Green River

A teenage girl hiking down off the Fenetre d’Arpette, a high pass in Switzerland on an alternate route of the Tour du Mont Blanc.

The 10 Best Family Outdoor Adventure Trips

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By Michael Lanza

As a parent of two young adults who’s taken them outdoors since before they can remember, I’ll share with you the biggest and in some ways most surprising lesson I’ve learned from these trips: Our outdoor adventures have been the best times we’ve had together as a family—and not just because the places are so special. The greatest benefit of these trips is that they have given us innumerable days with only each other and nature for entertainment—no electronic devices or other distractions that construct virtual walls within families in everyday life.

For my family, our experiences together outdoors make up most of our richest and favorite memories. They have brought us closer together.

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A young girl hiking in Sequoia National Park.

12 Wonderful National Park Adventures to Take With Kids

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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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A father and son below Jacob Hamblin Arch, Coyote Gulch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah.

10 Tips For Keeping Kids Happy and Safe Outdoors

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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.

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Backpackers hiking past a tarn off the Highline Trail (CDT) in Wyoming's Wind River Range.

Backpacking Through a Lonely Corner of the Wind River Range

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By Michael Lanza

Less than an hour into our five-day backpacking trip into the Wind River Range, we turn onto the Doubletop Mountain Trail and within minutes splash across the shallow New Fork River at a spot where it’s flowing just inches deep; I ford it with boots on, walking gingerly on my toes to—happily—keep my socks dry. On the other side, just before beginning a long climb out of this valley, we run into a couple coming down the trail and stop to chat.

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A kayaker paddling the Green River in Desolation Canyon, Utah.

Rafting the Green River’s Desolation and Gray Canyons

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By Michael Lanza

Our two prop planes climb to 2,000 feet above the Green River, flying north from the tiny airport in the one-horse town in southeast Utah that shares the river’s name. The brown current far below wiggles between castle-like walls in a canyon carved deeply into the Tavaputs Plateau, a twisting labyrinth of towers and sharp edges that looks not much more decipherable from up here than it does trying to navigate it down there. The early-morning sun slashes across the tops of the tallest formations—which are about level with us—but has not yet reached the shaded canyon bottom.

Most conspicuous, though, is what’s unseen: any significant footprint of civilization beyond an occasional rough, rambling line of hardened earth and rocks that constitutes what passes for a road out here. We are heading into one of the most inaccessible patches of the U.S. West and one of the largest roadless areas in the Lower 48, to float through that yawning canyon.

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