America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
The trail tilts abruptly to a much steeper angle ahead of me. This is the uphill stretch that always whips the snot out of me. For several minutes that pass like epochs, I take a painful waltz with my anaerobic threshold, willing myself to keep running—even slowly—when my body just wants to stop, walk, and breathe without the sensation of flames in my lungs.
By Michael Lanza
My seven-year-old daughter, Alex, is engaged in some heavy intellectual lifting. I can tell by the way she stares quietly, her brow knitted in thought, at Upper Yosemite Falls. We’ve hiked for 90 minutes up a thousand vertical feet of hot, dusty trail above Yosemite Valley to stand below this curtain of water that plunges a sheer 1,430 feet off a cliff, ripping through the air with a sound like fighter jets buzzing us.