Sticky Finding reports from John Ladd JMT Survey #JMTsurvey
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Updated 3/21/22 with revised links and other more current information/plans.
See??leading to a where the reports will be collected. Start with _How to find reports.pdf in that folder, which includes some links to material not found in the Drive folder itself. In 2015-16, I recruited a number of fellow hikers with analytic and data presentation skills to do a comprehensive reporting on the 2015 survey, which had 1,286 useful respondents. See, most notably,? BTW: I'd love other volunteers with data skills I lack -- data presentation skills, particularly in Tableau, analytic skills using tools like R or able to build an online predictive calculator that could predict things like typical miles per day given entered age, prior experience, relative physical fitness, BMI, pack weight etc.?Email me if interested in any of these. It may take some time before I could start to onboard you as I already have a number of volunteers who are moving faster than I can keep up with. An embarrassment of riches from a very helpful community here and even on Facebook. It was a ton of work and it wasn't clear that repeating the 2015 work each year was worth the effort. And I feared burnout among the volunteers I needed to present the data well. I decided to efficiently use my own resources, and to readily recruit others with analytic skills, by waiting until I could pool results across multiple years. That would allow us to look both at problems that were the same year-to-year and how some problems differed between years. There are some reports from 2016 thru 2019, but they are minimal compared to the 2015 reporting. There are also a number of 2014 reports in the Drive folder. So I am working now on pooling and cleaning the data from 2014 to 2021. There are 6,969 usable responses to many of the questions. Individual multi-year graphics will start to come out often. They will be found in the folder above. We are giving priority to actionable data helping 2022 hikers. Serious multi-factor analysis of pooled responses probably won't come out until the Summer (probably too late for the 2022 hiking season) as the data assembly work is surprisingly tedious because the 2014 and 2015 questions were partly reframed for 2016 and later years. I don't give the data to folks with analytic skills until it is reasonably complete for the issue we are trying to address.? There is an academic group of Wilderness Medical Society members out of UCF Fresno, led by Dr. Susanne Spano, have published peer-reviewed reports on the earliest (2014) version of the survey and I look forward to seeing their analysis of the pooled data, though publishing delays will probably push them until 2023 at best.? Susanne J. Spano, Arla G. Hile, Ratnali Jain, Philip R. Stalcup, The Epidemiology and Medical Morbidity of Long-Distance Backpackers on the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada,
Wilderness & Environmental Medicine,?Volume 29, Issue 2,?2018,?Pages 203-210,?ISSN 1080-6032
The article was originally behind a paywall, but it is now freely available as a PDF If any links are broken or you notice typos or unclear text, please email JohnLadd@...?and tell me so. I will fix them. ?-- John Curran Ladd 415-648-9279 (landline) Communications via private replies to my posts or by direct emails to?JohnLadd@... |
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I plan to issue a detailed report on "Plan B" hikes, defined as exiting at a trailhead short of the planned exit
Most interesting finding to me is that the most experienced hikers are MORE likely switch to a Plan B. I think they have less of a "bucket list" mentality and adapt their plans to reality. I know that for me, it is more important to spend the number of days that I planned, and the exit trailhead is often adjusted to the reality of the hike Another interesting finding is that solo hikers switch to Plan B more often that hikers in groups. I would not have expected that, since one person's problems can lead several people to exit. But apparently the support of hiking companions makes intended hike completion more likely, Early season hikers are more likely to switch to Plan B than August hikers, at least in heavy snow years. Men and women have abut the same Plan B rate. Roughly speaking, even for later start dates. over 25% of JMT hikers exit short of their intended exit. Presumably those who plan a full JMT have a higher Plan B rate than section hikers (the survey covers both). One of the reasons that it is complicated is that I need to analyze separately depending on experience level and planned hike distance as the as otherwise the data could be easily misunderstood. See? -- John Curran Ladd 1616 Castro Street San Francisco, CA? 94114-3707 415-648-9279 |
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On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 09:28 AM, @Fredxy wrote:
John, thank you for the prompt response. Are the raw data available to view?I share raw data with selected people with demonstrated analytic or data presentation skills.? I generally ask people to propose a hypothesis to test, and how they plan to test it, before releasing the data. Or to propose a particular way of presenting data I only share the fields relevant to the hypothesis in question or the visualization at issue. I never share personally identifying data. When I've shared the data with academic researchers, I avoid sharing the data with different academics who are investigating the same issue. ? I generally reserve the right to comment on any published version of the data. I rarely want joint authorship, though I do expect credit. With a large data set and many, many questions, there is a real danger of data mining (chasing results with apparent high confidence) that could easily discredit the survey in the long run. I think confirmation bias runs rampant in survey interpretation and in hiking groups in particular.? So I release raw data very selectively No offense meant. -- John Curran Ladd 1616 Castro Street San Francisco, CA? 94114-3707 415-648-9279 |
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On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 12:07 PM, Peter Klein wrote:
I agree. Particularly in groups of men, I fear that the most risk-tolerant individual over-influences group decisions.? ? -- John Curran Ladd 1616 Castro Street San Francisco, CA? 94114-3707 415-648-9279 |
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I've had to revert to Plan B a few times over the years. When I read hiking forums, I often read about aborted hikes due to weather issues. People prudently will stop before a pass to avoid going over it in a storm and then end up behind their required pace. But several years ago, in Colorado, I started thinking in terms of a day being 24 hours and not restricting myself to conventional hiking hours. So if I had to stop in the early afternoon, my mileage goals were not necessarily blown since I was willing to hike in the evening hours or start very early the next morning. ?I think that fewer hikes would be aborted due to weather that causes perceived time limitations if hikers were more open to night hiking. Actually, after doing some of it out of necessity, I actually grew to appreciate the unique aspects of walking at night, especially under a relatively full moon -- it's a great experience overall to be out under the moon and stars walking (with a good headlamp, of course).
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Excellent post… On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 10:19 AM ravi_jmt2013 <ravi@...> wrote: I've had to revert to Plan B a few times over the years. When I read hiking forums, I often read about aborted hikes due to weather issues. People prudently will stop before a pass to avoid going over it in a storm and then end up behind their required pace. But several years ago, in Colorado, I started thinking in terms of a day being 24 hours and not restricting myself to conventional hiking hours. So if I had to stop in the early afternoon, my mileage goals were not necessarily blown since I was willing to hike in the evening hours or start very early the next morning.? I think that fewer hikes would be aborted due to weather that causes perceived time limitations if hikers were more open to night hiking. Actually, after doing some of it out of necessity, I actually grew to appreciate the unique aspects of walking at night, especially under a relatively full moon -- it's a great experience overall to be out under the moon and stars walking (with a good headlamp, of course). |
John Ladd
ravi_jmt2013
Will Cronan