Safe hiking practices V2
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After a second deadly hiking accident in two years I have updated this article with some more tips. Unfortunately if the hiker had followed the practices in the first version of this article he would have been found much sooner. The outcome could have been the same depending on what caused his death but at least the recovery could have been quicker so that the family could have had the result sooner. Up till now it is not known what actually caused his death. He was hiking along a trail that he had covered in the days before with family members. This time he was hiking alone. The fact that he didn't asked for assistance via his phone suggests that he got unconscious during the hike and that he did not regain consciousness (if ever) before his phone died. His exact or approximate location was not known so the search took several days before he was located.
In the frst version of this article I already covered a lot of safety measures and also ways of letting the people at home constantly know where you are. That is especially a necessity in case you are hiking on your own. The first article focussed on safety during the hike. The updates in this article are more focussed on some extras in case your hike takes (considerably) more time than expected.
How to deal with dogs during your hikes
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Introduction
Last year I was bitten twice by dogs during my hikes. The first time by a large dog that was on a leash but where the owner had insufficient control over the dog, probably because of its size and weight. The dog bit me severely in my left under arm. The wound was deep and wide so it needed to be stitched. Normally they prefer to leave a dog bite wound open because it infects easily but that was not an option in this case.
The second time I was bitten in my calf by a dog that was not on a leash and where the owners were closeby. When I was past the dog it attacked me from behind. The wound was only skin-deep so not really a problem.
Since then I have thougt a lot of means to defend myself against aggressive dogs. I changed my behaviour and I bought a dog deterrent via Amazon. I have two dogs myself so I know when a dog is aggressive or just wants to play. I am still not afraid of dogs but I became more careful when I encounter a dog.
Hiking apps - evaluation
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Introduction
To assist my readers in choosing a good phone-app for following and discovering hiking trails on their own I have evaluated a number of apps during about a half year. The chosen apps are:
- Locus Map; that is the app that I was using most during my hikes before I started this evaluation
- AllTrails
- Gaia GPS
- Wikiloc; that is the app that I used when I started to register my hikes
The results are shown below. If you want to skip the details and immediately want to jump to the conclusions you can click here after clicking Read more to display the full article.
Safe hiking practices
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Recent events made me rethink my hiking practices. Safety always was a concern for me, but I realized that still not everything was in place. For instance, what would happen if I was hiking on my own and something happened to me? Would others be able to find me quickly enough? So I started looking for tools that specifically address this issue. But that for later, first what are my normal practices.
How to follow the trails on your own
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At the end of 2019 Curaçao Hiking stops organizing guided hikes. Of course there are alternative hiking organizations; see the overview with links on the home page of this site. An alternative is to go hiking yourself or with a group of friends or similar minded people. To facilitate that I provide several options and tools:
- A facebook group where you can create an event for your hike so that other members of that group can accompany you on your hike; you need to be an accepted member of that group to use this service
- Descriptions of most of the trails that Curaçao has offered; these descriptions can be found on this site in the section Hiking
- A map with the track for most of the trails that Curaçao Hiking has offered; this map can be found as a downloadable picture in the description of the hike on this site in the section Hiking or as a downloadable picture in the Files section of the above mentioned facebook group
- The track of most of the trails that Curaçao Hiking has offered; these tracks can be found in several places:
- Wikiloc
- As a downloadable file in the description of the hikes in the section Hiking on this site
- As a downloadable file in the Files section in the above mentioned facebook group
- Suggestion for tools to follow the track (see the remainder of this article)
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