America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
It’s a situation all backpackers eventually encounter, no matter how hard you try to avoid it: You reach a backcountry campsite in a steady rain and must try to pitch your tent without soaking the interior. How successfully you accomplish that will greatly affect how warm and dry you remain that night—and probably how well-rested and good you feel the next morning. Follow these tips to keep your backpacking shelter and gear dry in that scenario.
By Michael Lanza
I may be risking an impassioned debate here, but I think there are very few mountain ranges in America with as many drop-dead, gorgeous high mountain lakes as Idaho’s Sawtooths. Yes, a few mountain ranges clearly outnumber the Sawtooths in that department, like the High Sierra, Cascades, and Wind River Range. But I believe the Sawtooths deserve similar recognition, and I’ve seen many of those watery jewels over more than 20 years of wandering around Idaho’s best-known hills. This gallery of photos of many of them may persuade you to agree with me—and to see them for yourself.
Daypack
Patagonia Terravia 28L
$169, 28L/1,770 c.i., 1 lb. 10 oz./737.1g (medium)
Sizes: unisex S-L
backcountry.com
On dayhikes from Capitol Reef National Park to bagging Borah Peak, Idaho’s highest, Patagonia’s Terravia 28L stood out for having the capacity for longer outings, along with good access and durability, while weighing just over 1.5 pounds—a level of capacity and versatility not often seen at that weight.
By Michael Lanza
Do you wonder how some people come back from national parks and other outdoor trips with fantastic photos? Would you like to take the kind of pictures that make people ooh and aah? Improving your photos may not be as complicated as you think. The following tips on outdoor and landscape photography, which I’ve learned as a trained professional and refined over more than three decades of shooting the finest scenery in America and the world, will help you take home better photos whether you’re a beginner or an experienced photographer.
By Michael Lanza
We followed the Doubletop Mountain Trail as it rolled over open plateau country above 10,000 feet in the Wind River Range, crossing one gorgeous lake basin after another where wildflowers still carpeted the ground in the week before Labor Day. In the distance, peaks along the Continental Divide soared to over 13,000 feet, jabbing at the underbellies of clouds. Turning onto the Highline Trail, we reached an unnamed tarn in late afternoon and walked beyond it to a flat, broad bench overlooking a meadow and lake below a pair of huge towers, 12,119-foot Sky Pilot Peak and 12,224-foot Mount Oeneis. It was a serendipitous find to make our home for the night.
But the real magic arrived the next morning, when nature served up a perfect stew of conditions—calm air, dappled light, still water, and a stunning backdrop—to create a scene that validates carrying all the weight on your back for days (and makes for a pretty good photo, above).