Gifts for hikers: what helps on the trail, and what stays after
A hiker already has boots, a pack and poles, and chose every one of them. The right gift is elsewhere: in what they wear out, and in what they keep.
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A hiker already has everything. Almost.
Everything a hiker carries, they chose themselves, often after miles of trial and error: the boot size, the fit of the pack, the length of the poles. Giving one of those means guessing at what they know better than anyone.
That leaves three kinds of gift that never miss: the things that wear out and get replaced with a sigh, the small luxuries nobody buys for themselves, and the memory of a trail. The list opposite takes you to each.
Their trail, on the real map
A hike leaves photos, usually too many, and a trace: the exact line of the path, recorded by a watch or a phone. Strava, Garmin, Komoot, Suunto and Polar all export it as the same file, a GPX.
Dropped into our editor, that file lays the line on the real map of the place: the passes, the lakes, the forests it crossed. You choose the colours, the title, a date, a distance, then the finish, from A4 to A0, on fine art paper, framed or as a framed canvas.
No file to hand? The great trails are already drawn: the Appalachian Trail, the West Highland Way, the Camino de Santiago, the GR20. And for a trail that is not there, you place its stops one by one in walking mode, and the path draws itself from one to the next.
What wears out, and gets replaced with a sigh
A headlamp first, because hiking days so often end later than planned. Petzl’s goes up to 600 lumens and recharges: no more batteries to buy before every trip.
Then a filter bottle. It filters water from a spring or a stream against bacteria and parasites, and takes off the pack everything there is no longer any need to carry up from the valley.
And merino wool socks: the least spectacular gift in this guide, and perhaps the most welcome. The wool stays warm even damp, and does not hold on to the smell of a long day on the trail. The ones from Vermont are guaranteed for life.
The small luxuries nobody buys for themselves
Hot coffee at the summit weighs almost nothing in a day, and changes it. A well-made vacuum bottle keeps it hot all the way up; Stanley’s, in hammertone green, has barely changed in decades.
And a notebook whose paper does not mind the rain, to write down the stages, the names of the passes and what was seen on the way. It is already the story of the trip, and sometimes the line that ends up engraved under the map.
Boots, the pack, the poles
They are the first gifts that come to mind, and the ones most often wrong. A hiking boot is tried on the foot, at the end of the day, with the right socks; a pack is fitted to a back; poles to a height and a way of walking.
If that really is where you want to go, give the moment rather than the object: a day in a store together, or a gift card from an outdoor shop. The hiker will choose, and it will be the right one.
Gear wears out and gets replaced. A trail is never walked quite the same way twice.