Improve Your Backpacking Experience with Better Communication

Anyone who has thru-hiked with a partner knows you won’t always be thriving at the same time as one another. It would be nice if your low-energy miles lined up with your partner’s, so you could agree to cut the day short, collapse into your tent, and whine about achy feet or a squeaky pack. But in my experience, my cranky days are the days when my partner feels the best, leaving them to cruise up switchbacks while I could swear my legs have been replaced with lead balloons. Communicating during this time is challenging for both people, and I’d never encountered it more than on a trip this past spring. 

We started the route on an extended desert section, and I immediately found myself struggling with the sun exposure. Conversely, my partner seemed to be having an extremely easy time, and I tried to be happy for him as he casually crushed the climbs regardless of the heat. He was kind and accommodating, but I knew he could have been doing bigger miles if I hadn’t been there. The more I got into my head, the more my mood began to spiral. If I was struggling this much at the start, what would happen when the route got harder?

I caught up to my partner at the top of a long climb one morning, collapsing in a scant patch of shade and trying to quell my anxiety as the day’s miles loomed over my head. 

“I’m having a really hard time with the heat today,” I told him as I gulped water, feeling a twinge of panic at how early in the day it was. “I’m exhausted.”

“Oh really?” He said, looking concerned. “Today is the easiest day we’ll have all week.”

The prickle of resentment I’d felt watching him disappear around a switchback flared. All at once, I felt physically uncomfortable, inadequate, and scared to hear that I had been right and it was only going to get tougher. I burst into tears. 

We went back and forth like this for a few days. I was increasingly frustrated at my body’s struggles, and while my partner’s responses weren’t unkind, they didn’t do my fragile mental state any favors. When I was wilting from the heat, he said that it was only going to get hotter. When I said I was tired, he pointed out correctly that we had just started the day’s miles.  

Our communication, while normally strong, was entirely misaligned during this time. He couldn’t figure out why I was having a hard time, and I needed him to acknowledge that the route conditions were hard, not tell me that they were about to get harder. 

“A response like this, though attempting to give context and not untrue, is likely to amplify the partner’s feelings of overwhelm rather than their feelings of competence,” Dr. Jon Reeves, a clinical psychologist with a background in outdoor sports, said when I told him about my trip. 

While this kind of communication can be helpful for some people—it reminds them to keep pushing—Reeves says it can also feel shaming, shutting them down instead of making them feel better. 

Neither my partner nor I was really at fault, but a combination of my physical struggles and subsequent shame combined with his casual ease made everything seem more dire. I was panicking that my fears about my abilities were true, and because I was embarrassed, I felt unable to ask for a different style of communication. 

When I asked what would have been a better communication strategy, Dr. Reeves broke it down into three parts: The stronger partner should allow their struggling companion room for their feelings, reassure them that they are there for them, and find a way to work together to get to the end. This three-part response was tailored to my backcountry situation, but it can also be a blueprint for healthy communication between people experiencing different challenges while they pursue a common goal on the trail. 

With the benefit of hindsight, I can understand now that the hike wasn’t easy on my partner either. While he never expressed impatience, I imagine it must have felt frustrating to be held up during the day and to stop earlier in the evenings. 

“A challenge of the better-faring partner feeling frustrated is they are forced to reckon with their priorities,” says Dr. Reeves. “Is the objective more important, or something else? If you and your partner are both equally able, you can both push for an FKT and have a great time simultaneously. It’s when one of you doesn’t align that you have to face what you really care about.” 

Shame and feelings of weakness are powerful emotions, especially for thru-hikers or backcountry athletes who thrive on feeling strong and empowered. Struggling on a route others are finding easy can compound shame with the notion that you’re letting your partner down. Left unchecked, those feelings can pull you into an emotional downward spiral.

To counter this, Dr. Reeves suggests breaking the entire route into management chunks. This allows the partner who is struggling to feel accomplished reaching smaller goals, and to feel good that their partner is working with them.

“Often those who aren’t struggling want to hurry their partners through their trouble,” Dr. Reeves says, “but taking a few beats to create space for [your partner] being afraid, overwhelmed, or angry usually pays dividends when the struggling partner can work through their emotions.” 

Pushing through challenging emotions often does little more than exacerbate the feelings or create tension that can explode later on. While we never exploded, I spent the entire trip stressed. When I was reflecting on the experience a few months later, I knew that if it had felt more manageable, or we acknowledged that the route was indeed hard, my morale would have been higher and I wouldn’t have experienced the mounting dread that I was having a hard time during an “easy section.” 

Navigating communication barriers doesn’t have to lead to fighting, and like I said, we never actually argued. In my shame and anxiety, I didn’t communicate my own needs, neglecting to tell him that his responses were less than helpful. But when we talked about it later—removing elements of fatigue, thirst, body aches, and heat exhaustion—we had a productive conversation where I could step away from feelings of inadequacy and communicate more rationally. 

So how will my experience change how I communicate on upcoming trips? I know that my partner and I will both need to anticipate problems and acknowledge that one or both of us may struggle—often with different aspects of the trip. Preparing for these scenarios and working out what type of communication feels encouraging is critical. 

“Shame is a killer in these situations, so establishing that tempers may flare ahead of time and planning to deal with it is useful,” Dr. Reeves says. “Often these feelings are more about fatigue, hunger, or some other discomfort, and talking about this ahead of time can alleviate some of the hurt feelings.”

The inherent challenges and needs of thru-hiking throw a wrench even in the best communicators. The partner who is struggling can feel both overwhelmed by the situation and guilty for holding the other person back, and the person who is doing better might inadvertently say exactly the wrong thing. 

“Try to establish ahead of time that being tired or needing breaks is part of the journey,” Dr. Reeves says, “It’s part of maintaining health and safety. There is no shame if they are necessary.”