Artist's Drive is a popular, 9-mile one-way scenic road in the heart of California’s Death Valley National Park that weaves through craggy badlands and skirts colorful hillsides in the shadow of the Black Mountains. The drive bears east from Badwater Road, roughly 10 miles south of the Furnace Creek Visitor Center, in Death Valley. Climbing …
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California’s Death Valley National Park sports many natural archways, but there is none more prominent than the natural bridge in Natural Bridge Canyon, which slices through the Black Mountains south of Furnace Creek and Artists’ Drive. The natural bridge is easily accessible by way of a short trail, with roughly 80 feet in elevation gain. …
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Carving a dramatic gorge hundreds of feet deep in the Grapevine Mountains, Fall Canyon is a relatively popular destination in California’s Death Valley National Park. The hike through the lower reaches of the canyon is moderately difficult but climbs relentlessly, a common trait of canyons in the area, tilting upward from the vast expanse of …
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Mojave National Preserve is a wild playground of desert peaks, sand dunes, Joshua tree forests, rocky jumbles, and dry lakebeds situated in southern California, near the Nevada and Arizona borders. Considerably less crowded than nearby Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave boasts a seemingly endless set of hiking opportunities, as well as a relatively liberal roadside …
Continue reading Teutonia Peak Trail (Mojave National Preserve, CA)
Towering above California’s wine country, Bald Mountain (2,729’) is the highest point in Sugarloaf Ridge State Park and one of the tallest peaks in the Mayacamas Mountains, a subset of the Coast Range in the North Bay. While the main draw of Sugarloaf Ridge is the nearby 25-foot seasonal waterfall, hearty hikers can trek to …
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Fremont Peak, one of the highest in the Gabilan Range south of the Bay Area, takes its name from the 19th century explorer, military officer, senator, and presidential candidate John C. Fremont, whose survey expedition passed through the area in 1846. Facing objections from the Mexican authorities who controlled the area at the time, then-Captain …
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Rising to 3,304 feet, Chalone Peak is the highest point in California’s Pinnacles National Park and a worthy challenge for peak-baggers who seek to brave the exposed sun and 2,000 feet in elevation gain to reach the summit. The Chalone Peak Trail juts off from the end of Bear Gulch Cave in the eastern section …
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Every national park has one: a trail that, despite lacking any particularly notable beauty, exists seemingly to be hiked only by those seeking the satisfaction of completing every trail in the park. In Capitol Reef National Park, a former focus of this blog, it is the much-maligned Old Wagon Trail. In Pinnacles National Park, it …
Continue reading South Wilderness Trail (Pinnacles National Park, CA)
Sporting one of California’s finest talus caves and shoreline access to a picturesque, rock-hewn reservoir, the Bear Gulch Cave Trail is one of the most popular hikes in Pinnacles National Park. Here a jumble of boulders, so large and tightly-packed that it blankets the ground with darkness, forms subterranean passages home to a resident colony …
Continue reading Bear Gulch Cave – Rim Trail Loop (Pinnacles National Park, CA)
2019 has come and gone, and it was an excellent year for hiking. Over the course of the year, I added 43 posts to Live and Let Hike and notched nearly 150,000 site visits (81,000 visitors). As always, the travel was diverse, spanning hikes and scenic drives from 13 states (plus the District of Columbia), …
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