Guides to enjoying nature and outdoor activities with limited energy, including hiking, walking, and exploring at a sustainable pace.
For a long time, I assumed that long-distance hiking, adventure travel, and chronic illness were fundamentally incompatible. Multi-day trails seemed to require a level of predictability that my body simply couldn’t provide. Guidebooks mapped out precise stages. Hiking blogs listed daily distances. Online forums debated the “best” itinerary. Everything seemed designed around moving forward each day according to plan.
Hiking with chronic illness doesn’t mean giving it up—it means doing it differently. These 12 practical tips will help you plan smarter, pace yourself, and enjoy the outdoors without triggering a crash.
Hiking again after developing Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) wasn’t something I jumped back into overnight—especially not in Colorado, where altitude adds a whole extra layer of complexity. But over time, with the right approach (and a lot of patience), hiking became possible again—and even enjoyable. Here’s how I started to hike again in Colorado with POTS.