Over the many years I’ve worked as a guide, one of the main issues I’ve seen trekkers face is knee pain.
During my early years when I was spending long hours walking and studying trails, I went through the same issue myself.
Therefore, I am using this platform to share what I know about mitigating this issue so that trekkers can apply it for themselves.
I am not making this a comprehensive guide to a proper way of walking on the mountainous terrain. There are too many elements, and therefore, too many techniques to talk about that need a much longer article.
So, I’ll limit this insight to walking uphill and downhill on the stone stairs that you encounter trekking in the Himalayas.
I also don’t mean to say that it would absolutely prevent the issue from happening since your fitness, duration of walking, rest time and frequency, all come into play. But, I’ve found that learning them helps considerably.
Uphill and Downhill: A Battle Against the Gravity
I see most trekkers approach the stone stairs the same way they do the staircase in their homes. They move straight, their steps directly in front of the other, making their knees take the entire load of their body in the process.
It would be fine if the steps numbered a few dozen. Except, they number a few thousand when a typical trekking day ends.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration when I say that such technique is the shortest way to a bad, painful experience. Particularly, after a few days of trekking. And of course, a sure way to hasten fatigue in the body.
Before I go into the details of the technique, I urge you to employ your common sense to the limit.
No matter how you walk, you are putting stress on your knees while walking on such a path. And that stress comes from supporting your body weight.
One of the main things that punish our knees: the gap between two stairs. Higher the gap between the stairs, greater the effort your knee has to make to support your weight. The greater gap also means you have to fight against the gravity more.
I promise you this is one of only a few science stuff I know and mention here.
How Should You Walk on the Stone Stairs?
Well, imagine you are walking on a straight, flat path. Apart from the weight of your backpack you’re as right as rain. Just walking casually at a pace you are normally comfortable with. And a stone staircase is approaching soon.
There would be this impulse to continue with the same pace as you are carrying at the moment and straight through the middle of the stair. After all, you are hardly tired and the beauty of the surroundings is making you extra excited. I totally get that.
But, you must understand one thing: you don’t tackle the staircase head on and speed is not your friend here.
You must keep four things in mind:
Speed
Surface of each stair
Height of each step in a stair
Body angle against the stairs
Let me explain.
When you reach the stairs, first you slow down. I cannot stress enough how important this is! I might not have told you how to take your first step yet, but however many steps you take, keep them slow and steady.
In fact: slow but steady.
Limiting your speed gives you time to scan through the surface of the stair you are in, the gap between your current stair and the next, and if any stone slab on it is loose, sharp, slippery, elevated, depressed, etc.
Then, you scan the surface. Find the stone slab on the stair that is the lowest. If there is one, step onto it. If not, pick a corner and step there.
Now, instead of climbing straight onto the next, you scan the next step in the same way as earlier.
If you find a slab that seems to be very close to your current stair and to your current position, put your trailing leg onto it and go up. Simple.
But if it is a bit further, put your trailing leg onto the same stair so that you are moving towards it. Remember: we go where we can put the least stress on our knees and expend less energy.
To the person watching, you seem to be walking across the same stair. Then you put your next foot onto that lowest slab and move up.
Finally, if you do not find any lower section on the next stair or if the gap between the stairs is too tall, scan the same stair you are stepping upon.
Is there any elevated section? Perhaps at the edge? Many mountain stairs are made in such a way that you find the edge of a stair a bit more elevated than the rest.
Regardless of the fact that an edge is raised or not, you follow these next steps.
From the position on the stair you’re in, angle yourself a bit against the stairs. You don’t have to be completely sideways, but you shouldn’t be completely straight against the steps either. And then you move across the same stair towards its edge.
In a typical stone staircase, by three steps you should’ve reached the end of its width. Now, turn around and put your other foot onto the next stair.
I think this should be it if variation of the stair has to be considered.
Now let’s talk about downhill which isn’t all that different. Except, you have to have greater control of your movement.
In fact, going downhill has a higher chance of troubling your knees than going uphill.
Techniques are generally the same as going uphill: go slow, scan the surface of the stairs and the gap between them, aim for the shallowest section and if not follow the three-step movement across a stair to move onto the next.
But conscious effort has to be made to put less force into your steps while going downhill.
You can put your legs together on the same stair and descend slowly towards the next if the gap is too big.
Sometimes you can see a small slab protruding in between the two stairs and you can step onto that for an easier descent.
Try to make your steps short.
You get the point.
My final advice on this matter would be to take ample rest during the process. Trekking on such a path would take all your focus and energy into walking through it.
Taking a brief respite would not only allow you to give your legs a break, it also allows you to take in the beautiful sight the trail provides. Isn’t that the primary reason why you are on the trail?
Do Trekking Poles Help?
In a sense that it helps transfer some of your body weight from your knees, absolutely!
When you use a trekking pole on stone stairs, you put some of your weight into it to either elevate or lower yourself. That takes some of the load from your knees.
For the detailed scientific explanation you can search on the internet. I can only speak to the extent I’ve practically experienced about it.
Does Taking Extra Steps on the Same Stair Mean Extra Energy Wasted and Extra Time Consumed Cumulatively?
Totally reasonable question.
First, why are you moving across the same stair?
If you’ve keenly followed my words, you must’ve realized by now that in the final scenario we’ve moved three steps in total in the same stair before we turned around for the next stair.
Say, if you’ve put your right foot on the right corner of the first stair, your third step becomes the same right foot.
When you proceed to the next stair to move up, which would be your fourth step, it would be your left foot.
What it does is that your every ascent onto the next stair alternates your foot.
No matter how you move on the staircase, your ascending or descending foot bears the weight of your body. If you’ve only taken two steps before moving onto the next stair, it would have been the same right foot throughout the staircase.
It would be bad for that foot in the long run. And… completely counterproductive.
Also, it also gives your legs a few seconds between each stair.
Second, if you move straight up one foot after another onto the next stair, you are neither saving your energy nor your time. And definitely not your knees.
Ascending straight means expending considerable energy working against the gravity which results in faster accumulation of fatigue in your body.
The result is frequent and longer rest stops which means extra time consumed.
And the knees? That’s the entire point of writing this insight.
I hope this will be helpful to you!