Ten day hikes in the US worth planning a trip around

A loop out of Paradise that climbs to Panorama Point and looks straight up at the Nisqually Glacier. The Park Service gives it four and a half hours. Paradise sits at 5,400 feet and takes an average of 640 inches of snow a year, which is why a trail that reads like a summer stroll can still be under snow in June.

Two specifics matter. Past Panorama Point, take the High Skyline branch — the park says it avoids a dangerous icy slope that does not melt out. And the marmots here have learned what a sandwich is; the park's line is that food-conditioned animals beg aggressively and may bite. There is no reservation to win, but the lots fill, and the park's own suggestion is to arrive before 7am or after 4pm.

The one hike here that runs downhill first, which inverts everything you know about pacing. The Park Service publishes turnarounds rather than a summit: Mile-and-a-Half Resthouse is 3 miles round trip and 1,120 feet, Three-Mile Resthouse is 6 miles and 2,120 feet, and Havasupai Gardens is 9 miles and 3,040 feet. Water runs seasonally at the two resthouses from May to October and year-round at Havasupai Gardens.

Their planning advice is the single most useful sentence on this page: allow a third of your time to descend and two thirds to climb back out. Below Havasupai Gardens, day hiking is not recommended, and the park states plainly that you should not attempt to hike from the rim to the river and back in one day, especially between May and September.

The Park Service rates Old Rag very strenuous and allows about seven and a half hours: up the blue-blazed Ridge Trail, across the rock scramble, then down the Saddle Trail onto a fire road. It is the best scramble within a morning's drive of Washington, and it is a real scramble — the park's wording is that it requires good upper body strength, and that children and shorter adults often need help through it.

The ticket system is permanent now, not a pilot. Eight hundred tickets a day, 400 released thirty days ahead and 400 released five days ahead, both at 10am, and it is a separate transaction from your park entrance pass. One small thing to notice on the way up: the numbers painted below the trail blazes are reference markers for search and rescue, so it pays to register them as you pass.

Baxter State Park publishes segments rather than loops, so the usual circuit is an addition rather than a quoted figure: Helon Taylor 3.2 miles and 3,413 feet to Pamola, the Knife Edge 1.1 miles across, the Saddle 2.2 miles down, and Chimney Pond 3.3 miles out. The park gives no time estimate for any of it, which tells you something about how much the conditions decide.

Their warning is the most direct of any agency here: the route is completely exposed, several people have died or been seriously injured attempting a traverse in bad weather or high winds, and once you have started you should not try to leave the ridge. The trailhead pass goes on sale at 6am on 1 April, is capped at two reservations a month from June to October, and expires if you are not in the gate line by 7am on the day. The summit sign changes this summer too, from 5,267 to 5,268 feet, after a fresh survey.

Ten to twelve hours for most people, and the biggest single day here by a distance. The cables go up on the Friday before the last Monday in May and come down the day after the second Monday in October — that is the rule the park publishes rather than a fixed pair of dates, and the park adds that both move with conditions.

Three hundred people a day get up there, roughly 225 of them day hikers. There is a preseason lottery through March and a daily lottery that runs two days ahead, seven days a week while the cables are up. The park is precise about the risk: the leading cause of fatal falls on the cable route is being on the cables when the rock or the cables are wet. Since Yosemite dropped its vehicle reservation for 2026, the cables permit is now the only thing you have to win.