Trips

A backpacker on the Tonto Trail in the Grand Canyon.

5 Reasons You Must Backpack in the Grand Canyon

by

By Michael Lanza

The Grand Canyon’s appeal to backpackers may seem elusive. It’s hard, it’s dry, it’s often quite hot with little respite from the blazing sun. But while those aspects of hiking there are rarely out of mind, when I recall backpacking in the canyon, I conjure mental images of waterfalls, creeks, and intimate side canyons sheltering perennial streams that nurture lush oases in the desert. I think of wildflowers carpeting the ground for as far as the eye can see. I recall campsites on beaches by the Colorado River and on promontories overlooking a wide expanse of the canyon.

And, of course, I picture the endless vistas stretching for miles in every direction, where impossibly immense stone towers loom thousands of feet above an unfathomably vertiginous and complex landscape.

Read on

A backpacker in the East Fork River Valley on the Wind River High Route, Wyoming.

The Wind River High Route—A Journey in Photos

by

By Michael Lanza

An elegant, high-elevation, multi-day walk through a magnificent mountain range is the stuff of dreams for many backpackers, and there may be no walk better than the Wind River High Route. Traversing a range with few equals by any measure—elevations, abundance of alpine lakes and glaciers, remoteness, length and breadth, or raw splendor—the WRHR embodies everything we imagine a great hike in the mountains should be.

Read on

A backpacker hiking the Italy Pass Trail through Granite Park in the John Muir Wilderness, High Sierra, California.

Big Scenery, No Crowds: 15 Top Backpacking Trips For Solitude

by

By Michael Lanza

We all want our wilderness backpacking trips to have two sometimes conflicting qualities: mind-blowing scenery, but also few other people around. A high degree of solitude somehow makes the backcountry feel bigger and wilder and the views more breathtaking. However unrealistic the notion may be, we like to believe we have some stunning corner of nature to ourselves. But in the real world, if you head out into popular mountains in July or August or in canyon country in spring or fall, you’ll probably have company—maybe more than you prefer.

Not on these trips, though.

Read on

A backpacker above Liberty Lake on the Ruby Crest Trail in Nevada's Ruby Mountains.

The 30 Nicest Backcountry Campsites I’ve Hiked Past

by

By Michael Lanza

It is one of those unfortunate inevitabilities of life, like death and taxes: Occasionally on backpacking trips you will hike past one of the most sublime patches of wilderness real estate you have ever laid eyes on, a spot so idyllic you can already see your tent pitched there and you standing outside it, warm mug in your hands, watching a glorious sunset. But it’s early and your plan entails hiking farther before you stop for the day—not camping there. Or your permit isn’t for that site. Or even worse, you are looking for a campsite, but someone else has already occupied this little corner of Heaven.

Read on

A backpacker's campsite at sunset beside Lower Cook Lake, Wind River Range, Wyoming.

Backpacking 60 Miles Solo Through the Wind River Range

by

It’s a just-about perfect morning, with mild temps and a gentle breeze, as I start hiking from Elkhart Park in the Wind River Range on the second day in September, carrying six days of food in my pack and a bundle of high expectations. Just as an experiment, I start counting the number of hikers I pass on the Pole Creek Trail and tally almost 40 in the first two hours, all but two of them backpackers and almost all of them heading in the other direction, back to the trailhead. This doesn’t surprise me—it is the day after Labor Day.

But after that first two hours and more than five miles of hiking, as soon as I pass the junction with the Seneca Lake Trail, the parade stops. Over the rest of today, I’ll encounter a half-dozen backpackers.

Read on