The results are not the list you’d write from memory. Here’s what the data actually says.

Water is not tied for first. It’s first by a mile.

Drinking water appears in 76% of hiking packing notes - 78 out of 103. Nothing else is close. Hiking shoes or boots are second at 45%. Sunscreen is at 20%. Snacks are at 19%.

That gap is the whole story. Most families overthink gear and underpack water, and the trails themselves keep telling us the same thing. Thirteen entries don’t just say “water,” they say lots of water or plenty of water - and those aren’t the wilderness epics. Grelle Recreation Area near Spicewood is a four-hour lake hike whose note reads simply “plenty of water (no facilities).” Koko Crater Railway Trail on Oahu is a two-hour hike, and its note leads with “lots of water.”

The pattern: the emphasis on water goes up with sun exposure and down with facilities, not with distance. A shaded two-mile creek walk with a bathroom at the trailhead needs less than a two-mile exposed ridge with nothing.

Rule of thumb from the data: one bottle per person for anything under two hours, double it for exposed terrain or anything over three, and check whether the trailhead actually has water before you count on it.

The footwear ladder is real, and it tracks difficulty exactly

This was the most surprising thing in the dataset. The specific footwear named in a packing note maps almost perfectly onto how hard the hike is:

Twenty-three easy trails say walking shoes. Zero moderate trails do. Seventeen moderate trails say boots; exactly one easy trail does.

What this means practically: if you’re taking kids on an easy trail - and easy hikes in our data run about two hours with a typical minimum age of three - sneakers are fine. You do not need to buy your six-year-old hiking boots to walk to a waterfall. Boots are the signal for a different kind of day: moderate trails in our data run about three hours with a typical minimum age of five, and that’s where ankle support and real tread start earning their place.

The middle rung is the one worth paying attention to. “Sturdy shoes with grip” shows up on both easy and moderate trails, and when you read the actual entries, the parenthetical always explains why. Manoa Falls Trail is rated easy and says “sturdy shoes with grip (trail is muddy).” Watkins Glen State Park is easy too and says “walking shoes with good grip (trail is wet).” Maunawili Falls Trail just says “shoes with grip (very muddy).”

Easy does not mean dry. Eight trails in the set flag mud or slick rock specifically, and most of them are the easy waterfall walks families pick precisely because they’re short.

Bring a swimsuit. Seriously.

Here’s the one nobody packs: swimsuits appear in 27% of hiking packing notes. Twenty-eight hiking entries out of 103 tell you to bring one.

That’s not a data error. It’s what family hiking actually looks like. The trail is the means; the water at the end is the point. Vernooy Kill Falls Trail in the Catskills lists “hiking shoes, swimsuit, towel, water, bug spray” - the swimsuit is item two. Shelving Rock Falls Trail says “swimsuit if continuing to the bay.” Colorado Bend State Park pairs “sturdy hiking shoes (rocky trail)” with a swimsuit because the pools stay cool through summer. Waimea Valley on Oahu ends at a swimmable waterfall. Taughannock Falls State Park says “walking shoes, swimsuit for the beach, camera.”

If you have a kid who negotiates about hiking, this is your leverage. A hike that ends in water is a completely different sell than a hike that ends at a parking lot.

Bring a towel too - it shows up alongside the swimsuit often enough, and a wet kid in a car seat is its own kind of misery.

Bug spray beats sunscreen on the trail

On beaches and swimming holes, sunscreen is nearly universal. On trails, it flips: bug spray appears on 22 hiking entries, sunscreen on 21. Basically tied, with bug spray slightly ahead.

That inversion makes sense once you see it. Hiking trails are shaded; that shade is where the mosquitoes live. The sunscreen mentions cluster on exposed hikes - coastal paths, lava fields, ridgelines - while the bug spray mentions cluster in forest, creek and valley trails. Pack the one that matches the terrain, and pack both if you’re doing a forest hike that pops out onto a lake beach.

The rain jacket is usually not about rain

Twenty-six entries across the dataset call for rain gear, and eight of them explain themselves in a parenthetical that has nothing to do with the forecast:

• High Falls Gorge - “rain jacket (mist from falls)”
• Buttermilk Falls - “rain jacket (mist from falls)”
• Thacher State Park - “rain jacket for behind the waterfall”
• Kaaterskill Falls Trail - “rain jacket for mist”
• ‘Iao Valley State Monument - “rain jacket (valley gets showers)”
• Akaka Falls State Park - “rain jacket (Hamakua coast gets showers)”

If your hike ends at a waterfall, you are going to get wet regardless of the sky. And if you’re hiking on a windward coast or in a rainforest valley, “it might rain” is not a forecast, it’s a description of the place. A packable shell weighs nothing. Bring it.

What only shows up on the long ones

A handful of items appear almost exclusively on hikes over four hours, and their absence from short-hike lists is as informative as their presence on long ones:

• Trekking poles (6 entries) - all moderate, all multi-hour. Indian Head and Rainbow Falls Trail is a seven-hour Adirondack day and lists them; no one-hour trail does.
• Lunch, not snacks - short hikes say snacks, long hikes say lunch. Ampersand Mountain and Snowy Mountain Trail both say “lunch.”
• Layers (18 entries) - concentrated on summit hikes and anything at elevation. Sliding Sands Trail on Haleakala opens its list with “warm layers” - on a Hawaii hike.
• Headlamps and flashlights - almost entirely caves and lava tubes, like Thurston Lava Tube, not late finishes.

The actual list

Sorted by how often the trails themselves ask for it:

Always:

• Water, more than feels necessary, especially if the trailhead has no facilities
• Shoes matched to the rating - sneakers for easy, grip for anything muddy or wet, boots only for moderate and up

Usually:

• Bug spray for forest and creek trails, sunscreen for exposed ones, both if the hike changes character
• Snacks for anything past an hour, real food past three
• A swimsuit and towel if there’s any water at the end - which, in our data, there is more than a quarter of the time

Terrain-dependent:

• Packable rain shell for waterfalls, windward coasts and mountains
• Layers for elevation and summits
• Trekking poles for long descents
• A light for caves and lava tubes

Skip it: boots for an easy trail, and any gear item you’re buying specifically for a two-hour walk.

The honest summary of 103 trails’ worth of advice is that families overbuy footwear and underpack water. Fix those two things and the rest is detail.

Ready to go? Browse all our hiking adventures and check the “what to bring” section on any adventure page - that’s the same data this guide was built from.