Can You Fail a Hike?

What does it mean to have an unsuccessful hike? One of the things I like about hiking is that it’s not competitive. At least not usually. Sure, there’s always that occasional person who tries to “win” the hike by pushing the pace either consciously or unconsciously. (Yes, sometimes this person is me.) In running though, we have much more objective measures of success—time, pace, placement. We even have the DNF or did not finish. Even in mountaineering, we have an objective measure—you either make it to the summit or you don’t. If you don’t, you didn’t climb the mountain; you only attempted it.

But what about hiking? If you are doing a hike to a specific destination, I suppose not making it there could be considered a DNF, but you still went hiking, right?

In the past year since I started this blog, I have written about most of the hikes I’ve done and mountains I’ve summitted. There are just a few exceptions. Two of which I could technically call DNFs. I didn’t intend to forgo writing about them before, during, or even after the hike. In fact, I even started the post for one of them, making it a sort of a double DNF I suppose. Part of it is that maybe I, like everyone, don’t want to rehash an unsatisfying experience. Another part is that these may not be nice pat stories with tidy little bows on them. When others struggle, I want them to be able to overcome and succeed, and when I struggle, I also want to be able to overcome and succeed, even though I don’t more often than I would like. And this is why erasing these stories feels disingenuous at times and paints a flat, social media picture of a perfect world where everyone meets their challenges and wins.

So, let’s talk about one of these DNFs—a hike to the 3,000m peak Frondella in the Pyrenees. It was July, and heading into this hike, I was craving something mild, with easy trails, early summer flowers, a bit of sun. I didn’t realize that the ultimate goal was to summit this peak, just that we would go near some alpine lakes where maybe I could swim, something that will always lure me on a hike. And this was mostly what I got, at least until we reached the pass just before a series of alpine lakes before the route climbed steeply up to the mountain. While nearing the narrow pass to the lakes, a frigid wind picked up and we crossed an unstable scree field (aka Lindsay Kryptonite). It had clearly been the site of a recent rockslide. I was so tense by the time I reached the lakes, even though it was a short distance, that I’m not sure I really even enjoyed them.

We circled the lakes and started a short rock scramble that I would ordinarily consider easy and fun, but it left me feeling pretty tired with still a third of the hike to go to the summit, plus the return. So instead of continuing up, I stayed on the mountainside just above the lakes while my partner went up to the summit. For the remainder of the afternoon, I alternated between stretching out in the sun and tucking myself out of the wind next to a boulder when the sky clouded over. I also watched marmots in the distance running back and forth between their burrows and hillocks and fighting and chasing.

A lot happened, or rather didn’t happen, on that hike. We communicated poorly and made bad decisions. In addition to placidly watching the clouds roll over me, I paced and waited and worried and waited some more, while a deepening fear ate at me. I cried and yelled, but I also laughed and recovered. It wasn’t all marmots and sunshine that day, but watching those marmots were the best part of it (well, maybe second to getting back to the car) and something I might never have had a chance to experience had I kept going that day.

Therefore, I propose that we label any activity where we don’t meet our objectives a DNF—did not fail—because, let’s face it, most of our objectives are pretty arbitrary and don’t take into account the myriad of variables affecting us on any given day. Did you go somewhere? Did you return home alive? Did you enjoy yourself? Did you see interesting and beautiful things? Did you learn something? If yes, then you did not fail; you succeeded.