America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
America’s 63 national parks preserve over 52 million acres of uniquely beautiful and genuinely awe-inspiring places in nature, and the payoff for our country’s foresight in protecting them is a lifetime’s worth of unforgettable experiences—many of them entirely feasible, safe, and really fun for families with kids of all ages. Best of all, you’ll find that sharing these adventures will create your best times together as a family, as they have for mine.
By Michael Lanza
So, you’ve been an avid [circle all appropriate terms: hiker/backpacker/climber/trail runner/skier/kayaker] for years, and now you’re spending big chunks of your days changing diapers and your nights wondering when you’ll sleep again. You’ve never gone this long without getting out into the mountains, and you see no remedy for that shortfall in the foreseeable future. Your new baby is more wonderful than you’d ever imagined—and yet, you’re feeling a little despair over what’s missing from your life lately.
I know where your head is right now. And I have good news for you: I’ve reached the bright light at the end of the tunnel, and you can get there faster than you might think. Here’s how.
By Michael Lanza
Some people might say my wife and I are bad parents. We’ve repeatedly and deliberately placed our kids—at young ages—in risky situations. And I’m not talking about letting them ride their bikes without wearing helmets or frequently taking them to McDonald’s.
I’m talking about setting out with seven- and four-year-old kids to cross-country ski through a snowstorm for hours to a backcountry yurt. Tying a six-year-old into a rope and letting him or her rock climb a cliff. Rappelling into slot canyons. Backpacking into the remotest and most rugged wildernesses in the contiguous United States, from the Grand Canyon to the Tetons to Glacier National Park.
By Michael Lanza
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t take young kids down that river in May. It’s much too dangerous. I tell families to go in June or later, when the river’s lower.”
That was the dire warning issued to me over the phone by an employee with an outfitter based in Moab, Utah, that offers multi-day float trips down the Green River in Canyonlands National Park. His tone completely derailed me: Based on everything I’d read and heard, May was an ideal time for a family trip on the Green—which may well be America’s best easy float trip.
By Michael Lanza
With our first steps on the descent from Maze Overlook into the labyrinth of mostly dry desert canyons that comprise one of the greatest geological oddities in the National Park System—the Maze in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park—we already face our first obstacle: Removing our backpacks, we scramble one by one over a ledge drop of several feet and pass our packs down.
But this introduction to the most technical section of our route merely hints at the arduous and improbable terrain awaiting around the corner.