Ten miles is the perfect trip length—a full day or a short backpack, with enough time in the woods that you can leave all your worries behind but not enough that your clothes will clear a room when you return to civilization. And while ten miles of any trail is good, ten miles of incredible wilderness hiking is an experience you will never forget. Check out our picks for the ten best ten-mile hikes on the continent, and start planning your next trip.
Find yourself among the redwoods and isolated coves of California’s wildest shoreline.
—Dennis Lewon:
The first time I hiked the Lost Coast, I was in college and it was spring, the sky was bright and clear, the irises blooming, and the beach campsites utterly deserted. Perfect conditions, at a perfect time in life. So when I heard other hikers have found the trail too wet, too cold, too hard, or all three, and vowed never to return, I wondered: Is my memory unreliable, corrupted by a golden moment I can’t repeat? To find out, I returned again and again over the years, and have experienced the notorious summer fog that erases everything but your buddy a few feet away, and rain so hard that I had to coax my friend to even get out of the car. Read more…
