THE SOLO TRAVELLER
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Risk, Readiness and Respect – A Confidence and Safety Series
The peak of Mount Koonika rises to 1,600 metres (5,249 ft) above sea level within the Great Dividing Range in Victoria’s Alpine National Park, Australia. Photograph courtesy Darren Edwards.
When small decisions matter
Part 2 of our Q&A with Darren Edwards, Founder of Trail Hiking Australia and the author of ‘Small Things Don’t Stay Small: A Practical Guide to Safer Hiking in Australia’. You can read Part 1 here.
Briefly …
This is the second part of a two-part conversation with Darren Edwards exploring how hiking incidents develop on the trail. Rather than focusing on dramatic mistakes or simplistic conclusions about solo hiking, Darren examines the small decisions, subtle warning signs, and gradual shifts in awareness that can quietly shape outcomes long before a situation becomes critical.
Many people think hiking safety is mostly about gear checklists, having enough water, sensible footwear, a hat and sunscreen. Your approach seems much more focused on observation, pacing, judgement, and attention. Why do you think those “small things” matter so much on a trail?
Gear and preparation matter. Nobody should minimise them. But they are not the starting point, or the complete picture. The reason observation, pacing and judgement matter so much is that conditions on a trail are not static. The weather you prepared for may not be the weather you encounter. The track you researched may be harder underfoot than the description suggested. Your body on the day may not perform the way it did on your last hike. Gear addresses the conditions you anticipated. Attention is what allows you to respond to the conditions you actually find.
There is a version of checklist thinking that can actually work against a hiker. Once the box is ticked, the item stops being actively considered. The water bottle is full at the trailhead, so water stops being a live question until thirst arrives. The forecast doesn’t suggest rain, so the rain jacket is left behind. The hike should only take a few hours, so a torch isn’t necessary. The first aid kit is packed, so the possibility of injury recedes from active thought. That is understandable, but it creates a kind of mental closure around things that actually need to remain open questions throughout the day.
Most hiking incidents do not begin with dramatic terrain or extreme events. They develop gradually. A navigation delay becomes a time problem. Time pressure increases fatigue. Fatigue narrows judgement. Exposure and deteriorating conditions become harder to manage. Small issues compound quickly, even on familiar tracks.
“Most hiking incidents do not begin with dramatic terrain or extreme events. They develop gradually … Small issues compound quickly, even on familiar tracks.”
What I find more useful is thinking about those same categories as ongoing assessments rather than pre-departure tasks. Not “Do I have water?” but “Am I drinking at the right rate for these conditions?” Not “Do I have navigation tools?” but “Am I confident about where I am right now?”. That shift from checklist to continuous awareness is small in concept but significant in practice.
Trail Hiking Australia documents thousands of trails across Australia, and one of the consistent themes that emerges from that breadth of observation is how variable conditions can be, even on well-known routes. The small things that experienced walkers pay attention to are rarely exotic. They are usually the same basic factors, checked more frequently and with more genuine curiosity about what the answers actually mean on that particular day.
When conditions begin to shift – weather, fatigue, navigation uncertainty, dehydration, loss of confidence – what separates hikers who successfully reset the situation from those who continue deeper into trouble?
The most consistent difference I’ve observed is not skill level or experience. It is the willingness to pause and honestly reassess rather than continue on momentum. Hikers who manage deteriorating conditions well tend to catch the shift early. They notice that something has changed, and they treat that noticing as information worth acting on rather than something to push through. They are comfortable stopping, even briefly, to take stock. They ask themselves straightforward questions. “Where am I?”, “How am I feeling?”, “Is the plan I started with still realistic?”. And importantly, they are willing to let the answers change their plans, including turning back when the signals indicate they should.
“The most consistent difference I’ve observed is not skill level or experience. It is the willingness to pause and honestly reassess rather than continue on momentum.”
What keeps people moving deeper into trouble is usually a combination of things. Sunk cost thinking plays a role. The hiker has come a long way, the destination feels close, and turning back feels like failure. Time pressure compounds this. If there is an expectation to be somewhere by a certain point, the pressure to continue can override signals that would otherwise prompt a stop. And then there is optimism about conditions improving, which is sometimes reasonable but is often a way of postponing a difficult decision in the present moment.
Solo hikers face a particular version of this challenge because there is no external check on their reasoning. In a group, someone else might voice the concern that one person is privately carrying. Alone, the hiker has to be both the one feeling uncertain and the one who decides what to do about it. That requires a degree of self-awareness that is worth developing deliberately, not just hoping for in a difficult moment.
The reset itself does not have to be dramatic. Sometimes it is simply stopping for ten minutes, eating something, drinking water, and looking at the map with fresh attention. That small interruption to momentum can be enough to shift the quality of thinking considerably. The hikers who do that instinctively, or have learned to do it, tend to find their way through. The ones who keep moving because stopping feels like admitting defeat often find that the situation has moved well beyond the point where a simple reset would have helped.
“The ones who keep moving because stopping feels like admitting defeat often find that the situation has moved well beyond the point where a simple reset would have helped.”
The Western Arthur Range is a spectacular mountain range located deep within the Southwest National Park of Tasmania, Australia. Photograph courtesy Darren Edwards.
Do you think modern technology has changed the psychology of risk outdoors? Do GPS devices, mobile phones, and emergency beacons sometimes create a false sense of security for solo hikers?
Technology has genuinely improved safety outcomes in the outdoors. Emergency beacons have saved lives that would otherwise have been lost, and that is not a small thing. But the relationship between technology and risk is more complicated than the tools themselves suggest.
“But the relationship between technology and risk is more complicated than the tools themselves suggest.”
The most significant effect I have observed is not that technology makes people reckless. It is that it can quietly shift where people believe the safety margin resides. If a hiker knows they are carrying a beacon, attention to preparation elsewhere can ease slightly without them consciously deciding that it should. The beacon becomes a kind of background reassurance that changes the calculation in ways the hiker may not fully recognise.
GPS devices carry a similar dynamic. Navigation is a skill that develops through practice and attention. A hiker who has consistently relied on a device to tell them where they are has often not developed the deeper situational awareness required to orient themselves when that device fails, runs out of battery, or leads them somewhere unexpected. The tool works until it doesn’t, and the moment it stops working is usually not a convenient one.
Mobile phones sit in a slightly different category because most people do not carry them as deliberate safety tools, yet they have become part of the assumed safety net in many people's thinking. “I can always call for help” is a reasonable thought in many environments, but in remote terrain it frequently isn’t true. Coverage is unreliable, batteries deplete, and the expectation of connectivity can substitute for preparation that would otherwise have been made.
“Coverage is unreliable, batteries deplete, and the expectation of connectivity can substitute for preparation that would otherwise have been made.”
None of this is an argument against carrying technology. It is an argument for understanding what it does and does not provide. Technology works best when layered over competence rather than used as a substitute for it. A beacon does not prevent an incident. It improves the odds of rescue after one has occurred. That distinction matters, because the decisions that shape whether an incident occurs at all happen well before any device becomes relevant.
Located on the border of Switzerland and Italy, the Matterhorn is one of the world’s most famous and strikingly symmetrical peaks. Photograph courtesy Darren Edwards.
There is often an assumption that experienced hikers are safer simply because they have done more walks. But can familiarity itself become a risk factor if people stop noticing the small changes happening around them?
Experience is genuinely valuable. It builds pattern recognition, physical conditioning, and a kind of quiet confidence that helps in difficult moments. But experience can also produce a familiarity that softens attention in ways that are worth being aware of. The mechanism is subtle. A hiker who has completed a particular trail several times, or who has hiked in similar terrain repeatedly, begins to form expectations about how things will go. Those expectations are often accurate. Experienced hikers can sometimes begin moving from memory and expectation rather than from active confirmation of what is actually happening around them. But when those expectations are wrong, the experienced hiker can be slower to notice the discrepancy than a less experienced person approaching the same situation with fresher attention.
I’ve seen this pattern in people who are genuinely skilled and careful. I’ve seen it in myself. It is not complacency in the careless sense. It is more that the brain becomes efficient at processing familiar information, which means it also becomes less likely to flag small deviations as significant. The track feels known, the terrain feels familiar, and the conditions appear manageable, and the signals that would have prompted careful attention on an earlier hike get processed more quickly and with less scrutiny.
There is also a social dimension to experience that is worth naming. Experienced hikers are often the ones others defer to in a group, which can create pressure to project confidence even when uncertainty is present. The expectation of competence can make it harder to pause and say that something feels off. What tends to protect experienced hikers from this is the habit of approaching each walk with a degree of genuine curiosity rather than assumption. Not treating the familiar as known but treating it as a context that still deserves fresh attention. The most capable people I have observed in the field tend to ask questions about conditions that a less experienced person might assume they already know the answer to. That habit does not diminish with experience. In many cases it deepens.
“What tends to protect experienced hikers from this is the habit of approaching each walk with a degree of genuine curiosity rather than assumption.”
If you could change one thing about the way hiking safety is discussed publicly – especially after fatalities involving solo hikers – what would you want people to understand differently?
If I could change one thing it would be the timing and direction of the conversation. Incident discussions tend to arrive quickly after an incident, focus on the outcome, and work backwards to find the decision that explains it. That process almost always lands on something simple, whether it was hiking alone, an underestimated route, or inadequate gear, and it stops there. The complexity that preceded that decision rarely makes it into the public discussion.
What gets lost in that process is the part of the story that could actually help people. Not the verdict, but the sequence. How did the situation develop? What was the first sign that things were shifting? What decisions were made along the way, and what information was available at those moments? That kind of analysis is far more useful to a hiker preparing for their next walk than a conclusion about what the person should not have done.
“How did the situation develop? What was the first sign that things were shifting? What decisions were made along the way, and what information was available at those moments?”
I would also like to see more of the safety conversation happen before people leave home. Modern hiking culture makes it very easy to be inspired by a destination, download a route onto a phone, and head out quickly without much reflection on how small issues can compound once conditions begin to shift. The most effective safety discussions are not retrospective verdicts after an incident. They are pre-emptive conversations that help people think more carefully before a hike even begins.
There is also a tendency in post-incident coverage to treat the environment as a neutral backdrop against which a human error occurred. Australian terrain is not a neutral backdrop. Heat, remoteness, sudden weather changes, and the genuine scarcity of reliable water in many environments are active factors. Understanding how those conditions interact with human decision making under fatigue or stress is a much richer conversation than simply identifying who was at fault.
The other shift I would welcome is a move away from the implied audience of these discussions. Post-incident coverage often reads as though it is addressed to people who have never hiked and should perhaps reconsider doing so. The more valuable audience is the experienced hiker who is already going out regularly and who would benefit from a more honest and detailed understanding of how things go wrong. That hiker is not well served by simple verdicts. They are well served by careful thinking about the conditions and sequences that precede serious situations.
You can connect with Darren via his Trail Hiking Australia website here https://www.trailhiking.com.au, and find ‘Small Things Don’t Stay Small: A Practical Guide to Safer Hiking in Australia’ here https://www.trailhiking.com.au/small-things-field-guide/