Nearly nine in ten day hikers and trail runners surveyed at Rocky Mountain National Park rated themselves “adequately prepared.” By the researchers’ yardstick, only about one in six hikers — and one in four runners — actually were. The gap is the story. So is the honest question of whether the yardstick was fair.
A new study out of Rocky Mountain National Park has put a number on something Colorado’s search and rescue teams have long suspected: the distance between how prepared hikers feel and how prepared they actually are is wide. Researchers surveyed 654 people on their way off the trail in the summer of 2024 — 586 day hikers and 68 trail runners — and found that while the large majority believed they were ready for the backcountry, only 15.7% of hikers and 25% of trail runners met the study’s definition of “wilderness prepared.”
The paper, published in the journal Wilderness & Environmental Medicine and led by Boston University researcher John Lambert, is among the first to study trail runners as their own group rather than lumping them in with hikers. Its title borrows a phrase that should sound familiar to anyone who hikes in Colorado: Know Before You Go.
For a park where day hikers account for the majority of rescues, that perception gap isn’t academic. It’s the space where preventable emergencies happen — and, as the study also shows, where some of the cheapest fixes live.
What the study actually measured
Over the summer of 2024, the team surveyed hikers and runners at four locations across the park as they finished for the day, asking about their experience and cataloging the gear they were carrying. To be counted as “wilderness prepared,” a person had to be carrying all of the following: at least one liter of water, seven of the emergency items on the National Park Service’s Ten Essentials list, a map or equivalent wayfinding device, and either two rescue devices or eight of fifteen recommended first-aid items.
Measured against that standard, the results were sobering. Roughly 88% of both hikers and runners rated themselves “adequately prepared” or better — but only 15.7% of day hikers and 25% of trail runners actually cleared the bar. The author has been blunt that both groups badly overestimated their own readiness.
~88%
of hikers & runners rated themselves “adequately prepared”
15.7%
of day hikers actually met the study’s preparedness standard
25%
of trail runners met that same standard
Was the bar too strict — or are we kidding ourselves?
It’s a fair question, and worth sitting with rather than waving away. Lambert himself concedes the definition was “perhaps kind of strict.” A reasonable hiker can push back: on a short, popular, well-traveled trail on a clear July morning, do you truly need eight first-aid items and two separate rescue devices? Sometimes, honestly, no. Preparedness is supposed to scale to the trip — a sunny two-mile loop and a remote off-trail scramble call for very different packs.
But here’s why the finding still lands. Even if you mentally relax the standard, most people in the study fell short on the things that matter when a day goes sideways — not the nice-to-haves. Nearly everyone carried a phone, yet fewer than one in ten carried any kind of emergency shelter, and only a small share carried a satellite messenger or beacon for the large stretches of the park with no cell signal. Those aren’t fussy extras. They’re what stands between an unplanned night out and a medical emergency.
There’s a deeper limit, too: the survey could measure what people carried, but not fully what they knew. An ice axe, a map, or a first-aid kit only helps if you can use it. So the most useful way to read this study isn’t as a scolding about a checklist — it’s as a prompt for an honest self-audit. Preparedness is a judgment call matched to the specific objective, the conditions, and your own skills. Or, as we like to put it: risk management isn’t fear. It’s smart.
Both groups vastly overestimated their level of preparedness. — John Lambert, lead author, speaking to GearJunkie
Hikers vs. trail runners: the surprising part
The most novel piece of the study is its split between the two groups — and it cuts against intuition. Trail runners travel light and fast, are far more likely to be alone, and were dramatically more likely to leave the trail: about 27% reported going significantly off-trail, compared with roughly 3% of day hikers. They also reported more close calls during their outing, most of them weather-related.
And yet, by the study’s own standard, runners were the better-prepared group — 25% cleared the bar versus 15.7% of hikers. They tended to be younger, more experienced, and more likely to carry a GPS communicator or SOS device, even as they skipped some of the bulkier items hikers carried. The lesson isn’t that fast-and-light equals reckless. It’s that running solo and off-trail raises the stakes if something goes wrong — which means runners deserve safety messaging built for how they actually move, not hand-me-down hiking advice.
The one fix that costs nothing
If there’s a single takeaway worth pinning to your door, it’s this: about one in four day hikers said they hadn’t told anyone where they were going or when to expect them back. (Runners did better here — only about 16% left no plan behind.) Lambert calls this the lowest-hanging fruit in the whole study, and he’s right. It costs nothing. There’s nothing to buy, nothing to carry, and no skill to practice.
But it changes everything about a rescue. When search and rescue knows where to start looking and gets the call an hour or two after you’re overdue — rather than a day later — that head start can be the difference between a routine evening callout and a tragedy. It also lightens the load on the volunteers who answer that call. With Colorado’s statewide search and rescue coordination in the middle of a major transition this year, the most direct way any of us can support the system is to reduce the odds we ever need it.
Close the gap before your next hike
Here’s how to turn an honest self-audit into a safer day on the trail:
- Audit your pack against the Ten Essentials — honestly. Not “could I survive,” but “what would I actually want if I rolled an ankle two miles in at 11,000 feet?” Start with our guide to the Ten Essentials.
- Tell someone your plan, every time. Where you’re going, your route, and when to worry. It’s the cheapest safety gear you own — here’s how to do it well.
- Carry a way to call for help that isn’t just your phone. Much of the high country has no signal. A satellite messenger or personal locator beacon — plus an emergency shelter — covers the gaps the study found most people leave open.
- Match your kit to the trip, not the calendar. The strongest predictor of preparedness wasn’t age or years on trails — it was how often people actually got out, and whether they’d been caught out before. Check current conditions, not just the date.
- If you run, plan for solo and off-trail. Lighter is fine; alone and off-route is the risk multiplier. Carry communication and tell someone your loop before you start.
- Know your skills, not just your gear. An item only helps if you can use it under stress. Build the habits behind the pack with our mountain safety best practices.
Quick self-audit: what’s in your pack?
Tick what you’d carry on a typical alpine day hike. This is a personal gut-check, not the study’s exact scoring — but it’s the same honest question the researchers asked.
Tick the items you’d carry to see your pack at a glance.
Build your pack the right way
Our free Ten Essentials guide breaks down exactly what to carry — and why each item earns its place — so you can close the gap between feeling ready and being ready.
Read the Ten Essentials Guide →The mountains are inherently unpredictable, and a quiet, sunny trailhead can hide that as easily as a storm reveals it. The good news in this study is that the biggest improvements are the cheapest ones. Want more conditions reporting and safety education like this? Explore our free Resource Hub for route guides, gear advice, and the skills that keep day hikers off the rescue list.
