From Colorado to Oregon to Maine, these incredible winter hiking trails offer beautiful views, wildlife-spotting opportunities, and fewer crowds.

If you have a habit of stashing your hiking boots the moment cooler temperatures arrive, you’ve been missing out. In the winter, the nation’s best hiking trails clear out and you can walk for miles without seeing another soul. Strap on a pair of snowshoes and stomp across glittering, snow-covered fields, or avoid the snow entirely and head south, where you’ll find plenty of dry terrain that’s too hot to brave in the summer.

The secret to winter hiking is making sure you have the gear necessary to stay warm, kick through snow, and outsmart the sun. Appropriate footwear and versatile lightweight layers are key. And since the days are shorter, you’ll want to make sure you give yourself plenty of time to finish your hike before darkness falls and the views you came for disappear.

To get you started, here are some favorite winter hiking trails…

It’s still 2020 and the pandemic-/-climate change apocalypse just got even worse.

The West Coast is burning. Residents of the San Francisco Bay Area awoke to dark orange skies, as a thick layer of smoke settled over Northern California. (Smoke scatters blue light, allowing only red and yellow to reach the ground.)

It’s hard to overstate how really, terribly bad this fire season has been. In California alone, wildfires have blown through 2.5 million acres of land since the beginning of the year — about 10 times more than last year, and much more than 2018’s previous record of 1.8 million acres.

Meanwhile, in Washington state, fires erupted over Labor Day weekend, scorching 330,000 acres in just 24 hours. The smoke led cities across the West Coast to warn their residents to stay inside and keep windows closed to avoid breathing some of the dirtiest air in the world.

One of the reasons, of course, is climate change. High temperatures dry out vegetation and the surrounding air, making wildfires more likely to burn fast and hard. The fire season has also lengthened. What was once a four-month season has stretched to six or even eight months in some regions of the U.S., according to the Forest Service.

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Hamilton Mountain is one of the most scenic spots in the Columbia River Gorge, itself one of the most scenic destinations in the Pacific Northwest. The climb to the top is always nice, but it’s especially beautiful on summer’s late afternoons and evenings, when crowds are sparse and the light in the gorge can be downright glorious.

A 3-mile trail takes hikers from the busy trailhead in Beacon Rock State Park to the top of the mountain, where views of Mount Hood and Mount Adams rise above the gorge. Along the way are several scenic stops that serve as brief detours, or even destinations in their own right for those who don’t have the time or desire to hike all the way to the top.

There’s Hardy Falls, seen from a viewpoint just off the trail; Pool of the Winds, where a small waterfall pours into a pool nestled into a rocky alcove; Rodney Falls, which stair steps its way down a steep stream bed; and Little Hamilton Mountain, a rocky outcropping about 2 miles up the trail with views that outshine those on the main summit.

Savvy hikers willing to wait out the morning and afternoon rush can find plenty of open parking, and much more peace and quiet, by hiking up Hamilton Mountain in the late afternoon.

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Those hoping to set off into Oregon’s central Cascade Mountains this summer won’t need to scramble for a hiking permit after all – once trailheads closed due to the coronavirus reopen to the public.

New hiking permits set to roll out this month in Oregon’s central Cascades will be delayed until 2021, the U.S. Forest Service announced, due to the ongoing pandemic.

“Given many logistical constraints caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we are delaying our implementation until next year,” Holly Jewkes, supervisor for the Deschutes National Forest, said in a news release.

Originally scheduled to begin May 22, 2020 the new permitting system is now expected to take effect around the same time next year.

The permits are aimed at reducing the number of hikers allowed into the Mount Jefferson, Three Sisters and Mount Washington wilderness areas, as a response to overcrowding and human impact on what are supposed to be pristine natural spaces.

Otherwise, wilderness areas in the central Cascades will continue to be managed as they have been in the past, with no limits on entries and free, self-service wilderness permits at the trailheads.

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You don’t have to go to Egypt to see the Pyramids. That’s because the Three Pyramids, mountains created long ago by volcanic action, are in Oregon for the viewing and, at least in the case of the Middle Pyramid, for the climbing.

Reaching the Middle Pyramid is a pleasant hike, only a little more than 2 miles from the trailhead. But that’s a challenging 2-plus miles because mountaintops like the Middle Pyramid require some uphill hiking, in this case an elevation gain of nearly 1,800 feet.

Located in the Central Oregon Cascades, the Three Pyramids are a trio of volcanic plugs that are part of the Old Cascades. The Cascades are two mountain ranges in one. The better-known High Cascades mountains include such prominent 10,000- to 14,000-foot peaks as Shasta, Hood, Jefferson, Adams and Rainier. According to geologists, the Old Cascades, which form the foundation of the High Cascades, are older and lower, with many summits only 4,000 to 5,000 feet high. The Three Pyramids, with elevations of 5,690, 5,618 and 5,480 feet (from south to north), are part of the Old Cascades.

Even though the Middle Pyramid is not a dominant peak, you can still enjoy a wide-sweeping panorama from its summit that includes the Three Sisters, Mount Washington, Three Fingered Jack, Mount Jefferson and, if lucky, Mount Hood. The promised views from atop the Middle Pyramid are part of the trail’s allure but, the journey itself is also rewarding.

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Minam River Lodge is a rare piece of private property within Oregon’s 360,000-acre Eagle Cap Wilderness, which itself is located within the 2.3 million-acre Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. It was founded as a hunting camp in 1950 and even today the only ways to get here are to hike, ride a horse or have local rancher Joe Spence fly you there in his three-seat Cessna 206.

Once at the lodge, which is open from late May into October, there is no cellphone reception, Internet or television; power in the cabins and main lodge comes from an array of solar panels near its organic greenhouse and pigpen.

Eagle Cap Wilderness has 535 miles of trails and 17 peaks taller than 9,000 feet. Much of the Wallowa Mountains, called “the Alps of Oregon” and pronounced WAH-lau-waa, are in the Eagle Cap. Four rivers that run through the wilderness are in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, including 39 of the Minam River’s 51 miles.

Ninety-nine percent of guests hike in from the Moss Springs Trailhead, which, at 8 1/2 miles away, is the closest trailhead. But you can also start at the Wallowa Lake Trailhead. This allows you to see dozens of high alpine lakes and some of the range’s tallest peaks, but is substantially longer in time and distance then the trek from Moss Springs.

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While families celebrate the New Year, many are getting rid of their Christmas trees this week. With that comes a warning from the Oregon Department of Forestry about an invasive insect that could pose a problem if you don’t dispose of your tree the right way.

Experts say roughly 8,000 Fraser Fir trees shipped from North Carolina to big box stores on the West Coast had elongate hemlock scale, an invasive species not native to the Northwest.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture found the pest and ordered the infested trees destroyed, but not before some had been shipped to big box stores all along the West Coast. The fear is that when Christmas trees are left for weeks or months in a yard or dumped in a park or the woods, eggs laid on them will hatch and the pest may escape into nearby trees.

According to a new release from the Oregon Department of Forestry, if the elongate hemlock scale does get established in Oregon, it could be bad news for the state’s timber economy.

The pest attacks not only hemlocks, but several conifer species native to Oregon, like true firs, spruce and Douglas-fir. The scale feeds on the underside of the needles, creating a yellowish-brown waxy layer that is present year-round.

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Hiking and camping in three of Oregon’s most popular wilderness areas will be restricted starting in 2020, an attempt by outdoor officials to limit damage from growing crowds of visitors.

The U.S. Forest Service announced a decision to install a permit system limiting the number of people in the Mount Jefferson, Three Sisters and Mount Washington Wilderness areas.

A sharp increase in crowds during the past decade — and environmental damage that’s followed — prompted the agency to enact sweeping changes to the way people access 450,000 acres of Oregon’s most iconic backcountry.

“The goal is to maintain the quality of our wilderness areas and the experience they offer,” said John Allen, supervisor of Deschutes National Forest. “It’s about keeping the amount of people to a level where they’re not degrading these special places.”

Anyone camping overnight in the three wilderness areas will need a permit from a limited pool, under the new system. Day-users also will need a special permit for 30 of the most popular trails, including routes to Green Lakes Basin, Marion Lake, South Sister and Jefferson Park.

The decision marks a fundamental change to the unencumbered way most Oregonians currently hike, backpack and ride horses on public lands. It’s a system that treats hiking in a way similar to fishing or hunting, which have long been more regulated.

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  A little girl who lost her beloved stuffed lion on a hike in the Oregon backcountry was reunited with her favorite toy over the weekend after a community effort to identify her.

Hiker Holly Spaman, who recently moved to Bend, Oregon, from Yakima, Washington, ran into Audrianna Flores and her family as they descended Broken Top Trail on July 16 on their way back from a hike to the remote No Name Lake.

The distraught 7-year-old told Spaman about her lost stuffed lion, Kitty, which had fallen out of her mother’s backpack unnoticed during the trek, the mother, Erin Allen, told The Associated Press on Monday.

Spaman didn’t think she’d find the toy in such a vast wilderness, but she kept her eyes peeled and spotted Kitty a few miles later.

She didn’t have the family’s name or number. So she put Kitty on a rock and snapped a photo of the well-loved beige-and-yellow lion in front of jagged peaks of Broken Top Mountain — snow in the background — and posted it online when she got home.

Spaman’s friends forwarded her note, which was then passed on to complete strangers as everyone tried to reconnect the girl with her lost lion, and after almost a week of community effort, a very happy Audrianna was reunited with Kitty.

Hikers are the best!

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More than 30 popular hiking trails on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge remain closed because of hazards left in the wake of last year’s Eagle Creek wildfire. That has park rangers wrangling crowds on the unburned Washington side of the Gorge.

Unsafe conditions will likely keep many trails on the Oregon side of the western Gorge closed until this summer or fall. The fire closure area covers terrain between Troutdale and Wyeth, including about 135 miles of trails.

The Eagle Creek fire was extinguished last autumn, but professional and volunteer trail crews need more time to repair damage, remove dangerous snags and allow landslide and rockfall risk to abate.

The spillover to Washington State Parks in the Columbia Gorge is already happening and they’re bracing for worse. Parks spokeswoman Meryl Lipman said the biggest challenge is parking.

There are no near-term plans to make more parking available, since the spillover is a temporary situation. Lipman said outdoor recreationists should keep the Gorge on their list, but plan their trips for off days and off hours. She suggests a sunrise or sunset hike.

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