Welcome to Ask an Outsider. We’re right here to reply your most urgent questions on having fun with time exterior, like whether or not you may hike in denims or reconcile completely different path objectives with a accomplice. Our recommendation givers are consultants from each inside and out of doors REI Co-op who draw from their very own expertise and information to assist inform yours.
This time, we discover the query: Is city climbing really climbing?
We requested Miles Howard, an city thru-hiking advocate and REI Co-op Member since 2010, to weigh in. A author, REI Co-op Member and the founding father of Boston’s Strolling Metropolis Path, Howard has spent years exploring how metropolis landscapes can supply the identical sense of discovery, problem and connection as conventional trails. He’s even written a how-to information to constructing your individual city path.
Learn on for his perspective.
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Ship it to expertadvice@rei.com. Embody your identify and the 12 months you grew to become an REI Co-op Member. Letters could also be edited.
Pricey Outsider,
One in all my favourite issues about residing in a metropolis is having the ability to discover so many neighborhoods and parks on foot. Once we get good weekend climate, I’ll load up my backpack with snacks and additional clothes, select an area landmark like a historic monument or my favourite pho restaurant, and spend the higher a part of the day climbing there by way of inexperienced areas, sidewalks, stairways, bridges, you identify it. It’s a terrific exercise, and stuffed with surprises.
However each time I speak about my city adventures with mates who hike within the backcountry, they get slightly snooty that I name them “hikes.” They are saying I’m “simply strolling.” I really feel like that is dismissive and gatekeeper-y, however perhaps I’m lacking one thing. Is there a substantive distinction between strolling and going for a hike?
Signed, Morgan Z., REI Co-op Member since 2018
Pricey Morgan,
As a fellow city hiker, I’ve discovered myself asking the identical query after hitting trails in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and catching up with mates who can’t conceive of the town as a climbing vacation spot. However I can see the place they’re coming from.
Traditionally, “climbing” has been thought of a extra vigorous type of off-road foot journey, normally in backcountry settings and on rocky, rooty trails. Today, although, extra individuals are warming as much as the wonder and oddities of the cityscape, which a pleasant crosstown ramble can illuminate. Simply take a look at the success of latest city trails just like the Chicago Outerbelt and Boston’s Strolling Metropolis Path. In follow, the road between strolling and climbing isn’t mounted. It’s formed by how and why you progress by means of a spot.
I made a decision to dig into your query with one other metropolis explorer: Darren Josey, creator of the Nice Malden Outdoor, a municipal program that gives no-cost to low-cost climbing, biking, fishing and mountain climbing alternatives within the Boston suburb of Malden.
Sense of Place or State of Thoughts
“If there’s a peak concerned, I believe ‘climbing,’” Josey says. Josey’s early experiences with backcountry journey led to a profession within the outside gear sector. He spent two and a half years on the tools producer NEMO and later based First Seed Sown, a gross sales and advertising and marketing company that helps BIPOC-owned companies within the outside trade. (He’s additionally a core advisor for the REI Co-op Path Forward Ventures program.) Now, helming a metropolis program that helps Malden’s numerous communities discover methods to recreate exterior, Josey is revisiting his personal thought of what “climbing” seems like.
“There are a few trails within the woods by my home that individuals with backcountry expertise would affiliate extra with strolling,” Josey says. “However in case you have mobility challenges or should you haven’t been on many dust strolling trails, the paths might really feel nearer to climbing.” Whether or not a brand new outside problem takes you alongside a footpath by means of dense tamarack groves and glacial boulders, or a paved walkway meandering previous a tidal salt marsh on the sting of city, there’s one thing intentional about setting off both means.
So, sure, whereas “climbing” has been outlined in additional rigorous phrases, like trudging uphill or scrambling over obstacles, who defines what “rigorous” is? Does climbing have to incorporate battle?
Extra usually, it comes all the way down to intention. It’s the option to spend time outdoor in a means that engages your physique, your consideration and your environment. We will consider a hike as a acutely aware resolution to push ourselves exterior and revel in some high quality time with the sticks, stones and streams.
Lastly, let’s contemplate how publicity to the weather can break down that walking-versus-hiking divide.
The Mountaineering Baseline
In August 2025, I traveled to Texas to go to an previous pal I labored with within the Appalachian Mountain Membership’s White Mountain huts. Now not capable of run ridgelines collectively, we determined to discover one among Dallas–Fort Value’s newer city trails: the 9.3-mile paved (and largely unshaded) path referred to as the Northaven Path. A forecasted excessive of 103°F compelled us to start strolling earlier than daybreak. We wore UV-resistant solar hoodies, wielded solar umbrellas and carried liters of water in our packs. Had been there nice woodlands and hilltops within reach at any level? Nope. Had been we sporting light-weight sneakers as a substitute of our burlier climbing boots? You guess.
However the publicity of our cross-city expedition felt rather more like climbing. We needed to map out our logistics and kit extra deliberatively than for an on a regular basis stroll. Not doing so would have put us in peril, simply because it’s by no means a good suggestion to go right into a nationwide forest with no backpack containing a path map, headlamp and the opposite Ten Necessities. That’s one other helpful distinction. Mountaineering usually includes some stage of publicity to climate or distance that requires preparation. To hike is to simply accept these variables and to pack accordingly. Josey considers that stage of intention completely different from strolling’s extra informal nature.
“A spot that you simply may contemplate strolling territory a lot of the 12 months can develop into climbing territory whenever you want gear to get by means of it,” Josey says. For instance, whereas he may traverse the rocky dust paths within the Middlesex Fells in a pair of Vans, seasonal situations may power a special method. “We’ve had numerous ice within the Boston space this winter, and I generally discovered myself placing on MICROspikes and utilizing trekking poles as a result of a number of of our native strolling venues had develop into treacherous. I felt like I used to be getting the form of climbing expertise you’d have within the mountains as a result of I used to be counting on that gear.”
Discover Your Path
However right here’s probably the most essential factor to recollect, Morgan: In the end, we outline our climbing and strolling practices as we replicate on foot journeys that felt extra meditative, and ones that left us wild-haired and wheezy.
So, whereas your mates might consider climbing as one thing that occurs solely on backcountry trails, your method matches inside a broader, evolving definition of what a hike will be. You intend a route, pack gear and set out with intention. The following time your mates push again, invite them alongside. Allow them to expertise the route, the rhythm and the surprises discovered shifting by means of a metropolis on foot. They might come away with a brand new perspective on what counts as a hike.
Joyful trails!
Associated studying:
The submit Ask an Outsider: I really like city climbing however my mates say it’s “simply strolling.” How can I persuade them I’m a hiker? appeared first on Unusual Path – An REI Co-op Publication.
