America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
The wind blows a steady warning blast heralding the meaner gusts forecast for tonight as we begin backpacking down the rugged “trail,” such as it is, into Owl Canyon, in the Cedar Mesa area of southern Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument. In the first week of May, the four of us wear pants and shell jackets over a couple of top layers—it feels that chilly.
By Michael Lanza
Like many desert Southwest hikes, southern Utah’s Boulder Mail Trail begins from its western trailhead with a lot of laboriously slow walking in soft sand—miles of it, up, down, over, across. When not walking in beach sand, or for brief, merciful spurts, firm sand, we’re hiking over slickrock, that most grippy of ground surfaces where we can move much more quickly—except where the slickrock tilts at severe angles, as it does much of the time. Then it begins an adventurous exercise in strenuous, calf-pumping ascents or cautious descents with backpacks, constantly zigzagging to avoid the impassable spots steep enough that a slip could result in a long slide and tumble for a possibly hurtful distance.
By Michael Lanza
In strong, cool gusts of wind competing against a blazing desert sun, we descend a dusty trail flanked by tall, muscular saguaro and countless small cacti aiming thousands of sharp needles at the legs of anyone who wanders too close to the trail’s edge. Just minutes from the trailhead, we reach the bottom of southern Arizona’s Aravaipa Canyon, splashing across Aravaipa Creek in several strides—the first of scores of crossings we’ll make of this calf-deep, crystal-clear, and cool but not numbing little desert waterway over the next three days.
By Michael Lanza
After descending seven miles and over 4,800 feet on the Grand Canyon’s always-stunning South Kaibab Trail and crossing the footbridge to the north side of the Colorado River, we follow the path through the Bright Angel backpacker campground to its end. There, not marked by any sign and not obvious to anyone unaware of it, a faint path leads through low bushes. Within moments, it turns and runs straight up a steep canyon wall of cacti and other desert flora, loose scree, and boulders, ascending about 1,500 vertical feet in the first mile, beyond what we can see from the bottom of it.
Gazing up with a volatile mix of excitement and trepidation, we start a long uphill grind.
By Michael Lanza
Walls of searing, orange-red sandstone shoot up for hundreds of feet, so close together in places that I could cross from one side of this chasm to the other in a dozen strides. On the floor of Paria Canyon, a shallow river slides lazily forward like very thin, melted milk chocolate. The early-spring sunshine only occasionally finds us in here, even at midday; instead, it ignites the upper walls and sends warm light bouncing downward in a cascade of reflected glow, painting every wave of rock in a subtly different hue.
Hypnotized, I fall a short distance behind the group, pointing my camera and clicking away. Moments later, I round a bend in the canyon to see my friend, Vince, mired hip-deep in quicksand and struggling mightily.