Field Notes
Signature Trails
The trails and summits worth planning a trip around — one at a time.
West Glacier, MT
The Highline Trail's Hand Cable Is the Least Frightening Part
Every photograph of this trail shows the same thing: a narrow ledge, a garden hose of steel cable bolted to the rock, and a very long way down. In practice that section takes four minutes and the tread is excellent. The parts worth thinking about come later: the shuttle you must book, the parking cap, and the grizzlies.
Bridal Veil, OR
The Multnomah-Wahkeena Loop After the Fire: What Grew Back and What Didn't
Five miles, six waterfalls, and 1,600 feet of climbing on the most famous stretch of the Columbia River Gorge, through forest that burned in 2017 and is still visibly recovering. It is the best short hike in Oregon and it now requires a timed permit in season, which almost nobody realizes until they arrive.
Yosemite Valley, CA
Clouds Rest Is Higher Than Half Dome, Needs No Permit, and Has the Better View
It stands a thousand feet above Half Dome, looks down on it, requires no lottery, and finishes on a granite fin narrow enough that the last few hundred yards are the most exposed ground most hikers will ever walk. Almost nobody outside Yosemite has heard of it.
Lone Pine, CA
Mount Whitney in a Day: The Permit, the Altitude, and the 3 A.M. Start
Twenty-two miles, 6,656 feet of climbing, and a finish at 14,505 feet, the highest point in the contiguous United States, reachable on a maintained trail with no technical climbing. Which is precisely why so many people underestimate it, and why the altitude turns back more of them than the distance does.
North Bend, WA
Mailbox Peak: The Old Trail, the New Trail, and Why People Still Pick the Old One
Four thousand feet in two and a half miles, straight up a ridgeline, with an actual mailbox at the top that people have been leaving things in for decades. The Forest Service built a longer, sane, switchbacked alternative in 2014 because the original was hurting people. Both still exist, and the argument about which to take is a Seattle institution.
Government Camp, OR
The Timberline Trail: 41 Miles Around Mount Hood, and the River Crossing That Stops People
A loop entirely around an 11,000-foot volcano, 41.5 miles with 10,000 feet of climbing, and a free permit you pick up at the trailhead. The permit is the easy part. The hard part is a glacial river with no bridge that has turned back more parties than the elevation ever has.
Babb, MT
Grinnell Glacier Before It's Gone: The Boat Shortcut, the Bears, and the Best Light
A trail cut into a cliff above two turquoise lakes, ending at a glacier that has been measured shrinking for a century. There is a boat that removes 3.4 miles of it, a mid-July opening date that catches people out, and enough grizzly activity that bear spray is standard equipment rather than a precaution.
Gatlinburg, TN
Charlies Bunion: The Appalachian Trail's Best Four Miles of Exposure
A bare rock promontory in a range famous for being covered in trees, reached by four miles of ridge-running on the Appalachian Trail. The rock is bare because of a fire in 1925 and a flood in 1929 that stripped the soil off it and never let it back.
Gatlinburg, TN
Alum Cave to Mount LeConte: The Cables, the Lodge, and the Best Trail in the Smokies
Five trails reach the top of Mount LeConte. Only one takes you through a hole in a rock, under a 100-foot bluff, and along cable-assisted ledges with the whole Tennessee side of the Smokies dropping away beside you. At the summit there is a lodge that has run on llamas since 1925.
Gatlinburg, TN
Kuwohi Got Its Name Back. It's Also the Highest Point in Tennessee.
Half a mile of pavement, 330 feet of climbing, and you are standing on the highest ground in Tennessee and the highest point on the entire Appalachian Trail. It is the easiest big summit in the eastern United States, it is fogged in most of the year, and in 2024 it got its Cherokee name back after 165 years.
Bend, OR
South Sister Without a Rope: Oregon's Easiest Big Summit Is Still a Long Day
A 10,363-foot volcano you can walk up, 26 miles from Bend, with a trail the whole way and no technical climbing. That accessibility is exactly why it catches people out: 12.6 miles and nearly 5,000 feet of gain on volcanic cinder is a mountaineering day wearing hiking clothes.
Yosemite Valley, CA
The Half Dome Cables, Explained by Someone Who Wants You to Come Back Down
Four hundred vertical feet of granite at roughly a 45-degree angle, two steel cables, wooden slats every ten feet, and no rope. The permit lottery gets all the attention, but the cables are where the decisions that matter get made, and most of them are decisions about going down, not up.
Leavenworth, WA
The Enchantments Permit Lottery: How the Odds Actually Work, and What to Do When You Lose
Roughly two in a hundred applicants win an overnight permit for the Core Enchantments. Everyone else either gives up or figures out one of the four other ways into the same granite basin. Here is how the lottery is structured, which zones are worth applying for, and why the free day-use permit is the answer most people overlook.
North Bend, WA
Mount Si Is Seattle's Stairmaster. Here's How to Actually Enjoy It.
Eight miles, 3,150 feet of gain, and somewhere north of 80,000 hikers a year grinding up the same switchbacks 45 minutes from Seattle. Most of them treat Mount Si as a fitness test and go home sore and unimpressed. Here is how to time it, how to get there without fighting for parking, what to look at on the way up, and the one place near the top where people get hurt.