Trips

A young girl hiking in Spring Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park, Utah.

Plunging Into Solitude: Dayhiking, Slot Canyoneering, and Backpacking in Capitol Reef

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By Michael Lanza

We stand on the rim of an unnamed slot canyon in the backcountry of Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park, in a spot that just a handful of people have seen before us. We’ve arrived here after hiking about two hours uphill on the Navajo Knobs Trail, and then heading off-trail, navigating a circuitous route up steep slickrock and below a sheer-walled fin of white Navajo Sandstone hundreds of feet tall, stabbing into the blue sky. Now I peer down at the narrow, deep, and shadowy crack that we have come to rappel into, and feel a little flush of anxiety.

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A backpacker above Overland Lake on the Ruby Crest Trail, Ruby Mountains, Nevada.

Backpacking the Ruby Crest Trail—A Diamond in the Rough

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By Michael Lanza Dark clouds loom low overhead, thunder periodically rents the air, and strong winds blow steadily as hurried rain showers hit us intermittently in bursts that last several minutes between equally brief dry spells. We’re hiking north on our first afternoon backpacking the Ruby Crest Trail through northeastern Nevada’s Ruby Mountains, and passing thunderstorms are making the first …

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A backpacker on the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park.

American Gem: Backpacking Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail

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By Michael Lanza “Bear!” Todd calls this out to me and points toward a meadow maybe 200 yards off—but I glance up a moment too late and the black bear has already disappeared into the dense forest. “It was a big one,” Todd says. We’re hiking along the crest of the Cowlitz Divide on the southeast side of Mount Rainier …

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Hikers on the trail up Telescope Peak in Death Valley National Park.

11,000 Feet Over Death Valley: Hiking Telescope Peak

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By Michael Lanza

We set out at a brisk pace from the Telescope Peak Trailhead, at just over 8,100 feet in Death Valley National Park, for a good reason: It’s 29° F at just after 7 a.m. on this Saturday in the third week of May. That’s exactly 80 degrees colder than the big digital thermometer at the park’s Furnace Creek visitor center read when we arrived here four days ago. But the fifth-largest U.S. national park—and the biggest one outside Alaska—is nothing if not a place of extremes, both of temperature and physical relief. Today, besides notching the coldest temp we’ll see over four days of hiking in Death Valley, we intend to tag another of its extremes: the highest summit in Death Valley National Park, 11,049-foot Telescope Peak.

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A view from the Appalachian Trail in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

In the Garden of Eden: Backpacking the Great Smoky Mountains

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By Michael Lanza

Late-afternoon sunlight tilts golden beams through the low canopy of spruce and fir trees as I hike alone up the Welch Ridge Trail, deep in the backcountry of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I haven’t seen another person all day. Solitude in the mountains exerts many effects, small and large, on us, including that we instinctively listen more attentively. Our rational minds cannot erase from primal memory the instinctive knowledge that, in the primitive brains of some woodland creatures, we represent a boatload of calories.

I stop abruptly and stand perfectly still—listening intently, waiting. And then I hear it.

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