The MSR Zoic 2 backpacking tent in Idaho's Sawtooth Mountains.

Review: MSR Zoic 2 Backpacking Tent

by

Backpacking Tent
MSR Zoic 2
$350, 4 lbs. 6 oz.
Moosejaw.com

Everyone wants ultralight backpacking gear—but not everyone wants to live with the sacrifices inherent to ultralight gear. While few pieces of gear can produce as much reduction in the weight of your gear kit as switching from a standard to an ultralight tent, you’ll also notice the tradeoffs in a tent more than with almost any other ultralight gear. With MSR’s Zoic 2, backpackers get the comfort of a tent with good space, along with superior ventilation and good stability, weather performance, and durability.

Read on

A hiker at Trail Crest on the John Muir Trail on Mount Whitney in Sequoia National Park.

Video: Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail

by

By Michael Lanza

Will 2019 be the year that you hike the John Muir Trail? While next summer may seem very far off, an ambitious undertaking like a thru-hike of “America’s most beautiful trail”—more than 220 miles and anywhere from under two weeks to over three weeks—requires significant advance planning, and the time period for applying for a permit for it is coming up soon. Take your first step on that adventure right now by watching this video from my thru-hike of the JMT, and then click the link below to my story about that great trip, with my tips on how to do it right. Plus, read on to see how I can give you the best expert advice you’ll find to planning a JMT thru-hike.

Read on

Ski touring the Elkhorn Loop, Boise National Forest, Idaho.

New Year Resolution: Getting Unplugged

by

By Michael Lanza

Right before New Year’s Day, for the tenth year of the past 12, my family and another did something we have eagerly anticipated annually for almost as long as my children’s memory reaches backward. It involved skis, backpacks, and spending four days at a yurt tucked away in snow-covered mountains a few miles from the nearest, very lonely, winding, two-lane road. But the details matter only inasmuch as they steer us toward our ultimate goal: We really go there to get completely unplugged.

We do that mostly for ourselves, of course. But I think we need this notion of disconnecting to catch on more widely, to save us all from ourselves.

Read on

A backpacker at a waterfall on the Deer Creek Trail in the Grand Canyon.

Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Thunder River-Deer Creek Loop

by

By Michael Lanza

The heat presses in from all sides as we hike down the Bill Hall Trail off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The overhead sun feels as if it has expanded to a supernova threatening to engulf the planet. The rocks radiate waves of heat up at us; I wonder if they might actually reach egg-frying temperature today. Even the air seems to be rising to a boil like a vast kettle on a stove. We hike cautiously over broken stones that slide underfoot, leaning out onto our trekking poles for the two- and three-foot ledge drops on this path—which appears better suited to bighorn sheep than to bipedal primates hauling backpacks weighed down with gear, food, and a surplus of a rare element out here: water.

Read on

Are You Pissed Yet? 5 Things You Can Do For Our Planet Now

by

Dawn at Quiet Lake in Idaho's Cecil D. Andrus-White Clouds Wilderness, created in 2015.
Dawn at Quiet Lake in Idaho’s Cecil D. Andrus-White Clouds Wilderness, created in 2015.

By Michael Lanza

How’s it feel to be a conservationist in America today? Does it feel like people who want the government to protect the environment—which is a large majority of Americans—suddenly find themselves losing a war that it seemed we had already won?

These are strange and frustrating times for conservation. We have to wonder: How could so many Americans believe that climate science is bogus—or even a “hoax,” as a certain world leader calls it? How could so many of our countrymen and women applaud as the current White House takes an axe to the agency created four decades ago to protect the very environment we live in? Or buy into the corrupt notion that ceding control of our prized public lands to private interests could, in any way, be in our public interest?

Read on