Field Notes
Hiking Destinations
Day hikes and multi-day routes, region by region.
Port Angeles, WA
Three Ecosystems, One Peninsula: Day Hiking the Olympics
The Olympic Peninsula holds a glaciated mountain range, a temperate rainforest that receives twelve feet of rain a year, and 73 miles of wilderness coastline, all inside a single park, within a few hours' drive of each other. No other day hiking destination in the country asks you to pack for three climates at once.
Hamilton, MT
The Bitterroot Canyons: Missoula's Backyard Range, Canyon by Canyon
The eastern face of the Bitterroots is cut by a row of parallel glacially carved canyons, each with a trail running into it beneath granite walls a thousand feet high. They are numbered along the valley like streets, most people only know one of them, and the whole range is an hour from Missoula.
Cannon Beach, OR
Hiking the Oregon Coast: Headlands, Tide Tables, and the Trails That Reach the Beach
Every foot of Oregon's 362-mile coastline is public, by law, which is why the hiking here works in a way it does not in California or Washington. The catch is that the good bits alternate between forested headlands and beaches that the tide takes away twice a day.
Bend, OR
Bend's Trail Menu: High Desert to Alpine in a Single Drive
A town of 100,000 people sits where the high desert meets the Cascades, with sagebrush and juniper on one side and a chain of glaciated volcanoes on the other. One road runs from the edge of town to alpine lakes at 6,000 feet, and the whole spectrum is available before lunch.
Mammoth Lakes, CA
Eastern Sierra Day Hikes: Alpine Lakes You Can Reach Before Lunch
On the west side of the Sierra you climb for a day to reach the alpine. On the east side the range rises straight out of the desert and the roads climb for you: one trailhead sits at 10,244 feet, the highest paved road end in the Sierra. Which means the hard part is the altitude, not the hiking.
Stanley, ID
Backpacking the Sawtooths: Idaho's Alpine Lake Basins, Loop by Loop
Forty-odd named peaks over 10,000 feet, more than 300 alpine lakes, and a wilderness permit that is free and self-issued at the trailhead. No lottery, no reservation, no fee. Idaho's best range asks almost nothing of you administratively and a great deal of you physically.
Palmer, TN
Savage Gulf: 19,000 Acres of Gorge on Top of the Cumberland Plateau
Tennessee's best hiking is not all in the Smokies. Two hours west, the Cumberland Plateau is split by a system of gorges so deep and so intact that it is a National Natural Landmark, with 60 miles of trail, nine backcountry camps, and a cliff with a crack in it you can walk down.
Roan Mountain, TN
The Roan Highlands: Grassy Balds at 6,000 Feet on the Tennessee-North Carolina Line
Open grassland on a Southern Appalachian summit should not exist. These mountains are forested to the top everywhere else. The Roan Highlands carry roughly a thousand acres of treeless bald along seven miles of ridge, nobody is entirely certain why, and walking them is the closest thing the eastern United States has to being above treeline.
Marblemount, WA
The North Cascades Day Hikes That Justify the Drive From Seattle
Two and a half hours from Seattle there is a range of glaciated rock that most Washington hikers see twice a year, because the highway that reaches it is buried in snow for five months. That closure is the single fact that should shape every North Cascades plan you make.