Alice Lake

A young girl hiker at Imogene Lake, Sawtooth Mountains, Idaho.

Sawtooth Jewels: Backpacking to Alice, Hell Roaring, and Imogene Lakes

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By Michael Lanza We sit on the bank of Pettit Lake Creek and remove our boots and socks to ford it. It’s the third week in June, and winter is just winding down in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. The creek barrels downhill, barking and bursting with snowmelt. My friends Chip and Jan Roser are already partway across, moving carefully over the …

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A hiker on the Observation Point Trail in Zion National Park.

12 Photos From 2018 That Will Inspire You to Get Outdoors

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By Michael Lanza

What adventures did you take in 2018 that inspired you? I hope you enjoyed at least a few. I did. The 12 photos in this story are favorite images from some of the trips I took over the past year. They included hiking in Zion (twice) and Bryce Canyon national parks; backpacking off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in spring and returning in fall to dayhike the canyon rim to rim to rim over two magnificent days; rock climbing in Yosemite; backpacking and scrambling peaks in Idaho’s Sawtooths; and putting an exclamation point on the year with a 90-mile traverse of Glacier National Park on the Continental Divide Trail.

Scroll through these photos, each of which is accompanied by a short anecdote from the trip and links to existing stories at The Big Outside. I hope they help inspire you to start planning your adventures for 2019. After all, these are the experiences that give meaning to our lives.

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Trekking the Alta Via 2 in Parco Naturale Paneveggio Pale di San Martino, Dolomite Mountains, Italy.

10 Favorite Photos From 2014 Adventures

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By Michael Lanza

Was 2014 a good year for you? After poring through thousands of photos I shot on more than a dozen trips this year, including return visits to iconic national parks like Yosemite and Zion, and a couple of adventures that have been on my to-do list for years—backpacking the Timberline Trail around Mount Hood and trekking in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains—I picked my 10 favorite images of the year. I’ll write about these trips in upcoming stories at The Big Outside. For now, let these pictures give you a little inspiration to make 2015 a great year outdoors.

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