America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza Dark clouds loom low overhead, thunder periodically rents the air, and strong winds blow steadily as hurried rain showers hit us intermittently in bursts that last several minutes between equally brief dry spells. We’re hiking north on our first afternoon backpacking the Ruby Crest Trail through northeastern Nevada’s Ruby Mountains, and passing thunderstorms are making the first …
Backpack Osprey Archeon 70 and Archeon 65 $340, 68L/4,150 c.i., 5 lbs. 8 oz. (men’s S/M) Sizes: men’s S/M and L/XL, women’s XS/S and M/L backcountry.com Large backpacks may seem to some backpackers like the outdoor industry’s Ford Edsel—reflecting a style from a bygone era—and the clean, old-school, utilitarian look of Osprey’s Archeon series perhaps engenders that reaction. But don’t …
Backpacking Tent
MSR Hubba Hubba NX 2-Person
$550, 3 lbs. 8 oz.
backcountry.com
In exposed, windy campsites on backpacking trips in Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness, Nevada’s Ruby Mountains, and Hells Canyon, the Hubba Hubba NX 2-person tent not only passed that test of its sturdiness, it displayed the subtle reasons why it’s so comfortably livable for a midweight, three-season, freestanding shelter.
By Michael Lanza “Bear!” Todd calls this out to me and points toward a meadow maybe 200 yards off—but I glance up a moment too late and the black bear has already disappeared into the dense forest. “It was a big one,” Todd says. We’re hiking along the crest of the Cowlitz Divide on the southeast side of Mount Rainier …
By Michael Lanza
We set out at a brisk pace from the Telescope Peak Trailhead, at just over 8,100 feet in Death Valley National Park, for a good reason: It’s 29° F at just after 7 a.m. on this Saturday in the third week of May. That’s exactly 80 degrees colder than the big digital thermometer at the park’s Furnace Creek visitor center read when we arrived here four days ago. But the fifth-largest U.S. national park—and the biggest one outside Alaska—is nothing if not a place of extremes, both of temperature and physical relief. Today, besides notching the coldest temp we’ll see over four days of hiking in Death Valley, we intend to tag another of its extremes: the highest summit in Death Valley National Park, 11,049-foot Telescope Peak.