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I wrote the following ‘on the road’, after the first day of a hike around the Königssee. As it turned out, the trek that we picked was a little more challenging and the weather a little worse than expected. It meant that we didn’t touch the laptops for the remainder of the hike. I still believe that the concept of code-hiking is very enticing, but requires more meticulous planing. If you have ever done something similar, I would love to hear about it!

Code-hiking, as its name implies, combines hiking and coding. In my case, it leverages the amazing infrastructure available throughout southern Germany and the Alps to spend the days scaling the mountains, enjoying the breath-taking views and fresh air and spending the evenings hacking on projects.

The DAV (only available in German) maintains shelters and refuges throughout the alps. These let you charge your laptop over night. They also provide a certain level of comfort that sleeping in a tent just cannot. After a strenuous day spent hiking the hacking sessions end up being rather short - so far we managed about 1-2 hours during the evening - but are incredibly productive.

The hiking provides plenty of time to discuss, and mull over, challenges and problems regarding the project(s) at hand. And after a well-deserved dinner following the hiking, it’s time to find a power socket and a place to hunker down for good, old-fashioned coding. There are none of the traditional distractions, no HN or reddit, no TV.

While you are rarely alone in the shelters on weekends, quite the contrary, you can usually find a secluded spot. If it is crowded, people will still respect your desire for privacy. Next comes the easy part, open up your local copy of the documentation along with your favorite editor and get coding. Once the exhaustion finally does set in, it’s time for a final cup of tea and some reading/talking with the fellow hikers.

Code-hiking is very flexible: in the alps you can schedule anything ranging from 15 to 30km across terrain of varying difficulty between refuges. This allows for pacing according to your focus: hiking or coding. It also comes with the additional benefit of being relatively cheap in terms of accommodation and travel costs.