Rate Your Hiking Level before you book a trip to the Alps
Your biggest day out in the last 12 months: how much elevation gain?
The morning after that day out, how were the legs?
Take an ordinary week: how much physical activity is in it?
Hiking several days in a row, have you done it?
The terrain under your boots: how far does it go?
The pack, on a hike of several days:
Your ideal mountain vacation looks like:
- Facts beat a feeling of fitness
- Placing yourself from 1 to 5 before booking a trek
- On a trek, how do you read your level?
- The most common mistake people make rating themselves
- Checking physically with 4 measurements
- Checking physically with 1 day on the ground
- When in doubt, take the time to call us
- Frequently asked questions
Level 1 to 2: Accessible
Your answers describe an unhurried practice, where the walking is there to show you something rather than to grind you down. Your ground today is 200 to 400 m of gain, 2 to 4 hours out and a light pack, roughly a maintained valley trail in Banff or a Bruce Trail section with one climb in it: our day-long nature outings and our family activities. Level 2 comes within reach this season if the appetite is there, with a donkey-supported hike that stretches the day without you carrying anything, or a weekend in the Southern Alps. Level 3, where most of our departures sit, becomes a fair target after one season of regular outings. The levels in detail. 7 questions do not replace a conversation: Alice or Robin review this result with you before you sign up, and it often shifts a notch one way or the other.
Level 2: Moderate
You can put in a full day on the trail without writing off the rest of the week. Up to 600 m of gain, a shade under Sulphur Skyline at Miette, 4 to 5 hours out, on trails that call for no technique: a hiking weekend in the Southern Alps or a bivouac night in the Écrins is within reach this season. Add the pack and several days back to back and the figure drops to 400 to 500 m a day, because the ceiling comes down as soon as the stages stack up. If you want to stretch, level 3 is the notch to aim for, and that is where most of our departures sit. If you would rather keep room, or travel with someone who trains less, a level 1 trip costs you nothing. The levels in detail. 7 questions do not replace a conversation: Alice or Robin review this result with you before you sign up, and it often shifts a notch one way or the other.
Level 3: Intermediate
A pass a day holds no fear and one night puts you back on your feet. This is the level we see most on our departures: up to 1,200 m of gain in a day, a little under Cascade Mountain from Banff, 4 to 6 hours of hiking, and the legs to start again tomorrow. The Tour du Vercors, the crossing of the Hauts-Plateaux and the 4-day trek in the Valgaudemar are cut for you. Anyone who has carried a full pack across the Chic-Chocs already knows the shape of the effort. If you want to stretch, our level 3 to 4 treks are within range provided you build the legs beforehand. If you would rather keep room, or bring a friend who trains less, a level 2 trip leaves you reserve and time to look around. The levels in detail. 7 questions do not replace a conversation: Alice or Robin review this result with you before you sign up, and it often shifts a notch one way or the other.
Level 4 to 5: Sustained
Elevation gain has stopped being your limit. From 1,200 to 1,800 m in a day, which is Mount Temple from Moraine Lake and then some, 6 to 8 hours of hiking, with sections where the foot has to look for its place. Our level 3 to 4 treks, the 5-day Écrins traverse and the 7-day Tour du Mont-Blanc sit inside your range, and level 5 routes open up once technical ground stops slowing you. One reminder that holds at this level as at every other: on a point-to-point route it is days 3 and 4 that judge you, and after a red-eye across the Atlantic day 1 judges nothing at all. Nothing requires you to aim high either, and a level 3 trip stays the sound choice for a restful vacation or for bringing someone who trains less. The levels in detail. 7 questions do not replace a conversation: Alice or Robin review this result with you before you sign up, and it often shifts a notch one way or the other.
Level 4 to 5: Intense
Talus, off-trail ground, airy ledges and long days: you come looking for commitment. If a Kane scramble is a normal Saturday for you, this is your register. Routes of that sort are built around you, so tell us what you have in mind and we will draw the line together. In the meantime most of our scheduled departures run at level 4 and you will have room there, whether it is the 5-day Écrins traverse, the 7-day Tour du Mont-Blanc or the Dolomites, whose cabled sections come closest to level 5 on our calendar. And a level 3 trip keeps every bit of its point on the day you travel with someone who trains less. The levels in detail. 7 questions do not replace a conversation: Alice or Robin review this result with you, and it often shifts a notch one way or the other.
Tell us what you have in mind for your next trip to the mountains and we will tell you whether this level covers it, or which one does.
"I am a pretty strong hiker." 2 people who say that on the same day can mean 300 m of gain for one and 1,200 m for the other, and neither of them is kidding themselves.
Altimood puts these questions to you on a call before you sign up: your last big day out, what it left in the legs the next morning, what an ordinary week holds. The test takes them up and converts them into our scale of 1 to 5, the one printed on every trip we run.
The rest of this page sets out what the questions measure, how to read the level they give you, how to check it in 3 minutes on your own body, and what shifts it a notch.
Facts beat a feeling of fitness
The picture you carry of your own condition is a poor measuring instrument. The record of a season of hiking, on the other hand, can be counted.
The test therefore works from facts: your last big day counted in elevation gain, the state of the legs the following morning, what your weekly activity actually consists of, your habit of stacking days, your ease on ground that gives way, and the weight you agree to carry. The next-morning question counts double, because it measures recovery, and recovery is what separates people on day 3 of a point-to-point route. The last question is about appetite, since the same body does not aim at the same trip depending on whether it comes to rest or to push.
2 findings are folded in here, learned on the ground rather than from a table. The type of sport weighs as much as its frequency: someone who hits the gym 3 times a week starts fast and stalls on day 3, where a regular hiker holds one pace from trailhead to trailhead. And carrying changes the level you can hold without changing the hiker: the same legs take 200 to 300 m more per day when the bags travel by road or on a donkey.
Placing yourself from 1 to 5 before booking a trek
| Level | Gain in a day | Time on the trail | What it assumes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Accessible | 200 to 400 m | 2 to 4 h | Good health, nothing beyond it |
| 2. Moderate | up to 600 m | 2 to 6 h | Occasional physical activity |
| 3. Intermediate | up to 1,200 m | 4 to 6 h | A weekly activity |
| 4. Sustained | 1,200 to 1,800 m | 6 to 8 h | 2 sessions a week and mountain days behind you |
| 5. Intense | often past 1,500 m, off-trail | 7 h and up | Regular practice and ease on technical ground |
Those figures describe one day taken on its own, with a light pack. That is the reading to use when you are picking a day hike or a weekend.
On a trek, how do you read your level?
Once the days stack up with a pack, the daily budget settles well under the ceiling of the level. A level 3 who climbs 1,200 m on a one-off day runs at 600 to 700 m a day on a 4-day route, and that is how it should be: fatigue accumulates, and one night no longer clears it.
2 figures carry a multi-day plan. The first is that daily one, well below the single-day ceiling: 400 to 500 m a day at level 2, 600 to 700 m at level 3. The second is time, since the same 6 hours do not buy the same ground on a built trail and on talus, and it is gain rather than distance that sets the pace. The first sizes a trip, the second plans a day.
The most common mistake people make rating themselves
Nobody rates themselves too low. Over several seasons of sign-ups, the gaps between the level announced and the level observed all run the same way, and they trace back to 3 recurring blind spots.
Day 1 proves nothing. On fresh legs, with the pull of the start behind them, almost everyone gets through 800 m. The verdict arrives on the third morning, quads stiff and pack already heavy, with another climb waiting. Flying from Canada adds a layer: a red-eye and 6 to 9 hours of time difference make day 1 even less informative, which is why a night in the valley before the trek starts beats walking off the plane.
The descent gives no warning. It costs the lungs nothing, so it never makes it into the arithmetic people run before signing up. It builds most of the soreness all the same: a stage at -900 m usually leaves more behind than a stage at +900 m.
Terrain changes everything. 1,000 meters on a wide, built trail nearly climb themselves. The same 1,000 on sliding talus in the Écrins, where the foot hunts for its place at every step, cost twice the attention and twice the legs. A season of scrambling in the Rockies prepares you for exactly that; the rounded, forested trails of the Gaspésie build the endurance and leave the footing untrained.
Hence one simple rule when your result leaves you between 2 levels: take the one below. Nobody has ever regretted finishing a day with something in reserve, and a variant can always be added along the way if the form is there. The reverse gets paid for in tendinitis, or in stepping off a route halfway.
Checking physically with 4 measurements
The test at the top of this page runs entirely on what you declare: an outing you remember, legs you remember. That holds up while the season is fresh, and much less once the last big climb goes back a few years, or when the fitness was built somewhere other than the mountains.
4 measurements will settle it. They are done at home, with no equipment, in 3 minutes. You need a wall, a staircase and a way to count seconds.
The wall sit: back to a wall, no chair, thighs horizontal and knees at a right angle. How long before it burns too much?
4 flights of stairs in one go, at a decent pace. At the top:
Your pulse right after those stairs, then again 2 minutes later. How many beats per minute has it come down? (count over 15 seconds and multiply by 4)
Walking 1 hour without stopping at a decent clip, around 5 km/h, downtown or on a flat path:
The body is behind the experience
Your measurements land below what your mountain history suggests. This is the familiar case of the hiker with a good past in the legs and 1 or 2 quiet seasons behind him: the level from the top of the page describes who you were, not who you are this year. Drop a notch for this season, then go and win the level back over a few weeks of outings at 400 and then 600 m of gain, as set out just below. If the test at the top already put you at level 1, there is nothing to correct: it was simply accurate.
The body keeps up
Your measurements and your history agree, which is the most common outcome. Take the level from the top of the page as it stands, and sign up on it. When memory and body say the same thing there is nothing further to look for, and the rest gets handled on the ground with the guide.
The body is ahead of the experience
Your fitness runs ahead of what your mountain history shows. This is the profile of the regular runner, cyclist or swimmer who has not hiked much at altitude yet: the engine is there, the terrain is not. Add a notch to the level from the top of the page, and only one. What is missing does not come from training: talus sliding under the boot, or 5 hours of descent on the knees, is learned in the mountains and nowhere else.
This second result corrects the first. Where the two disagree, believe the body: memory usually dates back several seasons. Say so when you sign up, since it is exactly the kind of gap Alice or Robin settle in 2 minutes on the phone.
Checking physically with 1 day on the ground
The best test before booking fits into one outing: a day hike with 600 to 700 m of gain and 6 to 8 kg on your back. Ha Ling Peak above Canmore does it, and so does Mont Albert in the Gaspésie. Come home tired but pleased and the level above is open to you. Come home flattened and the answer is a few weeks of outings at 400 and then 600 m, and nothing more ambitious than that.
Between 2 outings, walking briskly and taking the stairs every time already amount to training that pays off. Hiking rewards regularity far above intensity, and a half marathon in the legs settles nothing about your 3rd day of trekking. Taking weight out of the pack does as much as a month of training and costs far less: our bivouac gear list sets out where the kilos come off.
When in doubt, take the time to call us
Vertigo, a joint you do not trust, a recent surgery, the highest altitude you have reached, heat that empties your legs in summer: none of it fits into 7 questions, and all of it moves the cursor. Heat is worth naming for anyone flying in from Canada, because a July afternoon at 2,000 m in the Southern Alps runs warmer and drier than a summer day in the Rockies, and it catches people out more often than the gradient does.
The group escapes the questions too. On a scheduled departure you walk alongside people who do not all have the same lungs, and it falls to the mountain guide to set the pace, place the breaks before fatigue takes hold, offer a variant to whoever wants more, and turn around below a pass when that is the call. On a guided trip, half a level of difference is absorbed without drama. 2 levels is harder work, and harder still an ocean from home.
That is also why Alice or Robin revisit these questions when you sign up: the result opens a discussion, it does not close one. Look at our guided trips with this level in mind, and if yours lands between 2 of them, a tailor-made route settles the question. And if what is still open is the format rather than the level, guided or self-guided puts the 4 side by side, quiz included.
Frequently asked questions
Does the test level match the one shown on your trips?
It does. Same scale of 1 to 5, set out in full on our hiking difficulty page. A trip listed at level 3 to 4 therefore calls for a result of 3 at minimum, with room to spare on the longest stages.
I fall between 2 levels, which one do I choose?
The lower one, unless stepping outside your comfort zone is the point of the trip. A day finished with something in reserve leaves a far better memory than a day endured, and the guide has variants ready for whoever asks.
Is my level the same on snowshoes as on a summer hike?
No. Snow slows everything down and the snowpack decides how much: allow 200 to 300 m less gain for the same feeling, plus the extra work of breaking trail. Our winter trips carry a level of their own, to be read as it stands.
And for kids?
The usual marker is around 100 m of gain per year of age on a single day out, so 600 m for a fit 6-year-old. Over several days, cut that back hard and lean on motivation: friends along, a night in a tipi or a donkey beat any amount of encouragement.
Can I aim a level higher if the trip is guided?
One notch, provided you are honest about the room you have. The guide sets the pace on the group and can shorten a stage, but he will not be carrying your pack every day. Past one notch, the trip stops being a vacation.
Keep reading
- Altimood Mountain Guides
- Blog
- Rate Your Hiking Level before you book a trip to the Alps