I Pre-Walked 37 Trails So You Stop Asking If They're Beginner-Friendly

Tunnel Bluffs, November. Light rain at the trailhead, proper rain by the second switchback, the kind that makes everyone suddenly very interested in whether their jacket was actually waterproof or just "city waterproof."

I had posted the trail the week before because the view over Howe Sound looked ridiculous. Blue-gray water, islands in the distance, one of those photos that makes people comment "need this weekend" even if they have no idea where their hiking shoes are.

The useful comment was not about the view.

Someone asked if there was cell service.

That was the moment I realized my account had been answering the wrong question. I was showing people where I went. They were trying to decide whether they should go.

Here is what my notes from that hike actually looked like:

Parking lot half full by 8:10am.

Mud starts after the first steeper section, worse on descent.

Cell service drops in patches but comes back near the open viewpoint.

Dog can do it if the owner is realistic and the dog is not chaotic.

Runners were fine that day. Would not say the same after frost.

Door to door from downtown Vancouver: longer than Google says, because Google is not factoring in the emotional tax of finding parking.

None of that fits neatly into a pretty caption. It also matters more than the pretty caption.

So my content changed. I still post the photo, because people need a reason to stop scrolling. But the real product is the trail note: the parking, the wet rock, the "this is called moderate but please define moderate," the one sentence that keeps someone from dragging a five-year-old up something they are all going to regret by kilometer two.

I made a few Google Docs because Instagram captions are a terrible filing system. One for weekend trails. One for rainy hikes. One for beginner routes that I would actually send to a beginner. One for people trying their first cabin overnight and about to pack three hoodies instead of layers.

For months, I sent them by hand. Badly.

By "badly" I mean I would be in a trailhead parking lot with a group waiting on me, see seven comments asking for the rainy packing list, tell myself I would reply after the hike, and then forget until dinner. Or I would send the wrong doc because my phone had no service and my brain had left the chat somewhere around the second climb.

Now I have one simple setup: if someone comments TRAIL, the weekend guide goes out through StarLovin. PACK sends the rainy list. That's mostly it. I do not need a grand system for this. I need people to get the trail note before they give up and pick a brunch spot.

The part I still do myself is the part that actually requires a guide.

Last week someone DM'd me about a trail east of Squamish. She had a nervous rescue dog, a friend who had never hiked anything with real elevation, and a window of about four hours before the November sun disappeared. She was not asking for a link. She was asking me to look at the variables and tell her whether this was a bad idea. That takes five minutes of actual thinking — which trail, which season, which dog, which friend, what time they are actually leaving the house versus what time they think they are leaving the house. There is no keyword for that conversation, and I would not want one.

Same thing happens every time the weather turns. Someone wants to know whether a route they saw in August is still reasonable in late November with a noon start. Someone else is nervous about a scramble section and wants to know if "moderate exposure" means normal-people moderate or mountaineering-forum moderate. These are judgment calls, and judgment is the job.

But the person who just wants the Tunnel Bluffs notes should not need to wait until I am back in cell range.

That is the very unglamorous truth about hiking content: the best thing you can give people is not inspiration. It is enough information to make a good decision before they leave the house.