Mountain hikers: how do you estimate the physical demand of a tour ahead of time?
I’m not talking about technical difficulty, just the level of physical exertion.
I’ve been using a simple rule of thumb for myself:
If a route averages around 100 m of elevation gain per kilometer, I consider it easy. A hard route to me is roughly 200 m/km.
I don’t factor in total distance much, since most of my hikes fall between 9 and 14 km anyway.
Do you use a similar metric?