High Sierra backpacking trips

A backpacker hiking the Italy Pass Trail through Granite Park in the John Muir Wilderness, High Sierra, California.

Big Scenery, No Crowds: 10 Top Backpacking Trips For Solitude

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By Michael Lanza

We all want our wilderness backpacking trips to have two sometimes conflicting qualities: mind-blowing scenery, but also few other people around. A high degree of solitude somehow makes the backcountry feel bigger and wilder and the views more breathtaking. However unrealistic the notion may be, we like to believe we have some stunning corner of nature to ourselves. But in the real world, if you head out into popular mountains in July or August or in canyon country in spring or fall, you’ll probably have company—maybe more than you prefer.

Not on these trips, though.

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A backpacker hiking the John Muir Trail above Helen Lake in Kings Canyon N.P., High Sierra.

High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail

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By Michael Lanza

All day, clouds the color of a bruise pile up across the sky, conceding the sun only brief, teasing appearances before blocking it out again. Carrying packs bursting with nine days of food, we hike past lakes, each one higher and prettier than the last. More than seven miles from where we began our walk, we stroll into the basin of a sprawling lake whose image captured in historic Ansel Adams photographs has in many ways come to define the public’s mental picture of what is arguably America’s finest mountain range, the High Sierra: Speckled by scores of rocky islets below the distinctive profile of aptly named Banner Peak, Thousand Island Lake today bares whitecapped teeth pushed up by strong gusts of wind.

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A backpacker hiking Indian Ridge, overlooking Half Dome, in Yosemite National Park.

Yosemite’s Best-Kept Secret Backpacking Trip

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By Michael Lanza

A bit over a mile into our first day backpacking in Yosemite, as we round a bend in the trail, Half Dome suddenly rears up in front of us, looming over the horizon like an asteroid just seconds before it impacts the planet. “Wow!” bursts from my mouth involuntarily, sounding very inadequate for the majestic scene before us.

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A backpacker in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park.

Backpacking 150 Miles Through Wildest Yosemite

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By Michael Lanza

In early evening on a bluebird September day, deep in northern Yosemite National Park, my friend Todd Arndt and I—with legs a little weary—reached our fourth pass on a 23-mile day, the second day of a four-day, 87-mile hike. Only a quad-melting, 1,500-foot descent stood between us and soothing our feet in the cool sand and cold water at Benson Lake (possibly the most unbelievable mountain lake I’ve ever seen).

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A backpacker in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park.

Best of Yosemite: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite

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By Michael Lanza Under a sky lacking even one tiny cotton ball, and so blue you want to pour it into a cup and drink it, Todd and I walk across Tuolumne Meadows, carrying full but light backpacks and hearts full of anticipation. Across the creek-cut meadows, Cathedral Peak knifes into the stratosphere, and domes of polished granite bubble up …

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