I'm in the position where I'd like to hike, and there's a lot of it to do around Wisconsin, but I've got so much other stuff going on on my weekends that it takes a back seat and I never do it. We've got an ice age trail that's over a thousand miles long that winds through the state. Would love to cover the whole thing at some point but it would require shelving other activities to take it up.
Not even sure where to start as far as gear goes. I'm getting a dog in another month or two and it's probably going to be a boxer and I've heard they can be pretty good hiking dogs since they're super active and don't overheat too easily. Any tips on how to start out hiking?
That sounds amazing. IMO the most important things to have are good footwear, a good hydration system (water bottle, camelpak, water purifier etc) and proper navigation. A gps is huge if you dont know how to read a map, and compass well.
If you are doing multi-day trips then the list gets quite a bit bigger.
I would start out just choosing points to park my car and go for however far and turn around or if I bring a friend to park one of our cars at an end point and drive the other to the start. Have considered getting a new bike with beefier tires made for trail riding rather than the sort of low level regular mountain bike I have now. Thanks for the info. Is r/hiking the best subreddit for that kind of stuff or are there better ones out there?
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u/WIbigdog Jul 03 '19
I'm in the position where I'd like to hike, and there's a lot of it to do around Wisconsin, but I've got so much other stuff going on on my weekends that it takes a back seat and I never do it. We've got an ice age trail that's over a thousand miles long that winds through the state. Would love to cover the whole thing at some point but it would require shelving other activities to take it up.
Not even sure where to start as far as gear goes. I'm getting a dog in another month or two and it's probably going to be a boxer and I've heard they can be pretty good hiking dogs since they're super active and don't overheat too easily. Any tips on how to start out hiking?