Tent Flap With A View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites

By Michael Lanza

An unforgettable campsite can define a backcountry trip. Sometimes that perfect spot where you spend a night forges the memory that remains the most vivid long after you’ve gone home. A photo of that camp can send recollections of the entire adventure rushing back to you—it does for me. I’ve been very fortunate to have pitched a tent in many great backcountry campsites over nearly three decades of backpacking and trekking all over the U.S. and the world. I’ve boiled the list of my favorite spots down to these 25.

I update this list every year, and each time, it becomes more difficult. This year, I’m adding a campsite in Titcomb Basin, in the heart of Wyoming’s majestic Wind River Range. Below my top 25 list you’ll find a second list of campsites that were previously in my top 25. Each campsite photo below includes a short description of where it is and the trip, and most have a link to an existing story about that trip at The Big Outside. Continue reading →

Ask Me: My Top Picks For Long Backpacking Trips

Hi Michael,

I’m looking for a backpacking loop, out and back, or shuttle that allows me about 20 miles a day for about five days. I’ve done a ton of multi-day backpacking and lots of long-distance trails. I’m an elementary-school teacher, and I usually take a solo trip the first week of my summer vacation. It can be tricky as it’s the second week of June and there is usually too much snow to attempt certain trails. I saw your piece on the Timberline Trail around Mount Hood in Oregon, which is an option, but I’m looking for more like 75 to 125 miles in total. Ideas would be sooo appreciated. Continue reading →

10 Photos From 2017 That Will Inspire You to Get Outdoors

By Michael Lanza

What adventures did you take in 2017 that reinvigorated you? I had a good year. The 10 photos that follow are favorite images from a list of trips I took over the past 12 months that included trekking the Tour du Mont Blanc in the Alps and exploring the rainforests and volcanoes of Costa Rica, backpacking in Wyoming’s Wind River Range and Utah’s Dark Canyon Wilderness, dayhikes in the Columbia Gorge and up the most beloved peak in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains, backcountry skiing in the High Sierra and Sawtooth Mountains, and whitewater kayaking in my back yard on Idaho’s Payette River.

As the people of Costa Rica like to say, “Pura vida,” which is Spanish for “pure life.”

Continue reading →

3-Minute Read: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin, Wind River Range

By Michael Lanza

Titcomb Basin, deep in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, is the kind of place that can induce neck problems. The environs force you to perpetually look around, mouth gaping open at the mountains towering above it—because many people coming here have quite possibly never seen a place like it before. An alpine valley at over 10,500 feet, it lies astride peaks on the Continental Divide that soar more than 3,000 feet above the Titcomb Lakes, the highest of which is 13,745-foot Fremont Peak. But the valley is flanked on three sides by high peaks; the only straightforward route in is from its southern end.

Spending time here—as two friends and I did on a recent, 39-mile backpacking trip—can really give your neck a workout. Continue reading →

A Walk in the Winds: Hiking a One-Day, 27-Mile Traverse of Wyoming’s Wind River Range

By Michael Lanza

At 6:20 a.m., more than an hour into our hike, the sun surfaces through the thick layer of wildfire smoke in the valley below us. A blood-red sliver with clouds above it burning orange and yellow, it slowly blossoms into a partial disk, then a full, sharply defined orb glowing like a hot ember. It looks both beautiful and darkly sinister.

I’m trying to figure out whether this sunrise is a metaphor for our plans to hike 27 miles across Wyoming’s Wind River Range today. But I’m working on three hours of sleep and my brain’s functioning at about 20 percent of capacity. So I’m not sure whether this sunrise through wildfire smoke foretells us burning up the trail or, conversely, crashing and burning. As tired as I feel, I’m not sure that I want to know. Continue reading →