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Going on my first hike

usmaak

usmaak

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 13, 2012
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I received my Apple Watch the other day and today I am taking it on its first hike. The hike will be somewhere between 10 and 15 miles. I am coming from a GARMIN Venu. That watch is very straightforward. Go to hike, wait until the GPS connects, press the start button, and go. I am a bit confused about how to do this on the Apple Watch. How do I start the GPS and how do I know when it is connected. I will likely wear both watches this first time, to make sure I record the hike. I know that the Apple Watch isn’t a sports watch like the GARMIN. It is going to take a bit of time to work it all out, I think. It is a really nice watch though, and I have had fun setting it all up and am amazed at how much I can do with it.

With the GARMIN watch, I get a ton of metrics. The ones I pay the most attention to are calories burned, average heart rate, and steps taken. I am hoping I can get all of that from Apple Watch. The cardio aspect of my walks and hikes is the most important part.

Does anyone have any suggestions on using this watch for hiking and walking? I walk between 40 and 50 miles per week and I want to make sure I am recording everything I can. I’d like to make it as much of a sports watch as I can.
 
Just launch the Workouts app and choose Hiking; that’s all there is to it. It’ll sort the GPS out. If you tap the three dots in the upper right of the Hiking workout option and then the pencil, you can customise the displayed metrics. I don’t think step count is one of the options, but there are plenty of others that should keep you covered. Enjoy!
 
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I got my first Apple Watch about a week ago.
As part of this purchase, I got a 30min phone call with an Apple specialist.

His advice was to see the Apple Health app as the central piece of the puzzle. The Watch is mostly about collecting data and sending them to the Health app.

So I'm following his advice, even though using the Health app wasn't all that easy for me. Simply because there's so much data in there. But indeed, ATM I'm still a newbie 😉

Best of luck !
 
You can put all sorts of metrics on the Watch screen, including calories, just need to add views to the workout in question.

Apple Watch User Guide

Here’s everything you need to know about Apple Watch and the Apple Watch app on iPhone, straight from Apple. This definitive guide helps you get started using Apple Watch and discover all the amazing things it can do.
support.apple.com

ADD: no need to wait for GPS, just start the Hiking workout in Workout and go.
 
I wore both watches to see how they compared. I only ended up doing eight miles today and the GARMIN and apple watches were only .04 miles apart. So I don’t think that is too bad. They were way off on calories. The GARMIN had me burning 793 calories and the Apple Watch had me at 637 calories. All that is just an estimate anyway
 
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usmaak said:
I wore both watches to see how they compared. I only ended up doing eight miles today and the GARMIN and apple watches were only .04 miles apart. So I don’t think that is too bad. They were way off on calories. The GARMIN had me burning 793 calories and the Apple Watch had me at 637 calories. All that is just an estimate anyway
Click to expand...
my ultra is usually .02 lower than my garmin every run and walk i do. Ive used them both together probably 12 times and they have been .02 EVERYTIME
 
Fthree said:
my ultra is usually .02 lower than my garmin every run and walk i do. Ive used them both together probably 12 times and they have been .02 EVERYTIME
Click to expand...
Doesn’t ultra have a better GPS?
 
i am not finding tracking to be dependable.

‘’’Most the time, tracking works perfectly but sometimes is fails!

Normally my tracking looks like this:
FD056DD0-65EB-4834-813E-BF1E1BED481D.jpeg



when it fails it looks like this:

1CDE05E0-3DE2-4497-904A-98B2317E95A4.jpeg


‘It fails about half the time. I hit the crown and pick outdoor walk, wait till the circle in the top left corner turns blue and chimes and then hit the action button. What am I doing wrong?
 
usmaak said:
I wore both watches to see how they compared. I only ended up doing eight miles today and the GARMIN and apple watches were only .04 miles apart. So I don’t think that is too bad. They were way off on calories. The GARMIN had me burning 793 calories and the Apple Watch had me at 637 calories. All that is just an estimate anyway
Click to expand...
How did the heart rate stats compare?
 
The GPS has been great in my experience. Detects correctly what side of the street I’m on in urban areas and on my hike yesterday when exiting tree cover to open ground it didn’t appear to have to do any correction.

54D04DAA-6D7F-4541-B7D3-320AE5EEFB75.jpeg
 
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For your hiking I *highly* recommend you use WorkOutdoors, a $6 one time payment app (no subscription!) that is mind blowing for everything fitness, in particular hiking with full mapping.

video that shows what the app does as an overview:
hiking specific info about the app:
and finally the website: http://www.workoutdoors.net
 
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Two suggestions.. on the iphone, before going on the hike make sure that COMPASS CALIBRATION in locations services, system services is enabled..

2nd, if you really want the BEST HR date I would use a secondary HR sensor, like a forearm or chest strap. This makes ANY watch work better, but certainly the AW is no exception AND it will also save a fair bit of battery life on the AW.

Just a thought. I have used a secondary sensor for years for working out, running and hiking just to always get the best HR read I can vs a sometimes variable read that the AW or really any WRIST mounted HR sensor is going to give.
 
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tivoboy said:
Two suggestions.. on the iphone, before going on the hike make sure that COMPASS CALIBRATION in locations services, system services is enabled..

2nd, if you really want the BEST HR date I would use a secondary HR sensor, like a forearm or chest strap. This makes ANY watch work better, but certainly the AW is no exception AND it will also save a fair bit of battery life on the AW.

Just a thought. I have used a secondary sensor for years for working out, running and hiking just to always get the best HR read I can vs a sometimes variable read that the AW or really any WRIST mounted HR sensor is going to give.
Click to expand...

I would normally agree with your 2nd point but after many years of AW there have been so many improvements. countless tests (and my own experience) show that on the Series 7/8/Ultra the HR is super accurate for steady state cardio (running, biking) and FOR SURE hiking and normal life. It only struggles a bit in workouts that constantly flex the wrist like weight lifting but even then it has improved greatly. At this point even the better optical forearm straps like the Polar Verity Sense aren't doing better than the AW and it is only chest straps that are clearly superior to AW for lifting. Chest straps often actually are inferior to AW during cold weather sports when your skin is dry early in a workout unless you use spit or better electrode gel.

I totally agree it saves a some battery but with Ultra that isn't a big deal for most anymore. Bottom line? AW is pretty awesome at HR nowadays and using strap of some kind may very well not be worth it for most athletes.
 
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