When visiting Wrangell, it’s always a nice day to take a hike — because there’s really no such thing as bad weather in Alaska, only bad raingear.

Most of the recommended Wrangell day hikes in a new book, “Day Hiking: Southeast Alaska,” are moderately strenuous, for hikers with moderate fitness and moderate navigational skills, so the 2-mile round-trip Volunteer Park walk may be the best starting point.

It has wheelchair accessible trails and provides a family-friendly area to stretch your legs and let the kids play.

Volunteer Park offers a running track, volleyball nets, baseball fields and restrooms. Strollers, bird watchers and botanizers will all enjoy the flat walk through this quiet park which begins not far from downtown. 

Dogs are permitted on trails but must be kept under control at all times because the area is bear habitat.

Volunteer Park, Mount Dewey, the Rainbow Falls Trail, Thoms Lake and Long Lake are the five Wrangell area trails recommended in the book by Madison Reynolds, which provides detailed information on 110 of the best trails in Southeast Alaska. 

A biologist with extensive experience in remote environments, Reynolds has traveled from Arctic Alaska and Canada to Antarctica. Her trails guide, published in early 2026 by Mountaineer Books in Seattle, notes that most of Southeast Alaska is a temperate coastal rainforest, so it’s always smart to bring a rain jacket, rain pants and extra layers for every hike.

The dominant living creatures in Southeast Alaska are trees, including cedar, Sitka spruce and western hemlock, and much of the region is part of Tongass National Forest, the nation’s largest national forest — but there are also inherent risks. There is always the potential of encounters with bears, who typically do not want to interact with people and tend to avoid or ignore humans, unless they are caught by surprise. 

The introductory section of the book details best practices for hiking in bear country, including traveling in groups, making a lot of noise, carrying bear spray or a firearm and avoiding areas heavily trafficked by bears.

The Mount Dewey Trail, just a short distance from downtown Wrangell, is a 2-mile roundtrip hike. It begins on a residential street above downtown, vaulting into the forest on a stone staircase, doing a switchback uphill through a second-growth hemlock forest.

A new, alternate route starts from Bennett Street, on the way to the airport, and merges with the downtown path along the way.

On a clear day hikers can stand on a small wooden viewing platform to see views of Etolin, Woronkofski and Zarembo islands to the west. The path consists of beautifully constructed packed gravel through forests and over muskegs, Reynolds notes.

The 6.5-mile Rainbow Falls Trail Complex offers all levels of hiking, from day trips to multiday alpine adventure through hemlock forests, across spongy muskegs and along alpine ridges. 

At the start of the Rainbow Falls trailhead, a little more than five miles south of downtown, the trail leads up a steep boardwalk to Rainbow Falls at 0.8 mile, a great turnaround point for day hikers.

Longer-day hikers can traverse to rustic trail shelters and breathtaking panoramas, Raynolds notes. Again, all dogs must be kept under control at all times because of bears.

The 2.8-mile Thoms Lake Trail farther south of downtown, off an old logging road, is a good place to look for waterfowl such as loons, mergansers and grebes. The trail is part of Audubon Alaska’s Southeast Birding Trail.

When reaching the lake, hikers may find sandhill cranes, secretive black-backed woodpeckers or even the tiny northern pygmy-owl in surrounding muskegs and forests.

Thoms Lake is valued for fishing, bird and wildlife viewing and paddling. There is a primitive cabin accessible only by boat for overnight adventures.

The 1.5-mile Long Lake Trail in the middle of Wrangell Island, also accessible from old logging roads, offers primitive camping in a three-sided shelter near the lake at the end of the trail. This shelter is available free on a first-come, first-served basis. It has an outhouse, picnic table and 14-foot skiff. Spare life jackets are often stocked at the shelter.

Again brown and black bears inhabit the area and Reynolds’ guidebook offers constant reminders on how to avoid dangerous encounters.

For all trails this includes, with respect as well for the environment, bears and future visitors, a rule to pack out everything you pack into the backcountry. Anything left behind, especially food scraps and garbage, attracts bears. Bears that associate humans and campsites with food become a problem and often must be euthanized.  

Visitors are urged to respect wildlife and never feed wild animals.