Grand Canyon South Rim hikes

A hiker near Skeleton Point on the South Kaibab Trail, Grand Canyon.

How to Hike the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in a Day

By Michael Lanza

Minutes after we started hiking down the Grand Canyon’s South Kaibab Trail, we descended through short, tight switchbacks where the trail clings to the face of a cliff. The earth dropped away precipitously beyond the trail’s edge; we gazed down nearly a vertical mile into the bottom of The Big Ditch. Not much farther along, we stopped, awestruck, at a breathtaking overlook of perhaps the most famous canyon on the planet.

Those first vistas laid bare the audacity of our plans: to walk across this awesome chasm in one push, on a 21-mile, nearly 11,000-vertical-foot, rim-to-rim dayhike.

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A hiker in the North Fork Cascade Canyon, Grand Teton National Park.

The 25 Best National Park Dayhikes

By Michael Lanza

America’s most stunning landscapes are protected within our 63 national parks, and some of the very finest scenery within our national heritage can be reached on dayhikes. Some of these hikes you may not have done yet or heard of. Others are famous, but there’s a reason for that: They are mind-blowingly gorgeous, so they stand out even in parks with multiple, five-star footpaths. You take these hikes for a one-of-a-kind experience.

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A backpacker hiking down the South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon.

9 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do

By Michael Lanza

This is, in a way, a story about obsession. Or a love affair. Or both. Those metaphors best describe how the Grand Canyon constantly lures me back when I’m thinking about spring and fall hiking and backpacking trips.

It is that rare kind of natural environment that exists on a scale of its own, like Alaska or the Himalaya. There’s something soul-stirring and hypnotic about its infinite vistas, the deceptive immensity of the canyon walls and stone towers, and the way the foreground and background continually expand and shrink as you ascend and descend elevation gradients of a vertical mile or more—all of which validates enduring the wilting heat and trails that sometimes seem better suited to rattlesnakes and scorpions than bipedal primates.

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A young girl hiking in Sequoia National Park.

12 Wonderful National Park Adventures to Take With Kids

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.

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Backpackers hiking the Tonto Trail above Sapphire Canyon in the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon’s Best Backpacking Trips—A Photo Gallery

By Michael Lanza

I returned to the Grand Canyon yet again in April, my seventh backpacking trip there in the past 15 years, which works out to roughly every other year. Any psychologist, behavioral scientist, or criminologist would describe that as an established pattern of behavior. I confess: I can’t get enough of that place. This time, five friends and I spent six days hiking about 60 miles from the South Bass Trailhead to the Hermit Trailhead off the South Rim, following what’s informally known as the canyon’s Gems Route (photo above and a couple more in the gallery, below) for the names of several tributary canyons you cross along this most remote section of the Tonto Trail.

And as usual in the canyon, superlatives seem to fall far short of describing this latest adventure there.

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