Peak Freaks

In the eternal battle for hiking superiority that rages between mountain paths and beach rambles, BACKPACKER users have spoken: You’ll take the peaks over the waves any day. In our homepage survey, respondents overwhelmingly said you’d prefer to hike in the mountains—92 percent to 8 percent.

That’s probably not much of a surprise; more hiking trails are in the mountains than along beaches, and solitude-seeking trampers such as ourselves tend to avoid the densely populated zones of the coasts. But that’s good news for beach trampers, too: You can rest easy in the fact that your favorite lonely beach hikes are more likely to stay that way.

Has all this talk of beach and mountain hikes got you hankerin’ to compare the two? Map out your own ocean/peak hiking trip anywhere in the U.S. on our Destinations page.

—Ted Alvarez