This is an excerpt from a larger list, where I give various activities a Sober Fun rating of 1-10. Entries from this list are scattered throughout my website, or you can find that complete list HERE.

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HIKING: 8

I have a complicated relationship with hiking, because unlike many other physical outdoor activities, this was not introduced to me until I was an alcoholic adult. It was introduced to me as a daylong drinking excursion, and that is what it remained for a very, very, long time. We usually paired it with several days of camping, at which point the entire multi-day adventure could probably be quite accurately described as a “bender.”

Hiking involved all of my favorite things: drinking, nature, athleticism, drinking, shopping (at REI) beforehand, photography, drinking, physical exertion, more drinking, setting up campsites like little elaborate, temporary sets… the list goes on.

Oh, and also waterfalls. You can’t forget waterfalls, I absolutely love waterfalls! Or at least, I thought I did… When I stopped drinking, I wasn’t quite sure what I still liked. Not sober, anyways, and I honestly wasn’t sure if hiking would have a place in my life anymore. Did I even like hiking? Or did I like having multi-day, vaguely-athletic, binge-drinking adventures in the forest?

The answer turned out to be "both," haha, but also ultimately "yes." Yes I do still like hiking sober. Phew! That one really had me worried!

However, I enjoy hiking with one important caveat; and this is an addendum that I have found to be true of almost every activity that I originally enjoyed while drinking and have since attempted to enjoy anew without any alcohol: I don’t enjoy doing it for quite so long as I did while drunk.

Hiking is the first activity that I had this realization with, but I quickly found that it applies to so many other things. Horseback riding, boating, even how long a social meal or dinner party should last. All these events I suddenly found needed to be decreased in length by about half. When you stop drinking, you realize that your leisure activities were always intentionally designed to be bloated and overlong, to allow for all the alcohol consumption. Meals were always heavily padded on both sides, and daylong excursions were often little more than excuses to start drinking at sunrise and continue drinking all day and all night.

Everyone trying to stay sober will have to establish their own thresholds for how long they are able to engage in activities they previously associated with drinking—IF AT ALL. Personally, I found it helpful to introduce new elements into the equation, ones I’d never tried before, and therefore had no connection in my mind with drinking. I started hiking 14ers, or mountains with peaks above 14,000 feet. These 14er hikes usually start with first waking up in the middle of the night, then hiking in the dark with headlamps, then hiking all morning in the cold, then ultimately summiting before noon, having lunch in the warmth of the sun, and finally hiking down in the pleasant afternoon. They also involve the added challenge of hiking and climbing at very high altitudes. You can read more about hiking 14ers HERE, as it turns out I have my own set of issues with 14ers, too.

The foremost of which is, you probably guessed it, they are just too long. It often takes me 12 hours or more at the pace I usually like to hike. Sometimes things really are better in moderation, and often too much of a good thing is exactly that— too much. When allowed to continue for too long unabated, something you once loved can turn into just the opposite. Oops, I guess in trying to make sober hiking interesting and new, looks like I erred in the wrong direction! We want shorter hikes, not longer!

Yes, it took me going through all of this to give you the advice that most people could probably tell you instantaneously, just based on common sense: a four hour hike, with a nice picnic lunch about halfway through, that's the perfect amount of time for a hike. It is long enough to get you somewhere really cool, with an amazing view, but not so long that it becomes unbearably tedious. A hike like this gets a nice solid Sober Fun rating of 8.

You might have noticed at no point did I mention hiking to Everest Base Camp here, and that’s because A). I figured that would be unrelatable to most people and B). that’s not a hike. When it’s in the Himalayas and lasts several weeks, we call that a TREK, you Silly Goose! Everyone knows that!

See? UNRELATABLE.

Kinda like people who hike shirtless, but with a backpack.