Hiking vs Walking (stats and challenges)

5769090 said:

My question is for Garmin...

Unfortunately, Garmin does not answer any questions here. Better told, it is extremely rare, especially on the Connect subforums, to see any Garmin employee to post here. You can try contacting the Support, if you want to ask them questions, however, I would not expect any enlightening answer anyway - the support staff has most likely absolutely no idea why the decision was made in this way.

However, if you want to collect the Walking badges, there is nothing simpler than just using the Walking activity for all your hiking trips.

5769090 said:

Also, what are the exact differences between the two modes, i.e., what type of information do I loose when switching from hiking to walking? (Altitude, e.g., is there in both activities, contrarily to what I've seen on reddit)? Is there really a difference in the calories computation for example?

No significant difference. Same calculation for Calories and for other metrics. The only thing that differs is, that during a Walking activity, a compatible watch can measure your VO₂max (under certain conditions, i.e. as long as you do not have any VO₂max value from Running newer than 30 days, ...). VO₂max is disabled during hiking (since it is impossible to account for the added difficulty when hiking). You do not lose any data by switching the activity type in Connect. And even if you did, the original can be restored by switching the type back to Hiking.

To me, walking and hiking are just two words for the same activity. However, there a (quite) a few folk who insist they are distinct. Trying to ascertain the difference is an exercise in frustration. As far as I am concerned Garmin should simply include both in any relevant challenges and let the user decide which they want to record.