It seems that more frequently now I run across younger folks hiking with their music on their phones turned on and not in earbuds. What's this all about?! I thought we went hiking to get away from that kind of stuff. Enjoy the quiet, the wind, the sounds of the trails.

Someone I know suggested that it was the new "bear bell". I have to say, there's nothing more frustrating than having to listen to someone else's music when I'm on a hiking trail. STOP IT! I've hiked thousands of kilometres in both front and back country in BC and never once have I had any kind of serious encounter with a bear! As soon as they see you, they run the other way. REALLY, that's what they do. Only bears accustomed to people don't and those ones aren't on the trails. So much paranoia, so little reason.

rant over.

I share your frustration, and no it's not only on the Coast - it's everywhere. It is only going to get worse I am afraid

All that idiotic music blaring away in the distance ... just another way to habituate Bears to human presence.

Ya can't fix stupid.

The first time I came across someone playing music while backpacking was in Strathcona Park; kind of surprised me. Is this the new fad?

I just hum my tunes as I walk along. Is that strange?

Of the several dozen hikers and back-packers on the Wedgemount trail, one was carrying and blaring their music along the trail. Exactly my thought, we get into nature to get away from it all ; the crazy busy hectic life which also comes with that music.

K

People hiked with a walkman in the 80s. The difference now is the power of small portable speakers.

Used to be you needed a 4 foot long ghetto blaster to properly pump out loud music and the D cells would die after a couple hours; that limited anyone's ability to blast tunes in the backcountry.

Thanks all but I see that the responses are only coming from us "oldsters" unless solo75 is a youngun. Actually, singing or whistling is entirely ok. That's simple humans expressing their feelings about being there. I've often thought about bringing a harmonica to play a bit before I head off to sleep in the back country. Lucky for all my fellow hikers, I didn't do that!

I wish I was youngbut it's only hiking which keeps me 'young'.
I saw a guy coming down a steep trail in Strathcona Park carrying a guitar.

Yes, but what did you expect? "youngsters" don't use Club Tread; instead they sleep with social media, "likes", tweets, etc. This is discussion on its own but, world is changing because of constant technology changes. I am not going into is it better or worse as each generation has their own; (Kids nowdays probably can't understand how someone could possibly live without texting or facebook, same as I could not understand how my elders could listen to sport games on radio instead of watching on color tv).

This also translates more or less on trail etiquette, consideration for others etc. Add exponential population increase which leads to resource saturation and you have whole picture.

We're up in Panorama near invermere for a week's hiking in the Purcells but, owing to a really shitty injury on day one, have spent the whole time walking and sitting quietly by gorgeous Toby Creek, way up the valley, taking in the beautiful sound of the river and the steady warm breeze from Jumbo Valley. Man, that's healing, really lifts one's spirits and quiets your thoughts ..... until..... a small group of folks with music blasting discovered my 'secret spot' by the river

Yeah, what a downer, but we started to chat with the kids. They were really nice and just sort of shut things off when we talked about how great it was to get up here, on your own, to take in the river and listen to it. Sometimes it just takes awareness.

I'd be happy if I could listen to someone talk on radio or TV without background music. Even on CBC Radio now.

Yes, looks like this is the current "wave of the future" as @zeljok suggests, but I think ultimately it will pass. People go hiking and into the wild country to experience what that's like. Sooner or later, they'll realize they're missing what they actually set out to get.

There's plenty of young people who think hiking while blasting music is rude at best, and who also use clubtread. Unless 27 qualifies me as decrepit, I guess.

Oh good, a young one. Can we meet up and you can show me how to use my bluetooth speakers? I cannot figure it out for the life of me.

In any case, I was just at Garibadli Lake (which I accidentally typed first as Caligari Lake, if anyone knows the old film) at it was a musical extravaganza on the trail and in the campground. Our lovely neighbours played music for us to fall asleep to and yet again to drink our coffee by. We passed literally dozens of groups or individuals with speakers, the high point (literally) being a young pair of dudes near the top of the Black Tusk trail merrily listening to their music.

I've given up on muttering my disgust (my daughter told me to shut up in any case) and I'm happy to realize that youngsters today are as annoying as I was in my teens and twenties. (I doubt they can compete, actually). My only complaint is the rudeness of it. That's all. And perhaps I am a cranky 50-something (when I was 20 I thought I'd basically be done with hiking by now, crippled and decrepit and incapable), but I feel like it just gets worse. Far worse than the music was the man who decided to keep me company at 6:30 am on the shore of Garib. Lake while I drank my coffee. With perhaps 1000m of shoreline to choose from to cast his hopelessly large lure (seriously? after coho or maybe marlin in the lake? see, i can judge everything people do!) from a spot 15 feet away from me. After his lure plunked down just offshore from the rock where I sat, I gave up and left and found a better (lonelier) spot.

I know it's hopeless to find solitude in August up there, but it takes but two bits of common sense to think that someone might wish not to be bothered. But perhaps he didn't want to be alone, so I should have sympathy. He sure was friendly.

But I think around Vancouver, where the woods and mountains are so close to so many people, it is noticeably worse than, say, the North Cascades in the US, where I spend most of my hiking time.

My wife tells me to block it all out. I cannot. Perhaps it's my failing, but I think we all toodle through the woods with some sense of belonging to a larger group of people with similar feelings or ideas. There's a collective background to our individual experience. And when you feel like that background now has an inescapable soundtrack, it's kind of a bummer.

THe only solution is to go farther afield and get away. Except that doesn't work. Those youngsters can cover ground and those damn speakers are very lightweight. And very easy to carry on a mountain bike.

Now let me tell you what I think of mountain bikes....