By Michael Lanza
We can all remember specific places that we consider the best days of hiking we’ve ever had. I’ve been exceptionally fortunate: I have hiked many trails in America and around the world that would probably make anyone’s list of most-scenic hikes. From numerous trips in iconic national parks like Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon, and Glacier to the John Muir Trail and Teton Crest Trail and some of the world’s great treks, including the Alta Via 2 in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, the Tour du Mont Blanc, New Zealand’s Tongariro National Park, Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls trails, and the icy and jagged mountains of Norway and Patagonia, here’s a list of the 30 hands-down prettiest days I’ve ever spent walking dirt and rock footpaths.
I think you’ll find some places in here to add to your must-do list.
I’ve taken these adventures over the course of three decades working as an outdoor writer and photographer, formerly as Northwest Editor of Backpacking magazine for 10 years and now even longer running this blog. Many of the photos in this story are from adventures widely recognized as classics, while others are from places you may not have heard of before.
Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here for my e-guides to classic backpacking trips. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.
Scroll through the photos and short anecdotes from each trip. They include links to stories at The Big Outside about those places, with my tips and information on how to plan those trips. Those stories require a paid subscription to The Big Outside to read in full.
And I can help you plan any of these trips or any other you read about at this blog—giving you the benefit of my many years of professional experience identifying, planning, and successfully pulling off great adventures. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you, and my downloadable e-guides to some of America’s and the world’s best backpacking trips and treks.
I’d love to hear what you think of any of my photos or the places shown in them, or upcoming plans you have or are contemplating. Please share your thoughts or questions in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.
Happy trails.
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Hiking Yosemite’s Clouds Rest and Half Dome
Traversing the slender summit ridge of 9,926-foot Clouds Rest, we walked what felt like a high wire between sphincter-puckering abysses in the heart of Yosemite National Park. Below one elbow, a drop-off of several hundred feet; on the other side, 4,000 feet—that’s a thousand feet taller than the face of El Capitan. It’s arguably the best summit view in Yosemite and one of the best reached by a trail in all of California’s High Sierra. On the first day of a 151-mile grand tour of that flagship park, four of us walked from the granite-framed shores of Tenaya Lake over Clouds Rest and on to one of America’s most famous summits: Half Dome. And after all that, we still weren’t even finished for the day.
See my story about that hike, “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking South of Tuolumne Meadows,” “The 7 Best Backpacking Trips in Yosemite,” “The 12 Best Dayhikes in Yosemite,” “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite,” “Yosemite’s Best-Kept Secret Backpacking Trip,” and all of my stories about backpacking in Yosemite at The Big Outside.
You want to backpack in Yosemite? See my e-guides to three amazing multi-day hikes there.
Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim
We breezed down the narrow crest of the Grand Canyon’s South Kaibab Trail as the first light of day fell on one of the planet’s most magnificent and unfathomable landscapes: a mile-deep chasm with twisting side canyons, walls stacked in multi-colored layers, and an army of stone towers each standing thousands of feet tall. Three friends and I walked across the canyon from the South Rim to the North Rim, and back again—42 miles with over 22,000 feet of up and down—in one very long day. I’ve repeated the r2r2r running and hiking in one day and hiking it over two days. Wherever I hike for the rest of my life, I’m sure I’ll always rank hiking rim to rim among my greatest trail days ever.
See my stories “Fit to be Tired: Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in a Day,” “How to Hike the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in a Day,” “A Grand Ambition, or April Fools? Dayhiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim,” “7 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do,” and all stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.
Do your Grand Canyon hike right with these expert e-guides:
“The Best First Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon”
“The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon”
“The Complete Guide to Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim.”
Walking Across Zion
From the red-rock Kolob Canyons in the park’s northwest corner to the 2,000-foot, creamy white and blazing burgundy cliffs of Zion Canyon, Zion National Park harbors some of the most uniquely beautiful and beloved natural real estate in the entire National Park System. Hiking 50 miles across the entire park in a day, tagging highlights like Angels Landing and the West Rim Trail, seemed like the perfect way to experience a park without peer. That’s what several friends and I figured, anyway. Our adventure was proof that, even when events don’t proceed quite as planned, it can be a great day.
See my story “Mid-Life Crisis: Hiking 50 Miles Across Zion in a Day,” “Insider Tips: The 10 Best Hikes in Zion National Park,” and all of my stories about Zion National Park.
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Trekking the Alta Via 2 in the Pale di San Martino, Dolomite Mountains
Often described as “the world’s most beautiful trail,” the Alta Via 2 traces a roughly 112-mile (180k) path through northern Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, which thrust a dizzying array of spires and serrated peaks into the sky, gleaming like polished jewels in sunshine and virtually pulsing with the salmon hue of evening alpenglow. On my family’s hut-to-hut trek of a 39-mile (62k) section of the AV 2, jaw-dropping views became routine.
But on the day we hiked from the Rosetta Hut, in the sub-range known as the Pale di San Martino, down to the small mountain town of San Martino di Castrozza, we walked below one sheer limestone tower after another on a path that clung to vertiginous mountainsides, sometimes chopped from the face of a cliff.
See my story “The World’s Most Beautiful Trail: Trekking the Alta Via 2 Through Italy’s Dolomite Mountains.”
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Hiking from Many Glacier to Logan Pass, Glacier National Park
In the cool hours of early morning, my hiking partner and I set out from the Many Glacier complex on the east side of the park, heading toward Swiftcurrent Pass and eventually Logan Pass on the Going-to-the-Sun Road: a traverse of 15.2 miles with about 2,000 feet of uphill. Neither of us had hiked these trails before, so we carried no expectations—and were amazed at every turn.
We walked below towering cliffs spliced by ribbon waterfalls, climbed to a notch hundreds of feet above the Grinnell Glacier, and followed the Highline Trail, an alpine footpath with sweeping views of the Northern Rockies where sightings of mountain goats and bighorn sheep are common.
See my story “The 6 Best (Long) Hikes in Glacier National Park,” and all of my stories about Glacier National Park.
Get my expert e-guides to the best backpacking trip in Glacier
and backpacking the Continental Divide Trail through Glacier.
Trekking the Tour du Mont Blanc in the Alps
Some hikes need no introduction. The Tour du Mont Blanc is one of them. One of the most storied, popular, and step-for-step majestic trails on the planet, the roughly 105-mile (170k) footpath around the “Monarch of the Alps,” 15,771-foot (4807m) Mont Blanc, passes through three countries—France, Italy, and Switzerland—delivering a cultural and culinary experience to match the scenery.
While there are few mediocre kilometers on the trek, one of our nine days walking it with family and friends really stood out scenically: day four, hiking from the Rifugio Elizabetta Soldini mountain hut into the resort town of Courmayeur, Italy, below a staggering array of knife-like spires.
See my story “Hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc at an 80-Year-Old Snail’s Pace.”
Save yourself a lot of time.
Get my e-guide “The Perfect, Flexible Plan for Hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc.”
Hiking Mount St. Helens
The catastrophic eruption that decapitated Washington’s Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, removing almost 1,300 vertical feet of mountaintop, ironically created one of America’s most strikingly beautiful, fascinating, and coveted dayhikes. On a climb up the mountain’s standard Monitor Ridge route—10 miles and 4,500 vertical feet up and down, most of it over a rugged and stark moonscape of loose rocks, pumice, and ash—you’ll soak up views of several Cascade Range volcanoes, and eventually stand atop the rim’s crumbling cliffs, gazing out over a vast hole 2,000 feet deep and nearly two miles across.
See my story “Three Generations, One Big Volcano: Pushing Limits on Mount St. Helens.”
Score a popular permit using my “10 Tips For Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit.”
Trekking Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls Trails
Nearly every day that my family spent trekking hut to hut on Iceland’s 34-mile/55k Laugavegur Trail and 15.5-mile/25k Fimmvörðuháls Trail struck me as one of the prettiest days of hiking I’ve ever had.
But if forced to choose some days over others, I can only narrow it to four: The morning we spent dayhiking the peak named Bláhnúkur, from the hut at Landmannalaugar in Iceland’s Central Highlands (see the lead photo in this story); our third day on the Laugavegur, hiking from Álftavatn to Emstrur (photo above); and both days on the magnificent Fimmvörðuháls, hiking the spine of a narrow crest between two deep chasms and crossing a moonscape created by recent volcanic eruptions (photo at left) on day one, followed by descending a river valley past more than two dozen big, powerful waterfalls one after another—probably the single best waterfalls trail I’ve ever seen.
My advice: Just go trek both the Laugavegur and the Fimmvörðuháls trails.
See my feature story about my family’s hut trek on these two trails, “A Family Hikes Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls Trails,” “9 Great Hikes and Walks Along Iceland’s Ring Road,” and “Earth, Wind, and Fire: A Journey to the Planet’s Beginnings in Iceland.”
Get the right pack for you.
See “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs”
and “The 10 Best Hiking Daypacks.”
Backpacking the John Muir Trail from Evolution Basin to Mather Pass
The John Muir Trail, aka “America’s Most Beautiful Trail,” is a 211-mile journey through one of the most picturesque mountain ranges in the country—the High Sierra, which Ansel Adams dubbed “The Range of Light.” When a few friends and I knocked off the JMT in a week, we packed two or three normal days of hiking into each day. (The scenery was morphine for our aching feet.)
But I have to give the edge to the day we ambulated from Evolution Lake in Kings Canyon National Park all the way to the Upper Basin of the South Fork Kings River: past the glassy lakes of the Evolution Basin, over 11,955-foot Muir Pass, through LeConte Canyon with its soaring granite walls, and over 12,100-foot Mather Pass, which we crossed as the setting sun set puffy clouds overhead afire.
See all stories about backpacking the John Muir Trail at The Big Outside, including “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail: What You Need to Know,” “10 Great Section Hikes on the John Muir Trail,” and “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail in Seven Days: Amazing Experience, or Certifiably Insane?”
After the John Muir Trail, hike the other nine of “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.”
Two Days Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail
Having backpacked the Teton Crest Trail multiple times and taken 20 or more hiking, climbing, and backcountry skiing trips throughout the Teton Range, I’ve gotten to know these incomparable peaks pretty well. But the two sections of the TCT that stand out scenically for me are the sections from Death Canyon Shelf to Hurricane Pass and from the North Fork of Cascade Canyon over Paintbrush Divide.
My experiences on those stretches of trail include a bull elk waking us by clomping around just outside our tents; early-morning moose sightings; uninterrupted views of these famously jagged mountains; and endless fields of wildflowers. I’ve had many magical days in the Tetons since my first backpacking trip there three decades ago, but I still consider those sections of the TCT its finest.
See my stories “A Wonderful Obsession: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail,” “5 Reasons You Must Backpack the Teton Crest Trail,” and “10 Great Big Dayhikes in the Tetons,” and all of my stories about backpacking in Grand Teton National Park.
Dying to backpack in the Tetons? See my e-guides to the Teton Crest Trail and
the best short backpacking trip there.
Backpacking the Wonderland Trail
No multi-day hike in the contiguous United States compares with the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier—because there’s no mountain in the Lower 48 like glacier-clad, 14,410-foot Mount Rainier. The sight of “The Mountain” repeatedly filling the horizon at a seemingly unbelievable scale is thrilling every time. But this trail also features some of the most beautiful wildflower meadows you will ever see, countless waterfalls and cascades, crystalline creeks and raging rivers gray with “glacial flour,” and likely sightings of mountain goats, marmots, deer, and possibly black bears.
On the second day of a 77-mile hike on what I consider the WT’s best sections (a route described as one of the alternate itineraries in my Wonderland Trail e-guide), two friends and I walked from the glorious meadows of Summerland on Rainier’s east side to more meadows west of Sunrise and eventually our campsite at Granite Creek, drinking in some of the best vistas along a path rich with amazing scenery.
See my stories “5 Reasons You Must Backpack Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail” and “An American Gem: Backpacking Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail.”
Want to hike the Wonderland Trail? Get my expert e-guide
“The Complete Guide to Backpacking the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park.”
Hiking the Volcanoes of Tongariro National Park, New Zealand
I could create a separate list just of the most spectacular days I’ve spent in New Zealand. (It would include day two on the Kepler Track, at least one day on the Dusky Track, and sea kayaking in Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound, all in Fiordland National Park, as well as days on the Cascade Saddle Route and the Whanganui River.) But not for nothing was Tongariro, on New Zealand’s North Island, this country’s first national park and the world’s fourth.
Active volcanoes have birthed a virtually lifeless, yet Technicolor world of craters painted in vivid shades of burnt red, orange, brilliant white, gray, deep black, yellow, and brown. On a 12-mile dayhike over three of the park’s volcanoes and craters, a local guide and I walked through old lava flows of coal-black rocks and up to the 7,516-foot rim of the active volcano named Ngauruhoe. But you take your life in your hands hiking here: Tongariro has seen dozens of volcanic eruptions just in the past century.
See my story “Super Volcanoes: Hiking the Steaming Peaks of New Zealand’s Tongariro National Park,” and all of my stories about adventures in New Zealand.
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Backpacking The Narrows, Zion National Park
Tough call deciding whether the first or second day backpacking Zion’s Narrows deserves a spot on this list. But take this classic, two-day backpacking trip and you’ll get to decide for yourself. Walking down the mostly shallow North Fork of the Virgin River between close sandstone walls that rise up to a thousand feet overhead, with trees and lush hanging gardens contrasted against rock painted in a rainbow of colors, Zion’s Narrows keeps getting more spectacular with every step.
Read my story “Luck of the Draw, Part 2: Backpacking Zion’s Narrows.”
Click here now to get my e-guide to Backpacking Zion’s Narrows.
Hiking Above the Gray Glacier, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile
A rumble of thunder ripped through the air, audible over the persistent wind—but it wasn’t thunder. A few hundred feet below our rocky overlook in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, a slowly widening ring of small bergs floated in the lake, shrapnel from a massive chunk of ice that had just calved off the snout of the Grey Glacier. We were ascending a trail over a mountainside scoured to bedrock by ancient ice, scaling hundred-foot-tall steel ladders anchored to the earthen walls of gorges, while looking out over a river of ice two miles across and 17 miles long. Part of the spectacular “W” trek in this park in Chile’s Patagonia region, it was a 19-mile day that ended when we walked up to the Paine Grande Lodge after dark, buzzing with excitement.
See my story “Patagonian Classic: Trekking Torres del Paine,” and all of my stories about hiking in Patagonia.
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Two Days on the Continental Divide Trail in Glacier
On a 94-mile traverse of Glacier, mostly following the Continental Divide Trail from Chief Mountain Trailhead at the Canadian border to Two Medicine, three friends and I saw bighorn sheep, mountain goats, black bears, moose, and a grizzly bear, and heard elk bugling almost every morning and evening—and we enjoyed mountain skylines unlike anywhere else in America.
But if it’s possible to pick out any days on that hike that stood out, there would be two in particular: hiking over Piegan Pass (photo at right), and our afternoon following the high, alpine Dawson Pass Trail from Pitamakan Pass to Dawson Pass (photo above)—both of them jaw-dropping. Glacier does that to me every time I go there.
See my story about this trip “Wildness All Around You: Backpacking the CDT Through Glacier.”
Save yourself a lot of time. Get my expert e-guide to backpacking the CDT through Glacier.
Backpacking Mosquito Creek to Toleak Point, Southern Olympic Coast
You won’t find much on the longest strip of wilderness coastline in the contiguous United States, the shore of Washington’s Olympic National Park—just seals, sea lions, sea otters, bald eagles, many species of seabirds and whales, and trees 10 to 15 feet in diameter and growing over 200 feet tall. On the middle day of a three-day, 17.5-mile backpacking trip, hiking from Mosquito Creek to Toleak Point, my family explored tide pools and boulders coated with mussels, sea stars, and sea anemones, looked out on scores of stone pinnacles rising out of the ocean, and camped on a wilderness beach. I’m not sure who had more fun, the kids or the adults.
See my story “The Wildest Shore: Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast,” and all of my stories about Olympic National Park.
Got an all-time favorite campsite? I have a few great ones.
See “Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites.”
Backpacking Paria Canyon
By our second day backpacking Paria Canyon, in southern Utah and northern Arizona, our kids had become so inured to the frequent, shallow puddles of quicksand that it became a game for them to stomp around in them, laughing and shrieking, to see if anyone could get stuck. We were deep in Paria’s narrows, hiking in the shade of canyon walls that make humans look tiny.
At every bend and twist in the canyon, we’d look up at another sheer, multi-colored wall or huge, arch-like formations eroding into a cliff, and come upon the occasional hanging garden of moss and greenery where a spring gushed from cracks in solid rock.
The desert Southwest harbors many lovely canyons, but few compare with Paria Canyon for length, variety, and sustained beauty.
See my story “The Quicksand Chronicles: Backpacking Paria Canyon,” and all of my stories about hiking and backpacking in southern Utah.
Explore the best of the Southwest on “The 12 Best Hikes in Utah’s National Parks” and
“The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest.”
Backpacking the High Sierra Trail, Sequoia National Park
We weren’t far into a nearly 40-mile family backpacking trip in Sequoia before I realized it promised to be one of the most photogenic places I’ve ever hiked. Part of one of the biggest chunks of contiguous wilderness in the Lower 48, it’s home to many of the highest mountains outside Alaska, lonely backcountry groves of giant sequoias, and crystal-clear alpine lakes.
On our third day, hiking the High Sierra Trail from Bearpaw Meadow toward 10,700-foot Kaweah Gap, we traversed a cliff face hundreds of feet above the deep Middle Fork Kaweah River. We stopped for lunch and a swim at the Hamilton Lakes, which are almost completely enclosed by towering cliffs and pinnacles. By late afternoon, we found campsites at Precipice Lake at 10,400 feet, its glassy, green and blue waters reflecting white and golden cliffs (one of my 25 all-time favorite backcountry campsites).
See my story “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park.”
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Four Days Exploring the Wind River Range
From the first light of early morning turning a sliver of clouds on the eastern horizon blood red, until we finished our long day near dusk, the 27-mile, east-west traverse that some friends and I made of the southern Wind River Range felt like a stroll through mountain paradise.
We spent much of our hike above 11,000 feet, drinking up expansive vistas of soaring granite cliffs and peaks rising above 12,000 feet on the Continental Divide. We scrambled to the 12,250-foot summit of Mount Chauvenet and strolled across the Lizard Head Plateau gaping at stone temples and thick glaciers. Then we put an exclamation point on our adventure by walking across the Cirque of the Towers, a mind-boggling horseshoe of sheer-walled, granite peaks scratching at the clouds.
Other trips I’ve taken in the Winds certainly compete for a spot on this list, including the first day of a 39-mile backpacking trip, when two friends and I hiked from the Elkhart Park trailhead, past Island Lake and several other stunning lakes, to Titcomb Basin—an alpine valley at over 10,500 feet, where peaks on the Continental Divide soar more than 3,000 feet above lakes rippling in the wind.
In August 2020, I joined three companions backpacking a 96-mile, south-north traverse of the Winds on the Wind River High Route—one of the most audacious and magnificent wilderness adventures in the country. On our fourth morning, we crossed Sentry Peak Pass and a little while later walked past a tiny tarn reflecting a row of incisor mountains in the upper valley of Middle Fork Lake (lead photo at top of story).
And in late summer 2022, my wife, a friend, and I backpacked a 43-mile loop mostly exploring an area of the Winds I had not seen before. We started out from one of the best backcountry campsites I’ve ever had, walked a stunning stretch of the Highline Trail (part of the Continental Divide Trail), passed two of the prettiest backcountry lakes I’ve hiked past without camping at and more lakes that came close, crossed three high passes, and camped by a lake that reflected the alpenglow on the peaks. As happened throughout that trip, we passed fewer than 10 people all day.
See my stories “Backpacking Through a Lonely Corner of the Wind River Range,” “A Walk in the Winds: Hiking a One-Day, 27-Mile Traverse of Wyoming’s Wind River Range,” “Best of the Wind River Range: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin,” and “Adventure and Adversity on the Wind River High Route.”
Our 27-mile Winds dayhike is one of “America’s Best Hard Dayhikes.”
Three More Days in the Grand Canyon
If the Grand Canyon looms large in this story—and in others at The Big Outside, like “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest”—that’s because it looms even larger in my perspective and that of probably every backpacker who ventures into it. In fact, besides hiking rim to rim to rim (described above), I can think of at least a few more days of backpacking in the Big Ditch that rank among my most scenic ever.
Those would include the second day on the very rugged and infrequently hiked, 34.5-mile Royal Arch Loop, which featured just about everything that makes backpacking in the Grand Canyon unique: sweeping views, a sandy beach beside the Colorado River, an intimate side canyon with lush hanging gardens, a high solitude quotient—even some spicy scrambling and a fun rappel off a cliff—not to mention one of the best campsites in the entire canyon, below Royal Arch (one of my 25 all-time favorite backcountry campsites).
It would also include the day that two friends and I traversed most of the Escalante Route, one of the of the prettiest and most adventurous “trails” (if it can be called that) in the canyon, on a 74-mile hike from the South Kaibab Trailhead to Lipan Point. And I’d have to include day three on yet another rugged and remote GC hike, the 25-mile Thunder River-Deer Creek Loop, which features some of the canyon’s loveliest waterfalls, narrows, and desert oases.
See my stories “Not Quite Impassable: Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch Loop,” “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon,” “Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Thunder River-Deer Creek Loop,” and “7 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do.”
Get my expert e-guides to “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon,” and an easier alternative, “The Best First Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon.”
Backpacking the Rockwall Trail, Kootenay National Park, Canadian Rockies
My family’s second day on the 34-mile (54k) Rockwall Trail in Kootenay National Park was long and hard—12 miles over two 7,000-foot passes—but we had the most effective painkiller: views that even impressed our 14- and 12-year-old kids. One of Canada’s most popular and stunningly scenic hikes—and really deserving a spot on the list of the world’s finest treks—it follows the base of an almost unbroken limestone cliff up to 3,000 feet (900m) tall. We started that day below 1,154-foot (352m) Helmet Falls, one of the tallest in the Canadian Rockies, and hiked to Numa Creek, crossing meadows carpeted in wildflowers below hanging glaciers, and sighting four mountain goats at Tumbling Pass.
See my story about backpacking the Rockwall Trail in Kootenay National Park.
Stay drier and safer. See “The 6 Best Rain Jackets For Hiking and Backpacking.”
Climbing Norway’s Highest Peak
Under a brilliantly blue morning sky in the highest mountains in northern Europe, my wife, Penny, our friend, Jeff Wilhelm, and I started a 5,000-foot climb of the highest peak in Norway, 8,100-foot Galdhøpiggen. It was the final day of a 60-mile trek in Jotunheimen National Park—another trip which every day could legitimately be the one chosen for this story—and we could have lounged in our last hut, but were glad we didn’t.
Ascending a treeless mountainside, we gained increasingly longer views of a rugged, Arctic-looking landscape vibrantly colorful with shrubs, mosses, and wildflowers, where cliffs and peaks look like they were chopped from the earth with an axe. At the chilly, windblown summit, we stood above a sea of snowy mountains and glaciers. And, of course, it being Europe, there was a hut at the summit where we could buy hot cocoas.
See my story “Walking Among Giants: A Three-Generation Hut Trek in Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park.”
Take the world’s best adventures. See all stories about international trips at The Big Outside.
Backpacking Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass Loop, Glacier Peak Wilderness
Deep in Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness, we ascended Trail 785 through quiet forest before emerging in a sprawling mountainside meadow crazy with marmot burrows and blooming wildflowers. Our sweeping vista to the south revealed the deep, green valleys of Miners Creek and the Suiattle River. Beyond it, 10,541-foot Glacier Peak wore a heavy cloak of snow and ice, towering above a sea of mountains. It was the third day of five my family and three friends spent backpacking the 44-mile Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass Loop. That day had begun at our previous campsite, below the glacier and emerald alpine lakes of the Upper Lyman Lakes basin (one of my 25 favorite backcountry campsites), and still ahead of us lay one of the most beautiful backcountry tarns I’ve ever come across, Image Lake.
See my story “Wild Heart of the Glacier Peak Wilderness: Backpacking the Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass Loop,” and all of my stories about the North Cascades region.
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Hiking the Crown of Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains
We started hiking in a cool, morning fog that hung thickly over the Sawtooth Valley, headed for a very small and airy block of stone that lay beyond sight about 6.5 horizontal miles and 4,200 vertical feet in the distance: the 10,751-foot summit of Thompson Peak, the highest in Idaho’s Sawtooths. Four-and-a-half hours later, we had the crown of the Sawtooths to ourselves on that July day, with a view of the entire Sawtooth Range and the White Cloud Mountains across the valley. That was the most recent of my several trips up Thompson, a rugged, partly off-trail hike that starts out nice and then knocks your socks off long before you reach the summit.
See my story “The Roof of Idaho’s Sawtooths: Hiking Thompson Peak,” my e-guide “The Best Backpacking Trip in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains,” and all stories about backpacking in the Sawtooths Mountains at The Big Outside.
We are set to hike The Enchanments this September… have you been?
Hi Jess,
Yes, I’ve hiked the Enchantments, it’s a beautiful area and September is a great time. Enjoy it.
I have been following your blog for a long time, you have great photos!
Thank you for the hiking ideas, I live in Europe and I advise you to get acquainted with the Carpathians. These are not the highest points in Europe. But they can offer you gorgeous views and ethnic flavor and local cuisine, which allows you to save on food on a hike.
Also thank you for the ideas for traveling to Italy and Iceland!
Thanks, Mike. You are not the first person to recommend I explore the Carpathians. I think it’s time I started doing some research on them.
I’m sure you have hikes across Haleakala on Maui. It’s one of the most amazing hikes I’ve done.
I’m sure it is, Linda, but I have not hiked Haleakala. I did hike Mauna Kea on the Big Island in November and that was beautiful.
Hiking the Kungsleden Trail from Nikoloktu to Abisko Station in Arctic Sweden was mind-blowing. It’s a hut-to-hut hike. Lapdanalds reindeer burgers at the 5km mark are not to be passed by. Start by flying to Kiruna. The Bishops Arms hotel/bar has a fantastic selection of Belgian beers.
Thanks for the great suggestion, Scott. I’ve read about the Kungsleden Trail. I’d like to get there sometime. Keep in touch.
Michael,
An inspiring list of spectacular places to at least contemplate as we race towards the New Year of 2021. By the way Happy New Year to you, your family, friends and readers of your excellent blog.
I have had to good fortune to trundle along several of the paths you brought to us. And, as you know, as few others. Thus far the trek up the Baltaro Glacier into the Concordia and then on to K2 Basecamp is the most spectacular place I have had the good fortune to not only see but experience. It is not just being in presence, and often touching distance, of so many iconic mountains like the Trango Towers, The Cathederal, Masherbrum, the Gasherbrums, Broad Peak and of course K2 plus innumerable other drop dead gorgeous mountains. The place has a life and spirit like no other that I have visited. I concluded that the Karakoram Mountains are like a teenager that is constantly growing and changing as it grows toward maturity. I have had the good fortune to explore many of the magnificent mountain ranges of the world but none are as vibrant and dynamic. The almost constant roar of landslides, avalanches, cirques collapsing, ice dams on glacial lakes suddenly collapsing and a lake disappearing before your eyes while the resulting river is tearing downstream pushing and dragging boulders the size of pickup trucks while sounding like a runaway train.
I encourage you and your readers to include the K2 Basecamp trek to your lists. But be careful because you may find yourself returning because there are myriad other equally stunning places in the Karakoram like the trek over Snow Lake which takes you past the famous Ogre which, like K2, is one of the most difficult mountains in the world to climb. Doug Scott’s book of his and Chris Bonnington’s mis-adventures on the Ogre is legendary.
Again, Happy New Year!
John, you are one of the few people who give me ideas for my list of trips to do. Thanks, as always, and happy new year.
What a great collection of hikes! A volcano is on my bucket list for sure.
Thanks, Evan. I also have more volcanoes on my bucket list.
Wow! These hikes are breathtaking! I hope to get to at least some of these places!
Thanks, Agness. I hope you get to see them, too.
Wow, more hikes to add to our bucket list! I came across your blog while researching our trip to Alaska and researching other “travel” blogs for ideas for mine (just getting started). You have some great resources! We travel quite a bit to the National Parks in the western part of the US (Rockies and west, except we have made it to South Dakota), and up to British Columbia and Alberta. Thanks for all your great info! Lisa
Thanks, Lisa, I’m glad you found The Big Outside, and I hope you subscribe to my email list so you don’t miss any new posts. You might also be interested in my Ask Me trip-planning service: https://thebigoutside.com/ask-me/.
Keep in touch and good luck with your trip planning. So much to do, so little time!
This is a GREAT blog post! I will be referring to it often as a resource. Thanks.
-Rod Benson
http://www.bigskywalker.com
Thanks Rod.