Walking Surfaces

 

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The urban environment of suburban Clackamas County has a mix of sidewalks and trails that criss cross the landscape.

Walking and hiking are my medicine. Having lived a life with chronic back problems, it has been the no cost medicine that has largely left me pain free. Along with the positive effects of how walking modulates mood, there is nothing I like better than walking. Unfortunately, the type of surface can make all the difference in whether that walking experience is great, good or just endurable.

In any given area, there are numerous types of walking surfaces. To start, all but the dumbest suburbs usually have the ubiquitous concrete sidewalk. Concrete, once chosen for long term durability, now seems to disintegrate in a few years. The Romans who built concrete that has lasted millennia are rolling in their graves. Concrete is the worst material to build walkways in all but the densest urban settings where it needs to withstand the foot traffic of thousands on a daily basis. In the hierarchy of surfaces, concrete is the most taxing to walk on and limits the number of miles one can walk walking. For every ten miles on a softer surface, I can only do a few on concrete. I have types of shoes, insoles and socks that all work together to make walking on concrete bearable to my middle-aged joints, still it is less enjoyable than it could be if cities were actually designed for walkers.

As a lover of urban hiking, walking all the concrete leads me to walk less miles than I would if the surfaces were more pliable. Concrete is not good for walking or biking unless, as I said above, you have hundreds or thousands of people perambulating on it every day. That isn't 99 percent of the sprawled urban space of America outside the densest urban centers. Miles of mostly empty sidewalks, maybe wouldn't be so, if the surfaces were nicer to use. Municipalities should rethink miles of mostly empty concrete sidewalks in favor of making a city of trails. I am always encouraged by the moves to take streets back from cars and have daydreams of forest lined trails through every neighborhood.

A comfortable dirt trail near Eagle Fern Park

 

After concrete, the next step up on the hierarchy of surfaces is blacktop. Blacktop is a little softer on the body and the best surface for biking, but still hard for a walker. I sometimes walk the road as opposed to the sidewalk when it starts to wear on my body. Of course, this is only possible in the least trafficked places.

Gravel, a step up on the hierarchy is softer, the only problem being the slip and slide of your feet that adds to exertion. Gravel has a sweet spot.

Trails with wood chips or shavings are often employed in boggy or hillside areas. Walking on them is like a spongy form of gravel and at the right depth, they can be a great surface that is very forgiving on joints and provides good traction. Their real drawback is that unlike the other surfaces, they have a "goldilocks zone" beyond which they are too spongy or doing nothing at all. Wood chips float somewhere around gravel in the hierarchy and each have their positives and negatives.

An urban wood chip trail down the Rock Creek Trail.

 

Next up on the hierarchy is limestone. It is the best of all surfaces under most conditions.

A plain dirt trail can be at the top of the hierarchy, but in some cases like too much moisture, drops below limestone, gravel and wood chips. Overall, in most cases when it is dry it can be the best  surface if it is in "goldilocks" condition meaning not too soft and not too hard. Even a hard packed dirt trail is preferable to concrete or blacktop.

A foothills trail near Mount Hood has a mix of dirt, rock and wooden steps.

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