Redwood National and State Parks protect the tallest living things on Earth, coast redwoods that soar past 350 feet (110 m), along a wild stretch of far Northern California coast. Managed jointly by the National Park Service and California State Parks, this misty realm of ancient groves, fern canyons, elk-grazed prairies and rugged shoreline is…
Pinnacles protects the eroded remains of an ancient volcano, a maze of towering rock spires, sheer crags and dark talus caves rising from the chaparral hills of central California. Small, uncrowded and split by a ridge into two unconnected halves, it is a favourite of rock climbers, cave scramblers and anyone hoping to watch endangered…
Lassen Volcanic is a compact showcase of a living volcanic landscape, the only place on Earth where all four types of volcano stand together, crowned by Lassen Peak, which last erupted just over a century ago. Boiling mud pots, roaring fumaroles and steaming ground share the park with clear alpine lakes and quiet conifer forest,…
Kings Canyon is the wild, vertical heart of the southern Sierra Nevada, a park of one of the deepest canyons in North America, groves of giant sequoias, and a vast high country of granite peaks and alpine lakes that runs unbroken into the John Muir and Sequoia wilderness. Co-managed with neighbouring Sequoia, it trades crowds…
Joshua Tree is where two deserts meet, the higher, cooler Mojave with its namesake spiky trees, and the lower, hotter Colorado Desert of creosote and cholla. Add jumbled fields of golden monzogranite boulders, some of the darkest skies in Southern California, and world-class rock climbing, and you have one of the most distinctive and beloved…
Often called “the Galapagos of North America,” Channel Islands National Park protects five rugged islands off the Southern California coast and the rich waters around them. Just an hour by boat from the mainland yet a world apart, the islands shelter species found nowhere else on Earth, sea caves and kelp forests, and a wild,…
Yoho packs an outsized share of the Canadian Rockies’ drama into a compact park on the west slope of the Continental Divide. Its Cree name means “awe.” Towering rock walls, the thundering Takakkaw Falls, the glacial jewel of Emerald Lake and the fiercely protected alpine of Lake O’Hara sit side by side, all within an…
Pacific Rim is Vancouver Island’s wild western edge, a coast of surf-pounded beaches, brooding temperate rainforest and one of the most famous long-distance hikes in the world, the West Coast Trail. Split into three units strung along the shore, it is a park of raw Pacific weather, where summer surfers, tide-pool wanderers and winter storm-watchers…
Mount Revelstoke is the rare mountain park you can drive to the top of, a 16-mile (26 km) parkway switchbacks from rainforest valley to flower-filled summit meadows, putting the high country within reach of almost anyone. Small but lush, it protects a slice of the Columbia Mountains where wet interior rainforest gives way to some…
Kootenay is the Canadian Rockies distilled into a single scenic highway, a park that runs “from glaciers to cactus,” dropping from icy alpine passes to the warm, dry Columbia Valley in the space of a drive. Part of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site, it pairs classic peak-and-canyon hiking with the mineral pools…
