US trail guides
Real numbers for America’s best hikes — distance, elevation gain, difficulty and current permit and fee rules, each verified against official park sources.
Angels Landing
A 5.4-mile round trip climbing roughly 1,500 feet to one of the most exposed summit ridges in the National Park System. The final half-mile follows support chains along a narrow fin with sheer drops on both sides — spectacular, and not for anyone uneasy with heights.
Half Dome (Cables Route)
A 14–16-mile round trip with roughly 4,800 feet of gain, finishing with a 400-foot climb up bolted cables to a granite dome nearly 8,800 feet high. One of the most demanding day hikes in the country and a permit-only, cables-up-only objective.
Bright Angel Trail to Plateau Point
A 12-mile round trip descending about 3,080 feet from the South Rim to Plateau Point, with big views over the inner canyon and the Colorado River. Remember the canyon’s cruel arithmetic: the easy downhill start is the return climb in the heat.
Delicate Arch Trail
A 3-mile round trip climbing about 630 feet across open slickrock to the most famous freestanding arch in the world. Short but exposed — there is almost no shade and the rock radiates heat, so timing matters more than distance.
The Narrows (Bottom-Up)
Instead of a trail, you wade up the Virgin River itself, hemmed in by 1,000-foot sandstone walls that in places narrow to twenty feet across. The bottom-up route needs no permit and no technical skill — just a tolerance for cold water, a stick for balance, and real respect for flash floods.
Grinnell Glacier
The signature day hike of Glacier National Park: about 10.6 miles round trip climbing roughly 1,600 feet past turquoise, glacier-fed lakes to a viewpoint above Grinnell Glacier and its milky meltwater basin. You can trim a few miles by taking the summer boat shuttle across Swiftcurrent and Josephine lakes, but the climb from the lakes up to the glacier is where the real work — and the best scenery — is.
Emerald Lake Trail
A 3.6-mile round trip that strings together three alpine lakes — Nymph, Dream and Emerald — climbing about 700 feet from the Bear Lake trailhead to a glacier-carved basin beneath Hallett Peak and Flattop Mountain. It is the most popular hike in Rocky Mountain National Park because it delivers big-mountain scenery for a manageable effort, which also means arriving early or riding the shuttle is essential.