Five Great National Park Adventures

Hearing the thunderous roar and walking through the rain of mist coming from some of North America’s biggest and most iconic waterfalls in Yosemite Valley. Seeing mountain goats, bighorn sheep, and one (fortunately unaggressive) sow grizzly bear with cubs in Glacier National Park—as well as incredible mountain scenery almost every step of the way. Backpacking through a landscape of multi-colored canyon walls and wildly sculpted sandstone monoliths in Zion National Park. Paddling a sea kayak past seals in Alaska’s Glacier Bay, while watching a mile-wide glacier with a snout 200 feet tall explosively calve bus-size chunks of itself into the sea. And backpacking through vast fields of wildflowers below jagged peaks on one of the country’s premier multi-day hikes, the Teton Crest Trail. Continue reading →

New Year Inspiration: My Top 10 Adventure Trips

I often get asked, “What’s your favorite trip?” And I can’t answer that one. To pick just one from all the amazing adventures I’ve had the good fortune to take feels impossible to me. But I tried really hard and pared the list down to 10 all-time favorites (so far).

So as you’re thinking about what great adventures to take in 2013, consider the following admittedly subjective personal picks, chosen from scores of backpacking, dayhiking, paddling, trekking, and other trips I’ve taken, domestically and internationally, over the past couple of decades as an outdoor writer. Continue reading →

Walking Familiar Ground: Reliving old memories and making new ones on the Teton Crest Trail

The moose cow and her calf block the trail, staring back at us with expressions that I swear look like confusion over what to do. So the feeling is mutual. They were coming down, we were going up, and now none of us are moving. With steep, rocky, wooded terrain on either side, we backpack-carrying humans aren’t interested in an off-trail detour. The moose don’t seem enthusiastic about that option at the moment, either.

We appear to be at a standoff. Continue reading →

American Classic: The Teton Crest Trail

That first full day was a hard one.

We had hiked less than an hour into the backcountry of Grand Teton National Park the night before, camping in the dense forest surrounding Phelps Lake, where we saw mule deer grazing at dusk and the wind howled through the dark night. In the morning, probably tired from the long previous day of traveling to Jackson, we got a slow start under packs heavy with too much old, oversize gear. The sun starts baking the open lower section of the Death Canyon Trail by mid-morning; so our gorgeous hike beneath soaring granite cliffs and along a roaring cascade quickly also became a hot, dusty climb. Continue reading →