America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
If you have ever backpacked in Glacier National Park, you know you want to return. If you haven’t yet, then isn’t it time? One of America’s flagship national parks, it’s a must-see destination for backpackers because of the eye-popping scenery, remoteness, and an extremely rare variety of megafauna—including mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, moose, and black and grizzly bears—as the photo gallery below from my numerous trips in Glacier shows.
Trekking Poles
Leki Makalu FX Carbon Poles
$230, 1 lb. 1.9 oz./508g (per pair)
One size, adjustable 110-130cm/43.3-51.2 ins.
backcountry.com
What qualities are you looking for in trekking poles? How about good adjustability, packability, durability, comfort, reliability, and especially versatility? Those adjectives all describe the Leki Makalu FX Carbon folding poles—which I increasingly found myself reaching for when choosing poles for backpacking trips in places as rugged as the Wind River Range, High Sierra, Canadian Rockies, High Uintas, and more. In fact, I can point to just one drawback to them—although in this case, I question whether it can even be called that.
By Michael Lanza
On the first afternoon of a five-day, late-summer backpacking trip covering much of the 93-mile Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier, two friends and I were making a long ascent through meadows bursting with lupine when we spotted two mountain goats staring at us from rocks partly hidden by bushes—and within seconds, we counted nine goats. Not much later, the morning fog finally lifted, revealing Mount Rainier in all its glory, a vast mountainside of ice and snow rising nearly 8,000 feet above us. Crossing endless wildflower meadows in warm sunshine, a light breeze, and just about perfect hiking temperatures, we reached Panhandle Gap at 6,750 feet—the highest point on the Wonderland—with its expansive view of The Mountain. Below us, at least 18 mountain goats grazed in a flat meadow carpeted in green grass.
And that anecdote encapsulates scenes that occurred daily on the Wonderland Trail.
By Michael Lanza
I’m a hiking snob—I admit it. I want all of the hiking trips I take to feature five-star scenery. And for years, I’ve done most of my dayhiking and backpacking in the American West, with its vast wildernesses and infinite vistas, so I’m a little spoiled. But a weeklong trip to the mountains of western North Carolina upended my snobbery. Exploring the highest peaks east of the Mississippi, I discovered one of America’s richest stashes of stunning waterfalls and most biologically diverse forests, enough ruggedness to inspire a sense of climbing “real” mountains—and some pretty darn big vistas, too.
By Michael Lanza
Over more than three decades of backpacking adventures throughout America’s West, I’ve been fortunate to explore deeply into our most cherished national parks, wilderness areas, and protected backcountry. All of them are special. But some places rise above the rest, inspiring a sense of awe that can motivate us to reorder our priorities and rearrange our lives—and they have that effect on us every time we return to them. This story spotlights those special places in the West and many trips that you can take in them.