The 5 Best Day Hikes In Yosemite National Park, According To Experts

So, you're looking to go day hiking in Yosemite National Park? Join the queue! This is perhaps the most famous place for hitting the trails in the great state of California. It's easy to see why. It's hallowed ground for outdoors enthusiasts, drawing 4 million visitors each year with its symphony of granite summits and hulking sequoia trees. Look one way, and you'll spy the mighty Half Dome. Look another, and there are secret valleys filled with waterfalls and granite domes. Basically, Yosemite is about as breathtaking as it gets!

Day hiking is a fine way to get a taste of the legendary Yosemite backcountry without having to pack up days of food supplies and tent gear. What's more, some of the park's most iconic routes can be done in a single session, taking anything from a few hours to every iota of time between sunrise and sunset, but almost always offering spectacular, unforgettable views and experiences along the way.

This guide brings together recommendations from leading outdoors experts, official national park service picks, and my own in-depth knowledge of this Californian gem. In a word — expertise. The result is a handful of trails that regularly stand out as the very best day hikes in Yosemite, from the huge route up Half Dome to more hidden paths that begin in the Tuolumne Meadows area.

No list of the best day hikes in Yosemite National Park could possibly be complete without a mention of the Half Dome Trail. Veteran outdoors content creator Alec Sills-Trausch hails it as the "grandaddy of them all" on his blog Explorewithalec.com, and the route gets consistent mentions across the board for being one of the finest treks in the whole of California. The biking, running, and hiking tracker app Strava even places it among a selection of the best day hikes on the entire planet!

Just don't be fooled by the plaudits, for the Half Dome hike is hard. Clocking over 14 miles in total, the route packs in a thigh-burning 4,800 feet of elevation gain between its start point at the Happy Isles Trailhead and its terminus atop the great granite outcropping of its namesake mountain. You'll want to begin very early to leave enough time to bag the summit and return during daylight hours — yes, it can take that long!

The route begins on the Mist Trail, which creeps through the forests before opening onto the rushing waters of the Vernal Falls. It then zigzags up to Little Yosemite Valley, where the trail skirts the Merced River. From there, it's up again through dense forests before you hit the final push on the infamous Half Dome Cables, which always test the vertigo. Be warned: This hike is as popular as it is stunning. There are always crowds, which is why there's now a strict limit of 225 day hikers permitted on the route during the season (usually late May to the middle of October).

Taken on their own, the Mist Trail and the John Muir Trail are surely among the most famed hiking paths in the whole of Yosemite. Josh, from the Golden State travel blog California Through My Lens, calls the first one of the best-loved hiking paths in the whole state. For its part, the John Muir Trail (JMT) is the stuff of legends — an epic undertaking of 211 miles that links Yosemite Valley with the soaring summit of Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United States.

What a lot of people don't know is that parts of the two routes can be combined to create a neat day-hike loop through one seriously breathtaking corner of the national park. Both begin at the same trailhead before splitting under the roaring cataract of the Vernal Falls. Take the Mist Trail up, because, as one past hiker on TripAdvisor puts it, "the JMT is much easier to go down than all the stairs on the Mist Trail route." That makes the ascent a series of stone staircases cut straight into the granite, some bringing you close enough to the waterfalls to feel the spray.

To connect with the JMT, you'll have to push up to yet another waterfall — the Nevada Falls — on zigzag paths rutted with the roots of big trees. You'll eventually reach the top of those, where views of the craggy peak of Liberty Cap and the narrow end of Yosemite Valley abound. That's also where a short bridge links to the return leg on the John Muir route. Going up the Mist and returning on the JMT clocks up roughly 7 miles in all.

The Cathedral Lakes Trail might not scale some famous peak like the aforementioned Half Dome route, but it gets plaudits from some pretty renowned experts. Yep, this one's among the top day-hike picks of Liz Thomas, a professional hiker and author of the 2017 National Outdoor Book Awards winner "Backpacker Long Trails". She named it as one of the best intermediate-level hikes in Yosemite in a piece on 57hours.com.

And she's not the only one waxing lyrical about it. It scores an enviable 4.8 out of 5 on the global hiking app AllTrails, where one user remarks: "As far as trails I'd call the best in Yosemite, it's between Clouds Rest and this. The lower lake is gorgeous and worth a pit stop on the way back, but I'd recommend going straight to the upper lake before the crowds get there."

Set out from the Tuolumne Meadows Visitor Center, which sits just off the stunning and underrated scenic driving route of the Tioga Road. The path actually follows the John Muir Trail, going due southeast through high-alpine meadows and pockets of big pine trees. The aim is to reach the Upper Cathedral Lake at 9,600 feet, with a pitstop at the Lower Cathedral Lake and its mountain-shrouded shorelines along the way.

"Yosemite Falls is a butt kicker, but it's really rewarding to get that view of the valley knowing I got there by my own two legs." Those are the words of pro hiker Liz Thomas, who places the Upper Yosemite Falls trail among her picks of the best day hikes in Yosemite on 57Hours.com. She's backed up by Michael Lanza, founder of the blog The Big Outside and former field editor at Backpacker magazine, who also elevates this one into the top dozen hikes in Yosemite as a whole.

Don't expect a walk in the park. The 7.2-mile trail involves a cloud-busting 2,700 feet of elevation gain in all, and it can take up to eight hours to complete. The path is also rated "hard" on AllTrails, though a 4.8 out of 5 score after over 18,000 reviews means it's likely to be worth the effort.

Indeed it is, as the reward here is perhaps the finest set of views in the whole reserve. The route to that begins at Camp 4, where a dusty, rocky trail cuts through the main valley and begins to ascend its northern side. It creeps ever higher, eventually offering a rest stop at Columbia Rock a mile in, where you'll find a fine head-on panorama of Half Dome. After that, it's more ascent, on exposed sections with rail assistance, all before the final hurrah – epic views framed by the mist plumes of the highest waterfall in the national park.

One of the easier Yosemite day hikes in this guide, the Mirror Lake Loop reveals mystical mirror images of Half Dome without the huge mileage and elevation demands of other big-name routes. What's more, you have options to shorten or lengthen your outing depending on how you're feeling on the day — the hike to Mirror Lake can be a simple 2-mile walk in the woods, or a more adventurous 5 miles deeper into the wilderness.

The long and short versions both begin on a paved roadway, though you can take alternate detours into the forests if you prefer something wilder. The namesake Mirror Lake is one of the first things you come to, though it's actually not a lake at all but rather a wide section of Tenaya Creek where folks go to cool off in the summer months. It's the point at which the longer loop version of the trail begins, taking you further into the valley to the northeast through rock fields and woodlands.

One of the major pulls of the Mirror Lake area in general is that it offers a unique, front-on viewpoint over the Half Dome. Specifically, you'll be craning your neck to see the distinct Northwest Face of that great mountain, which is one sheer wall of granite from top to bottom, rising nearly 2,000 feet from base to crest. Believe it or not, folks do scale that monster. In fact, it's hailed as one of the most spectacular climbs on the globe on MountainProject.com. So, keep your eyes peeled for climbers looking like specks on the stone as you walk.

To compile this list of the top day hikes in the Yosemite National Park, I blended research with hands-on knowledge of the region and its trekking routes. I began by scouring a range of well-respected hiking and travel blogs, and then branched off to look at the day hikes that are recommended by the official NPS guide pages.

I created a shortlist of trails that were consistently ranked highly for their mix of scenery, terrain variation, and overall experience factor, but also aimed to get a good mix of easy, moderate, and hard options to ensure there was something for all levels of hiker.

My final step was to whittle down my own shortlist into just the handful of top suggestions that form the backbone of this list. For that, I drew on my own personal experience of Yosemite, which includes previous visits specifically for day hiking, including completing the famous Half Dome.