Not only for remembering, but also for…
For those who are just starting to walk mountain paths, but also for those who have been walking them for quite a while, a very worthwhile piece of advice concerns the method for keeping your own hiking diary:
First of all, you start with simple operations.
At home you need a notebook in which to record all the hikes you have done, with a description of the walk.
Each single description must include:
1) title of the hike;
2) route driven by car and km covered from home to the starting point;
3) if you have a GPS, the km covered during the hike;
4) walking time;
5) time spent at stops;
6) weather conditions (snow, rain, cloud…);
7) description of the views seen during the walk;
8) detailed description of the points where the path disappears and you have to go by instinct;
9) springs or fountains encountered, names of the springs and presence/scarcity of water;
10) feelings experienced during the hike;
11) people taking part in the hike;
12) state of the waymarking along the route;
13) maximum altitude reached (measured with an altimeter or by reference to the map);
14) people met, wild animals, oddities and assorted observations…
15) perceived physical effort;
All this serves above all to avoid forgetting, after a few years, the many hikes you have done and the summits you have reached.
These same data can be organised either in a simple Excel sheet (putting each item in its own column) or by arranging the material in a more complex database.
These operations look complicated, but they then let you easily retrieve information about your own hiking activities.
One important consideration has to be made. Writing on a computer has its strengths and its weaknesses. Writing in electronic form lets you catalogue and process the material quickly. The internet lets you share the same material with relatives, friends, colleagues and people far away. The computer requires a certain amount of know-how and a bit of application and organisation.
Writing a paper notebook, on the other hand, is a slower operation, probably simpler but certainly with a far greater charm. Through our handwriting, the words we have used, the colours, the sketches and drawings we make, we communicate our state of mind of the moment, and it is
for this reason that we suggest you definitely favour the paper notebook or, at most, for those who wish, use both, paper and computer.
Filling in the notebook or hiking diary right in the places you are visiting can improve both the quality of what we write and the truthfulness of the descriptions.
Please note: this article was written with the help of Giuseppe Albrizio, visit his website here: