Nah, you go your own pace and then stop at every fork, intersection, and overlook, and let everybody catch up before moving on.

lol. My sister is a botanist. She tells the story of a team that went out on a study hike. At noon they stopped and one of them gasped, "Oh, no. I left my lunch in the car." They turned around and laughed when they saw they were only 100 meters away.

Yes.

Sure but every time you stop they're going to have a new berry, leaf, or bit of bark for you to taste. (It's me, I'm the one handing you forest treats)

uh, we use that word with a slightly different meaning out here. naturalist enclave is synonymous with nudist colony is synonymous with active adult community

My ex did this to me. I got heat stroke and she left me behind on the mountain. Wanted to get back to the truck for cell service cuz addicted to phone and didn't want to wait for me.

I spent hours sitting by an alpine stream filtering and drinking water and I ended up hiking out in the dark while occasionally projectile vomiting. It's the first time and only time I thought about pressing my garmin SOS button.

And the only reason I got sick was because I was on new medication that killed my heat tolerance I was pushing myself too hard to keep up to her to fend off the incoming conflict. Was being called "out of shape" and "unhealthy" the entire ascent. If I was alone I would have taken it slow and never ended up in this situation.

There was a crazy case of this in Austria last year.

This is the way. If you decided to hike with someone less fit then you better be waiting for them. Getting separated is how people got lost on the trail.

Yes.

It doesn’t seem like you want company, I’ll go with someone else.

Dude, just solo hike.

„Ah shit, I thought you said beer spray”

If they leave me alone in the woods, I become more terrifying than a bear.