The Hill Day Plan
Time the route with its stops, put sunset on your watch, set a turnaround time and a latest start, count the water as weight, and leave a route card someone at home can act on
HillnVale's free calculators each answer one question: how long a route takes, when the sun sets, when to turn back, how long the drive is, what the pack weighs. On a real hill day those answers depend on each other. While writing this plan we checked our own Turnaround Time Calculator and changed it: it timed the walk with no stops at all, so a long day could read as fitting when it would finish in the dark. It now counts 10 minutes of stops for every hour on the move by default. The Hill Day Plan works backward from the one fixed deadline in the day, being off the hill with daylight to spare. It times the route with its stops, turns the Daylight Calculator's solar sunset into the one on your watch, and sets a turnaround time, a latest start and a time to leave home. In the worked example (an example, not a promise), a mid-October route of 10 km each way with 900 m of ascent takes 6 h 25 min with stops; sunset on the watch is 18:01, the turnaround time 14:56 and the latest start 10:51, so an 11:00 start that looked fine without stops finishes 9 minutes past the margin. The day's water is 4 L, half of a 7.94 kg pack that carries all ten essentials. It is a planning aid, not mountain training, and its stops, margin, water and pack-weight figures are rules of thumb. Check a mountain forecast, carry the ten essentials, leave a route card, and turn back at the turnaround time or sooner. It gives no altitude or medical advice. Included: 23 printable pages, seven steps, a hill day plan sheet, a route card, a kit and water checklist, a round-trip time table, a quickstart, and a personalised sheet worked on the figures you entered in our calculators.
Look inside
Two full pages from the plan, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.
What is in it
- Count the Stops: the route timed walking only and with 10 minutes of stops an hour, up and down
- The Watch, Not the Sundial: sunset moved from solar time onto your watch for the date and place
- Turn at the Time: back at the car by sunset less a margin, and the turnaround time, at the slowest walker's pace
- The Latest Start: the last start that still fits, worked back to the time you leave home
- Water Weighs: water for the hours out plus a reserve, counted as weight
- Ten Essentials, Every Time: the ten essentials weighed with the water against a share of body weight
- Someone Knows: the mountain forecast check, the route card and the go card
- The hill day plan sheet, printable
- The route card and the kit and water checklist, printable
- A round-trip time table by distance and ascent, a water table, and a one-page quickstart
- ✓ 23 printable pages
- ✓ 10 sections, worksheets and templates
- ✓ A second PDF worked out from the numbers you enter
- ✓ No account needed, just an email address
- ✓ Instant download; link valid 7 days
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The plan picks up where the free Turnaround Time Calculator leaves off. The calculator gives the latest time you can still be going up; the plan times the route with its stops in the Hike Time Calculator, turns the Daylight Calculator's solar sunset into the one on your watch, works back to the latest start and, with the Drive Time Calculator, to the time you leave home. It counts the day's water as weight and checks the ten essentials in the Pack Weight Calculator. Check a mountain forecast, carry the ten essentials, leave a route card with someone at home, and turn back at the turnaround time or sooner. The plan gives no altitude or medical advice, and the worked figures are examples.