The Best Hikes In San Diego

San Diego should entice any hikers or outdoor enthusiast. Not only does the great weather year round keep you moving, but you can explore forests, mountains, deserts and coasts all in one day.

Check out these hikes in San Diego and see why it’s easy to fall in love with this place.

Urban and Local Hikes

San Diego’s urban areas are one of the most underrated places to hike. With beautiful canyons and parks, you can find a great hike without having to leave the city.

San Diego City Canyons

You don’t have to leave the city to find great hiking in San Diego because spread throughout the city itself is a network of beautiful canyons filled with trails, trees, creeks, and wildlife habitats. San Diego’s canyons offer a chance to explore a natural, undeveloped landscape right in your own backyard. There are nearly 3,200 acres of open space canyons within the city. Some are more well-maintained than others, but most are accessible for anyone to do a light hike, trail running, and even mountain biking on certain trails. Open all year round and good to explore any time, we recommend the winter and spring months when the rain brings a lush, green landscape with fresh new foliage and beautiful wildflowers. The canyons are critical habitat for many of the amazing species in San Diego including great horned owls, great blue herons, rattlesnakes, hawks, parrots (yes, red Amazon parrots), humming birds, frogs, lizards, coyotes, and rabbits. If you’re really lucky, you might even see a squirrel.

Maple Canyon Trail

Sitting between the neighborhoods of Bankers Hill and Little Italy, the Maple Canyon trail in San Diego is one of the more accessible and beautiful urban hikes around. The trail is just under 1 mile (one way). On the way you’ll be surrounded by pretty steep canyon walls, lots of tall eucalyptus trees and green foliage (depending on the time of year), and you’ll pass under a few tall bridges, which make a great scene on the trail.

South Fortuna Trail At Mission Trails

Located in Mission Trails Regional Park, South Fortuna Trail is one of the best hikes in San Diego County for catching a sunset. Or a sunrise. The South Fortuna Trail starts from the West Fortuna Staging Area and is a challenging hike that takes you through hills, meadows, riparian forest, and up a steep mountain climb. The hike can be done as a loop (6 miles), or as an out-and-back hike (4 miles), and is mostly exposed to the elements. From the top of South Fortuna you get a beautiful view – you can look west to the ocean and downtown San Diego in the distance or east out toward Mt Laguna and the desert beyond.

Father Junipero Serra Trail

The Father Junipero Serra Trail is one of the best walks you can do in San Diego County. The trail is actually a paved road that cuts through Mission Trails Regional Park and it follows along the path of the San Diego River as it winds down from the eastern mountains toward the ocean. On the west side of the trail sits South Fortuna and on the east side Kwaay Paay Peak. The steep mountains on either side make you feel like you are miles and miles from any urban areas, even though the park sits right in the middle of San Diego.

Coastal Hikes

With steep cliffs and canyons, the pacific coastline of San Diego offer miles of stunning trails and vistas overlooking the ocean. So if you’re not feeling the volleyball or surf that day, take a hike on one of the coastal trails in San Diego.

Torrey Pines State Reserve

Torrey Pines State Preserve should be on everyone’s list to visit in San Diego, whether you are in town for a day or you have lived here your whole life. There are two ways to hike through Torrey Pines – on the beach below the cliffs or up in the cliffs themselves. We recommend the latter, starting up at the Torrey Pines Reserve Lodge and Visitor Center. Parking in the main lot by the visitor center is usually open, though it can fill up on weekends and sunset. There is overflow parking at the bottom of the hill by the beach.

Torrey Pines State Beach

Torrey Pines State Beach is a wide stretch of beach from Torrey Pines State Reserve in the south to Del Mar in the north and is one of the more underrated places to spend a beach day in San Diego. The water here is clean and warm and the beach is nice and sandy all the way out. There is minimal kelp, like some of the other beaches, and probably the best part is the inlet of Los Pensaquitos Creek leading into the lagoon that is a nice calm place to swim and snorkel during high tide. The views up and down the beach are lovely with the massive cliffs of Torrey Pines State Reserve to the south. The main parking is in the North Beach lot, though there is competitive parking right on the beach, along Highway 101, and then in the South Beach lot closer to the state park.

Cabrillo National Monument

Cabrillo National Monument is like a big brother to Sunset Cliffs in Ocean Beach – it is historically significant, beautiful, and part of the National Park System. It is where the first European explorer – Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo – stepped foot on modern California in 1542 (and then immediately left and got murked in the Channel Islands a few months later and then no Europeans set foot in San Diego for over two hundred years).

Mountain Hikes

Often a shock to newcomers or visitors, San Diego is filled with cliffs, canyons, and has epic mountains just 30 minutes outside the city. So if you’re not a beach bum, take advantage of the epic peaks and forests around San Diego and get your hike on.

Mount Laguna Recreation Area

Mount Laguna Recreation Area is a rebuttal to those who say San Diego is just a beach town. Less than hour away, this alpine sanctuary is nestled within the Cleveland National Forest just west of Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Mount Laguna has lush forests, mountain peaks, and meadows where you can hike, car camp, mountain bike, backpack, and easily access the Pacific Crest Trail.

Desert Hikes

One of the best places for hiking is in San Diego’s deserts. Under 90 minutes from San Diego, the deserts out East are some of the most exciting and dramatic landscapes around. Summer is to be avoided due to the extreme heat, but winter and spring are ideal times to find cool weather perfect for desert hiking.

Borrego Palm Canyon In Anza Borrego

Just 2.9 miles round trip, this is probably the most popular trail in Anza Borrego Desert State Park and one of the best hikes in San Diego County. The trail starts at the Borrego Palm Canyon Campground, a large campground with a combination of tent camping sites and full hookup trailer sites with drinkable water and coin-operated hot showers. The trail leads through the canyon and is an easy, kid friendly hike. This area is where the bighorn sheep of Anza Borrego are known to hang out, so keep an eye on the ridges above your head for any hooved activity (and also to make sure it isn’t a mountain lion stalking you). Go in the wetter winter months when water may be flowing for an even more magical experience.

Domelands Trail (Near) Anza Borrego

There was once a shallow sea covering parts of Anza Borrego over six million years ago and most of it seems to have deposited its sediment on the Domelands Trail, making this trail a geological wonderland. An eleven mile round-trip hike, the Domelands Trail, located in Anza Borrego State Park, is filled with slot canyons, wind caves, and great views of the Carrizo Badlands. It is also rich with fossils from ancient seashells, sand dollars, whales, and walruses.

Blair Valley And The Pictographs Trail

A huge sweeping valley surrounded by mountain peaks, Blair Valley is truly one of the most scenic areas in Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Located in the southwestern part of the park, just off the Great Southern Overland Stage Route, Blair Valley is a popular primitive/dispersed camping area with miles of available spots to camp, all with a beautiful views of the valley floor and surrounding mountains. On the eastern side of the ridge sits Little Blair Valley, another great spot for setting up camp. Come after a rain and the whole valley may be exploding in color with a wildflower bloom.

Goat Canyon Trestle Bridge In Anza Borrego

Buried deep in the mountains of the western Colorado Desert, within the confines of Anza Borrego Desert State park, sits the world’s largest all-wood trestle bridge – haunting in its isolation and magnitude. The unused Goat Canyon Trestle Bridge is a testament to the determination of man to conquer every landscape on earth, no matter how formidable. And a testament to the limitations of that ambition. Initially part of a rail line attempting to connect San Diego with the east, this section of the defunct San Diego and Arizona Eastern Railway snakes through inhospitable desert terrain in the southern section of Anza Borrego. Lucky for us, it makes for a beautiful walk through the desert.