Hiking activity on Venu SQ

Possibly you removed it accidentally. Add it back again.

• Venu Sq Owner's Manual - Adding or Removing a Favorite Activity (garmin.com)
• Venu Sq Owner's Manual - Adding a Custom Activity (garmin.com)

It's not an option to be added back. 

Ah, yes, you are right, it is only available on Venu 2 and higher

Activity Profile Options On My Wellness Watch | Garmin Customer Support

Perhaps you had it there as a custom activity profile. Or a Connect IQ app. In that case you will have to add it in the same way.

That's so odd. I never set it up as a custom activity. Maybe Garmin removed it as incentive to upgrade. 

I do not think so. Venu Sq is discontinued model, and there were no firmware updates since years for it.

Could you share a link to one of your past hiking activities recorded by your Venu SQ?

Your response is surprising to me as I purchased it in June of 2022 and just had a software update the other day. As to your other question, all of my previous activities that were categorized as hiking are now listed as walking. Hmm. 

The last update released for Venu 1st gen was the v7.80 in 2022, so there was no recent update. Perhaps it was just an update of time zones, or the magnetic poles correction, that you received - those come every couple of months to all models.

Did not you use a different language originally? In some languages the names for walking and hiking sound very similar, or may be perhaps even wrong in some cases.