The next step would be doing a hut/refuge to hut/refuge hike in the Alps. A hut/refuge is a hotel with a restaurant, private rooms, dorm rooms. They are hundreds (thousands) of them throughout the Alps. You can arrange them yourself for multiday hikes. There are an infinite number of routes, but a good starting place would be this publisher of guidebooks: https://www.cicerone.co.uk/. Likewise, you only need to carry your lunch, but you do need more clothes because mountain weather can be unpredictable and dangerous.
I've personally done the "Tour de Vanoise" which I think is easy enough for novices and the "Stubai Hohenweg" which was definitely harder and scarier.
Actual backpacking (tent/sleeping bag, etc) is harder because you need more equipment but a good way to start in the United States might be by doing a group trip with The Sierra Club or a local club (meeetup.com) or commercial trip (REI?). I've done many Sierra Club trips.
* Grizzly Bears - Some great backpacking places - the Winds, Alaska - have grizzly bears which require more discipline about food. In the Sierra, there are bears but no history of them eating people.
* Lightening - Not as likely to make you shit in your pants as the Rockies in Colorado or Wyoming.
* Water - Some great backpacking places - the Grand Canyon - you MUST get from point A to point B that day because you need that water at point B, there's no water along the route. Water sources are plentiful in the Sierra
* Where to camp - Some great backpacking places - the Grand Canyon, the Tetons - are tightly regulated by permit as to where you can camp each night, so you have to know your pace beforehand and then stick to the plan. The permit system in the Sierra is easier - you pretty much just say where you are entering and exiting
* People - if you are a novice, it's good to have other people around, not too many and not too few. There will be more or less the right number of people around in the Sierra
* Logistics - Getting to the trailheads from Bishop, CA, not so hard.
* Reward - So beautiful. You have long distance views. You aren't just in the trees.
* Lyme Disease, etc - Not so bad.
Other options are Mt. Hood (near Portland), and Stevens Pass (near Seattle).
- Bears: You still need to be disciplined about food/smellables. Bear canisters are required for most of the Sierra—not bringing one is a recipe for a fine or getting escorted out by a ranger. Also, other critters are a problem. I had a raccoon steal my unguarded shorts (they had a bag of weed in the pocket) while I was sleeping, and I had to walk back to town with no pants.
- Logistics: Bishop/Kearsarge passes are quite remote and rugged, and then you’re on the PCT/JMT superhighway which is increasingly over-stressed by people. You can enter via Duck Pass or Red’s Meadow from Mammoth Lakes via public transit. The friendliest place for beginners would probably be further north in the Lake Tahoe region (e.g. Tahoe Rim Trail). Vermillion Valley Resort is a (rugged) ~1 hour drive from Fresno, and is one of the most classic congregation spots for PCT/JMT hikers and would make a great entry point. Angeles National Forest / the PCT would be a good choice for the LA area.
- Lightning/weather: The weather doesn’t care if it intimidates you or not, so you need to be prepared for anything. I didn’t bring rain pants to the desert section of the PCT and got slammed by freezing rain and had to run to avoid hypothermia. Also, please don’t do something batshit insane like go over a pass in inclement weather (I see it all the time). Here’s a document on lightning safety: https://www.nols.edu/media/filer_public/fa/96/fa96d71d-df6b-...
- Leave no trace: The Sierra is heavily impacted, so please tread lightly! In particular, don’t camp <100ft of the trail or a body of water, use Bluetooth speakers, or leave toilet paper blooms (packing it out is recommended but has low compliance, so at least mash up the TP and waste with a stick and some water to make a soupy mixture—critters like to dig up the lightly used paper). Being a wilderness ninja is cool, so read more LNT guidelines here: https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/leave-no-trace.html
The town of Bishop would be your base, and you can get there with public transportation from the airport in Reno, NV. Good stores if you need to replace equipment.
The roads to the trailheads are paved - a normal passenger car can handle the roads. Only about an hour from Bishop. There are commercial shuttles too. Even hitchhiking (I've done it, and I'm an ugly old man, and still had no trouble getting rides). The parking lots are already at high altitude, about 10,000 feet, so you only have to go another 2,000 to get over the passes.
The actual trails are in good shape, good surfaces, not narrow, not scary. There are places to camp both before and after the highest point of the passes so you can hike at your own pace. If you wanted to camp at the trailhead the night before to get adjusted to the altitude, then go just, say, just 5 miles and 1200 feet your first day, you could do that, and the trails are beautiful the whole way.
Rugged = safety traversing passes can require an ice axe and/or crampons (plus the skills to use them properly), depending on the conditions. That region is at high elevation which becomes problematic for people. Lots of inexperienced backpackers get airlifted out of there because of acute altitude sickness. There is a lot of weather exposure (harder to get below treeline if a storm rolls in). Bigger stream crossings, which tend to be the most serious danger to hikers.
I don’t disagree that Bishop rules and the area is (extremely) beautiful, but it’s absolutely not the best recommendation for people who are trying to backpack for the first time. Doable? Yes. Advisable? Not really.
We're talking pretty much about the same altitude situation as going to a ski resort in Colorado.
The thing is, I want even the beginner to experience spectacular mountain scenery so in the USA, that usually means hiking at 10,000, above the tree line.
If you're really starting from zero my recommendation would be to get yourself a decent pair of trail shoes and a small day pack. Find some short local day hikes and hit the trail for a couple of hours on the weekends. Mix in a little car camping and see how it goes. If you have friends who have gear, start by borrowing what you can and if the camping/hiking bug bites you slowly start building out your own set of gear. If you don't have friends that backpack find some and go on an overnight trip away from the cars. Ask them about the gear they brought and why. They'll have lots of opinions.
After you get a bit more comfortable with the basic stuff and have a better sense for what you need then start planning a longer trip like this.
I can't recommend enough finding a group of experienced people to start with. You'll make plenty of mistakes and they'll help keep it from turning into a catastrophe. You'll pick up a lot from them while also figuring out what does/doesn't work for you. Probably five years after starting backpacking with my family I was the 'experienced one' leading a group of friends on a hike through the Smokey Mountains on the Appalachian Trail.
1. Avid day hiker (10-16 mile hikes every weekend, 5-8k ft gain)
2. Car camping in Ojai (near Los Angeles). Drive in, setup your tent, chill, sleep, leave next morning.
3. Backpacking around LA on the trails from step 1
4. Thru-hiked PCT
5. Mountaineering / alpine climbing
Lots of people do the PCT with little hiking experience and are fine though. It's just walking, and there are tons of people to help you.
Don’t overthink, go and enjoy.
(trips in bear country take a bit of additional preparation, but also that can be done w/o too much hassle, lots of info online)
So, hut supported, you could try the Iceland trail, the Kungsleden in Sweden is moderate difficulty and the huts are wonderful, the huts in the U.S. on segments of the Appalachian trail are quite nice (and they even cook you dinner at some!) and there are a few others you can search for. Then once you've picked a specific hike, quite a few people write about their experiences on that particular trail and you can hone in on the specific equipment you'll need to bring.
My biggest piece of advice: be absolutely ruthless about the stuff you decide to bring so you can keep your pack as light as possible for that first multi-day hike. A bunch of extra clothes? No. The very low probability emergency situation that your hut won't have working gas so you have to bring your own stove? No. etc. etc.
This will teach you what you need and what you’ve forgotten to bring without much risk.
You will also learn what kind of meals you want to prepare and carry, which is really important.
https://www.notion.so/backpacking-aaf9b1959c57448ca86b9b481a...
Note: backpacking is ALL about preparation. Make a good list and you'll be good.
What? Why?
> matches ... lighter
Why both? I just bring two lighters
> Selfie stick ... hiking poles
I find the more stuff I bring, the more frustrated I get unpacking and packing each night and day. Of course there’s the weight thing, too, but anyway try to pack your things in cloth or plastic baggies for separation. I use the zippered pouches that are sold for this purpose in luggage when traveling.
Also don’t forget a trash bag!
> bells
This is great if you are hiking where bears are active. We call them bear bells for this reason.
I dunno. A handful of strike anywhere matches in a small plastic bag is very lightweight insurance as part of a small repair kit.
I do bring a (one) hiking pole because I find it really useful under certain conditions. But a selfie stick seems pretty unnecessary (as does the cup cozie so long as you have a plastic coffee cup--but who knows maybe metal plus cozie is lighter).
just like distributed systems, redundancy is key in wilderness survival. For anything super critical (like staying warm in the cold), always bring a backup option. lighters are more likely to fail than a match IMO.
> cup coozie
Keep tin cup warm after boiling water/removing it from stove.
> Selfie stick ... hiking poles
Yes ! packing cubes are helpful. I have 3 backpacks for different use:
22L - day hike or summer overnight 50L - 2-3 day hike summer 70L - ∞ day hike Winter
> bells
yeppppp learned this the hard way, stumbled on a momma and her cubs in the north cascades, WA while alone and i pissed myself. never surprise them.
Flat terrain or gentle climbs, I find no value in poles. Steep climbs (basically anything that has or should have switchbacks, or anything with steps) my knees are happier with them but it's not that big a deal.
Descending--this is why I carry them. Even a pretty gentle descent is going to hurt my knees if I don't have my poles.
As for lighters--disposable lighters run on butane. Butane has a boiling point of 32F. Good luck using your lighter if it gets too cold! Also, the matches in my pack can be lit and dropped into tinder sheltered under other wood, a lighter can't be. My emergency gear contains a cylinder of matches, each match held in it's own hole so there's no possibility of them rubbing against each other. (No lighter, though--where I hike an emergency fire would be difficult, campfires are almost always prohibited.)
Edit: typo
In the UK (other places too but the UK is really known for it), there are a ton of town to town walks and you can have your luggage transported.
As for backpacking, as others have said, you really probably want to get started with an out-and-back backpack, possibly with day hike(s) from a base camp rather than setting yourself on a probably overly ambitious point to point week-long backpack. ADDED: People do just strike out to do the AT or the PCT (see Wild) but it's not really recommended.
The short stuff also has the advantage that your costs are minimal. You likely have most everything you would need except possibly a pack and pretty much anything will do for a short hike. The people doing the trails on that list will generally have basically everything they're carrying (other than consumables) being high-end stuff specifically for hikers/backpackers. Consider the highest mountain locally--at the trailheads you see plenty of people in anything, even a decent number simply carrying a water bottle and that's it. On the summit (a long hike, no mountaineering) I would say 90% of the gear I see is the good stuff.
Or consider an experience from last year--we got a last-minute message from the leader, she had car trouble and couldn't get there. We were supposed to be six, but one new person failed to find us at the trailhead so four of us set off. It was dusk when we left, soon turning to night, and without our leader we definitely had some pathfinding problems. We were all glad the new woman didn't find us--we were all experienced, the fact that we were out at night in the desert and didn't know where the trail was was of no concern to us (we could see civilization and there wasn't any substantial obstacle to simply heading for it) we were thinking about how she would have reacted to the situation.
I have done Fjällräven Classic in Sweden two times and Hong Kong once and love it.
And various subreddits