While most pro pickleball players have side hobbies like yoga, reading, cooking, or travel, Anna Bright's favorite downtime activity is hiking. 

Bright is no ordinary hiker who goes out into the mountains for a few hours and makes it home before sunset.

She enjoys multi-day excursions in the wilderness. 

“I’ve hiked over 2,700 miles,” confirmed Bright. “I’m sure there’s other pros on tour who’ve done more hikes than me, but definitely no other pro has more miles on their legs than me.” 

The 25-year-old has traveled across the country for hikes, from the Florida Everglades to the mountains in Zion National Park.

So what is her recommendation for a hike that people should do at least once? 

“Everyone should go to the Grand Canyon. I think it’s really amazing. I recommend what Hayden [Patriquin] and I did. We hiked rim to rim in one day and it was a really great experience,” said Bright. “It’s really special to be in places where there’s no light pollution and it’s so amazing to see all the stars.” 

The St. Louis Shock star shared that she actually doesn’t come from a particularly outdoorsy family. In fact, she had no experience at all in this department. Hiking was a completely new hobby she found in adulthood that felt really out of the norm for her. 

“During COVID, a lot of people had a lot of time to reflect and I decided that I wanted to do something beyond the typical mold. I felt like my whole life, the next step had been pretty obvious. You finish high school, you go to college, you get a job. But for me, I felt like I had been on easy mode because of tennis,” explained Bright. “Everything had been easy and I wanted to do something to break the mold and really challenge myself, but also prove to myself that I could do something hard.”

True to form, she rose to the challenge.

“For my first hike ever, my best friend, Sophia, and I went backpacking in the Smoky Mountains,” recalled Bright. “We did a four-day, 22-mile trip. We thought we were so hardcore going six or seven miles a day. After that, I did a 50K trail run in Zion.”

Bright has managed to conquer trailheads aplenty between traveling and competing in tournaments.

But hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was always a primary objective.

“I had to prove to myself that I could do the Pacific Crest Trail. I needed to be able to endure a little misery. In Florida, there’s a 62-mile trail that’s flat, so it’s not too hard. But I did it in December and I walked through 42 miles of water. It was so miserable,” she explained. “But, I did it. It was tough, and I actually finished on Christmas Day. I was so emotionally drained. I was vegan at the time and my little sister had finished all my vegan butter when I got home and I cried about it. That’s how emotionally drained I was. But once I did that, I knew I could do the PCT.” 

Bright ultimately hiked the Pacific Crest Trail completely solo in 2021.

And it made a huge impact on her life moving forward.

“The Pacific Crest Trail was definitely my favorite and most transformative experience. It’s something I’ll never forget,” she said. “It was a good time, and it feels like a different life and a different person who did that.” 

Bright even has a tattoo on her thigh to commemorate the hike – a small tree that’s the sign for the trailhead.

She hopes to visit Spain and hike Camino de Santiago to check another one off her bucket list.

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