What Is a Good Hiking Pace? Find the Pace You Can Actually Hold
What Is a Good Hiking Pace Once Terrain and Effort Come Into It?
If you want a number, around 2 to 3 mph, or 3.2 to 4.8 km/h, is a useful rough hiking pace on straightforward ground. It’s handy when you’re trying to work out whether a walk might take two hours or four, but that’s about as far as we’d take it.
We used to head out too hard, especially when we were newer to hiking. Fresh legs, plenty of energy, everything feeling good, so we’d move quicker because we could. An hour or two later, we’d usually be wondering why the walk suddenly felt harder than it needed to.
These days we’d rather ease into it, find a rhythm and leave something for later. A good pace, for us, is one we can settle into without constantly stopping to recover or spending the second half paying for the first.
What is a good hiking pace in real life?
For plenty of normal trails, 2 to 3 mph is a decent planning range. Once the ground gets steeper, rougher or less obvious, that number can drop pretty quickly.
A smooth gravel track might let you roll along without thinking much about it. Add roots, mud, rocks, awkward steps or a decent climb and the same speed can suddenly feel completely wrong.
Then there are all the other little things that change a day. Heat, wind, altitude, a heavier pack, tired legs or just not feeling particularly sharp that morning can all slow you down.
That’s why we use average hiking speeds for rough planning and leave them there. Once we’re actually on the trail, how the ground feels and how we’re moving tells us more.
We had to stop wasting the good legs early
The start of a hike can make you feel pretty capable.
You’ve just got out of the car, nothing hurts yet and the pack still feels fine. If there’s a decent climb ahead, you probably haven’t properly met it yet either.
We’ve had plenty of walks where we were moving really well early on, then realised later that we’d spent energy for no real reason. The pace wasn’t impossible. It just wasn’t helping.
Now we normally start a bit easier and let the day come to us. Once the legs are warm and we know what sort of trail we’ve actually got, there’s plenty of time to move quicker if we feel like it.
That’s been a much nicer way to hike than flying through the opening section and dragging tired legs home later.
We pay more attention to rhythm than speed
We don’t worry much about holding one exact pace anymore. What matters more is whether the effort feels like something we can keep doing.
If we’re cruising along and still feel like there’s plenty left, good. If an ordinary stretch of trail already feels harder than it should, we’ll usually back off rather than trying to protect whatever number happens to be on the watch.
Speed moves around all day anyway. Climbs slow you down, easier track speeds you up and rough descents can take surprisingly long because you’re actually watching where your feet go.
Trying to make one pace fit all of that never made much sense to us.
Five kilometres can be five very different kilometres
Distance is useful, but it doesn’t tell you much on its own.
Five kilometres of wide, easy track might disappear pretty quickly. The same distance with roots, mud, steps and climbing can feel like a completely different walk.
That’s one reason we look at elevation, footing and the general shape of a trail before worrying too much about the distance. We get into that properly in our piece on what trail difficulty actually means, because those easy, moderate and hard labels often hide the bits that actually make a walk hard.
It also makes comparing pace between completely different hikes a bit pointless. Sometimes the slower day was simply the harder trail.
Your watch only tells part of the story
Trail apps can make a hike look a lot tidier than it really was.
Maybe your moving pace was 2.8 mph. You also stopped for food, took photos, checked the map, changed a layer and spent ten minutes trying to work out what bird was making that noise.
That’s still part of the walk.
We don’t think those stops need explaining away. Some of the best bits of a hike happen because you stopped long enough to notice something.
For planning, though, we’ve found total time more useful than the clean moving number. If we leave the car at nine and get back at one, we know that sort of outing takes us roughly four hours. Whether the watch says we were technically moving for three hours and twelve minutes doesn’t change much next time we’re working around daylight.
After enough walks, you get a feel for both. You know roughly how quickly you move and roughly how long the whole day tends to take once food, photos and normal messing around are included.
Pace changes when you’re hiking with other people
Everyone seems to have their own weird strengths.
Someone can fly uphill and suddenly become very cautious coming down. Someone else keeps exactly the same pace all day. Then there’s usually someone who starts slowly and somehow still looks fresh hours later.
We’ve been the faster person and the slower one on different days. Neither position really means much.
When we’re moving well, waiting a minute isn’t a problem. When we’re the ones having the slower day, trying to cook ourselves just so nobody has to stop for thirty seconds usually makes things worse.
On a relaxed trail, people naturally spread out and pull back together anyway. The nicest group hikes are usually the ones where nobody spends much time thinking about who’s quickest.
You start learning your own pace without trying very hard
After a few hikes, patterns become pretty obvious.
You get a feel for how quickly easy ground passes, what a sustained climb does to you and whether you tend to slow down much later in the day. You also start noticing which kinds of trails chew through time even when the distance doesn’t look like much.
We know there are certain types of ground where our pace falls away quickly. On other trails, we’ll cruise along without really thinking about it. Knowing that is far more useful to us now than knowing what the average hiker apparently does.
Fitness changes things over time as well. We’ve found regular walking, hills and a bit of strength work make harder days feel easier without needing to turn every hike into training. If that’s the side you’re interested in, we’ve already gone down that road in our training for hiking guide, so there’s no point repeating it all here.
For pace, the useful bit is simply getting familiar with how you move.
Naismith’s Rule is useful, but it’s still just an estimate
If you spend much time looking at hiking times, you’ll probably come across Naismith’s Rule.
The basic idea is to allow roughly an hour for every 5 km of distance and then add extra time for climbing. It’s been around for a long time because it gives you somewhere sensible to start when you don’t know the route.
We’ve always found that more useful as a rough planning tool than something to compare ourselves against.
Once you’ve got enough similar hikes behind you, your own history starts becoming more useful anyway. If a formula says four hours but you know that kind of trail usually takes you closer to five, we’d plan for five and forget about it.
The point is getting the day roughly right, not proving the formula wrong.
Slowing down made us notice more
This wasn’t why we stopped charging off at the start, but it ended up being one of the better parts of easing back.
When you’re not rushing, you notice more of what’s going on around you. Birds, movement off the side of the trail, water somewhere below you, wind through the trees, weird fungi, animal tracks and all the little stuff that’s easy to miss when you’re focused on keeping pace.
Sometimes we’ll stop because something looks interesting and stand there longer than we meant to. That’s part of it now.
We still enjoy moving quickly when the mood and trail suit it. Covering ground can feel bloody good. We’ve just stopped treating quicker as automatically better.
Some days we want to push. Other days we’re happy cruising along and seeing what we find.
Pace only really matters when it starts changing the day
Being slower than expected usually doesn’t matter much.
It starts mattering when the pace you’re actually moving no longer fits the time, weather or energy you’ve got left. Maybe daylight is disappearing quicker than expected, the weather’s turning or everyone’s looking more tired than they should for what’s still ahead.
That’s when we stop thinking about how fast we thought we’d move and work with what’s actually happening.
Trying to claw back lost time by suddenly hammering the return has never struck us as much of a solution. If the day no longer fits, shortening it can make a lot more sense. We’ve written separately about knowing when to turn around, because by that stage pace is only one part of the picture.
Most of the time, though, being a bit slower than expected is just being a bit slower than expected.
Before you head out
We’d start a touch easier than fresh legs are asking for and see how things feel once you’re properly into the trail. There’s always time to pick things up later if the legs are good.
Pace also changes how hot a walk feels. We tend to run warm once there’s climbing involved, so quicker or harder days usually push us towards something lighter and quicker-drying. On an easy dry walk, we’re perfectly happy in a comfortable cotton tee.
That’s pretty much how we think about our Hiking Shirts & Trail Tees too. There are quick-dry options for sweatier days and comfortable everyday tees for the ones where you’re not trying to turn a local walk into an expedition.
Whatever you’re wearing, it should disappear into the day pretty quickly. Get comfortable, find your pace and pay attention to the bit that actually matters, where you are.
Final take
A good hiking pace isn’t one fixed number. Around 2 to 3 mph is useful for rough planning on easier ground, but terrain, climbing, weather and how you’re feeling can move that around pretty quickly.
We’ve enjoyed hiking more since we stopped spending the good legs early just because they were there. Starting a little easier and settling into a pace we can actually keep has made longer days feel better, and we notice a lot more along the way.
If someone flies past us now, good for them. We’re probably stopping to look at something anyway.
FAQ
Is 2 mph a good hiking pace?
Yes. Around 2 mph, or 3.2 km/h, is a perfectly normal hiking pace.
On rough or steep ground, that can still feel quick. On an easy flat trail, you may naturally move faster.
Is 3 mph fast for hiking?
Three miles per hour, around 4.8 km/h, is a solid pace on a normal trail.
It can feel comfortable on smoother ground and very different once there’s climbing, mud, rocks or awkward footing involved.
What’s a good hiking pace for beginners?
There’s no particular pace you need to reach when you’re starting out.
Go at a speed you can keep comfortably and see what happens over a few different trails. Your own normal becomes obvious pretty quickly once you’ve got something to compare.
How long does it take to hike one mile?
At 2 mph, a mile takes about 30 minutes of moving time. At 3 mph, it’s around 20 minutes.
Hills, rough ground and stops can stretch the actual time quite a bit.
How long does it take to hike 5 km?
At 5 km/h, around an hour of moving time. At 3 km/h, closer to an hour and forty minutes.
A rough or hilly 5 km can take much longer, so we wouldn’t plan from distance alone.
Why am I slower going uphill?
Because climbing asks more from you.
Most of us naturally shorten the stride and slow down once the gradient kicks in. Trying to hold the same speed you’d walk on flat ground usually just makes the climb feel harder.
Why can hiking downhill be slow too?
Because some descents are awkward.
Loose rock, roots, big steps, slippery ground and tired legs can all make downhill sections slow. Sometimes coming down needs more concentration than going up.
Should I use moving pace or total hiking time?
We use both, but total time is usually more useful for planning the day.
Moving pace shows roughly how quickly you walk. Total time includes the food stops, photos, navigation and everything else that happens between leaving and getting back.
Should the fastest person set the pace in a hiking group?
Not really.
People will naturally move at slightly different speeds, but the day is usually nicer when nobody feels like they’re constantly chasing the group.
Is being a slow hiker bad?
No.
It only really becomes relevant if your pace no longer works with the route, daylight, weather or whatever else you planned the day around.
Can hiking slower help you go farther?
Sometimes, definitely.
Going out too hard can mean fading later or taking bigger recovery stops. Settling into an easier rhythm can leave much more in the legs once the early energy has worn off.
How can I get faster at hiking?
Walking more, spending time on hills and building some basic strength all help.
You don’t need to turn every hike into a speed session. As your fitness improves, your normal pace tends to feel easier first, and moving quicker usually comes with it.
What should I do if a hike is taking longer than expected?
Have another look at the day you’ve actually got.
Check how much trail is left, the daylight, weather, water and how everyone’s feeling. Sometimes nothing needs changing. If the timing has started getting tight, shortening the walk or heading back earlier can be the better option.