How to Use FarOut for Weekend-sized Adventures
Can’t commit to a full thru-hike? No problem. Here’s how FarOut can help you section hike bite-sized sections of long trails.
By Joseph Gonzalez, a 2025 FarOut Scout
Thru-hiking isn’t a sustainable lifestyle. I would know: I invested heavily in long-distance hiking in my 20s, working seasonally as a backpacking guide in the summers and thru-hiking in the spring and fall. Between guided trip departures, I used FarOut to plan thru-hikes of the Tahoe Rim Trail, Appalachian Trail and Arizona Trail. Eventually, I settled down into a 9-5 lifestyle (yes, with a lease!) that limited my hiking opportunities. Unless you’re retired or very early in your career, this is an overwhelming majority of hikers.
Photo provided by Joseph Gonzalez
But even if you don’t have time or resources to hike 2,000+ miles on a long trail, you can still get a taste of wilderness during your long weekends using FarOut’s resources. That’s how I’ve hiked hundreds of miles since settling into a more static lifestyle. From the sunkissed splendor of Southern California to the old-growth valleys of the Pacific Northwest and beyond, FarOut’s comment features, water resources, elevation profiles, and campsite icons have empowered me to get outside and they can for you too.
Photo provided by Joseph Gonzalez
I like rough sections of trail. But sometimes, rough is too rough. That’s why l check out the latest trail conditions from other hikers’ comments on waypoints. This helped me a ton in November 2024, when I hiked Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) SoCal Section C from Highway 10 up to Big Bear through Whitewater Preserve and Mission Creek the week of Thanksgiving. This 70-ish mile section was closed when I thru-hiked in 2016, and recent comments helped inform my navigation strategy through an eroded, tough stretch of trail in the fall. In turn, I left comments with additional perspective to help the following spring’s crop of fresh thru-hikers through a section that felt more aligned with unmaintained portions of the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) than the normally carpet-smooth PCT. FarOut even helped me devise a plan to walk directly into the town of Big Bear to wrap up my section. Three days of hiking in the high desert of Southern California was a welcome respite and dose of vitamin D for me.
Photo provided by Joseph Gonzalez
The same goes for remote trails in the Pacific Northwest. I live in Western Washington, so I keep FarOut guides for the Wonderland Trail (x2), Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT) and PCT Washington downloaded at all times. My partner and I hiked some of the final miles of the PNT over Memorial Day Weekend 2025, trekking from Oil City up to Norwegian Memorial on the rugged coast of Olympic National Park. Tides are a major challenge here: you could be at risk of being swept away by a tide or stranded at chokepoints while waiting for it to recede. Even though we planned ahead with a tide chart, we still encountered waves and scratched our shins on barnacles. We were able to mitigate our risk by cross comparing comments from previous hikers about wave depth with our own NOAA resources, ensuring we safely passed all danger points for a successful trip.
Photo provided by Joseph Gonzalez
Recalling Labor Day Weekend 2024, my partner and I hiked a 70+ mile loop in Olympic National Park again on the PNT, this time up the Bogachiel River, to Blue Glacier, and back along the Hoh River. The Bogachiel River trail winds through thick old growth rain forest on unmaintained portions of track, overgrown with vegetation and decrepit with decaying bridges. It was helpful to read comments at campsites and water sources from hikers to learn fun interpretive information. Comments from previous year’s even tipped me off to patches of delicious mushrooms – chicken of the woods, yum!
Photo provided by Joseph Gonzalez
Photo provided by Joseph Gonzalez
Those are just a few examples of close-to-home weekend trips. If you’re willing to take a couple extra days off work, you can also use FarOut to plan trips a bit further out, like when I hiked the Trans-Catalina Island Trail in 2022. I used the Catalina Island Conservancy website to book campsites and about the trail, then consulted a few blogs to help build back my travel and accommodation plans. But for the actual 39 miles of hiking? That was planned completely using FarOut. Using the elevation profile to learn where big climbs were was a huge help, especially for a spring hike in warm weather. It was a four-day trip, but felt like an exceptional spring-time oasis.
Photo provided by Joseph Gonzalez
It doesn’t matter if it’s 226 miles or 24. Even if FarOut isn’t your primary tool for a specific trip, it can still be an asset in your toolbelt. My family and I hiked a Rim 2 Rim across the Grand Canyon in June 2025, right before the tragic Dragon Bravo Fire, that ravaged the North Rim of the park. Grand Canyon National Park does an exceptional job preparing hikers for the journey, but having FarOut’s Arizona Trail guide downloaded helped me contextualize the outrageous ascents and declines we should expect to toil through for my party.
Photo provided by Joseph Gonzalez
It’s not sexy, but the truth is most of us don’t have time or aspirations to thru-hike around the clock. For the “average” hiker, a long weekend outing is what fits best with their schedule. It’s never been easier than now to explore outings like these with the help of FarOut. In fact, they’ve recently released guides focused on short hikes, hikes near major cities, and more to make adventures like this more manageable.
I’ll enjoy the remaining weeks of fall before spending winter planning my 2026 trips, applying for permits and dehydrating food. How do you plan on Going Far Out soon?