The hook
Robert Louis Stevenson spent his honeymoon squatting in an abandoned mine bunkhouse on this mountain above Calistoga — and the 4,343-foot summit he climbed still gives, on the right day, a view from the Pacific to Mount Shasta.
01Why it's worth it
In 1880 a broke, tubercular Stevenson and his new wife camped for two months in a derelict three-story bunkhouse at the played-out "Silverado" mine on Mount St. Helena's shoulder — cloth for windows, water hauled by hand, rattlesnakes for neighbors — and he turned it into The Silverado Squatters, the memoir that first put Napa Valley on the literary map (and whose scenery, some argue, fed Treasure Island). The state park now protects the mountain, with a monument where the bunkhouse stood on the way up. The payoff is the climb: a 10-mile out-and-back (much of it old fire road) to the highest summit ringing the wine country, where on a clear post-storm day the view reaches the Sierra crest, Mount Shasta and Lassen to the north, and the Pacific to the west — one of the widest panoramas in Northern California. It's the antidote to a wine-tasting day: earn the view, skip the buzz.
02How to experience it
Trailhead at the Highway 29 summit between Calistoga and Middletown (roadside lots, no fee). The trail climbs past the Stevenson monument to the peak; it's long, exposed, and hot in summer — go on a cool clear day and carry real water. Pairs with Calistoga's geyser and mud baths for the recovery afterward.