(1) Walking backward, usually while descending. This can lessen pressure on tired or injured knees.
Some do it only while stepping down, by placing one foot on top of the step, at a right angle to the trail, pointed toward the side of the trail, then twisting around while stepping down to land backward on the other foot. If not done with great care though, this method can result in a person getting those legs so tightly knotted together that only surgery can separate them again.
Overall this operation is in the same family as backpedaling and backsliding, though the last is most often done in a supine position, while in the office, or by politicians, few of whom actually know how to walk anyway.
(2) The second of the three elementary foot steps of backpacking. It produces a retrograde movement.
The others are fore stepping, or moving in a mainly forward direction, and side stepping, which one typically does to avoid unsavory underfoot substances.
This latter maneuver comes in both left and right versions, which may prove confusing to some. Fore stepping conveys a sense of being in control and of having a destination, whether true or not. Side stepping is sometimes called waffling because of the waffle-like patterns left in soft ground by lug-soled footwear as it hits tender off-trail virgin soil. Waffling can also connote indecision because for every possible step to the left there is an equally plausible case to be made for stepping to the right.
A backpacker loaded with too much indecision may be vulnerable to excessive waffling and can even incite an attack by his companions, who are likely to strip him of his goods and to eat all his snacks. Or hers. Not all women are perfect. Could be her snacks too.
(3) There is a third category of back stepping. It comes into play if a person should, for example, unknowingly enter into the personal space of a large, grumpy, and endlessly hungry organism, such as a grizzle bear.
If so very unlucky, such a person does not hear the distinctive grizzle sizzle in time, or pick up on the equally mesmerizing and unique "eau de grizze" while there is still time to do a useful back step or two and to quietly and respectfully depart in the direction of safer locales. Some enter into such a situation through a deficit of luck and others are merely stupid. This is how life works, though it has been proven that more often it is the stupid who become lunch.
But in fact anyone entering a grizzle bear's private zone may involuntarily provide sudden calories to such a beast, and not in a fun way. If you need more help with the concept of being lunch, then ask a tin of sardines.
As always, watch your step.
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