Distance: 1.3 miles (one way, depending on starting location) Difficulty: Moderate Best time of year: Year-round Last hiked: 2015 October The Fremont River Trail roughly parallels the Fremont Gorge Overlook Trail, only it does so from the other side of the river. It’s also a little easier in that it’s not quite as long of a trail. And like the …

Distance: 2.85 miles (one way) Difficulty: Strenuous (N-S), Moderate (S-N) Best time of year: Year-round Last hiked: 2015 October The Frying Pan Trail can either be hiked as an in-and-out hike, or as a connector trail to another location, especially if you have a shuttle car. And like the Chimney Rock Trail, this was another that I vastly underestimated in …

Distance: 1.1 mile (one way) Difficulty: Moderate Best time of year: Year-round Last hiked: 2015 October This is the much less populated and much more wilderness feeling alternative to Lower Calf Creek Falls. Found just a few miles upstream from Lower, Upper Calf Creek Falls sees a fraction of the visitors and can easily give you a more remote desert …

Distance: 4.5 miles (one way) Difficulty: Moderate Best time of year: Year-round Last hiked: 2015 October Navajo Knobs was the first trail I did in Capitol Reef National Park, and it remains one of my favorites. Most of the trail is spent winding around the rim of the Waterpocket Fold. …and that is just about as underwhelming as you can …

Distance: 2 miles (round trip) Difficulty: Moderate Best time of year: Year-round Last hiked: 2015 October Obscurely tucked away behind the grander adventures of the southern Utah region is a little state park that preserves a treasure chest of petrified wood. It’s relatively overlooked which means the trail can have plenty of quiet moments. And since it’s also in a …

One of the more minor reasons I wasn’t able to complete the Arizona Trail in 2015 was a general lack of preparedness and a haphazard attitude for my overall organization on the trail. Likewise, I was also very dependent on friends in the area for help which didn’t benefit either of us. In 2016, thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign …

In less than two weeks I’ll be leaving for Arizona to thru-hike the Arizona Trail! The crowdfunding campaign was a great success. I was shooting to raise about $3000 to make sure I would have everything I would need to hike the trail without going over budget. In all, we raised a total of $2,875. After fees were taken out, …

Distance: 3.8 miles Difficulty: Strenuous Best time of year: Year-round Last hiked: 2015 October I was fooled the first few times I saw the Chimney Rock Trailhead. Just a few hundred yards to the east is Chimney Rock. Surely the trail can’t be that long or even that interesting, I mistakenly thought. Of course it wasn’t until much later I …

Distance: 2.4 miles (one way) Difficulty: Moderate Best time of year: Year-round Last hiked: 2015 October I had hoped that the Fremont Gorge Overlook Trail would make for a great sunrise hike, but it turns out this one’s much more suited to late afternoon/evening. Regardless, I made the best of it and am glad I did. The overlook at the …