Hiking

Mark Fenton on the Osgood Ridge Trail, Presidential Range, N.H.

The Best Kind of Insanity: Long Dayhikes in the White Mountains

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By Michael Lanza

We started up the Daniel Webster Trail by the light of headlamps at a time of day that guaranteed we’d have the mountain to ourselves for hours: 3:30 a.m. My head had that squeezed, hungover feeling from not enough sleep; the four hours we grabbed on the floor of my friend Mark’s van the night before fell at least three hours short of rejuvenating. But we didn’t have the luxury of sleeping in. We were embarking on a one-day, 20-mile “Death March” across New Hampshire’s Presidential Range. And making our objective all the more lunatic, we had a bus to catch that afternoon—with nine summits between us and that bus stop.

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Tundra in autumn, Denali National Park, Alaska.

Photographing All 59 National Parks: 5 Top Tips From QT Luong

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By Michael Lanza

The number of people who can say they’ve visited all 59 of America’s national parks comprise a fairly small club. Only one person has made large-format photographs in all of them. In the 400 vividly sharp images in his beautiful and inspiring, coffee-table book Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America’s National Parks, photographer QT Luong distills the results of more than 20 years and 300 trips hiking, paddling, diving, skiing, snowshoeing, and climbing in every park, every type of environment, every season, and at all times of day and night.

Now, in an interview with The Big Outside, Luong talks about this project and offers his top five tips for shooting outdoors, for photographers from amateurs to pros.

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View from Lookout Point, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone National Park.

Great Trip: The First National Park, Yellowstone

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By Michael Lanza

On Sept. 20, 1869, Charles W. Cook, the leader of an expedition exploring the Yellowstone area, came upon the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River for the first time. He wrote afterward in his journal: “I was riding ahead, the two pack animals following… I remembered seeing what appeared to be an opening in the forest ahead, which I presumed to be a park, or open country. While my attention was attracted by the pack animals, which had stopped to eat grass, my saddle horse suddenly stopped. I turned and looked forward from the brink of the great canyon, at a point just across from what is now called Inspiration Point. I sat there in amazement, while my companions came up, and after that, it seemed to me that it was five minutes before anyone spoke.”

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Trekkers en route to the Thorung-La pass on the Annapurna Circuit, Nepal.

Ask Me: How Do We Flatlanders Train For High Altitudes?

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Hi Michael,

I hope this finds you well! At the end of the year I am hoping to join my friends on an adventure to Argentina to climb Aconcagua. We are not taking the technical routes, so no ropes or glacier travel. My question is this: what is the best way to train for high altitude? I live at sea level in Portland, Maine, so access to high peaks is not really an option.

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