Top 10 Trails of 2022: Greg Heil's Favorite New Hikes

The 10 best trails that Greg hiked in 2022.

Alpine Climbing, Canyoning, Hiking Easy, Moderate, Difficult, Severe, Extreme

Also in Yukon, Canada • L'Aquila, Italy • Alaska, United States of America • Arizona, United States of America • Utah, United States of America

Pizzo Cefalone da Campo Imperatore — Photo: Greg Heil

Description

While full-time travel has become a way of life, 2022 was a truly exceptional year filled with epic adventures in far-flung locales! My fiancee Christine and I celebrated the beginning of the year along the US/Mexico border in Big Bend, Texas. Over the next seven months, we slowly journeyed 4,000 miles north to Fairbanks, Alaska, exploring hiking and mountain biking trails all along the way.

Then, we turned around and headed back south again, charting a circuitous path through the mountains of Western Canada and the Western USA, visiting new destinations and old favorites alike. Eventually, we ended the year back in Arizona, almost as far south as we had begun. We've become migratory animals, covering tens of thousands of miles in our camper van every year in search of the best hiking and mountain biking.

We also enjoyed a short break from the endless highway miles with a jaunt over to Italy for a month—an entertaining combination of work and vacation, capped by fantastic hiking in Gran Sasso National Park.

While hiking is by no means my primary sport, I unwittingly set a new personal record in 2022, covering over 600 miles on foot, according to my Strava records. Almost all of those miles were covered in new-to-me locales, exploring beautiful trails in every single one. After so many incredible hikes, it was tough to cull my 2022 list down to just 10 choices!

I didn't summit many mountains this year, so naturally, the three peaks I climbed all made the list—Pizzo Cefalone, Italy; Wasson Peak, Arizona; and Picacho Peak, Arizona. However, several other high-alpine hikes made this list that didn't culminate in a summit, including the Savage Alpine Trail, Alaska (possibly my best hike of the year); Rohr Lake, British Columbia; and Grizzly Ridge Overlook, Yukon Territory.

Christine and I began dabbling in canyoneering—both technical and nontechnical—this spring, and followed it up with a week filled with Utah slot canyons in the fall. Two of the canyons we hiked easily made it onto this list of our top 10 hikes, including Moonshine Wash and the Little Wild Horse Canyon and Bell Canyon Loop.

Finally, as snowbirds we naturally spend a lot of time in the desert, and two other desert hikes stood out head and shoulders above the rest: the stunning Twin Buttes Loop through Sedona, Arizona's red rocks and the Seven Falls Trail near Tucson, Arizona.

From Arizona to Alaska and many places in between, this wide-ranging list is full of truly incredible adventures—you can't go wrong with any of them!