Backpacking the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park is a great way to test the thru-hiking waters to see if it’s for you. Joan and I visited Mount Rainier National Park for the first time in 2018, as we were scouting trails for the Pacific Northwest Six-Pack of Peaks Challenge. We were awestruck by this […]
Trail Guides
All of our detailed hiking trail guides, with interactive maps, elevation profile, directions and tons of photos in each. These trails have all been personally hiked by the SoCal Hiker team.
Hiking Piestewa Peak from Dreamy Draw
Hiking Piestewa Peak is a famously popular Phoenix-area, StairMaster-like workout that can get really crowded. Most people take the short, direct route up Trail 300. For this year’s Arizona Winter Six-Pack of Peaks Challenge, I wanted to explore a different route that would add both mileage and net vertical gain to the hike, and hopefully […]
Hiking Volcan Mountain
The Volcan Mountains are a relatively small range about 13 miles long and 7.5 miles wide. Located east of San Diego, near the town of Julian, this hike up Volcan Mountain gives you a perfect excuse for a weekend trip rewarded with a slice of Julian apple pie. The out-and-back double-track trail has and entrance […]
Hiking Gray Butte from Smith Rock State Park
Gray Butte is not particularly rugged nor jagged. The soft-shouldered butte is home to a cluster of antennas and a utility road the climbs there. But this 13.3 mile out-and-back route begins and ends in beautiful Smith Rock State Park, taking you down across the Crooked River before climbing out of the park, across a […]
Backpacking the Red Peak Pass Loop in Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park features some of the most beautiful backcountry in all of the Sierra Nevada. Surprisingly, however, most people stick to a few main trails – namely the John Muir Trail between Yosemite Valley – Tuolumne Meadows – Donahue Pass and the High Sierra Camp trails leading to Merced Lake – Vogelsang – Sunrise. […]
Wonderland Trail Day 13: Maple Creek to Longmire
Our final day required a four-mile climb out of Stevens Canyon, a stop at Reflection Lakes, the descending almost exactly the elevation we climbed to the Nisqually River and the Cougar Rock Picnic Area to complete our loop on the Wonderland Trail. This final section of our Wonderland Trail trek began foggy and damp. It […]
Wonderland Trail Day 12: Indian Bar to Maple Creek
Day 12 would start with a foggy climb with no views, then take us plummeting downward 3,805 feet to camp at Maple Creek, our final campsite for the trip. Before we headed out, we took one more look at the ravine at Indian Bar, then started the climb up to Cowlitz Divide. The divide begins […]
Wonderland Trail Day 11: Summerland to Indian Bar
Two of the most-wanted camps on the Wonderland Trail are Summerland and Indian Bar. They lie just five miles apart. And our itinerary included both of them. The sunrise from our camp at Summerland was a spectacular send off for the day. We’d be climbing 874′ to the highest point on the Wonderland Trail: 6,750′ […]
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