2016 Year in Hiking Review

Last week I posted my Year in Running Review, and now I am bringing you my 2016 Year in Hiking Review. It has been another awesome year of hiking. This year we were able to do more challenging hikes and we also added backpacking into the picture. The boys did great and after our first overnight trip, they were all in for going on more backpacking adventures. This year it was great to see the boys go further and even in some cases faster (7 year old seems to like to get in some trail running on the way down). 

We did a total of 24 hikes in 2016 and 5 of them backpacking trips. 

In 2016 our hikes were in 3 states 

California
Cosumnes River Preserve
Billy's Hill to Cortina Ridge
Hidden Falls Regional Park
Mt. Diable From Juniper Campground
Lake Berryessa North Shore Trail
Effie Yeaw Nature Center
Cache Creek Ridge Trail Backpacking Trip
Valley Vista Trail
North Table Mountain
Snow Mountain Backpacking Trip
Shealor Lake Backpacking Trip
Horsetail Falls
Desolation Wilderness Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4
Sentinel Dome at Yosemite National Park
Backpacking to Dewey Point at Yosemite
Lock Leven Lakes
Stebbins Cold Canyon Blue Ridge Loop Trail
Rockville Hills Regional Park

Washington
Lake Valhalla & Mt. McCausland
Heybrook Lookout

Nevada
Red Rock Canyon Calico Tanks Trail

My favorite hike or I should say backpacking trip of 2016 was our trip to Desolation Wilderness near lake Tahoe (see links above for trip report). It was a 4 day trip and so much fun. It is amazing to look back at how well the boys did. I am so happy that the trip went as well as it could even with the severe high winds we faced a couple of nights and not being able to take the water taxi back. We spent some awesome quality family time, saw some incredibly amazing beautiful scenery, and importantly had fun...oh we also survived. 4 days is a long time. :p

My favorite out of state hike of 2016 was our hike to Lake Valhalla and Mt. McCausland in my home state of Washington. It was a challenging adventure with the kiddos (8 miles) but we got to see an awesome lake and hike up a peak with amazing views all in one hike. 

I could probably go on and on about how awesome each hike was this year but that would make for an extremely long post. However there is one more hiking adventure that stands out in 2016 and that is our trip to Yosemite. I had never been this national park (Hubby has) and it definitely did not disappoint. It is an amazing place. The park is majestic. The views you get of El Capitan, Half Dome, Sentinel Dome, etc.. are all so beautiful. We are already hoping to visit again in 2017. It was also pretty cool because I ran the whole valley loop (14mile long run) there!

In 2016 we did a total of 125.4 miles of hiking with the fam. It was another great year! I'm looking forward to seeing where 2017 brings us! 

Happy hiking!