Family Adventures

Eve Garry on Snowbird's Cirque Trail

The Best Hikes In Salt Lake City’s Wasatch Mountains

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It’s no secret that Salt Lake City offers some of the best and most-accessible hiking of any city in the U.S. Unfortunately, the digital overload from over a million people living next door to the famous Wasatch Mountains spawns “too much information:” Every conceivable route has been posted in countless places, making it easy to end up at the most viral option and hard to figure out which hikes will give you some solitude after a tough day at work, provide the type of challenge that you find worth training for, or definitely make your visiting family or first-time-hiker friend come back for more. 

With this assortment of classics and less-well-known gems, I hope to make that decision easier—by providing a manageable number of hikes with a broad range of difficulty levels, popularity, and scenery. I’m confident that anyone will find a hike they’ll love on this list (and probably several).

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Hikers descending off Mount Bláhnúkur, above Landmannalaugar, Iceland.

Trekking Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls Trails—A Photo Gallery

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By Michael Lanza

We followed the trail upward through innumerable, short switchbacks to the summit of a battleship-gray, treeless, steep-sided peak called Bláhnúkur in the remote Fjallabak Nature Reserve of Iceland’s Central Highlands, one of the most active geothermal areas on Earth. At the summit, we turned a slow 360, gaping at a mind-boggling, kaleidoscopic landscape painted in more colors than there likely were species of plant life—none of it more than knee-high—on the volcanic slopes surrounding us. An old, hardened lava flow poured down one mountainside in a jumbled train wreck of razor-sharp black rhyolite. Barren peaks and ridges wearing the white splotches of July snowfields reached to every horizon.

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Hikers overlooking Iceland's second-tallest waterfall,, Glymur, at the head of the fjord Hvalfjörður.

9 Great Hikes and Walks Along Iceland’s Ring Road

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By Michael Lanza

Driving Iceland’s Highway 1, or Ring Road, in the country’s southeast on the kind of sunny day that’s almost as rare here as the sensation of boredom, we reached the seacoast—and the landscape and seascape suddenly seemed to exceed the capacity of our vision and minds to take it all in. The two-lane highway snaked along this island nation’s ragged edge, weaving in and out of one fjord after another, each as impossible to comprehend in its magnificence as it was to pronounce. The ocean crashed up against starkly barren yet wildly colorful mountains as we crossed bridges over intricately braided rivers, gazing up valleys where multiple, cracked glaciers tumbled nearly to sea level.

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Larch trees glowing with fall color, reflected in Rainbow Lake in the North Cascades National Park Complex.

15 Awesome Fall Backpacking Trips

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By Michael Lanza

The imminent end of summer always feels a little melancholy. After all, it marks the close of the prime season for getting into the mountains. But it also signals the beginning of a time of year when many mountain ranges become less crowded just as they’re hitting a sweet zone in terms of temperatures, the lack of bugs, and foliage color. Autumn also stands out as an ideal season for many Southwest hikes, with moderate temperatures and even some stunning color.

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Baron Lake, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

Mountain Lakes of Idaho’s Sawtooths—A Photo Gallery

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By Michael Lanza

I may be risking an impassioned debate here, but I think there are very few mountain ranges in America with as many drop-dead, gorgeous high mountain lakes as Idaho’s Sawtooths. Yes, a few mountain ranges clearly outnumber the Sawtooths in that department, like the High Sierra, Cascades, and Wind River Range. But I believe the Sawtooths deserve similar recognition, and I’ve seen many of those watery jewels over more than 20 years of wandering around Idaho’s best-known hills. This gallery of photos of many of them may persuade you to agree with me—and to see them for yourself.

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