Hiking: the route and the way back

Almost all hiking starts forty kilometres from where you live, and that's half the problem. The other half is the route: who knows it, how much it climbs, and whether it ends before the light goes.

What gets checked before a route

Climbing, distance and the return
A twelve-kilometre route can be a long stroll or a full day depending on what it climbs. And the hour you get back is not a detail: it decides whether it's done in daylight.
Company changes where you can go
Some routes don't get done alone, and not for technical difficulty: for being remote, for having no signal, for not crossing a soul in four hours. With people, those are precisely the good ones.