America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
Ready for your first backpacking trip in one of America’s greatest national parks for backpackers? Having backpacked several times all over Yosemite, my advice for a first-time backpacker who wants to hit highlights like Yosemite Valley, the Mist Trail, and Half Dome is nearly identical to the itinerary I followed on my first trip more than three decades ago—but modified because now I know better.
By Michael Lanza
At a bit over 148,000 acres, Zion comes nowhere near America’s largest national parks in sheer immensity. Zion could fit inside Yosemite National Park five times, inside the Everglades 10 times, inside Yellowstone 15 times, and inside our largest park, Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias, 89 times. But if you’re a hiker, Zion harbors, mile for mile, some of the most breathtaking scenery to be found on any trails in the National Park System.
By Michael Lanza
Thrilling, scenic, and enormously popular, an impressive feat of trail building, an intimidating and exposed scramble—these are some of the descriptions commonly given to Angels Landing in Zion National Park, all of them accurate. It also has a reputation as one of the scariest and most dangerous hikes in the National Park System—a claim that would seem somewhat overblown just by virtue of the fact that innumerable thousands of people, including many novice hikers, safely venture up and down it every year. For those willing to brave the exposure, the 5,790-foot summit offers arguably the best view of Zion Canyon.
Constructed nearly a century ago and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, now one of the classic dayhikes in America and certainly one of “The Best Hikes in Utah’s National Parks“ and “The 25 Best National Park Dayhikes,” Angels Landing is safe for anyone exercising reasonable caution and should be in the sights of every avid hiker. This story explains what you need to know about it.
By Michael Lanza
If you’re super fit and strong, hike with a pack of any weight 50 or more days a year, and have never known any sort of injury or ache in your body, then don’t bother reading this article. But for everyone else, knowing how to find the right pack for backpacking and other outdoor activities—and for your body—will make a world of difference in your enjoyment when carrying that pack for hours a day on a trail or up and down a mountain. This article will lead you through five steps to accomplish exactly that—helping to ensure that you spend your gear money smartly.
By Michael Lanza
Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon national parks loom large on the radar screens of most backpackers. But savvy Sierra aficionados know that the two major wilderness areas that sprawl over nearly 900,000 acres along more than 100 miles of the High Sierra between those parks, the John Muir and Ansel Adams wildernesses, harbor just as rich a cache of soaring, jagged peaks and shimmering alpine lakes—not to mention sections of the John Muir Trail and Pacific Crest Trail that enable almost endless possibilities for multi-day hikes, short and long. And while competition is stiff for permits to backpack in the John Muir and Ansel Adams wildernesses, those permits are not nearly as hard to draw as permits for the most popular trips in Yosemite or Sequoia-Kings Canyon or to thru-hike the John Muir Trail.