Utah backpacking

A backpacker hiking the Uinta Highline Trail west toward Dead Horse Pass in Utah's High Uintas Wilderness.

Backpacking Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness—A Photo Gallery

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By Michael Lanza

Early on the third morning of a six-day hike through Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness, I walked to the shore of the Fourth Chain Lake at 10,900 feet, where we had camped. Its waters sat absolutely still, offering up a perfect, inverted reflection of the mountains. By that afternoon, we reached 11,700-foot Trail Rider Pass, our second high pass of the day, with a view that took the edge off our weariness. Behind us, the valley of Lake Atwood, which we had hiked up, stretched for miles; ahead lay our destination, Painter Basin (photo above), an expansive, almost barren plateau at 11,000 feet below the highest peak in Utah, Kings Peak.

In those first three days of hiking, we encountered a grand total of two other people—and a whole lot of majestic scenery.

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A backpacker in The Narrows in Zion National Park.

The Best Guide to Backpacking the Zion Narrows

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By Michael Lanza

The sound of rushing water increased in volume and the canyon walls pressed in close and reached toward the sliver of sky overhead as we walked downstream in the calf-deep North Fork of the Virgin River in The Narrows of Zion National Park. Turning a bend in the canyon, we came upon one of the most incongruous sights in the desert: a waterfall pouring from cracks in the canyon’s sandstone wall. Known as Big Spring, this oasis of cascading water and a hanging garden clinging to a redrock cliff is just one of the many wonders awaiting backpackers in Zion’s Narrows.

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A backpacker hiking west from Porcupine Pass on the Uinta Highline Trail, High Uintas Wilderness, Utah.

Backpacking—and Sandbagging—Utah’s Uinta Highline Trail

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By Michael Lanza

The strongest signal that late afternoon has begun its inexorably precipitous October slide into a freezing evening comes as my son, Nate, and I step from almost-warm sunshine into the deep shade of a peak whose shadow tops out at over 13,000 feet in eastern Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness. The wind cranks up in volume as we continue upward, wearing shell jackets with hoods up, wool hats, and gloves while carrying full backpacks uphill at a lung-busting elevation—and still feeling just marginally warm enough.

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Backpackers in the narrows of Paria Canyon, in southern Utah and northern Arizona.

Paria Canyon—A Top 5 Southwest Backpacking Trip

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By Michael Lanza

Walls of searing, orange-red sandstone towered hundreds of feet overhead in a chasm at times no more than a dozen strides across. A shallow river flowed like very thin chocolate milk down the canyon, spanning it from wall to wall in spots. And the spectacle had only just begun: We were mere hours into the first day of one of the most continually stunning, multi-day canyon hikes in the Southwest: Paria Canyon.

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Backpackers hiking below Nevills Arch in lower Owl Canyon, Bears Ears National Monument, Utah.

Backpacking Southern Utah’s Owl and Fish Canyons

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By Michael Lanza

The wind blows a steady warning blast heralding the meaner gusts forecast for tonight as we begin backpacking down the rugged “trail,” such as it is, into Owl Canyon, in the Cedar Mesa area of southern Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument. In the first week of May, the four of us wear pants and shell jackets over a couple of top layers—it feels that chilly.

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