Backpacking

A backpacker enjoying the view from Maze Overlook in the Maze District, Canyonlands National Park.

Backpacking the Maze in Canyonlands—A Photo Gallery

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By Michael Lanza

With our first steps on the descent from Maze Overlook into the labyrinth of mostly dry desert canyons that comprise one of the greatest geological oddities in the National Park System—the Maze in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park—we had to remove and pass our backpacks over a ledge drop of several feet. But that was nothing compared to what lay ahead. Following a wildly circuitous trail marked by cairns but otherwise unobvious and not visible on the slickrock, we passed below redrock cliffs and towers, traversed the sloping rims of giant bowls of rippled stone, and several more times passed our packs to scramble through tight crevices and downclimb a ladder of shallow footsteps chiseled into a sandstone cliff face.

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A young girl hiking in Sequoia National Park.

12 Wonderful National Park Adventures to Take With Kids

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By Michael Lanza

America’s 63 national parks preserve over 52 million acres of uniquely beautiful and genuinely awe-inspiring places in nature, and the payoff for our country’s foresight in protecting them is a lifetime’s worth of unforgettable experiences—many of them entirely feasible, safe, and really fun for families with kids of all ages. Best of all, you’ll find that sharing these adventures will create your best times together as a family, as they have for mine.

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David Ports backpacking the Tonto Trail west of Horn Creek in Grand Canyon National Park.

Backpacking the Grand Canyon: Tonto West to Boucher Trail

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By Michael Lanza

A thin, hazy overcast keeps the sun from frying my longtime friend and adventure partner David Ports and me as we descend the Grand Canyon’s South Kaibab Trail—a trail I’ve now hiked more times than I can immediately recall. And yet, watching how the marching, broken clouds cause the light to shift across the broad expanse of canyon visible to us, seeming to repaint and reshape the landscape every few minutes, it still feels fresh and thrilling to me.

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A backpacker hiking the Dawson Pass Trail in Glacier National Park.

Backpacking Glacier National Park—a Photo Gallery

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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.

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A backpacker descending toward Granite Creek on the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park.

Backpacking Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail—A Photo Gallery

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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.

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