For wilderness travel, many words have been written about the importance of bringing first aid supplies in case of emergency, or keeping your wits about you when something goes wrong. These things are obviously important.

But I think the most overlooked backpacking “get out of jail card” is the ability to hike quickly. While it’s not always useful (maybe the reason you’re in trouble is because you twisted your knee), it’ll get you back to society in almost any likely scenario. Society has the resources to solve almost any safety problem you face in the wilderness. Whether it’s back to your vehicle, to a place with a cell phone signal, or out to a road to flag someone down, most issues can be solved this way. Getting to society is the second closest thing to a blanket cure-all that exists for wilderness travelers. The closest thing is calling for rescue, which brings society’s resources to you. Obviously, hiking out under your own power is preferred. 

Lost? After making your best guess, the faster you hike toward where you think you need to go, the faster you’ll know if your guess was right. If it wasn’t right, you’ll most likely end up at a road anyway. The difference between a 10 mile per day hiker and 30 mile per day hiker may add up to several additional days of being lost. 

Cold? The ability to hike fast, all day long, can keep you warm even if an error in judgement was made with regard to your insulation.

Wet? In most situations, fast hiking will dry you off in an hour or so, if you have good technical clothing. In those situations where it doesn’t, it’ll at least help you to keep warm while getting you back to society faster. 

Blisters? Getting back to the car is going to hurt either way, you might as well get it over with quickly.

Low on food? Tent leaks? Unexpectedly bad trail conditions? Weird man following you? Sleeping bag soaked? Bad hiking partners? Out of stove fuel? Lost your gloves? Sleeping pad flat? Forgot your stakes? Hiking partner has an emergency? If your best choice is to bail, it’s good to at least have the ability to bail quickly and efficiently. Keep that tool accessible in your toolbox.

Bailing isn’t required for this to be useful, either. Hiking fast to get down off a pass during a surprise storm, or until you reach the safety of the tree line, or until you reach your next trail town for more food are all great examples of situations where speed equals safety. 

This is the main reason I cringe when I see everyone’s 10 essentials lists full of extras: extra food, extra clothing, extra whatever. Extra means unnecessary. Extra stuff is occasionally useful for the one thing it’s intended for. But extra speed is useful for almost any problem. Unfortunately, when you add extra stuff, you subtract speed. It may not be wise to trade away a useful general tool for an overly specific one. 

I have used this strategy more times than I’d like to remember. The above photo was taken early on the last day of a February trip to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We were pulling pulks over miles of Lake Superior ice before dawn, with a punishing northwest wind reminding me of my poor choice in wearing only three lower body insulating layers. With the wind chill dozens below zero, I couldn’t even stop to put on more layers, for fear of becoming hypothermic in the minutes it would take to get them out of my pack and onto my legs. The cold crept in slowly but surely, and by the time I realized I might be in trouble, the cliffs were rising impenetrably above and there was no way to get off the lake and out of the wind. It was the coldest I’ve ever been. My solution was to hike as fast as I possibly could, for nearly two hours until the sun rose and returned some sanity to the temperatures. Problem solved. My hiking partners caught up later. A lack of physical fitness here could have been very, very dangerous. 

Stay fit, folks.