10 Great American Hikes That Should Be on Your Bucket List

Getting outside is a great form of exercise and a great way to learn about the natural world. It also just makes you feel good. Luckily, there are beautiful natural areas nearby to explore no matter where you live. North America, for one, is home to so much natural beauty that no one person can see it all, but there are certain places that everybody should try to see before they die. Once you've checked out these treasures within the U.S. National Parks, try these hikes:
The Continental Divide Trail
While many wax poetic about the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail (and for good reason), the lesser known Continental Divide Trail is a real gem, too. Complete all three of the country's longest trails and you will be known as a "triple crowner." It stretches 3,100 miles from Mexico to Canada passing through sun-soaked New Mexico, Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, Yellowstone's backcountry in Wyoming and Montana's open wilderness.
The Kalalau Trail
The Kalalau Trail is an 11-mile trail that leads from Ke’e Beach to Kalalau Beach along the Na Pali Coast on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. The trail climbs up to towering sea cliffs, drops down to lush valleys and all the way down to sea level. Hawaii is home to a large number of endemic species, or species that can only be found there, so the flora and fauna are sure to delight.
John Muir Trail
This 210-mile trail winds through the High Sierra wilderness. For 160 of those miles, the trail is part of the Pacific Crest Trail. You will be mostly above 8,000 feet in elevation for the hike, which begins at Yosemite National Park, passes through Inyo National Forest, Ansel Adams Wilderness, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks and ends at the summit of Mount Whitney, the highest point in the continental U.S.
Cadillac Mountain Trail
Found in Acadia National Park, the Northeast's only national park, Cadillac Mountain is a must. If you catch the sunrise from the top, you will be the first person to view the sun rising on the East Coast. It's a moderate 4-mile hike to the summit at 1,500 feet. The views from the top, especially at sunrise, are absolutely breathtaking.
Skyline Trail
This trail in Mount Rainier National Park affords you amazing views of the 14,000-foot volcano, which is the tallest in North America. It takes you as close as you can get to the volcano without technical climbing gear. The entire trail is 5.5 miles long with 1,700 feet of elevation gain. Hikers cross through foggy alpine valleys full of wildflowers, take in cascading waterfalls and trek through snowfields. On a clear day, you can even see peaks as far south as Oregon's Mount Hood.
White Oak Canyon
This 4.8-mile hike in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park is a standout because you'll cross wooden footbridges over emerald pools and see six major waterfalls. While Shenandoah's high alpine trails can only be tackled a few months out of the year, this trail is open and accessible all year. Spring brings wildflowers to the open meadows. The trees provide ample shade to avoid the heat of summer. The fall foliage is not to be missed. And there's a certain beautiful serenity to a winter walk.
The Narrows
The Narrows is the narrowest part of the canyon walls in Zion National Park. The Virgin River cuts through the canyon, creating walls up to 1,000 feet tall and sometimes just twenty feet wide. A hike in the narrows involves actually walking in the river. Depending on the river flow, the water reaches from ankle level to waste deep or more. Hikers take in incredible views of the canyon walls as they trek through the river.
The Lost Coast Trail
The Lost Coast is the portion of California's north coast that was spared the development that came with building State Route 1 right along the coast in the southern portion of California. The steepness of the coastal mountains and the density of coastal forests made it difficult to build the highway right on the coast, so this part of California has remained more rugged and remote. As a result, the Lost Coast has maintained more of its natural beauty. The Lost Coast Trail is a 24-mile hike starting at Mattole and ending at Black Sands Beach. You will hike through rocky tidal pools, watch sea lions sunbathing on the beach and explore abandoned lighthouses. The hike, which takes about three days, is impassible at times because of the tides, so don't forget a tide chart.
Mount Mitchell Trail
At nearly 7,000 feet, Mount Mitchell near Asheville, North Carolina is the highest peak east of the Mississippi and it's not to be missed. It's an 11-mile hike with a 3,600-foot elevation gain, making it one of the toughest climbs in the area. The views from the summit are spectacular in any season. The summit is accessible to vehicles, so if you don't want to share your summit views with a bunch of people, pick a bad weather day or a day when the road is closed.
Half Dome
The 14 to 16 mile round trip hike is not for the faint of heart. You will be gaining elevation (4,800 feet in total) for most of your hike. But it's well worth the effort. Along the way, you'll take in views of Vernal and Nevada Falls, Liberty Cap, Half Dome and views of Yosemite Valley and the High Sierra. It takes most hikers 10 to 12 hours to complete, so an early start is a must. The most famous part of the hike is the metal cables, which make the last 400 feet of the ascent possible. Permits are required and are distributed by a lottery.
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The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>By John R. Platt
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