What is postholing while hiking, and how can I avoid it?

If you’re postholing while hiking, it means your legs are sinking deep into the snow with every step — usually up past your knees or even up to your hip, which robs you of most of your mobility and makes walking even a short distance into an exhausting proposition. The term is a literal reference to the way a fencepost sinks into the ground. But in this case, your leg is the fencepost.

Postholing can range anywhere from a short, miserable ordeal to the start of a real emergency if it keeps you from returning to shelter in good time.

Of course, few people in their right mind would go far on a hike if they started postholing immediately out of the trailhead. But it can sneak up on you when snow that was firm enough to support your weight in the morning becomes soft enough for postholing by midday or evening, leaving you floundering up to your knees or hips in snow.

Or if you were walking across a solid crust of snow formed by wind or the melt/refreeze cycle, you might suddenly find yourself postholing when you hit a patch of snow that was protected from the wind or sun.

Priority #1: Avoid postholing

It’s hard to appreciate just how exhausting and demoralizing postholing can be until you’ve done it. The best solution, by far, is to avoid this situation if at all possible. Here are a few strategies to help minimize your exposure to postholing:

• Hike early. Try to get out — and back! — before solar radiation and warming air temperatures have softened the snow enough for you to sink into it.
• Travel in places with less snow. This might sound painfully obvious. But if you can choose between a hike where most of the sun has melted or blown away, versus a hike that’s still socked in by snow, one of them comes with significantly less potential for postholing.
• Travel in shaded areas if possible. There are never any guarantees, but once late winter/early spring hits, snow tends to be firmer in the shade.
• Navigate around snow deposits. By the time late winter rolls around, snow can make a hilly landscape look flat and even — but of course it’s not, and the dips filled in by deep snow are where you’re most likely to posthole. If you know what’s underneath that snow, you can stick to areas with less snow coverage.

I’ve hit postholing territory. Now what?

Okay, so you’re out on a nice snowy hike and you’ve started postholing. Now what? As in any potentially unpleasant or dangerous situation in the outdoors, stop and take stock of your circumstances.

Should you go back? Have you hit a short patch of posthole-y snow that you can move on past, or has the entire snowpack softened due to solar radiation and warming air? If the latter, can you reach shelter or the trailhead more quickly by turning around and going back, or by continuing forward? Weather conditions and your knowledge of the terrain are important factors when making this decision.

Is firmer ground available? If you’re hiking where other people ski, snowshoe or ride fat-tire bikes, try walking in their tracks. Sometimes they compact the snow enough that you won’t sink in.

Did you bring your snowshoes? Having snowshoes along is a really handy way of avoiding the postholing dilemma entirely. Yes, carrying them is an extra bother, but not as bothersome as skipping the hike entirely or having to posthole all the way back.

The summer version of postholing

Think you’re home free in the summer? Sure, you won’t posthole at all when the snow is gone — but you can still get mired in the summer landscape if you go bushwhacking off trail.