The best running trails in Juneau City and Borough

Mendenhall Waterfall, also known as "Nugget Falls," is located on beautiful Mendenhall Lake. From there, you also have a good view of the Mendenhall Glacier. You can easily get to the starting point from Juneau by bus or car. However, Juneau itself can only be reached by plane or boat.

A less beaten path than the eastern one where the visitors center is located

Your reward for reaching to the end of the Perseverance Trail is a chance to explore the old mining ruins in Silverbow Basin — all that's left of what amounted to a major industrial site in the early 1900s. Use great caution: The ruins are unmaintained and unstable and (hopefully) needless to say, you should do any off-trail exploring at a walk.

You can probably guess how Gold Creek got its name. But the history behind Ebner Falls — this picturesque waterfall in Gold Creek, which you can see from an overlook on the trail — is a little more obscure. It may have been named for one of the early miners in this area. You'll also find one of the more precarious sections of trail here, as it narrows to a footpath to skirt around a cliff.

Compared to the crowds you'll usually find near the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, this is a relatively quiet loop through the temperate rainforest. Expect runnable but semi-technical footpath, interspersed with tree roots and occasional planks/boardwalks and stairs that can be slippery when wet. As always when running in Alaska, be alert to the possibility of unexpected wildlife encounters.

The maintained section of this trail ends after two miles, at a rocky outcrop that offers fine overlooks of Mendenhall Glacier from the west side and makes a logical turnaround point. There are some social (unmaintained) trails that continue farther, but the terrain becomes less and less suitable for running. It's so common for off-trail explorers here to need rescues, the Forest Service has issued official warnings about it. Those warnings are actually for hikers — so you can imagine how rough and dangerous the same terrain would be to run through. Read more here: fs.usda.gov/recarea/tongass/recreation/hiking/recarea/?recid=78817&actid=50 As always, you should be alert to the possibility of surprise wildlife encounters too.

In a landscape dominated by mountains that meet the water, this is one of the very few trails you'll find that is mostly flat, offering a chance to log lots of training miles without a lot of elevation gain. You can even run a full marathon distance here, or whatever portion of it you like. Although you'll spend most of your time in old-growth rainforest, you'll also catch some really pretty views, especially of downtown Juneau on the other side of Gastineau Channel. As always, be alert to the possibility of unexpected wildlife encounters in this old-growth rainforest.

The Dan Moller public use cabin, situated in a pretty alpine cirque, makes a logical turnaround point for your run. Hikers sometimes continue off-trail to gain the ridge above you, but that's really not runnable terrain.