Hiking is already fun in itself, but you might need more entertainment if the trail is straightforward. Or, once you’ve set up camp, you might find yourself lacking any ideas and simply wasting time. That’s why we’ve come up with 10 great ideas of how you can improve your hiking trip with fun activities.
Picking wild fruit
This is great for either easy or more difficult trails or when you’re already at the camp and want to roam around. You can leave this activity as it is, or you can turn it into a contest if you want to make it more interesting. For instance, you can make teams of two and count how many berries each team managed to collect. At the end of the competition, you can assign prizes or “punishments” for the losing team.
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Fishing
The same thing as picking berries, fishing can be turned into a competition with winners or losers. You can also spend a free day at the campsite, hassle-free trying to catch your next meal and relax with your friends. Some of you might like to fish, while others might enjoy cooking the game.
If that sounds too routine for you, you can always try to fish with improvised tools like a pole made out of a flexible stick. In that case, a contest between people who fish with the rudimentary gear and those who use specialized equipment.
Practicing survival skills
How would you survive in the extreme wilderness and fierce weather with minimal equipment? You can imagine all sorts of situations, like what you would use instead of a solid pair of snowshoe boots to hiking during winter.
Another idea is to practice your abilities by building a fire or making an impromptu tent from a tarp piece. You can also try to find water or actually make water using different strategies as collecting rain, dew, or the perspiration of plants. Of course, all that can also be made into a competition.
Geocaching
This might also be a fun activity to try if you’ve brought your smartphone along, or you can use a GPS. Geocaching isn’t a new thing, its predecessor before the technological evolution was letterboxing. People used all sorts of clues and puzzles so others could find the little boxes they buried near certain landmarks. Nowadays, we use precise coordinates.
Once you find the cache, you’ll enter the date, sign it, and put it back where you find it. You can find all sorts of items inside, and some of those can be taken and replaced with something of value to you for the next person to find.
Orienteering
If you like geocaching, you can take it up a notch to orienteering. That’s when you and your friends play against each other to beat a certain time. You can also set specific caches just for your group and assign certain challenges. One group member can do this before your hiking trip, so it can all take place on your trail.
Orienteering is better if you already have amazing navigational skills, but it can work for newbies too.
Hide and seek
This age-old activity still holds water, and you can play it around camp with its regular rules or on your trail. As such, someone can go up higher on the path and hide while the others are looking.
Photographing
What can be better than making your memories forever? This time we won’t suggest another competition, though you could do that. But it would be really nice for each of your friends to contribute to creating an extraordinary hiking album. The only rule could be that each person should photograph something else so that you can relieve your trip from each other’s point of view.
Tracking
This is a survival skill too, but it’s also an activity you would go for if you’re hunting since tracking entails following a certain animal after its set tracks.
This can be done in groups or alone, turning things into a contest or not. But you can make tracking better if you invent a certain story, imagining what the animal was doing in certain places, what its name is, what it likes, etc.
Exploring
Once you’ve set up camp, you can explore the surroundings. This can be a great activity if you’re with a bigger group, and each of you can choose a certain direction. After you can meet back at camp and exchange impressions, and show each other photos so you can decide on the upcoming activities. Maybe you can choose a new trail, or maybe some of you have brought back delicious treats in the form of truffles or berries.
Scavenger hunt
This can be part of the exploring activity, or you can do it on the trail. You have plenty of options here, for instance, each of you should gather interesting things, and you decide which one wins at the camp. You can each find preset items, like a certain type of mushroom or feather, or photograph a specific type of animal.
Relaxing
This can be fun too, don’t imagine we’re sending you off to sleep in your tent. You can make a campfire, tell stories with your friends, reminisce about your childhood, or bake marshmallows. Or, you can sit in a circle and tell horror stories; it still counts as relaxing.
Another idea is to browse through the photos you’ve taken during the day, enjoy a bite to eat, and plan your next few days. The thing is that most hiking trips are exhausting, and you also need some time for yourself, so you can all do some yoga or mild stretching to sleep better and regain your strength.
What would you do?
Do you like the activities we mentioned here? Have you tried one of these before? What other trail games or camp activities did you do? Leave us a comment below!
