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Why are there no challenges for hiking?

8083881
over 4 years ago

There are multiple challenges for activities like diving and breathwork but none for hiking. I find this disappointing. 

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 4411990

    Garmin seems to have no problem putting down huge running or cycling goals.

    Lots of ways to add cool hiking challenges.

    1. distance 
    2. elevation
    3. pace
    4. super goals… badge for lifetime elevation gain of equivalent of Mt. Everest
  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 8083881

    I think you are confusing regular badges with challenge badges.

    And yes, I see no reason why Garmin could not add some hiking badges. Elevation gain of Mt Everest might be in the extreme catagory, but why not?

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 4411990

    Challenge/regular… there is a lack of hiking badges. 

    There are cycling challenges of 675km per quarter or 2700 per year…. Which is a lot for a non-cycler like myself… which I would consider extreme

    An Everest challenge would be 4 quarterly challenges of 7257 feet cumulative elevation gain.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 8083881

    The yearly cycling challenge works out to about 4.5 miles per day, and nobody says you have to take the challenge.
    The yearly walking challenge works out to 1 mile per day. very reasonable.

    Again, Garmin could add some hiking badges if they wanted to, and I believe the hiking challenges are only a year or 2 old, so maybe the wheels are slowly turning at Garmin,

    Make a suggestion to Garmin directly. They rarely respond to this stuff in the user forum.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 4411990

    I never said I had to do the challenge. My point is everyone has different ideas of what extreme is. Someone who hikes a fair bit would have no problem hitting those numbers. Just like someone who cycles a lot. 

    this conversation has run its course.

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to 4411990

    >> Since I live in a relative flat land area, tryting to get more than 250-500 feet elevation gain while walking or hiking is near impossible.

     Fair enough, but you don’t need to use elevation for a badge.   I can think of dozens of creative ideas based on e.g. distance, duration, elevation, frequency, geography/location, specific trail, etc. More creative than, Ok, you ran 10 miles, now here’s a badge if you run 20 miles!  I’ve hiked in flat states as well as mountainous, and distance, duration, geography, etc. aren’t elevation-dependent.   There are “virtual climbs” for e.g. Mist Trail & Angels Landing, but not hiking the actual trails?   Garmin can’t figure out from a GPS watch if you’ve hiked for a few miles within the relative vicinity of where the Mist Trail is in Yosemite to award a badge?  Or publish an official course for the trail that you can hike and get a badge?  What if you simply say hike 3 miles in Yosemite, too hard to track?

     

    >> But, in the long run you have to realize that the monthly challenges are meant to get people of all conditioning motivated to excerise. You can't have beginning people being asked to do 80 hours…

     That’s exactly my point.  I’m more of an outdoors versus fitness person.   Hiking a new trail motivates me.   A goal to run another 10 miles this week to get my next stage running badge?  Not so much.   The running & cycling badges are often just more of the same. And that’s where the huge variety of hiking challenges really benefits conditioning.  You can start with shorter trails and challenge yourself to more.   It gets you exploring with the topo maps & GPS that are on your fancy watch.  Remember Garmin at its core is a GPS & Navigation company, not simply a Fitbit step counter alternative.

     

    Also, what really frustrates me is I’m constantly seeing more and more versions and/or stages of badge for favored activities like running & cycling.  e.g. right now I see things like 2022 Cycling Stage 3 (675 km), Run 50 miles in a single activity, etc.  I also see watch-specific badges (that have nothing to do with a feature offered by the watch): e.g. required to have a Darth Vader, Rey, Captain Marvel watch, etc. (but none ironically for “I bought Garmin’s top-of-the-line $1000 Fenix 7X Sapphire Solar watch”).

     We can have those badges, but should settle for just one "hike three hours" badge for hiking??

  • 0 over 2 years ago in reply to Tom-7XSS

    I totaly agree with your comments about some of the badge offerings. A lot seem oriented to holidays and special watches (of course that's a sales thing).
    But, Garmin likes to be stingy on the meduim priced watches and not put activities on them that are found only on the most expensive. Hiking app for example is not on my VA4, but 2 forms of walking are as are 2 forms of cycling (indoors and outdoors) along with a lot of other stuff. Why not Hiking? The good news is that I can change the Walk activity to Hiking and get the badge, and all I really wanted was the HR zzones, pace, time, distance what is still there from the Walk, and be able to see reports based on the Walking activies and Hiking activities each month, year, etc.. But in the end I'm not paying $1,000 for a device that has an app I would like just because it's a selling point for high end watches.

    The fact is that I don't think Garmin really really cares for those of us that want better apps, because the bottom end watches and the "junk" badges are for the real quantity market.

    I think that for most people Walking a trail, or Hiking a trail, would be the same thing. I have "walked" lots of trails in the Rockies when I was younger and never had a watch to give me a badge. My legs and lungs never knew I was missing those thinkgs.

    And yes you could get a CIQ app for hiking, but they tend to run the battery down fairly quickly. I've tried some of them, screens and screens of data that never makes it way into the FIT file or Connect Activity.

    But in truth, a badge not being offered should not let us get discourged from doing what we like to do. Last year I never recorded a Walk/Hike activity when I went camping and trailing. I had a hand held GPS and Compass, etc and was good to go. The watch battery would never has lasted that long anyhow.

    Good luck in getting Garmin to issue new badges, I'll be watching for them.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    The 2022 July Weekend Walking badge has a picture of a woman walking through a field with a backpack on - so literally a picture of a person hiking. Coincidentally, that is the same picture used for the September 2021 Hiking badge.  My hiking totals last year were 900 miles and 290K ft of elevation gain total but I get one hiking badge in July and then one in September because I hiked for 4 hours in each month...I might pass out from not-excitement.  I met a gentleman who works for Garmin while hiking Mount Madison in NH a handful of years ago and he told me about their products - purchased my first Garmin after that because of that conversation  If I run into him (hey Chip!) again on the trails I'll ask him what's up with this.  Can you imagine if trail running wasn't counted towards the running badges? People would lose their minds.

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    +1 for hiking challenges. The core reason I bought my garmin i2 solar is because of my hiking

  • 0 over 2 years ago

    It's nice to have now One hiking badge each month. It's better, but it could have more than one badge a month. Only a hike during 4 hours to win a badge; It could be nice to win badge also for evelation gain.

    It could be also interesting to take into account Hiking for training statut. It's pitty to see your statut is low when you have done multiple hikes with more than one thousand elevation gain in one week