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Risk, Readiness and Respect – A Confidence and Safety Series
Risk, Readiness and Respect
A Confidence and Safety Series
Photographer: Alberto Menendez | iStock.
Hiking and trekking have long carried a powerful place within solo travel. Yet after accidents and emergencies occur, conversations around solo hiking safety often reduce complex situations to questions about whether somebody should have been alone at all. Rather than arguing for or against walking alone, this series considers how preparation, responsibility, awareness, and changing wilderness conditions shape safer decision making in remote environments.
Why this matters to us at The Solo Traveller
It matters because solo hiking occupies an important space within independent travel, and because simplistic conversations around wilderness safety are rarely as useful as they first appear. For solo travellers especially, walking through remote environments can create experiences of concentration, perspective, stillness, challenge, uncertainty, and self-awareness that are difficult to find elsewhere. At the same time, wilderness environments demand humility. Small decisions can compound quickly, conditions can shift unexpectedly, and confidence alone is never a substitute for preparation or good judgement.
Exploring this space is not about discouraging people from walking alone, nor romanticising risk, but about encouraging more thoughtful conversations around how solo travellers prepare, adapt, assess conditions, recognise limits, and move through wilderness environments as responsibly as possible.
Following emergencies involving solo hikers, the conversation often centres on whether the person should have been alone at all. Here, we explore why safety in wilderness environments is rarely determined by one factor alone, but by preparation, awareness, conditions, judgement, and decision making on the trail.
By Josh Chandler | 26 May 2026
Darren Edwards has walked thousands of kilometres across Australian terrain, from well-marked trails to remote and less-defined environments. Drawing on that experience, his approach to hiking safety is less about fear and more about attentiveness: recognising change early, reassessing honestly, and understanding how small decisions can quietly shape what happens next.
Part 1 of a two-part 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’. | 27 May 2026
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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.
Part 2 of a two-part 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’. | 29 May 2026
Over nine years guiding hikers in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, Tarik J has watched the same patterns emerge time and again. In this conversation, Tarik shares what solo travellers most commonly underestimate about Mount Toubkal, why preparation matters more than confidence, and how the mountain often reveals far more than physical endurance alone.