Spent 4 hours on trail in Olympic National Park before realizing my trekking pole locks were loose the whole time

I was adjusting my pace every mile thinking the terrain was just weird, but after finally stopping to check, tightening those twist locks took 30 seconds and totally fixed my stride, has anyone else wasted a whole day hiking with a stupid fixable issue like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

casey2681d ago

Dude, I did something similar on a 10-mile day in the Smokies. My pack hip belt was twisted and digging into my side for like four hours. I kept thinking I was just out of shape or had gained weight over the winter. Stopped for lunch, fixed it in ten seconds, and the rest of the day was totally fine. Felt so dumb but also relieved it was that simple. It's always the little things that mess up a whole hike.

tessalane1d ago

And it's wild how that translates to real life too, you know? I feel like half the time I'm struggling with something, it's because I've got some stupid little detail sideways (like missing one step in a recipe or forgetting to check a setting). We're so quick to blame ourselves for being "off" when really it's just a tiny system error that takes seconds to fix. Like the mind just runs with the worst explanation first instead of looking for the simple glitch.

torres.riley1d ago

Has anyone ever noticed how often the tiniest things end up ruining our flow? Like @tessalane said, we always jump to blame ourselves instead of looking for the easy glitch. It happens in hiking gear and in regular life too, like when your coffee maker is acting up but you forgot to fill the water tank. Our brains are wired to think something is deeply wrong, but it's usually just a small fix that takes thirty seconds. I've done this with my headphones not sounding right, spent half an hour messing with settings before realizing the cable was just loose in the jack. It makes you wonder how much time we waste assuming the worst when the answer is right in front of us.