Backpacking

Trekkers hiking the Milford Track to Mintauro Hut, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand.

Learning to—Love?—the Rain on New Zealand’s Milford Track

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By Michael Lanza

As if by some celestial act of deception, our first day on New Zealand’s Milford Track is, by far, the easiest: We hike just three nearly flat miles—five kilometers—following the track along the rain-fattened and fast-moving Clinton River. And the pleasant temperature and warm sunshine pouring onto us from partly cloudy skies almost lulls us into illusions of such relatively ideal (for this place) weather persisting throughout our four days on the Milford.

But we’re not fooled. We’ve seen the forecast and already received other warning signals of what awaits us. And the truth is, even those data points will not, could not paint a complete picture of just how wet it would get out here over the next few days.

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Backpackers hiking the West Fork Trail above the West Fork Rock Creek toward Sundance Pass in the Beartooth Mountains, Montana.

Backpacking the High and Mighty Beartooth Mountains

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By Michael Lanza

“Big bull moose,” David calls to us over his shoulder, “just ahead of us.” Mark and I scan the forest, but we don’t catch even a glimpse of the moose—or for that matter, see David through the dense trees and brush, although he’s not more than 20 feet ahead of us. Then David, too, loses sight of the moose. Just a few hours into our first day backpacking in Montana’s Beartooth Mountains and moments after we started hiking off-trail, we’ve had our first close wildlife encounter—and two-thirds of us missed it.

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A backpacker hiking west from Porcupine Pass on the Uinta Highline Trail, High Uintas Wilderness, Utah.

17 Photos From 2024 That Will Inspire Your Next Adventure

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By Michael Lanza

How was your 2024? I hope you got outdoors as much as possible with the people you care about—and you enjoyed adventures that inspired you. I’m sharing in this story photos from several backpacking and hiking trips I took this year, from the Grand Canyon in April and southern Utah in May to the Tetons and Montana’s Beartooths in August, Colorado’s San Juans in September, northern Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness in early October—and culminating with three classic Great Walks and dayhiking in New Zealand in late November and December.

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A backcountry skier in Idaho's Boise Mountains.

The Best Clothing Layers for Winter in the Backcountry

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By Michael Lanza

There’s one thing we can confidently say about the clothing layers we use in winter: We get our money’s worth out of them. While a rain shell or puffy jacket may rarely come out of our pack on a summer hike or climb, we almost invariably wear every article of clothing we carry when Nordic, downhill, or backcountry skiing, snowshoeing, snowboarding, trail running, or climbing in winter. That’s money spent wisely to make us more comfortable and safer.

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A backpacker hiking west from Porcupine Pass on the Uinta Highline Trail, High Uintas Wilderness, Utah.

Backpacking—and Sandbagging—Utah’s Uinta Highline Trail

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By Michael Lanza

The strongest signal that late afternoon has begun its inexorably precipitous October slide into a freezing evening comes as my son, Nate, and I step from almost-warm sunshine into the deep shade of a peak whose shadow tops out at over 13,000 feet in eastern Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness. The wind cranks up in volume as we continue upward, wearing shell jackets with hoods up, wool hats, and gloves while carrying full backpacks uphill at a lung-busting elevation—and still feeling just marginally warm enough.

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