If you want to visit, a rugged hike or a pitching open boat are the only ways to do so, unless you take the ferry.
Physical difficulty: 1 to 4 Something for everyone: Well-marked (though often rugged) hiking trails, rock climbing and rafting for all levels (the Salmon River is mostly Class II or III).
It was a world cross-country championship like no other: The first to be staged in the Middle East, and the first to be staged on a converted golf course that looked better suited to rugged hiking.
This hamlet, tucked into the Catskills, is only 120 miles northwest of Manhattan, and cognoscenti who value its rugged hiking trails and secret swimming holes have been making pilgrimages since the turn of the century.
A more rugged hike was our exploration of the eerily colorful Calanques de Piana, with its eroded, tortured science-fiction granite formations in the shape of gargoyles, birds, turtles and elephant trunks.
THE HIKE -- The Linville Gorge Trail, running for 11.5 miles through the Linville Gorge (often called the Grand Canyon of the East), is an occasionally rugged hike beside the Linville River, through unspoiled hardwood forest, alongside sheer cliffs and among rhododendron and dogwoods.
Buoyed by our rugged hike, the next day we ventured into the town of Katoomba, a backpacker's paradise filled with cafes, restaurants and shops, to say nothing of the mountain scenery — though sorting out an eco-friendly way to get there, or anywhere for that matter, from our lodge proved impossible.
The picturesque villages nearby include tiny Pyrsogianni, where there is a history museum commemorating the secret language of the peasants who lived there; the secret pathways they relied on provide some rugged hiking if you feel like reliving the yomp done by the men of Operation Harling.
More rugged hiking opportunities are available in the Craters of the Moon Wilderness Area and Backcountry Area, the roadless southern and major part of the monument.
For decades, environmentalists dreamed of acquiring and preserving for all time the vast, privately owned tracts of beguiling woodlands, rugged ridges, hiking trails and crystalline streams and lakes known as Sterling Forest, 40 miles northwest of New York City.
