Beauty—real, untrammeled, backcountry beauty—is right out your back door, no matter where you live. But in combing through the best of the best, one hike demonstrates that more than the rest. Because here on the path to Winchester Mountain, no matter where you look—up: glaciers! down: blueberries! left: tarns! right: orchids!—proves our theory that this 1.8-mile hike delivers the most skewed effort-to-reward ratio in the country.

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