Chilkoot Trail

The world's longest outdoor museum. The Chilkoot Trail is a 53km (33-mile) legendary route that spans from Dyea, Alaska, across the Chilkoot Pass into British Columbia, Canada. It follows the exact path of the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, where 'stampeders' were forced by the North-West Mounted Police to carry a ton of supplies across the summit in multiple trips. Today, the trail is littered with rusted stoves, leather boots, and broken machinery left behind over a century ago. You transition from coastal rainforest to the stark alpine 'Golden Stairs' and finally into the boreal forests of the Canadian north. It is a profound intersection of history and wilderness.

Standing at an imposing 14,309 feet (4,361m), Uncompahgre Peak is the highest summit in the spectacular San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado and the 6th highest 'Fourteener' in the state. Despite its towering mass, it is widely considered one of the gentler, most aesthetically beautiful, and accessible 14ers for intermediate hikers—provided you have a hardcore off-road vehicle to reach the high trailhead. The peak is wildly distinct from the typical conical mountains; it looks like a massive, slanted rectangular block or the bow of a sinking ship, complete with sheer, 1,000-foot vertical cliffs on three sides. The surprisingly manageable hiking trail weaves up the one gentle southern slope, through lush tundra basins full of marmots, culminating in a fun, brief, and non-exposed rock scramble to a vast, flat summit plateau the size of a football field.