Hiking

A rock climber hiking in the Wonderland of Rocks, Joshua Tree National Park.

Facing the Biggest Challenge: Friendship and Climbing in Joshua Tree

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By Michael Lanza

A dry, invisible waterfall of heat pours from the desert sky as we follow a footpath through the Wonderland of Rocks, a vast archipelago of granite monoliths and spires floating in an ocean of sand in the backcountry of southern California’s Joshua Tree National Park. My friend David and I are in search of one particular crack in one specific stone skyscraper, which feels a little like picking through hundreds of haystacks scattered across a farm in pursuit of one needle.

We high-step through gardens of prickly-pear cacti and other vegetation that has evolved to put a hurt on you for the easy mistake of brushing against it. I pause frequently to consult photos of some of these granite monoliths in my guidebook to help pinpoint our location. I also contemplate—as seems to happen whenever I head out rock climbing for the first time in a while—the complicated human relationship with fear. There’s the natural anxiousness that can accompany trying to claw your way up a sheer cliff. But fear and its antipode, courage, take many forms. One can be so difficult to confront that it destroys lives. The other can save them.

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Young kids backpacking through Spray Park in Mount Rainier National Park.

Photo Gallery: 11 National Parks, One Year

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By Michael Lanza

Backpacking in the Grand Canyon, Glacier, Olympic, Rocky Mountain, North Cascades, and Mount Rainier (lead photo, above) national parks. Hiking to Yosemite’s waterfalls. Paddling the Everglades and sea kayaking Glacier Bay. Rock climbing in Joshua Tree, and cross-country skiing in Yellowstone. In one magical year, we took 11 national park adventures with our kids, sharing experiences that expanded their understanding of their world, times filled with joy and wonder.

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A hiker in The Subway in Zion National Park.

Luck of the Draw, Part 1: Hiking Zion’s Subway

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By Michael Lanza

In the refrigerator-like shade at the bottom of a fissure hundreds of feet deep, somewhere in the labyrinth of sandstone canyons that dice up the backcountry of Zion National Park, our keyhole-shaped passageway narrows to the width of a doorway. A shallow, ice-water creek pumps along this slot canyon’s floor, which drops off before us about four feet into a pool extending some 30 feet ahead of us. We’ve been informed the water temperature is around 51° F. And it looks deep.

We’re going for a chilly swim.

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Iceline Trail view of the Emerald Glacier, Yoho National Park, Canada.

Great Hike: Iceline Trail, Yoho National Park

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By Michael Lanza

The hike begins with a short walk to the base of Takakkaw Falls, which plummets thunderously more than 1,100 feet (350m) over a cliff, raining mist on hikers below. Fed by the Daly Glacier and Waputik Icefield, the waterfall takes its name from the Cree word meaning “it is magnificent.” You won’t contest the claim. Beyond, you begin a long, steady ascent, first through forest, but soon with expansive views of the Yoho Valley in the Canadian Rockies, where sprawling icefields cap the mountains. A bit over two miles from the trailhead, traversing an ice-ravaged, open landscape of rock, dirt, and a few tiny but hardy plants and wildflowers, you get your first view of the thick, severely cracked Emerald Glacier, pouring off of 10,000-foot peaks in the President Range.

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Monolith Valley, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

Hiking to the Stunning Monolith Valley in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains

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By Michael Lanza

Our day’s primary goal—reaching the 10,470-foot summit of Horstman Peak, which had eluded us on a previous attempt—was already behind us when my friend Chip Roser and I descended south off Horstman to hike across a valley that lies just a few miles as the crow flies from the busiest spot in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, and yet probably sees no more than a handful of hikers a year. We’d gotten distant views of the Monolith Valley before, but those glimpses hardly did justice to the spectacle of this stunning paradise of water and granite.

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