Winter is the season that most dramatically divides the world into North and South. But here is a comforting thought for all those among you who are currently in the grip of the cold and the dark: the people who inhabit the gentler climes of the Mediterranean may be spared the worst of the weather, but they are staring down the same barrel of a gun as you.
Yes, it’s that time of the year again when Christmas is rearing its tinselly head, forcing all of us to embark once again on the dreaded quest for the right gift for the right person.
If you have friends or family members who like hiking or walking, your thoughts will inevitably go in that direction. In principle, this is a good idea, but remember that all disasters start with an idea that sounded perfectly reasonable at the time.
Christmas Gifts for Hikers
Non-hikers appear to have no idea what a hiker might want or find useful, as my treasure trove of useless hiking gifts attests: maps for areas I never intended to visit, novelty camping items, books full of lyrical musings about hikes in the Hindukush.
My mother once bought me a compass, knowing that her beloved grandson and I were planning to go on a three-day hike in the spring. Where did she think we were heading: to explore Antarctica?
So allow me to assist you in whittling down your options a bit to find those perfect Christmas gifts for hikers. The following will be based on personal experiences and preferences, but in your search for the perfect hiking present, you still may find it useful to listen to a voice from the other end of the gift-giving chain, no matter how unrepresentative this voice may be.
First of all, if you are tempted to go Christmas shopping for hiking accessories, you should be aware that “hiking” covers a lot of ground, literally (of course) but semantically as well. On one end of the spectrum, you may have someone who plans to cross a whole continent on foot – believe me: such folks do not count on Christmas gifts to equip them for their trip to the Amazon basin.
Easy hikers, conversely, are also easy-to-make-happy hikers – provided you know the answers to a few basic questions: are your easy-hiking friends setting off on a multiple-stage trip or will they undertake a series of day trips from the same holiday base? Do they plan to sleep outdoors or in a hotel? Will they cook their own meals or rely on inns and restaurants?
Here is an example for what you have to consider. An aluminum water bottle is a potentially useful and visually attractive gift. (Our friends from adidas have some of those on their website. Browse through the section on “Hiking Accessories” in their online catalogue.) But they come in different sizes, so which one do you pick?
Think “Flasks For Tasks”: folks who hike through a largely uninhabited wilderness will go for the big bottle, but if they know that they will pass a village or a pub every hour or so for a refill, there is no need to carry two or three kilograms of excess weight with them. (If you carry any amount of weight up a mountain, every gram counts.)
Or take another indispensable item of hiking equipment: walking shoes. “Boots for routes” is the rule here. On most trails, conventional hiking footwear made of thick, heavy leather is unnecessarily weighty and substantial, and a light pair of trainers will do the same job without tiring you too soon. (Your feet and legs, too, will be grateful for every gram you can take off their load.)
Our friends from adidas have a range of such men’s and women’s walking boots in their catalogue, with and without ankle protection.
Books are probably the most popular gifts of all, but nobody would believe that just about any book will do as a gift: people choose their literary presents with careful consideration, and that should apply to books about hiking, too.
Tomes about specific locations – Hiking the Hindukush – will go straight to the most distant corner of the cupboard unless the recipient of the gift is already planning such a trip. It is a much better idea to concentrate your search on books about the general idea of walking or hiking – like Erlind Kagge’s “Walking: One Step At A Time” or the works of Duncan Minshull who collects the hiking prose and poetry of famous writers.
If you think your friend will be interested in what Mark Twain, Dante and Oscar Wilde had to say about strolls through the small and the great outdoors, Mr. Minshull is your man.
Books about the history of walking are a good choice for readers who do not want to make a huge time commitment and prefer to dip in and out. Rebecca Solnit’s “A History Of Walking” and Sarah Baxter’s “A History Of The World In 500 Walks” probably top this list.
And if you do not know whether your friend would appreciate any of these suggestions, pick something funny. You can never go wrong with funny: everybody likes a good laugh. In this sub-category of hiking books, Bill Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods is in a class of its own (also available in various audio formats).
If you insist on buying something that provides your friend with recommendations for future hiking tours, I would suggest to think about a subscription rather than a book. Komoot.com features information about hiking routes (predominantly) in Europe. Rough outlines of the routes can be freely accessed on their website, but for detailed maps you will need a subscription. (And since you ask: no, we do not get a commission from them.)
Finally, if none of the above ticks any of your boxes as Christmas gifts for hikers, you may want to think of updating the basic equipment of the sort that every hiker owns – and constantly grumbles about, particularly if the hiker in question is a “he” and over 50.
My own current backpack, to give you an example, is a remnant from the days when we used to go on longer hiking trips and had to carry everything on our backs: changes of clothes, fresh underwear, toiletries and so on.
This backpack consists essentially of a single large sack with a few side pockets, while for the kind of day-trip hikes that we undertake these days, a model with several smaller and easy-to-search compartments would be much more useful.
The rule, of course, is “Packs For Tracks”, but I – together with most hikers of my age – am far too stingy to throw anything away before it is literally in tatters, opting to wait for the time when something more practical will materialize out of thin air. And, until then, to grumble on.
The same is true for shoes. Many older hikers would surely be grateful if some Christmas elf were to relieve them of their clunky old leather boots, and once they have tried lighter footwear, they would – I bet – never return to their old clogs.
The only catch is that the elf would need to find a way of establishing the right shoe size. But who has ever said that the way to the perfect Christmas gift would be a walk in the park?
