trip suggestion?

[Blair Gentes]

Just wondering if anyone can suggest some good trails.

-I will be hiking the two last weeks of december and first of january.
-I do not want to be in the snow -I was thinking of the West Coast Trail, but I'm not hyped on being wet the whole time.( last winter I went to the island at this same time, and there was huge storm with several feet of snow)
-I do have a passport, so I can enter the US.
-Money is somewhat of an issue, in the sense that I mean i'm not going to fly to Australia or anything. ( I suppose continental US or anything similarily cheap.)
Thank,
Blair

[Larry Sullivan]

Hey Blair – Your itinerary is too vague to get constructive feedback. It will be snowing/wet/cold in most of the USA on New Years Day. Are you hoping to do an extended backpacking trip or just go somewhere warm and dry and dayhike? Do you want mountains? (count on snow) Winters are relatively comfortable in southern/Gulf of Mexico states. Looked into Mexico?

[David Palmer]

Look at Arizona, where a lot of places will give you very mild weather then. Big Bend in Texas might also be worth considering.

[Dean F.]

Yeah, CONUS isn't exactly the Land of Milk and Honey on January first- anywhere. I know that compared to Winnipeg it looks good, but not THAT good. About the only place almost certain to be snow-free and reasonably warm is southern Florida. (And there are hikes in Florida- the Florida Trail? Kayak the Wilderness Waterway? It's the right time of year to kayak it.) Maybe the Mojave? Southern California? (I'll refrain from SoCal jibes.)

If you can get a cheap flight to Hawaii you could do the Na Pali coast hike, but that is only a couple or three days. Another Hawaiian one I've always wanted to do is to hike from Haleakala caldera to the ocean.

I can come up with a lot of great hikes, but not many that are guaranteed cool-to-warm / dry / snow-free.

[Andrew King]

You should check out the Superstition Wilderness, located near Phoenix, AZ. It is a 160K acre wilderness with many trails and a wide variety of terrains. It is very doubtful that you will encounter snow, but there are rain storms that come through occasionally, and the overnight temps can get down to lower 30's/upper 20's if you catch a cold front. Most of the time, you will find sunny weather with highs in the 60's-70's and overnight lows in the 40's. There are springs located throughout and frequently you can find running streams, depending on the recent rainfall. This is my backyard and I frequent it often. You should check out hikearizona.com for the definitive source of information for hiking in this area.

[Diane “Piper” Soini]

You might enjoy hiking in the backcountry north of Santa Barbara and Ojai in the Sespe, Dick Smith or San Rafael Wilderness. It might be cold at night, but days ought to be pretty warm and nice. It'll definitely not look like anything you are used to, too. There's even a national recreation trail in there called the Gene Marshall Piedras Blancas trail. Here's a couple of links, but these pictures were from spring and summer (summer is way too hot for me to hike around here). Spring typically can be said to start in February or March in these areas, but there can be a little snow at higher elevations until April/May.

http://picasaweb.google.com/beemancron/2009GeneMarshall#
http://picasaweb.google.com/beemancron/2009VWRSpringTrip#

Actually, if you are interested in SoCal, look through more of Beeman's photos. He's got some in November where they look pretty cold and miserable, but the weather is often worse in November in SoCal than in January.

[Jesse Coonce]

I don't doubt that the W.C.T. will likely be wet during your planned trip, but having grown up on Vancouver Island I just thought I'd point out that the snow storm you encountered there last winter was a freak anomaly, I never in the 18 years I spent growing up there recall a dump of snow like that one or anything even remotely close(many years it doesn't snow more than an inch or two and usually it melts within a day or two of falling). I understand if you don't want to go because of rain(the Island gets more than its share), but I doubt you'd see much snow, if any this time around, I remember many not white Christmases growing up.

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