My profile

Darren Edwards is the founder of Trail Hiking Australia, Australia’s largest independent hiking resource, with more than 3,800 trail listings across all states and territories. He has spent more than three decades exploring Australian bush environments, from well-formed tracks to remote and less-defined terrain, and has also trained and volunteered in search and rescue.

Darren is the author of The Capable Hiker: A Practical Guide to Hiking in Australia, Small Things Don’t Stay Small, and the two-volume Hiking Australia series, Before You Go and On the Trail. His writing focuses on preparation, judgement and the way decisions, conditions, capability and equipment interact before and during a hike.

He is the creator of the Hiking Safety Systems Framework (HSSF) and the ExploreSafe Framework for Outdoor Decision-Making. HSSF is an eight-system approach to hiker readiness that examines how capability, conditions, equipment, human factors and decisions interact, while ExploreSafe translates that thinking into seven practical principles for preparing, recognising change, maintaining options and making decisions before, during and after a walk. Together, the frameworks underpin many of the planning tools, safety scenarios, calculators and educational resources developed through Trail Hiking Australia.

His work on bushwalking safety has been featured on ABC Radio and ABC News Breakfast, and his broader aim is to help hikers prepare well, recognise what matters, make better decisions and come home safely.