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Mountain Field Guide
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May 25 2025
Gower Gulch Loop: Hiking Through the Badlands of Death Valley
The Gower Gulch Loop is one of the classic moderate hikes in Death Valley National Park, California, combining the narrow walls of Golden Canyon with colorful badlands, historic mining country, and the rugged drainage of Gower Gulch. The National Park Service lists the standard loop at 4.3 miles (6.9 km) and estimates approximately 2.5 hours …
May 25 2025
Golden Canyon Trail: Hiking Through Death Valley’s Colorful Badlands
The Golden Canyon Trail is one of the most recognizable hikes in Death Valley National Park, leading through a twisting corridor of golden sedimentary rock toward the striking red cliffs of Red Cathedral. Located just south of Furnace Creek, the trail offers an unusually close look at the eroded badlands that surround nearby Zabriskie Point. …
May 25 2025
Wildrose Peak Trail: A High-Elevation Hike in Death Valley National Park
Wildrose Peak Trail offers a very different side of Death Valley National Park from the scorching salt flats and barren desert basins for which the park is best known. Beginning near 7,000 feet in the Panamint Mountains, the trail climbs through pinyon-juniper woodland before reaching the 9,064-foot summit of Wildrose Peak. The hike is strenuous, …
May 25 2025
Grapevine Mountains
The Grapevine Mountains rise along the California–Nevada border on the northeastern side of Death Valley National Park. Rugged canyons, heavily folded sedimentary rocks, high desert woodland, remote summits, and some of Death Valley’s most impressive backcountry scenery make this range one of the park’s most geologically fascinating mountain areas. The range forms the northern portion …
May 25 2025
North Palisade via Bishop Pass Trail
The route to North Palisade via Bishop Pass Trail combines one of the finest maintained high-country trails in California with a remote, technical mountaineering ascent of one of the Sierra Nevada’s most formidable fourteeners. The journey begins at South Lake near Bishop, follows the Bishop Pass Trail past a chain of alpine lakes to nearly …
May 23 2025
Santa Lucia Mountains
The Santa Lucia Mountains, also known as the Santa Lucia Range, form one of California’s most dramatic coastal mountain landscapes. Rising immediately inland from the Pacific Ocean along the Central Coast, the range combines steep ridges, deep canyons, redwood forests, chaparral-covered slopes, remote wilderness, and some of the most striking mountain-to-ocean relief in the contiguous …
May 23 2025
Three Brothers (California): Yosemite’s Three-Part Granite Formation
Three Brothers 🏔️ Overview Three Brothers is a striking rock formation on the north wall of Yosemite Valley in California’s Yosemite National Park. Rather than being a single mountain, the formation consists of three distinct features: Eagle Peak, Middle Brother, and Lower Brother. Eagle Peak is the uppermost and highest of the three. The formation …
May 23 2025
Junipero Serra Peak
Junipero Serra Peak Junipero Serra Peak is the highest summit in California’s rugged Santa Lucia Mountains and the highest point in Monterey County. Rising deep within the Ventana Wilderness, the mountain combines unusually high topographic prominence with remarkable isolation, remote trail access, distinctive sugar pine forests, and sweeping views across California’s Central Coast ranges. Although …
May 19 2025
Eagle Peak (Mariposa County, California)
Eagle Peak Eagle Peak is a prominent granite summit on the north rim of Yosemite Valley in Yosemite National Park, California. Rising to approximately 7,783 feet (2,372 meters), it is the highest of the three formations collectively known as the Three Brothers and offers one of the most expansive viewpoints above Yosemite Valley. Although Eagle …
May 17 2025
Panamint Range
🏔️ Overview The Panamint Range is a rugged desert mountain range in eastern California, rising dramatically between Death Valley to the east and Panamint Valley to the west. Extending roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) from north to south, the range forms much of the western wall of Death Valley and includes some of the highest …
