Whether you need a weekend of outdoor-infused peace or are the next badass moving in to claim a place in local legend, cancel your über-spendy St. Tropez wine-tasting/windsurfing trip, pack up the Vanagon, and hit the road. Thanks to a complex process of deduction (throwing darts at a dusty map), we compiled a rockin’ list of spots around the country where you can paddle until you’re blue in the face, climb until your hands are a mélange of blood and chalk, and crank until you collapse in a pool of sweat.
Five Trips for Your Outdoor Fix
Gunnison, CO
- Bonanza
Gunnison and nearby Crested Butte offer some of the nation’s most taxing and sublime mountain biking. If you’re looking to climb 13,000-foot summits and drop down adjacent valleys, the classic Pearl Pass to Aspen trail gets you higher than a liberal dentist over-supplied with Novocain.
After exploring the trail network, tear yourself away and spend a day or two paddling the serpent-like Gunnison and Taylor Rivers. Southwestern Colorado receives an annual inundation of snow melt that surges over rapids, down falls, and into placid pools that satisfy core whitewater junkies—and stoned college students. If wheels and water aren’t your bag, climb hair-raising routes in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The canyon’s walls—two thousand feet in places—plummet into the Gunnison River and regularly jut out in wet-your-pants spires and crags. Warning: routes in Black Canyon are long and complex, the best of which can be found at the North Chasm View Wall.
Kernville, CA
- Sierra Nevadas (not the beer, though we like that, too)
Nestled in the Southern Sierras and just three hours from L.A., Kernville caters to Southern California’s outdoor addicts and offers miles of challenges under the warm Sierra sun. Whitewater fans come to Kernville for the 20-plus miles of Class III-IV Wild and Scenic Kern River. With winter’s snowpack in full-melt, we recommend you get your kit in gear and honk at all the mallrats on your way to the mountains. Just north of Kernville, Sequoia National Park’s singletrack winds through nirvanic high desert terrain that might make you stop and offer oblations to the gods. Climbers in Sequoia National Park escape the crowds bound for Yosemite and Joshua Tree, and get free rein to test their grit on Dome Rock and The Needles—Sequoia’s granite spires that top out at eight thousand feet and overlook the idyllic Kern River Valley.
Despite all the ways to get dirty and stoked in Kernville, legendary surf crashes onto terra firma just hours away on the Southern California coast so you can shred Huntington State Beach in the morning and climb the Needles by sunset.
Stehekin Village, WA
-Raw
No roads connect Stehekin, Washington, to the outside world, so you have to trek, catch a ferry, or floatplane (sweet) to get there. This level of isolation promises some of the wildest land left in the lower forty-eight, and means you can get away from car-campers and noxious grilled-meat odors. Lying at the North end of Lake Chelan, Stehekin Village and its superb collection of lodges, cabins, and campgrounds makes a great base camp for exploring the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area and North Cascades National Park.
Between rafting and kayaking the early summer high-water of the Stehekin River, bombing down Cascades singletrack, or hiking one of the panoply of trails linking Stehekin with North Cascades National Park, Stehekin has plenty of awesome diversions to keep a jaw-cramping grin on your mug. For the hardcore types, the North Cascades’ eye-popping treks through old growth forests and across alpine ridgelines, as well as worldclass mountaineering on Mount Shuksan’s jagged massif, put you in a wilderness chock full of challenges and ego-boosting rewards.
Summersville, WV
-Deliverance
Nestled in the nexus of one of the East coast’s most exciting outdoor meccas, Summersville flanks the surging Gauley River, the gorge-ous New River, and monstrous Monongahela National Forest. The world-renowned Gauley River drops 668 heart-pounding feet in 28 miles and churns through a hundred rapids—50 of which range from Class III to Class V-plus (shaa-wing!). “Gauley Season” lasts only six weeks after Labor Day, but despite this short period, top rafters and kayakers come from around the world to run the world’s seventh-most raft-able river. Characteristic of Southern hospitality, the Mountain State doesn’t neglect climbers or bikers either. Rock hounds have 60 miles of shear sandstone cliffs on Summersville Lake’s shoreline to ascend. Multiple overhanging routes abound and range in height from 30 to 80 feet. Rated one of the top five mountain biking destinations in the United States, West Virginia boasts a cornucopia of mud-flying rides around Summersville and within Monongahela National Forest. Easy access from much of the East coast makes Summersville a must on every Confederate and Yankee’s list.
Littleton, NH
-Hidden Gem
Lodged between the placid Connecticut River and glorious White Mountains National Forest, Littleton—despite its name—makes a big claim on being an American outdoor destination. This pleasant New England town makes an awesome home base for any excursion you fantasize about. Trad climbers love to play on nearby Cathedral and Whitehorse Ledges. These sublime crags in Echo Lake State Park offer some of the best crack, friction, and face climbing in the country and are just the beginning of a string of trad, sport, and bouldering options rivaling any location east of the Rockies.
Whether flatwater paddling on the Connecticut or battling through Class II and III rapids on the surging Wild Ammonoosuc River, paddlers hardly have to walk down the block in Littleton to get their boat in the water. Crank-heads can find challenging local singletrack on the Moore Dam Mountain Bike Trail, while venturing deeper (and steeper) into the White Mountains promises to push your limits. Right-next-door Vermont and Maine reveal plenty of similar distractions—and mouthwatering maple syrup to boot.
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Tags: climbing, hiking, mountain biking, paddling, trip reports
Thanks for the Kern River mention for the 2010 river season. We are going to have a spectacular year out on the water! Mountain & River Adventures starts our Lower Kern river trips this weekend, so please be sure to check us out if you’re heading this way at http://www.mtnriver.com/lower_kern_river_rafting.htm. We should be paddling the Lower Kern through August and into September this year!!
And as a side note, if you are heading to Kernville, you will find yourself about three hours south of Sequoia National Park. But if you prefer to be in Sequoia National Forest, you will find it here in Kernville! See you out on the water!
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