I live in mountains pretty much my whole life and do regular hiking.My advice, you start together, you walk together, you return together. Full stop.
This was a dead giveaway for me that the author has little experience hiking. So many comments here about socializing, politeness, etc, not even mentioning the danger. But people plugged into the community and reading about incidents know how quickly things can turn from routine to crisis, and how many of them could have been prevented or mitigated by following these simple rules. Just one of many, many examples: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/06/17/new-hampshire-o...
For whoever needs to hear it: HIKING IS DANGEROUS!!! Respect the wilderness, prepare, and take care of each other.
Phrases like "full stop" make it sound like you have no room to question your own assertions, when in fact there are enough people with contrary opinions that it might help you to do so.
I'm curious what you need to judge in advance that's worth getting beyond line-of-site of "newcomers"? I suppose if you're preparing routes which take time this makes sense but I'm struggling to think of examples.
Things change awfully quick and it's a nightmare when you lose a group member and have a vast and potentially densely foliaged area to search with rescue teams many hours from responding.
As long as everyone's aware of the situation and properly prepared then it's certainly their choice to make.
We also don't have "foliage" in Iceland :)
From my limited experience with Iceland's terrain I think I'd be worried about "newcomers" behind me losing the trail so I think I'd be even more wary but perhaps it depends on the group, equipment, etc. While there isn't much dense foliage out here in the Rocky Mountains I've seen many people get separated even in alpine terrain. Especially in boulder fields where groups routinely get separated and I've seen several called for rescue independently after searching for hours.
> unless you're hiking in dangerous wilderness, there is no hard reason to prefer larger numbers.
This is simply untrue. Many people hike in groups because it is drastically safer than hiking solo. There are plenty of stories where separated hikers simply disappear after going off-trail in thick brush to use the restroom. THIS is the primary reason why the stigma exists and the author completely brushes it aside.
If you're a person hiking in "non-dangerous" wilderness you probably need the group even more since you likely failed to bring a map and compass, much less any survival gear. You may very well not know which trail you're on nor have planned for features and junctions to expect. The bare minimum you can do is stay with a few extra people who can help carry you out when you sprain your ankle or worse.
> If you don't want to wait for others, then ... go hiking by yourself.
That's literally what's happening when you start with a group but don't want to wait for others........... If the others are slow and have no intent to speed up, you should be perfectly free to speed off, without judgement from the group. Otherwise it's just a frustrating experience for everyone.
This entire debate is solved by mutual agreement of expectations. Communication solves these problems, and even if unexpected situational changes occur that might change the plan, communicating those changes helps everyone to help each other. This whole pseudo-philosophical debate can be boiled down to "discuss and be honest with each other and be willing to adapt"