Practical guides, honest gear advice, and everything you need to hike with confidence — written from real experience on real trails.
My first winter hike was in November on a trail I’d done several times in summer. I wore my usual hiking leggings, a fleece, and a waterproof jacket — the same combination that had served me well through autumn. By the top of the first climb I was warm enough. At the summit, exposed to […]
Autumn is my favourite hiking season. The light is different — softer, more golden, lower in the sky — and the trails are less crowded, the air is sharper, and the views through turning leaves are worth every extra layer you have to carry. But autumn is also the season that catches underprepared hikers off […]
Summer hiking sounds simple — it’s warm, you pack less, you don’t need to worry about wet weather layers. Then you do your first hot-weather hike in a cotton t-shirt and discover that sweat-soaked cotton sticks to your skin, takes forever to dry, and makes a three-hour trail feel twice as miserable as it needs […]
My first real hike nearly broke me. Not because the trail was particularly hard — it was a 7km loop with gentle hills, rated Easy on AllTrails, chosen specifically because I thought it would be manageable. I was wrong. I stopped four times in the first kilometre. My legs were burning by the second. I […]
Most beginner women buy their first pair of hiking boots, put them on, and head straight to the trail. I know because I did exactly this. I bought my first proper hiking boots on a Thursday, wore them for the first time on a Sunday for a 12km hike, and spent the following week with […]
There’s a question most women think about and almost no hiking guide bothers to answer properly: what do you actually do about your period on a hike? The short answer is yes, you can absolutely hike on your period — and most of the time it’s no big deal with a bit of preparation. The […]
I'm Sophie — an intermediate hiker who got tired of vague outdoor content written by people who've never actually been on a trail. Every article on PackedTrails comes from real experience and a genuine love of getting outside.
