Activity

Hiking

74 destinations along 55 roads

Hiking in the West runs the full range, from a paved quarter-mile to an overlook to a committing scramble with no shade and no water. What ties them together is the desert's one hard rule: it's drier, hotter, and bigger than it looks. Carry more water than you think you need, start early to beat both the heat and the afternoon storms, and turn around before you want to. These trails give back exactly what the terrain demands you respect — go in clear-eyed and they're the best of the trip.

IR-71

Canyon de Chelly

Chinle

Tséyiʼ — five thousand years, the Long Walk, and the road home

UT-91

Zion National Park

Springdale

Towering sandstone cliffs that glow like fire at sunset

I-10 / I-191

Tucson

The Old Pueblo — four thousand years of farming under the sky islands

Scenic Byway 126

Boulder Mountain

Boulder

A 50-mile forested plateau at 11,000 feet with 80 alpine lakes

Escalante Petrified Forest State Park

Escalante

Walk among 150-million-year-old stone trees

Lower Calf Creek Falls

Escalante

A 126-foot waterfall hidden in a desert canyon

Mossy Cave Trail

Tropic

A hidden waterfall and ice cave just off the highway

Red Canyon

Panguitch

A blazing red gateway carved by water and wind

Upper Calf Creek Falls

Escalante

A remote 88-foot cascade reached by a rugged trail

Scenic Byway 12 / UT-631

Bryce Canyon National Park

Bryce Canyon City

The largest collection of hoodoos on Earth

I-151

Kolob Canyons

Cedar City

The quiet, uncrowded back door to Zion National Park

Kelbaker Road (off I-15 / I-40)1

Kelso Dunes

Baker

The Mojave's largest dune field, and one of the few places on Earth where the sand booms underfoot.

UT-181

Snow Canyon State Park

Ivins

Red and white sandstone cliffs with ancient lava flows

S-22 / CA-781

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Borrego Springs

Six hundred thousand acres of badlands, slot canyons, and palm oases, and the biggest state park in California.

UT-243

Capitol Reef National Park

Torrey

Utah's most underrated national park — a 100-mile wrinkle in the Earth

Goblin Valley State Park

Hanksville

Thousands of mushroom-shaped rock formations in a Martian landscape

Hickman Bridge Trail

Torrey

A natural stone bridge framing Capitol Reefs layered cliffs

UT-251

Fishlake National Forest

Richfield

Home to Pando — the largest living organism on Earth

NV-28 / US-50 (Spooner Summit)1

The Flume Trail & Marlette Lake

Carson City

The other thing the Comstock took off Lake Tahoe—not its trees but its water, hauled over a mountain range through the highest-pressure pipeline on earth, on a flume grade that is now one of the country's great mountain-bike rides

Donner Pass Road (old US-40)1

Donner Summit Tunnels

Truckee

Granite bored by hand at fourteen inches a day, by Chinese crews the country spent a century forgetting.

I-402

Petrified Forest National Park

Holbrook

Two hundred million years turned to stone — and a Route 66 ghost

Walnut Canyon National Monument

Flagstaff

Sinagua cliff dwellings in the limestone — the Hisatsinom

US-401

Dinosaur National Monument

Jensen

A wall of 1,500 dinosaur bones still embedded in the rock where they were found

Tyler Foote Crossing Road (off CA-49)1

Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park

Nevada City

A canyon washed out of a mountain by water cannon, and the lawsuit that ended hydraulic mining.

US-502

Glenbrook & Spooner Summit

Carson City

Lake Tahoe's east shore, where the basin was logged nearly clean to timber the Comstock—the forest that paid for the silver, and the century it has spent growing back

Great Basin National Park

Baker

Nevada's only national park — caves below, the oldest trees on earth above, the darkest skies overhead

CA-62 / Park Boulevard1

Joshua Tree National Park

Twentynine Palms

Where the high Mojave meets the low Colorado, among monzogranite piles and a yucca that is not a tree.

SR-641

Grand Canyon (South Rim)

Grand Canyon Village

A mile down through two billion years — and eleven nations' ground

Historic Route 66 (National Trails Highway)1

Amboy Crater

Amboy

A near-perfect black cinder cone off Route 66, one of California's youngest volcanoes and a National Natural Landmark.

I-702

Fremont Indian State Park

Richfield

The largest known Fremont Indian village ever discovered

San Rafael Swell

Castle Dale

A massive dome of exposed rock layers with slot canyons and natural bridges

SR-881

Superstition Mountains

Apache Junction

The volcanic range that holds the Lost Dutchman legend — and outlasts it

CA-891

Emerald Bay State Park

South Lake Tahoe

A glacial fjord on Tahoe's west shore with the lake's only island and a Scandinavian house at the water.

SR-89A1

Oak Creek Canyon

Sedona

The switchback drive from red rock to ponderosa on State Route 89A

SR-89A / SR-1791

Sedona

Red-rock skyline, Little Hollywood, and the town Sedona Schnebly gave her name to

US-896

Jardine Juniper

Logan

One of the oldest living trees in the world at over 1,500 years old

Logan Canyon

Logan

A winding National Scenic Byway through limestone cliffs and alpine forest

Manti-La Sal National Forest

Manti

Alpine peaks rising above red rock desert

Sunset Crater Volcano

Flagstaff

The volcano northern Arizona watched erupt, around 1085

Wind Cave Trail

Logan

A short hike to a triple-arched limestone cave overlooking the canyon

Wupatki National Monument

Flagstaff

The red pueblo the volcano built — remembered, not abandoned

US-89/911

Wellsville Mountains

Wellsville

The steepest mountains in North America for their height

UT-921

Timpanogos Cave National Monument

American Fork

Three spectacularly decorated caves connected by hand-carved tunnels

UT-1281

Fisher Towers

Moab

Towering dark red pinnacles rising 900 feet from the desert floor

UT-1504

Bald Mountain Pass

Kamas

The highest point on the Mirror Lake Highway at 10,715 feet

Mirror Lake

Kamas

A pristine alpine lake reflecting the Uinta peaks like glass

Ruth Lake

Kamas

A hidden alpine gem reached by a short trail through wildflower meadows

Trial Lake

Kamas

A popular high-alpine fishing lake surrounded by granite peaks

NV-1571

Mount Charleston & the Spring Mountains

Las Vegas

A nearly 12,000-foot sky island 35 miles from the Strip — alpine forest above the Mojave

NV-1592

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

Las Vegas

The Mojave wilderness that begins where Las Vegas ends — striped sandstone cliffs and a 13-mile scenic loop

Spring Mountain Ranch State Park

Las Vegas

A spring-fed green oasis under the red Wilson Cliffs — and a roll call of colorful owners

White Mountain Road (off CA-168)1

Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest

Big Pine

Trees older than the pyramids, growing on white dolomite at ten thousand feet.

NV-1691

Valley of Fire State Park

Overton

Jurassic sand dunes turned to blazing red stone — Nevada's oldest and largest state park

US-1801

San Francisco Peaks

Flagstaff

The sacred mountain of the west — 12,633 feet, and a live argument

SR-1811

Chiricahua National Monument

Willcox

The Land of Standing-Up Rocks — Cochise and Geronimo's stronghold

US-1891

Bridal Veil Falls

Provo

A dramatic double waterfall cascading 607 feet into Provo Canyon

CA-1901

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

Stovepipe Wells

Fourteen square miles of dunes near Stovepipe Wells, and the easiest sand in the park to reach.

US-1911

Arches National Park

Moab

Over 2,000 natural stone arches in one extraordinary landscape

CA-203 / Reds Meadow Road (off US-395)1

Devils Postpile National Monument

Mammoth Lakes

A wall of hexagonal basalt columns with a glacier-polished top, and a 101-foot waterfall downstream.

NV-2271

Lamoille Canyon & the Ruby Mountains

Lamoille

The great exception to Nevada's sagebrush monotony — a glacier-carved canyon and a wall of eleven-thousand-foot granite peaks an hour southeast of Elko, fairly called the state's Alps.