If you’ve ever heard the idea of hiking 52 times in a year and immediately thought, “That sounds nice… but there’s no way we could actually pull that off,” you’re not alone. Before we had kids, my wife and I hiked several times a week, but let’s face it, kids area a game changer.
For most families, the hesitation isn’t about whether hiking is valuable — it’s about whether a goal like this is even realistic when life already feels full.
The truth is, most families don’t fail at a 52-hike goal.
They talk themselves out of starting before they ever give it a chance.
There is one BIG reason why this happens — and it’s the same reason for almost everybody.
At first glance, 52 hikes sounds like a lot.
That’s one hike every single week, all year long. No breaks. No excuses. No missed weekends.
And when you factor in:
…it’s easy to conclude that the goal is setting you up to fail.
The list above shows a lot of obstacles that stop us from succeeding, but the actual reason we don’t do it is because we don’t give it a dedicated spot in our schedules. My wife and I made this same mistake for years as soon as we had kids. Our rationale was that since we have kids now, it’s impossible to get out and hike. But here’s the truth: You have time for the things you choose to make time for.
Once we realized that, we made hiking and family outdoor fun a priority in our schedules and didn’t let work, school, or anything else get in the way.
This initial resistance is completely normal. It comes from a very common misunderstanding about what the goal actually represents.
The biggest mistake families make is assuming that 52 hikes is a requirement, not a framework.
The number 52 isn’t about perfection.
It’s about rhythm.
It represents:
When families treat 52 as a rigid rule, the pressure builds quickly. Miss a week, and suddenly the goal feels broken. Miss two, and it feels pointless.
But families who succeed don’t treat 52 as a finish line — they treat it as a direction.
This is a concept that I honestly struggle with quite often. As Ricky Bobby would say, “If you ain’t first, yer’ last.” I used to believe that fully. I always want to go all in on every one of the things I decided to do with my time. But the reality is, it’s not all or nothing. Every hike you do as a result of this goal is an experience your family wouldn’t have had.
Another reason the goal feels unrealistic is that many families set the bar far too high.
A hike doesn’t need to be:
Short local trails count.
Repeat hikes count.
Letting kids wander, stop, and explore counts.
If it gets your family outside and moving together, it counts.
Consistency matters far more than distance or elevation.
Here’s something most people don’t realize:
Even completing 15–25 hikes in a year often represents a massive lifestyle shift for a busy family.
That’s dozens of shared outdoor experiences that likely wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Success isn’t finishing all 52.
Success is changing the default from “we should get outside more” to “this is just something we do.”
As a family with 2 young toddlers, my family doesn’t do a lot of long, remote hikes right now. We have some local trails that are a five minute drive. We’ll take the girls in our backpacks for a mile or two and they absolutely love it!
Over time, the families who continue hiking aren’t the most motivated or disciplined.
They tend to have a few things in common:
When the goal lives somewhere you see every day, it’s much harder to forget — and much easier to return to after a missed week.
If you want a deeper breakdown of this approach, we shared it here:
👉 How to Hike More Consistently as a Family (Without Burnout)
For families who want a simple, visible way to support this kind of goal, the 52 Hikes a Year board was designed around these exact principles.
It’s not there to pressure you or keep score.
It’s there to remind you — visually and consistently — that getting outside together matters.
Having the 52 Hikes a Year board in our home makes it so easy to get out on hikes. Our 3 year old isn’t shy about telling us “We haven’t gone hiking this week!” Even if we’ve gone three times already. It’s also a great conversation piece with visiting friends and family.
👉 Explore the 52 Hikes a Year Board
It depends on how you define success.
If success means perfection, then no — it’s probably unrealistic.
But if success means:
Then yes — not only is it realistic, it’s surprisingly sustainable.
The goal isn’t to do everything right.
It’s to keep showing up, even when life gets in the way.
If you’re here, you’ve probably heard of the 1000 hours outside challenge, and your first thought might be: “That sounds super cool… and super impossible.”
If you’ve ever started the year saying, “We should hike more,” and then blinked and it’s suddenly summer… you’re not alone. That’s why I decided
