Monday, October 12, 2015

Water, Water, water....

It can't be said often enough, but water is very important when hiking. You need to drink plenty of it over the hike and start in the first minute and end a day after you finish the hike.

In general the body can only absorb one quart or about one liter of water per hour, so if you wait until you already lost that much is way to long as you won't be able to replenish it in time.

On my last hike at the Eisenhower park in San Antonio in 90 degrees weather I saw plenty of people that didn't carry any water or only 16 oz of water around.
Even worse, some had coffee with them.

While I love coffee, must be the German in me, I would never bring coffee on a hike as it will work against you.

On my 7 mile hike I drank 70 oz of water or about 2 liters. The hike was 2 hours and 51 minutes, so as I started drinking from the very start, I could have had 30 oz more, but my camelpak only holds 70 oz of water and I didn't replenish when I had the chance.

This of course is another problem, when you have the chance to get more water, take it and make sure you always have the maximum amount of water with you.

If it's very hot out there or you in general sweat a lot also bring salty food as you lose a lot of salt with sweating and you need too replenish that as well or you will get a water imbalance in your body and this isn't a fun thing to have.

I personally eat pretzels or other salty food in small doses.


I hope that hikers will take this to heart and start drinking the amount necessary to have a fun hike.


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