From a family day hike through southern Utah’s Road Canyon to a grueling scramble through northern Michigan’s Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, this exhaustive (and highly subjective) list can guide you to your next outdoor adventure, and on adventures for years to come.
To create the list, we canvassed some of the most accomplished guides, mountaineers, and backcountry adventurers, including pro climber Jimmy Chin, who recommends Wyoming’s “stunningly beautiful” Teton Crest Trail as “the number one hike in America”; three-time Everest summiter Conrad Anker, whose hands-down favorite is the sandstone Angels Landing Trail in Zion (He says he hikes it “barefoot, to wear-off calluses”); legendary mountaineer Jim Whittaker; backpacker Andrew Skurka, and Brad Ludden, who shared a well-kept (until now) local secret in Glacier National Park.