Finding a hiking route on an app can give you a slightly dangerous amount of confidence. There is a neat line to follow, a distance, an elevation profile and usually a reassuring label telling you that the route is easy, moderate or hard. Add a few photos of somebody standing on the summit in perfect weather and it is very easy to feel as though the app has already done the planning for you.
It hasn’t. Hiking apps are brilliant for finding ideas, recording routes and giving you useful information about a walk, but they reduce a complicated day outside into a handful of numbers and a line on a screen. The route may be 10 kilometres long whether it is dry or boggy, calm or blowing a gale, obvious underfoot or disappearing into bracken. Your phone can measure the distance. It cannot tell you exactly how those 10 kilometres are going to feel to you today.
An app gives you a route, not the whole day
This is the distinction I want newer hikers to understand. A route is the physical journey you are planning to take; the difficulty of the day comes from the interaction between that route, the conditions and the person walking it. Two people can complete exactly the same line on a map and have very different experiences, and you can walk the same route yourself six months apart and discover it feels like a different walk.
When I am assessing a route, I therefore use the app as the beginning of the research rather than the answer. I want to know the distance and ascent, but I also want to understand the terrain, steepness, exposure, navigation, weather, likely ground conditions and where my options are if the day does not unfold the way I expected.
That sounds like more work than pressing "start route", because it is. It is also the difference between knowing where a line goes and understanding the walk you are about to do.
Start with distance, then look at ascent
Distance is the most obvious number on an app and it is useful, particularly when you compare it with walks you already know. If 12 kilometres is normally a comfortable day for you, that gives you a starting point for thinking about another 12-kilometre route. It does not, however, make the two days equivalent.
The next number I look at is total ascent or elevation gain: all of the uphill accumulated across the route rather than simply the altitude of the highest point. A walk can start and finish at almost the same height while repeatedly climbing and descending all day, leaving you with far more ascent than the start and finish elevations suggest.
Ascent costs time and energy. A 12-kilometre route with 150 metres of climbing is a very different proposition from 12 kilometres with 900 metres, particularly if that climbing comes in steep bursts. The elevation profile can help here because it shows not only how much you climb but roughly where those climbs occur. A large ascent in the final third of a route may feel very different from doing most of the climbing while your legs are fresh.
Terrain is where the numbers start to fall apart
Even distance and ascent do not tell the whole story because they say very little about what your feet will actually be doing. Five kilometres along a firm track can pass quickly; five kilometres picking your way through bog, loose rock, deep mud or awkward boulders can take considerably longer and require much more concentration.
Steep descents are often underestimated for the same reason. An app may show that the route is heading downhill and make the second half look reassuringly easy, but a sustained rocky descent can be slow, tiring and hard on knees and legs. If the ground is wet, the difference becomes even more obvious.
This is why I look beyond the headline statistics and inspect the underlying map. Contour lines tell me how steep the ground is and how that steepness changes. Map features can show whether I am following tracks and rights of way or moving across more open ground. Route descriptions, where they are reliable, may flag scrambling, river crossings, pathless sections or particularly rough terrain that the distance number cannot communicate.
Difficulty ratings are not universal
Then we get to the little "easy", "moderate" and "hard" labels, which are useful only if you understand what they are measuring. Different apps and route creators use different systems, and a rating may be generated from distance and elevation rather than somebody assessing every aspect of the route on the ground.
Even when a human has rated the walk, difficulty is subjective. An experienced hillwalker who is comfortable with steep ground may describe a route as moderate while somebody taking their first steps onto rocky mountain paths finds the same section intimidating. Fitness, balance, confidence with exposure, navigation ability and experience all affect how hard a route feels.
Treat the rating as one piece of information, not permission to switch your brain off. If an app calls something easy but the route contains terrain you have never encountered before, the terrain deserves more attention than the label.
Weather can change the grade of the day
This is where a route that looked perfectly manageable at home can become much harder once you are outside. Rain changes friction and ground conditions, wind can make exposed sections exhausting or unsafe, heat increases the demand for water and can dramatically affect pace, while low cloud can remove the landmarks that made navigation straightforward.
None of that necessarily changes the line shown on the app. The route is still 10 kilometres. The ascent is still 600 metres. Yet the skills, time and effort required to complete it may have changed substantially.
Before I leave, I check a forecast that is appropriate for the area I am walking in rather than relying on a generic weather symbol inside a route app. In mountain areas, conditions at height can be very different from the nearest town. Once I am out, I keep comparing what was forecast with what is actually happening around me, because forecasts are information rather than guarantees.
Navigation is more than following the line
One of the easiest habits to fall into with hiking apps is watching the dot move along the route and assuming that is navigation. It can get you around plenty of straightforward walks, but it does not teach you much about the landscape and it becomes less reassuring when the path on the ground is unclear, the route data is inaccurate or your phone stops cooperating.
Before setting off, look at the map rather than only the highlighted route. Where are the path junctions? What major features should you pass? Is there a stream, woodland edge, ridge or road that helps you understand your position? Which sections are obvious and where might you need to pay closer attention?
Then keep your head up while you walk. If the app says the route continues ahead but the path has disappeared, the weather is deteriorating or the ground in front of you looks significantly more serious than expected, that is new information. A line on a screen does not overrule the landscape.
Look at recent information, but use it carefully
User reviews and recent route comments can be extremely helpful because they may tell you about temporary problems that a static map cannot: a damaged bridge, forestry work, a very boggy section, a diversion or a path that is difficult to find.
The important word is recent. A comment from a dry August three years ago may not tell you much about the same route after weeks of winter rain, and one person’s "a bit muddy" can cover an impressively broad range of experiences.
Use reports to add context, not as your only source of truth. If several recent walkers mention the same issue, investigate it. For rights of way, closures or access changes, look for information from the relevant authority or land manager where possible. The more consequential the information is to your route, the more worthwhile it is to verify.
Compare the route with something you already know
For newer hikers, one of the best ways to make all this information useful is to stop asking whether a route is objectively easy or hard and compare it with something you have already walked.
If your last comfortable hike was 10 kilometres with 300 metres of ascent on clear paths, a 12-kilometre route with 400 metres on similar terrain is a fairly understandable progression. A 10-kilometre route with 800 metres of ascent, sections of rough ground and an exposed ridge may share the same distance while asking something very different of you.
That comparison gives the numbers context. Over time you build a personal library of reference points: what 500 metres of ascent feels like, how quickly you move on rough ground, whether steep descents tire you, how wind affects your confidence and how much energy you normally have left after four or five hours. That knowledge is far more useful than trying to become the sort of person for whom every "moderate" route should apparently feel moderate.
Build a plan B before you need one
The final thing I want to know is what happens if the route turns out to be harder than expected. Can I shorten it at a junction? Is there a lower alternative? Does the route become committed after a certain point? If I turn around halfway, is returning genuinely the easiest option or does another path make more sense?
Looking at those choices at home means you are not trying to invent them when you are tired, wet or already behind schedule. It also makes changing the plan feel like part of the plan rather than evidence that you have somehow failed the original walk.
Sometimes you will arrive and discover the route feels easier than expected. Sometimes a supposedly moderate walk will hand you several hours of bog and a climb that appears to have been designed as a personal insult. Both experiences teach you something useful for the next route you choose.
Use the app, then use your judgement
I use hiking apps. They are genuinely useful tools and they make finding and planning walks more accessible than it has ever been. What I do not want them to do is give people the impression that selecting a route is the same thing as understanding it.
Use the app to find the walk, then interrogate what it is showing you. Look at the distance and total ascent, inspect the terrain and contours, check the weather, understand the navigation and compare the route with days you already know. Read recent information where it is useful and work out what your alternatives are before you need one.
The app can give you the line. Learning to understand what that line means on the ground is the part that makes you a more capable hiker.