Backpacking

A teenage girl hiking down off the Fenetre d’Arpette, a high pass in Switzerland on an alternate route of the Tour du Mont Blanc.

The 10 Best Family Outdoor Adventure Trips

by

By Michael Lanza

As a parent of two young adults who’s taken them outdoors since before they can remember, I’ll share with you the biggest and in some ways most surprising lesson I’ve learned from these trips: Our outdoor adventures have been the best times we’ve had together as a family—and not just because the places are so special. The greatest benefit of these trips is that they have given us innumerable days with only each other and nature for entertainment—no electronic devices or other distractions that construct virtual walls within families in everyday life.

For my family, our experiences together outdoors make up most of our richest and favorite memories. They have brought us closer together.

Read on

A backpacker on the Teton Crest Trail in Grand Teton National Park.

How to Get a Permit to Backpack the Teton Crest Trail

by

By Michael Lanza

For backpackers, the Teton Crest Trail really delivers it all: beautiful lakes, creeks, and waterfalls, high passes with sweeping vistas, endless meadows of vibrant wildflowers, a good chance of seeing wildlife like elk and moose, some of the best campsites you will ever pitch a tent in, and mind-boggling scenery just about every step of the way. And it’s a relatively beginner-friendly trip of 40 miles or less, which most people can hike in four to five days.

No wonder it’s so enormously popular—and there’s so much competition for backcountry permits.

Read on

A backpacker on the Teton Crest Trail in Grand Teton National Park.

5 Reasons You Must Backpack the Teton Crest Trail

by

By Michael Lanza

On my first backpacking trip on the Teton Crest Trail in Grand Teton National Park, camped on Death Canyon Shelf, a broad, boulder-strewn and wildflower-carpeted bench at 9,500 feet, I awoke to the sound of heavy clomping outside my tent. I unzipped the tent door to investigate—and saw a huge bull elk standing just outside my nylon walls.

Read on

A backcountry skier in Idaho's Boise Mountains.

12 Pro Tips For Staying Warm Outdoors in Winter

by

By Michael Lanza

Staying warm while skiing or riding at resorts or in the backcountry, Nordic skiing, snowshoeing, hiking, or running in winter is a constant challenge: We sweat, our clothes get damp, and then we have periods of reduced exertion like riding a ski lift or walking or running downhill, when we cool down. But as humans have known for thousands of years, it’s a matter of smartly managing and insulating our body’s furnace (and today we have much better technical clothing than animal skins).

Read on

Backpackers on the Piegan Pass Trail in Glacier National Park.

5 Reasons You Must Backpack in Glacier National Park

by

By Michael Lanza

Create a list of the attributes that constitute a great backpacking trip and the chances are very high that you will describe Glacier National Park. There’s the incomparable landscape, where the remnants of glaciers hang off craggy mountains, vertiginous cliffs tower above deeply green valleys carved in the classic U shape by ancient rivers of ice, and hundreds of mountain lakes reflect it all. And encounters with wildlife like bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, moose, and, yes, grizzly and black bears: Few places in the continental United States harbor such a breadth of megafauna.

Sprawling over a million acres in Montana’s Northern Rockies, most of it wilderness, Glacier exudes a sense of wildness and beauty that no longer exists in most of the country.

Read on