The Trailhead
A National Park Ranger Mystery
National Park Mystery298 pagesPublished 1 September 2026Kindle, paperback & hardcoverNational Park Mystery
The park calls it a misadventure. The knot says otherwise.
A body at the trailhead in Wilder Range National Park reads, at first, like the mountains doing what mountains do. Ranger El has walked this boundary long enough to know how the ground lies and how it tells the truth, and the rigging on the dead man is wrong in a way no accident explains.
What she finds instead is a closed stretch of backcountry, an outfitter with a reason to steer hikers elsewhere, a trail register with the wrong names in it, and people who were paid to keep the public away from a piece of ground nobody is supposed to want. When her own history is dug up and used against her, she loses the badge and keeps going anyway.
The first in The Wilder Range Mysteries, for readers who like their crime novels with weather, terrain and a professional who is very good at her job.
The series
The Wilder Range Mysteries
- Book 1The TrailheadYou are here
About the author
Marisol Vega
The Tracker of Wilder Range
Marisol Vega spent eleven seasons as a National Park Service interpretive and backcountry ranger — Big Bend, then the Colorado high country — which means she has carried a radio that didn't reach, followed a blood trail that turned out to be a gut-shot elk, and helped recover more than one hiker who trusted a map over the weather. She writes the parks from the inside of the flat hat.
More about Marisol Vega