America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
A vast sea of liquid glass spread out before us as we aimed our kayaks out into Milford Sound, a 4,000-foot-deep fjord in Fiordland National Park, on the southwest coast of New Zealand’s South Island. A thick fur of rainforest clung to cliffs plunging straight into the sea. The sharp, rock-crowned arrowhead of Mitre Peak rose to 5,545 feet (1,690m) out of the ocean, slashing at the sky.
By Michael Lanza
We follow the zigzagging trail upward until it becomes lost beneath an unbroken snow cover. Then we follow the boot prints of the few trekkers who’ve ventured up here before us recently, a navigational strategy based on hope—the hope that unseen strangers knew where the path goes. A bit farther than I could hurl a stone to either side of us loom sheer walls of dark rock, rendered fuzzy by the fog, as if Vaseline coats our eyeballs. The cliffs rise hundreds of feet into the oblivion of a soupy, gray ceiling, the sky a dark bruise that looks almost close enough to touch. A drizzly rain seeps from the clouds, but the air is calm and there is no sound but our footsteps and breaths—and a faint rumbling of uncertainty in my gut.
Hi Michael,
Hope all is well. I’m looking for your opinion on a 30-liter pack. I am going to Nepal in October on a 15-day trek. I think this would be the perfect size for me, because also I like a little bigger daypack for my hikes in the White Mountains. I have an older Gregory Z30, and I just tried on the new one and like the new details, plus I sweat really badly on hikes. As always thank you in advance, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Mike
Everett, MA
Michael,
Tremendous trip with your family (in this story)! My wife and I have four days in Jotunheimen National Park. May I request a recommendation for an area to concentrate? We are very experienced, fit hikers who live not too far from Leominster, in Longmeadow. Thank you for your time and insight.
All best,
Bob
Longmeadow, MA
By Michael Lanza The old school bus rumbles to life with a painful metallic grinding and we roll forward, our chariot rocking side to side down a rutted, muddy street of a small crossroads town called Dumre in central Nepal. Angling down a hillside, the bus lists heavily to starboard and moves too slowly to escape its own cloud of …