Trips

Sunset at Lower Cook Lake on a solo backpacking trip in the Wyoming's Wind River Range in September.

Tent Flap With A View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites

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By Michael Lanza

An unforgettable campsite can define a backcountry trip. Sometimes that perfect spot where you spend a night forges the memory that remains the most vivid long after you’ve gone home. A photo of that camp can send recollections of the entire adventure rushing back to you—it does for me. I’ve been very fortunate to have pitched a tent in many great backcountry campsites over more than three decades of backpacking all over the U.S. I’ve distilled the list of my favorite spots down to these 25.

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Lower Yellowstone Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone National Park.

The Best Hikes in Yellowstone

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By Michael Lanza

Yellowstone National Park is a place where the earth comes alive, with more than 10,000 hydrothermal features and 500 active geysers—that’s more than half the world’s geysers—as well as 290 waterfalls, not to mention having some of the greatest diversity of wildlife remaining in the contiguous United States. America’s first national park is also famously busy, drawing over 4.7 million visitors in 2025. Thankfully, most of those visitors never wander far from the roads, which means that hiking provides one of the best and quietest ways to explore Yellowstone.

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A "bison jam" in Yellowstone National Park.

Video: A Yellowstone National Park ‘Bison Jam’

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By Michael Lanza

It’s the coolest, most awe-inspiring traffic jam you’ll ever get stuck in—if a little unnerving, too—and something of an iconic experience in the world’s first national park. On a visit to Yellowstone, after a couple of days of hiking, I was driving south between Mammoth and Norris when I got stuck in a line of vehicles stopped by a large herd of bison walking up the road. Yes, we were in a bison jam, and I captured it on this video (scroll down to watch it).

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A hiker on the Gunsight Pass Trail in Glacier National Park.

The 8 Best Long Hikes in Glacier National Park

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By Michael Lanza

The morning sun wouldn’t make the climb over Mount Grinnell and find its way into the valley of Swiftcurrent Creek for a couple of hours yet, so we hiked quickly without breaking a sweat in the chilly air. No one else was on the popular Swiftcurrent Pass Trail when we set out shortly after dawn, and this trail was new to us; so it felt like we were the first people to walk into this small but spectacular little crease in the mountains of Glacier National Park.

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A backpacker on the Continental Divide Trail above Medicine Grizzly Lake in Glacier National Park.

The 10 Best Dayhikes in Glacier National Park

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By Michael Lanza

Glacier National Park sprawls over a million acres of rugged, glaciated mountains sprinkled with alpine lakes in the northern Rockies—most of it remote wilderness seen only by backpackers willing to hike into the backcountry for multiple days. Nonetheless, you can reach some of the best scenery in America’s 10th national park on dayhikes.

This story describes the 10 best dayhikes in Glacier, from popular hikes like Grinnell Glacier, the Highline Trail, Iceberg Lake, and Hidden Lake Overlook to some trails and mountain passes you may not have heard of but which reach areas of this iconic national park that are just as mind-blowing as the popular hikes—but not as busy.

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