8 Historic Hikes You’ve Never Heard Of — Ranked

For the past five years, I’ve been living in the abandoned mining town of Cerro Gordo in the Eastern Sierra. During that time I’ve explored hundreds of miles of trails across Death Valley, the Inyo Mountains, and the Sierra Nevada. In this video, I’m ranking the 8 best, hardest, and most remote hikes in California and the American West. This list includes extreme routes like the Lonesome Miners Trail, the Beekeeper of McElvoy Canyon, the Saline Valley Salt Tram, and the CIA crash site hike, along with historic ghost towns such as Panamint City and Beveridge, once called the most inaccessible town in America. I also compare all of them to a classic: Mount Whitney, the tallest peak in the lower 48. If you’re looking for difficult hikes, remote adventures, California ghost towns, Death Valley hiking, or abandoned places in the West - this video is a deep dive into the wildest trails I’ve found. Hikes Covered: Champion Spark Plug Mine • Saline Valley Salt Tram • CIA Crash Site • Panamint City • The Beekeeper Route • Lonesome Miners Trail • Beveridge • Mount Whitney Filmed across: Death Valley National Park • Inyo Mountains • Eastern Sierra • Owens Valley • Cerro Gordo Ghost Town If you're interested in the full videos of each, they are below: Champion Spark Plug Mine: https://youtu.be/abRU69XGy-w?si=HndWjgDZEBaWgwht Saline Valley Salt Tram: https://youtu.be/iuk0B2itiXo?si=aYKixjjUfLbGnOzQ CIA Crash Site: https://youtu.be/1KVg-vpZKKs?si=t2RsLajTsTegAS4E Panamint City: https://youtu.be/Jws7cXveMjQ?si=bfIcrm3z9WPOgmb5 The Beekeeper Route: https://youtu.be/1NuWPfaACr4?si=5TwE5rSp9oyxiivn Lonesome Miners Trail: https://youtu.be/bRIhKox8VNQ?si=fASc_CDWLFx5P6Ej Beveridge: https://youtu.be/iYCAwk5oxFE?si=PNaELizN2fJcmXvs You can follow my journey on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brentwunderwood/ Cerro Gordo T-Shirts and more: https://store.cerrogordomines.com/ Mailing Address: PO Box 490, Lone Pine, CA 93545 THANK YOU!