From natural arches, hoodoos, and hanging gardens to balanced rocks and towering mesas, slot canyons and vast chasms, the desert Southwest holds in its dry, searing, lonely open spaces some of America’s most fascinating and inspiring geology. The writer “Cactus Ed” Abbey no doubt had this region in mind when he said there “are some places so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep.” Much of it sits protected within southern Utah’s five national parks: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, and Capitol Reef.

The good news? Many of the best sights can be reached on dayhikes of anywhere from a couple hours to a full day.

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The list below of the best dayhikes in southern Utah’s national parks draws from numerous trips I’ve made to each of these parks over the past three decades, including the 10 years I spent as a field editor for Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog. Use my list as your compass, and I guarantee you will knock off the best hikes in these parks.

Like many stories at this blog, part of this one is free for anyone to read, but reading it in full and seeing the full list of hikes described below is an exclusive benefit of a paid subscription to The Big Outside.

I’d love to read your thoughts about my list—and your suggestions for dayhikes that belong on it. Please share them in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments, and as I continue to explore more trails, I will regularly update this story.

Angels Landing and West Rim Trail, Zion National Park

Angels Landing unquestionably belongs on any list of the best dayhikes in Utah. The five-mile, nearly 1,500-foot round-trip hike of Angels Landing culminates in one of the airiest and most thrilling half-mile stretches (actually, 0.4 mile) of trail in the entire National Park System. You scale a steep, knife-edge ridge crest of rock, using steps carved out of sandstone and chain handrails in spots. And the 360-degree panorama from the summit takes in all of Zion Canyon.

Two tips: If you can hike a strong pace, start in very early morning or wait until mid-afternoon (when the lower section of trail falls into shade) to avoid the crowds and the heat of midday. And after summiting Angels, continue up the West Rim Trail for another mile or two before turning back—you will ditch the crowds and explore a sublimely beautiful area of giant beehive towers and white walls streaked in red and orange.

Due to the hike’s enormous popularity, Zion National Park holds a seasonal lottery four times per year at recreation.gov for permits to dayhike Angels Landing. Key lottery dates for Zion’s two peak hiking seasons, spring and fall, are Feb. 13-25 for hiking permits from March 1 through May 31, held at recreation.gov/permits/4675310; for hiking dates from Sept. 1 through Nov. 30, the lottery dates in 2025 were July 1-20 and held at recreation.gov/permits/4675325, but the lottery dates for fall 2026 have not been announced yet. The permit is only required for hiking the spur trail up Angels Landing; anyone can hike as far as Scout Lookout without a permit.

A separate lottery for dayhiking permits is held daily before 3 p.m. Mountain Time the day before you want to hike it. Learn more and find the link for a day-before permit at nps.gov/zion/planyourvisit/angels-landing-hiking-permits.htm.

See my stories “Hiking Angels Landing: What You Need to Know” and “The 10 Best Hikes in Zion National Park.”

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Navajo-Queens Garden and Peek-a-Boo Loops, Bryce Canyon National Park

If the view of Bryce’s stone forest of multi-colored hoodoos is breathtaking from roadside overlooks, hiking in their labyrinthine midst is mesmerizing. Combine the popular and short Navajo Loop/Queens Garden Loop—which features one of the park’s best-known formations, Thor’s Hammer—with the Peek-a-Boo Loop (also shown in lead photo at top of story), and you will lose the crowds while walking through a maze of multi-colored limestone, sandstone, and mudstone towers.

The hike, mostly on good trails that are easy to follow, weaves among tall hoodoos, passes through doorways cut through walls of rock, and wraps through amphitheaters of wildly colored, slender spires that resemble giant, melting candles. The six-mile loop, with a total elevation gain and loss of about 1,600 feet, begins and ends at Sunset Point.

See “The Two Best Hikes in Bryce Canyon National Park,” and all stories about Utah national parks at The Big Outside.

Hike all of “The 12 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest.”

Navajo Knobs Trail and Hickman Bridge, Capitol Reef National Park

While other hikes on this list are likely on your radar, Capitol Reef’s Navajo Knobs Trail may not be—and it absolutely should. This may sound like hyperbole, but there are few dayhikes in the entire National Park System, never mind in Utah’s parks, that compare, step for step, with the consistently mind-blowing Navajo Knobs Trail (lead photo at top of story).

A 9.4-mile, out-and-back hike with 1,620 feet of uphill and downhill, it starts at the same trailhead as the immensely popular Hickman Bridge Trail, winding upward to the Rim Overlook at 2.3 miles from the trailhead, with a sweeping view of the cliffs and the Waterpocket Fold from 1,000 feet above the Fremont River Gorge. The lightly traveled trail then meanders along the canyon rim, below enormous cliffs and towers in a variety of shapes and sizes, with continuously expanding panoramas of Capitol Reef, ending with some easy scrambling to the top of one of the pinnacles known as the Navajo Knobs.

The Navajo Knobs Trail presents delightful surprises around every turn and a unique perspective on the fascinating topography of Capitol Reef National Park. The short and easy Hickman Bridge Trail, less than two miles out-and-back with 400 feet of up and down, loops around the natural bridge, which spans 133 feet—a terrific hike for a young family.

See “The Best Hikes in Capitol Reef National Park.”

Planning your next big adventure? See “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.”

Chesler Park, Canyonlands National Park

Hiking to Chesler Park in the Needles District of Canyonlands has the quality of approaching the Emerald City in the land of Oz. Multi-colored, 300-foot-tall towers of Cedar Mesa sandstone form a castle-like rampart, looming ever larger as you approach Chesler. The trail then leads steeply uphill through a break in the row of pinnacles—the doorway into Chesler Park, a horseshoe of sandstone spires arcing around a patch of desert more than a mile across.

From ledges between the spires of Chesler, you get views of the park’s pinnacles and the sprawling badlands outside its walls, where giant, white-capped mushrooms of stone sprout from the earth, and more red spires rise in the distance. It’s roughly 10 miles out-and-back hike to Chesler without probing into it. But if you have the time and stamina, hike the path almost three miles around the park to the Joint Trail, which passes through a very narrow, sheer-walled slot in solid rock.

See my story “No Straight Lines: Backpacking and Hiking in Canyonlands and Arches National Parks.”

Want more? See “The 25 Best National Park Dayhikes”
and “Extreme Hiking: America’s Best Hard Dayhikes.”

Delicate Arch at Sunset, Arches National Park

The trail to what is probably Utah’s most famous natural arch is certainly a well-traveled path. But here’s the smart hiker’s strategy: Do it in the evening, timing your arrival at Delicate for shortly before sunset. The final stretch of the trail traverses the face of a small slickrock cliff before suddenly depositing you on the rim of an amphitheater of solid rock, looking across the broad bowl at Delicate Arch, with the La Sal Mountains, snow-covered in spring, visible through its keyhole. Then hold your jaw in place while watching as the low-angle sunlight seems to electrify the sandstone’s burnt color.

Just three miles round-trip with minimal elevation gain, it’s an easy stroll, even returning by headlamp; and that time of day is far more pleasant than trudging it during the morning or afternoon heat. Tip: Bring a headlamp and jacket and linger for a while after sunset, until most other hikers have departed, and you’ll enjoy a quieter, enchanting walk under a sky riddled with stars.

See my story “No Straight Lines: Backpacking and Hiking in Canyonlands and Arches National Parks,” and all of my stories about Arches National Park.

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The Riverside Walk and the Narrows, Zion National Park

From the Temple of Sinawava, at the upper end of Zion Canyon, you’ll walk the flat and very scenic, wheelchair-accessible, mile-long Riverside Trail, paralleling the North Fork of the Virgin River beneath red cliffs and shady cottonwood trees whose leaves turn golden in fall. At the end of that trail, you can either turn back or enter the typically ankle- to calf-deep river and follow it upstream to explore the Narrows, a canyon up to a thousand feet deep, with walls that close in enough to cut off direct sunlight in places, where waterfalls pour from rock walls, nurturing hanging gardens.

At Orderville Canyon, a narrow side canyon about 2.5 miles from the trailhead (on the right when walking upstream), you enter the roughly two-mile-long stretch of the Narrows known as Wall Street, where the river often spans the deeply shaded canyon wall to wall. Wall Street ends just before Big Spring, a lush and large hanging garden about five miles up, beyond which hiking is prohibited without a backcountry permit.

One of the most magnificent and unique hikes in the national parks and enormously popular, the lower Narrows teems with hundreds and sometimes thousands of dayhikers on hot days of late spring and summer, when the river is low and warmer.

See “The 10 Best Hikes in Zion National Park.”

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Devils Garden, Arches National Park

Much of the mass popularity of Arches owes to the ease of viewing many of its signature features on short to very short hikes and roadside walks. That’s exactly why Devils Garden is the best hike in the park (at least among hikes that follow established trails). Besides being really scenic—you can view seven arches, including the park’s largest, 306-foot-long Landscape Arch—it’s much more adventurous.

The hiking is flat and easy for nearly one mile to Landscape Arch (almost two miles round-trip); beyond it, though, you’ll discover part of the magic of Devils Garden: immersing yourself in the landscape off the trail. You will scamper up and down steep sandstone fins and out onto exposed overlooks, and you can even scramble up into Partition Arch. Hike to all seven arches in the Devils Garden area, and you’ll cover about eight miles by the time you return to the Devils Garden Trailhead, at the end of the park road through Arches.

See my story “No Straight Lines: Backpacking and Hiking in Canyonlands and Arches National Parks,” and all stories about Arches National Park at The Big Outside.

See my 5-level difficulty rating system in my story
“How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”

Cohab Canyon and Frying Pan Trail, Capitol Reef National Park

Of southern Utah’s five national parks, Capitol Reef plays the Cinderella role as the unappreciated beauty—which hikers who love the place consider a fortuitous break. I’ve explored much of this park’s lonely backcountry, and it’s worth all of the time and effort it demands. But to sample Capitol Reef’s Utah-caliber scenery on a relatively easy hike of two to three hours, head up the Cohab Canyon Trail, through a defile of walls sculpted with countless “windows.” From the clifftop ledges at the North Fruita Overlook and South Fruita Overlook, reached by hiking several minutes on spur trails, you’ll get breathtaking views from about 400 feet above the valley of the Fremont River.

Take a short, out-and-back detour onto the Frying Pan Trail: Within about 20 minutes of leaving Cohab Canyon, you’re on top of the nearly 100-mile-long Waterpocket Fold, soaking in a mind-boggling landscape of creamy-white, burgundy, and blazing-orange domes and cliffs. The Cohab Canyon Trail extends just 1.7 miles between UT 24 near the Hickman Bridge Trailhead and its other trailhead across the park’s Scenic Road from Fruita Campground; shuttle vehicles or a bike to hike it end-to-end, or hike out and back from either trailhead.

I describe the outstanding 11-mile hike combining Cohab Canyon and Frying Pan Trail in my story “The Best Hikes in Capitol Reef National Park.” See also “Playing the Memory Game in Southern Utah’s Escalante, Capitol Reef, and Bryce Canyon.”

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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.

Based on more than three decades of exploring most major U.S. national parks—including the 10 years I spent as a field editor for Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog—and numerous trips to popular parks like Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Grand Teton, Zion, and others, I’ve assembled this list of the best dayhikes in our parks. Many can be done by novice hikers and kids (and my kids have done many of them, at various ages), while others are burlier adventures.

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here for my e-books to classic backpacking trips. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.

While you don’t usually set out on some these hikes expecting solitude, you can find it by doing them early or late in the day or outside of peak season; I offer tips below on the best times to do some of these hikes.

Use this as your tick list of great national park dayhikes to knock off, and I guarantee you’ll experience the best miles of trail our National Park System has to offer. By the way, this story actually describes 26 hikes—yea, there’s a bonus hike. And like many stories at this blog, much of this one is free for anyone to read, but reading it all and seeing the entire list of hikes is an exclusive benefit for paid subscribers to The Big Outside.

If I’ve missed an outstanding, favorite hike of yours, please suggest it in the comments section below to give me ideas for future trips. I regularly update and expand this list whenever I knock off a new trail that belongs here, and I try to respond to all comments.

South Kaibab Trail, Grand Canyon

You can’t go wrong on any dayhike in the Grand Canyon, but the South Kaibab is widely considered the premier trail in the Big Ditch. Following the crest of a narrow ridge that descends all the way to the Colorado River, it delivers expansive canyon views beginning minutes after leaving the trailhead.

It’s seven miles and 4,780 vertical feet one-way from the South Rim to the Colorado River—a one-day round-trip appropriate only for extremely fit hikers with desert-hiking experience, who are carrying enough food and water for a big day (there’s no water along the trail). Many people attempting a rim-to-river-to-rim dayhike descend the South Kaibab and ascend the less-steep Bright Angel Trail (9.5 miles and almost 4,500 feet uphill). But you can turn back at any point, choosing the length and difficulty of your hike—keeping in mind that going back up requires much more time and effort than going down. Start at first light and you’ll not only share the trail with far fewer people, you’ll be looking out over the Grand Canyon as the prettiest light of the day spills across it.

See all stories about the Grand Canyon’s South Kaibab Trail and all stories about the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

Do the canyon right. Get my expert e-book to dayhiking rim to rim
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Upper Yosemite Falls, Yosemite

Besides its towering granite walls, Yosemite Valley is famous for waterfalls that plummet hundreds or thousands of feet. The tallest, Upper Yosemite Falls, drops a sheer 1,400 feet (2,425 feet including the middle cascades and Lower Yosemite Falls, making the total drop the world’s sixth tallest). Near its brink, you’ll traverse a catwalk chiseled out of a granite wall to a ledge (with a safety rail) where you can peer down at the freefalling water and out over Yosemite Valley, nearly 3,000 feet below.

The round-trip hike to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls is 7.2 miles and 2,700 feet, but you can turn back at any point, such as at Columbia Rock (a mile and 1,000 feet uphill from the trailhead), which has a broad view of Yosemite Valley; or a half-mile farther, near the base of the upper falls, where you can stand in the rain of its intense mist.

See “The 12 Best Dayhikes in Yosemite” and “The Magic of Hiking to Yosemite’s Waterfalls,” and all stories about Yosemite at The Big Outside.

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Highline Trail, Glacier

From 6,646-foot Logan Pass, the high point on Glacier’s Going-to-the-Sun Road, the Highline Trail traverses north across rolling, alpine terrain above treeline, with uninterrupted views of the park’s jagged peaks and soaring cliffs. It’s common to see bighorn sheep and mountain goats along the trail, and occasionally sight a black bear or even a grizzly (bring binoculars).

Hike in daylight as a bear-safety precaution, but start early morning, before most hikers, for the best chances of seeing wildlife. Distance options include turning around at any point or hiking 11.8 miles to The Loop on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, which, like Logan Pass, is a stop on the park’s free shuttle bus. Or hike the 7.6 miles from Logan Pass to Granite Park, spend the night at the Granite Park Chalet (make a reservation months in advance); and the next day, either backtrack to Logan Pass or continue over Swiftcurrent Pass and descend to Many Glacier, another 7.6-mile day.

See “The 10 Best Dayhikes in Glacier National Park,” “The 8 Best Long Hikes in Glacier National Park,” and all stories about Glacier National Park at The Big Outside.

Get my expert e-books to the best backpacking trip in Glacier
and backpacking the Continental Divide Trail through Glacier.

Angels Landing and West Rim Trail, Zion

The 2.5-mile, 1,500-foot (one-way) ascent of Angels Landing culminates in one of the airiest and most thrilling half-mile stretches (actually, 0.4 mile) of trail in the entire National Park System: You scale a steep ridge crest of solid rock, on a path at times just a few feet wide, with steps carved out of sandstone and chain handrails in spots (see lead photo at top of story). Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, Angels Landing really has no peers.

Two tips: If you can hike a strong pace, start early morning or late afternoon to avoid the crowds and the heat of midday. And after summiting Angels, continue up the West Rim Trail for another mile or two; you’ll not only lose the crowds, you will enjoy increasingly dramatic views of Zion Canyon and venture into a quieter, sublimely beautiful area of giant beehive towers and white walls streaked in red and orange. The trail eventually climbs through exposed switchbacks to the West Rim, roughly five miles and 2,000 feet from The Grotto Trailhead where the hike begins.

Due to the enormous popularity of Angels Landing, Zion National Park has implemented a permit system for dayhiking Angels. Find out more at nps.gov/zion/planyourvisit/angels-landing-hiking-permits.htm.

See “Hiking Angels Landing: What You Need to Know,” “The 10 Best Hikes in Zion National Park,” “The 15 Best Hikes in Utah’s National Parks,” and all stories about Zion at The Big Outside.

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North Rim Trail, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, Yellowstone

With more than 10,000 geothermal features, including hot springs, mud pots, fumaroles, and at least 300 geysers—two-thirds of the planet’s known geysers—Yellowstone is a land of marvels. Plus, you have a virtual guarantee of seeing more bison and elk than you can count and possibly other wildlife like wolves, bald eagles, trumpeter swans, and grizzly and black bears.

But of all the trails in the park, I’ll posit that the North Rim Trail, hundreds of feet above the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, is the most spectacular. Traversing the rim for 3.2 miles from Inspiration Point to the overlook of 109-foot Upper Yellowstone Falls, the trail passes several dramatic overlooks of the canyon’s crumbling, golden walls. Don’t pass up the side trip down the steep switchbacks of the half-mile-long Brink of the Lower Falls Trail, which, as advertised, leads to the very lip of 308-foot Lower Yellowstone Falls.

See “The Ultimate Family Tour of Yellowstone,” “The 10 Best Hikes in Yellowstone,” which includes the North Rim Trail, and all stories about Yellowstone at The Big Outside.

Want more? See “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips”
and “Extreme Hiking: America’s Best Hard Dayhikes.”

Cascade Pass and Sahale Arm, North Cascades

North Cascades is one of the wildest, most rugged and spectacular, and least-visited parks—and after several trips, one of my favorites. With 9,000 feet of severe relief between the highest, jagged summits and deepest, rainforest valleys, more than 300 glaciers, and year-round snow coverage, the range has earned the nickname the “American Alps.”

But with 93 percent of its nearly 700,000 acres designated as wilderness, much of this park can only be seen by people willing to hike long distances over multiple days. Lucky for dayhikers, the 7.4-mile, 1,800-foot round-trip hike to Cascade Pass delivers views usually reserved for backpackers and climbers. Continue past it up wildflower-strewn Sahale Arm for steadily expanding views of a sea of pinnacles, ice, and snow. It’s another 4.4 miles and 2,300 feet to the trail’s end at Sahale Glacier Camp, but turn around at any time.

See my story “Exploring the ‘American Alps:’ The North Cascades,” and all stories about the North Cascades region at The Big Outside.

See Sahale Glacier Camp in North Cascades in my story
“Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites.”

Garnet Canyon, Grand Teton

The Tetons are another mountain range where some of the best views are enjoyed only by hiking many miles or tying into a rope. But Garnet Canyon, where soaring granite walls form a horseshoe beneath the Grand, Middle, and South Tetons and neighboring peaks, offers arguably the best views in the park that you can reach on a moderate dayhike.

From the Lupine Meadows Trailhead, it’s about four-and-a-half miles with more than 2,200 feet of vertical to the grassy area known as The Meadows, where there are campsites by a creek. The last stretch to The Meadows crosses an area of massive boulders beyond the end of the maintained Garnet Canyon Trail, but the views are just as good before the boulders.

Hiking to Amphitheater Lake, ringed by cliffs and forest high on Disappointment Peak and reached by a trail that forks off the path to Garnet Canyon, adds four miles out-and-back.

See my stories “Great Hike: Garnet Canyon, Grand Teton National Park” and “10 Great Big Dayhikes in the Tetons,” and all stories about Grand Teton National Park at The Big Outside.

Dying to backpack in the Tetons? See my e-books to the Teton Crest Trail
and the best short backpacking trip there.

Navajo-Queens Garden and Peek-a-Boo Loops, Bryce Canyon

Descend into Bryce Canyon on the Navajo Loop/Queens Garden Loop and you’ll walk through a maze of the multi-colored, limestone, sandstone, and mudstone spires called “hoodoos,” which resemble giant, melting candles, including one of the park’s best-known formations, Thor’s Hammer. But continue beyond that popular and short hike onto the Peek-a-Boo Loop, and you will lose the crowds—and discover the scenic heart of Bryce Canyon, hiking below row after row of towers in shades of flourescent red and orange, like the aptly named Wall of Windows.

The hike, mostly on good trails that are easy to follow, weaves among tall hoodoos, passes through doorways blasted through walls of rock, and wraps through amphitheaters of wildly colored, slender spires—a delightful, half-day hike that constantly changes character. The six-mile loop, with a cumulative elevation gain and loss of about 1,600 feet, begins and ends at Sunset Point.

See “The Two Best Hikes in Bryce Canyon National Park,” and all stories about Utah national parks at The Big Outside.

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Half Dome, Yosemite

One of America’s most iconic and sought-after hikes, the trek to Half Dome’s 8,800-foot summit—a tough 16 miles round-trip from Happy Isles Trailhead in Yosemite Valley, with 4,800 feet of elevation gain and loss—reaches its literal and emotional apex at the several hundred vertical feet of cables the park installs on the steep slab leading to the vast summit plateau. At the top, many hikers venture to the ledge known as The Visor that overhangs Half Dome’s famous Northwest Face, posing for photos on that granite gangplank thousands of feet above Yosemite Valley. Nothing compares with this hike.

Ascend the steeper Mist Trail past 317-foot Vernal Fall and 594-foot Nevada Fall, and after climbing Half Dome, descend the John Muir Trail—which has a classic view back toward Nevada Fall, the granite dome Liberty Cap, and the back side of Half Dome. Tip: Start an hour before sunrise to get ahead of most other hikers on this popular route.

See “Hiking Half Dome: How to Do It Right and Get a Permit,” “The 12 Best Dayhikes in Yosemite” and “The Magic of Hiking to Yosemite’s Waterfalls” for details on hiking the much shorter and easier, classic loop of the Mist Trail and John Muir Trail to Vernal and Nevada Falls.

Want to backpack in Yosemite? See my e-books to three amazing multi-day hikes there.

Navajo Knobs Trail, Capitol Reef

There are few dayhikes in the entire National Park System that compare with the Navajo Knobs Trail. There, I’ve said it. At 9.4 miles out-and-back hike with 1,620 feet of elevation gain and loss, it’s just moderately difficult, yet sees little hiker traffic beyond its split from the trail to Hickman Natural Bridge—but really stunning every step of the way. It first climbs to an overlook of Hickman Natural Bridge and then winds upward and along the top of cliffs that offer sweeping views from 1,000 feet above the Fremont River Valley of the rumpled topography of the Waterpocket Fold and the Henry Mountains in the distance.

The trail continues meandering along the rim, below soaring cliffs and towers with continuously expanding panoramas of Capitol Reef and distinctive formations like Pectols Pyramid, The Castle, and Fern’s Nipple. At its far end, you’ll do some easy scrambling to the tiny summit of one of the pinnacles named the Navajo Knobs, worth the effort for the prospect it offers of the varied and fascinating geology and topography of Capitol Reef National Park.

See “The Best Hikes in Capitol Reef National Park” and all stories about Capitol Reef at The Big Outside.

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Clingmans Dome and Appalachian Trail, Great Smoky Mountains

Set aside the fact that over 12 million people annually visit the Great Smokies—America’s most popular park—and thousands hike the half-mile-long, paved walkway to the observation tower atop 6,643-foot Clingmans Dome, the park’s highest point. Still, the 360-degree panorama of the overlapping, forested ridges of the Southern Appalachians will steal your breath away (if the steep hike up didn’t).

Then head west on the Appalachian Trail—the 2.2 miles one-way to the Goshen Prong Trail junction is far enough—for a much quieter experience of walking the rocky, up-and-down crest of one of the East’s tallest mountain ranges, passing numerous overlooks of the rugged peaks and valleys on the North Carolina and Tennessee sides of the park. Double back to the Clingmans Dome parking lot and hike 3.6-mile out-and-back (for a total distance of nine miles) on the Forney Ridge Trail to 5,920-foot Andrews Bald, the highest grassy bald in the Smokies, where the views span a broad expanse of North Carolina’s mountains; azalea and rhododendron bloom spectacularly from mid-June to early July.

See more photos and info in my story “In the Garden of Eden: Backpacking the Great Smoky Mountains,” about a trip that included Clingmans Dome, the Appalachian Trail, and Andrews Bald, and see all stories about hiking and backpacking in the North Carolina mountains at The Big Outside.

Third Beach to Strawberry Point, Olympic

Stone pinnacles called sea stacks rise up to some 200 feet out of the pounding Pacific Ocean. Sea otters, seals, and whales swim offshore and bald eagles fly overhead. Mussels, sea stars, and sea anemones carpet boulders in tide pools. In one of Earth’s largest virgin temperate rainforests, Sitka spruce and western red cedar grow to 150 feet tall, with diameters of 10 or 15 feet, and Douglas fir and western hemlock soar well over 200 feet.

The 73 miles of coast in Olympic National Park comprise the longest strip of wilderness seashore in the contiguous United States, remote and mostly accessible only to backpackers. But dayhikers can sample it on the relatively flat, 10-mile, out-and-back dayhike from Third Beach Trailhead on La Push Road to Strawberry Point, one of the spots with a cluster of offshore sea stacks. Up for 14 miles round-trip? Continue to Toleak Point, where at low tide you can scramble out onto some sea stacks.

See my story “The Wildest Shore: Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast,” and all stories about Olympic National Park at The Big Outside.

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Delicate Arch at Sunset, Arches

Just three miles out-and-back with less than 500 feet of elevation gain, the well-traveled path to what is probably Utah’s most famous and most-photographed natural arch is best done in the evening, timing your arrival at Delicate Arch for before sunset. Although still popular as a sunset hike, it’s more pleasant than trudging it during the heat of the day, and the sunset light seems to electrify the sandstone’s burnt color.

One of the pleasures of the hike is how the final stretch of the trail traverses the side of a small slickrock cliff before suddenly popping you out on the rim of an amphitheater of solid rock, looking across the big bowl at Delicate Arch, with the La Sal Mountains, snow-covered in spring, visible through its keyhole. Tip: Bring a headlamp and jacket and linger until well after sunset, when most other hikers have already started back, and you’ll enjoy a quieter walk under a sky riddled with stars.

See “No Straight Lines: Backpacking and Hiking in Canyonlands and Arches National Parks,” “The 15 Best Hikes in Utah’s National Parks,” and all stories about Arches National Park at The Big Outside.

Score a popular permit using my
“10 Tips For Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit.”

Skyline Trail, Mount Rainier

The 5.5-mile, 1,500-foot Skyline Trail loop from Paradise, on the southern flank of Mount Rainier, delivers everything you go to this park to see: in-your-face views of The Mountain and the cracked face of the Nisqually Glacier; thick carpets of lupine, mountain heather, and other alpine wildflowers; waterfalls, and marmots perched on trailside boulders.

You might also see climbers on their way up to or returning from Camp Muir, the base camp for ascents of the standard Disappointment Cleaver route up Rainier. Have lunch at Panorama Point, at nearly 7,000 feet, with a sweeping view of the Tatoosh Range and sister Cascade Range volcanoes like Adams, St. Helens, and Hood. At the footbridge over Myrtle Falls, follow the short spur trail descending to a better view of the waterfall, There are a variety of interconnected trails above Paradise to create shorter or longer loops. Tip: Often buried in snow until early August, this hike is prettiest when the wildflowers are in full bloom, around mid-August.

See “The Best Hikes in Mount Rainier National Park” and all stories about Mount Rainier National Park at The Big Outside.

See my five-level difficulty rating system in “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”

Dawson-Pitamakan Passes Loop, Glacier

The rare trails that run for miles high above the treetops, with jaw-dropping panoramas of jagged, icy peaks stretching to the horizon, bring hikers about as close as we get to the feeling of being an eagle soaring through the mountains. This loop from the Two Medicine North Shore Trailhead over Dawson and Pitamakan passes—both of which reach nearly 7,600 feet—does just that.

For more than five miles between the passes, this hike offers 360-degree panoramas of the peaks in Glacier’s remote heart, as well as deep, green valleys carved into classic U shapes by ancient glaciers, and shockingly blue alpine lakes. Watch for bighorn sheep and mountain goats. Shorten the 17.6-mile loop (with 2,500 vertical feet of elevation gain and loss) to 14.8 miles by catching an early boat shuttle across Two Medicine Lake (see glacierparkboats.com); do that at the hike’s outset in order to get off the alpine traverse, which is exposed to severe weather, earlier in the day. Shortest option: Dayhike 9.4 miles (with the boat shuttle) out-and-back to Dawson Pass—although you’ll miss most of the alpine traverse that makes this dayhike so special.

See “The 10 Best Dayhikes in Glacier National Park,” “The 8 Best Long Hikes in Glacier National Park,” and my stories “Déjà vu All Over Again: Backpacking in Glacier National Park,” and “Wildness All Around You: Backpacking the CDT Through Glacier” for more photos of the Dawson Pass Trail between Dawson and Pitamakan passes, and all stories about Glacier National Park at The Big Outside.

Plan your next great backpacking trip in Glacier and other parks using my expert e-books.

Anhinga Trail, Everglades

Nothing prepares you for your first immersion in the unbridled wildness of the Everglades—and the Anhinga Trail may be the best introduction to one of the planet’s greatest biological preserves. Less than a mile long and flat—easy enough and a wonderful experience for young kids, and accessible to people in wheelchairs—the trail meanders between footpath and boardwalk through a sawgrass marsh, where you will see an uncanny number of large, exotic birds like herons, egrets, and anhingas.

Most shockingly, you will stand possibly within reach of alligators—but make sure it’s only from the safety of an elevated boardwalk: Before I set out on the Anhinga Trail, I saw a gator on the lawn outside the Royal Palm Visitor Center, where the hike begins, that hissed menacingly enough at tourists approaching it with cameras to send them scattering. Don’t do that.

See my story “Like No Other Place: Paddling the Everglades.”

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Lake Solitude, Grand Teton

Full disclosure: Unless you take this dayhike outside the peak summer season or start early, don’t expect Lake Solitude to deliver on the promise in its name: On a nice summer day, this hike sees scores of hikers. But they spread out so it mostly doesn’t feel crowded—and there are good reasons so many people make this considerable trek: Vividly blue Lake Solitude nestles in a basin ringed by tall cliffs in the very heart of the Tetons, and the views down the North Fork of Cascade Canyon are among the best in the entire park.

At just over 15 miles and 2,300 feet out-and-back from the boat landing on the west side of Jenny Lake, this stroll up Cascade Canyon and its North Fork is challenging but certainly within the abilities of many fit hikers. Tip: Catch the first boat shuttle across Jenny Lake to get a jump on the crowds and possibly enjoy a bit of actual solitude at the lake; you might even see wildlife like moose along the trail (as I have three times in Cascade Canyon and the North Fork).

See “10 Great Big Dayhikes in the Tetons” and all stories about Grand Teton National Park at The Big Outside.

Decorate your walls with beautiful photos from your favorite wild places. Click here now to get professional-quality prints of this blog’s most inspiring images!

Are you a backpacker? You may like my stories “The 10 Best National Park Backpacking Trips” and “12 Expert Tips for Planning a Wilderness Backpacking Trip.”

See a menu of all stories about national park adventures at The Big Outside.

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Are you looking for great trip ideas for your bucket list? Well, you’ve clicked to the right place. This freshly updated story spotlights some of the most iconic wildlands in the U.S., including Glacier (photo above), Yosemite, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, and Sequoia national parks, southern Utah’s national parks and monuments, two wilderness areas, and two international adventures that may not be on your radar—all of them worthy of your bucket list.

All of them are also trips that you must start planning now or very soon to take them this year—including rapidly approaching backcountry permit-reservation dates for many national parks.

The 10 trips described below all stand out in personal memory among the countless trips I’ve enjoyed over the past three decades, including the 10 years I spent as Northwest Editor of Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog. They all have links to stories at The Big Outside with many more images and info, including my expert tips on planning and taking each trip. (Those stories require a paid subscription to The Big Outside to read in full.)

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here for my e-books to classic backpacking trips. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.

I update this list regularly to feed you fresh and timely ideas—and to help your bucket list, like mine, continually refresh as you steadily tick off new trips.

I can help you plan any of these trips—see my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how and to read hundreds of comments from people like you whom I’ve helped plan an unforgettable adventure. See also my E-Books page for my expert e-books to many of America’s best backpacking trips, and my “10 Tips For Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit.”

I’d love to read any thoughts, personal experiences, or suggestions you want to share in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Southern Utah is Huge. Get Busy

Okay, you know of and maybe have dayhiked or backpacked in some of Utah’s Big 5 national parks: Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, and perhaps even lesser-known Capitol Reef—which together protect landscapes that almost defy description and a density and breadth of parks and other wild lands that’s arguably unmatched in the country. You almost certainly haven’t finished with them yet.

But have you backpacked gems like Paria Canyon, Coyote Gulch, or Owl and Fish canyons? Or taken more obscure and challenging backpacking trips like Dark Canyon, the Death Hollow Loop in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, or the Maze District of Canyonlands? Or even taken classic adventures like backpacking Zion’s Narrows, Kolob Canyons or West Rim Trail or floating the Green River through Canyonlands? Not to mention the countless great dayhikes of all distances, like the beloved slot canyons Peek-a-Boo Gulch and Spooky Gulch.

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve returned to southern Utah—it’s dozens—but I’m far from done there. You’ve probably only scraped the surface of this region. Treat southern Utah as a lifetime commitment and every new adventure will amaze you. Spring and fall are the prime seasons and some of these trips require reserving permits months in advance.

See “The 12 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest,” “The 15 Best Hikes in Utah’s National Parks,” all stories about hiking and backpacking in southern Utah at The Big Outside.

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Get Lonely in the North Cascades

On at least three major lists of the least-visited national parks, North Cascades ranks in the top five (and most of the top 10 are in Alaska). For backpackers who prefer to have a beautiful wild place almost to themselves, that’s a good thing.

A sprawling swath of glacier-clad mountains and thickly forested valleys, North Cascades has long been one of my favorite parks—and it has one of the best backcountry campsites I’ve ever slept in.

On my most-recent trip there, a friend and walked 80 miles through the heart of the North Cascades National Park Complex just as the huckleberries ripened and the larch trees blazed yellow with fall color in the last week of September. Our grand tour from Easy Pass Trailhead to Bridge Creek Trailhead took us through virgin forests of giant cedars, hemlocks, and Douglas firs, and over four passes, including Park Creek Pass, where you turn a 360 overlooking waterfalls and glaciers pouring off cliffs and jagged, snowy peaks amid a sea of mountains.

North Cascades National Park holds an Early-Access lottery for permit reservations from March 2-13, 2026—enter it especially if you’re seeking any popular backcountry camps in the park—and opens general permit reservations on April 29.

See my story “Primal Wild: Backpacking 80 Miles Through the North Cascades,” which has my tips on how to plan and take this trip, including shorter variations of the route, and all stories about North Cascades National Park at The Big Outside.

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Backpack Incomparable Glacier National Park

Little wonder that Glacier ranks among the favorite national parks of backpackers: No place in the Lower 48 really compares with it. From its rivers of ice (which are disappearing rapidly due to climate change) pouring off craggy mountains and sheer cliffs that soar high above lushly green valleys, and over 760 lakes offering mirror reflections of it all, to megafauna like mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, moose, and grizzly and black bears, these million acres in the rugged Northern Rockies simply deliver an experience you can’t find in any park outside Alaska.

I’ve backpacked multiple times all over Glacier, most recently in September 2023 (lead photo at top of story), when two friends and I hiked for a week mostly on the Continental Divide Trail through the park—unquestionably one of the entire CDT’s best sections. The park’s more than 700 miles of trails enable trips of varying distances, from beginner-friendly to serious, remote adventures in deep wilderness.

My e-books describing two long and magnificent treks through Glacier, “The Best Backpacking Trip in Glacier National Park” and “Backpacking the Continental Divide Trail Through Glacier National Park,” detail all you need to know to plan and execute those trips safely. They also describe shorter variations on those routes.

And, of course, I can give you a customized plan for a backpacking trip of any length in Glacier; click here to learn how.

Glacier holds two early-access lotteries, on March 1 for large groups of nine to 12 people and on March 15 for standard groups of one to eight people, for a date and time between March 21 and April 30 when they can reserve a permit ahead of reservations opening to the general public on May 1. Glacier makes 70 percent of backcountry campsites available for reservations and 30 percent of campsites available for walk-in permits.

See “How to Get a Permit to Backpack in Glacier National Park” and all stories about backpacking in Glacier National Park at The Big Outside.

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Backpack the Wonderland Trail Around Mount Rainier

Backpacking the Wonderland Trail around glacier-clad, 14,410-foot Mount Rainier, one repeatedly sees “The Mountain” (as Washingtonians know it) fill the horizon—a sight that can stop you in your boots. If it’s fair to say that no multi-day hike in the contiguous United States is quite like the Wonderland Trail—and it is—that’s partly because there’s no mountain in the Lower 48 like Rainier.

But the WT isn’t just about views of Rainier. It also features some of the most beautiful wildflower meadows you will ever walk through, crystalline creeks and raging rivers gray with “glacial flour,” countless waterfalls and cascades, and sightings of mountain goats, marmots, deer, and black bears.

The full Wonderland loop around Rainier is a seriously strenuous, 93-mile trip, with over 44,000 cumulative vertical feet of elevation gain and loss. But because it can be accessed from several trailheads, you can choose between thru-hiking all of it—which takes up to nine to 10 days—or backpacking shorter trips of varying lengths on sections of the trail.

And choices like where to begin the loop and which direction to hike it, and whether to take a popular detour onto the higher and more-scenic Spray Park Trail, all affect the trip’s overall difficulty—which I spell out in detail in my expert e-book “The Complete Guide to Backpacking the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park.”

See my stories “5 Reasons You Must Backpack Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail,” “How to Get a Permit to Backpack Rainier’s Wonderland Trail,” and “American Gem: Backpacking Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail,” about a 77-mile hike two friends and I took on much of the Wonderland (a route described as one of the alternate itineraries in my e-book).

Got an all-time favorite campsite? I have 25 of them.
See “Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites.”

Take Yosemite’s Best Dayhikes and Backpacking Trips

Half Dome, the John Muir Trail, Tenaya Lake, Mount Hoffmann, the Mist Trail, Upper Yosemite Falls, Tuolumne Meadows, and the Cathedral Range and Cathedral Lakes—these names are nearly as famous as the park that harbors them: Yosemite.

But in numerous trips backpacking, dayhiking, and climbing there over the years, I’ve discovered that other corners of Yosemite are equally spectacular if not as well known, including the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, Clouds Rest, Red Peak Pass, Matterhorn Peak and Matterhorn Canyon, Burro Pass, Mule Pass, Benson Lake, and Dewey Point, among many.

This flagship park’s finest backpacking trips and dayhikes offer a variety of experiences that will awe you no matter how much time you have or how many times you’ve been there. For backpacking, plan to apply for a wilderness permit 24 weeks (168 days) in advance of the week you want to start hiking.

If you want to backpack Yosemite this summer, the time to apply for a wilderness permit is now.

See “Backpacking Yosemite: What You Need to Know,” “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in Yosemite” and all of this blog’s stories about backpacking in Yosemite, plus my expert e-books to three stellar, multi-day hikes in Yosemite, including “The Best First Backpacking Trip in Yosemite.”

See also “The 12 Best Dayhikes in Yosemite,” “The Magic of Hiking to Yosemite’s Waterfalls,” and all stories about Yosemite National Park at The Big Outside.

I know Yosemite’s unique wilderness permit system very well and I’ve helped many readers plan a backpacking trip in Yosemite—including helping some obtain a permit after they had failed applying on their own. Go to my Custom Trip Planning page to see how I can do that for you.

You want to backpack in Yosemite?
See my e-books to three amazing multi-day hikes there.

Explore the Wind River Range

Come up with a list of the best backpacking trips in America that do not require you to reserve a permit months in advance, and rank them in order of scenic magnificence, and Wyoming’s Wind River Range would have to reside near or at the top of that list. The Winds are also one of the few mountain ranges in the contiguous United States where—if you put in the effort to get beyond the very few popular trailheads—you can hike for days below 13,000-foot peaks and count more alpine lakes than people.

Among the most recent of several trips I’ve made to the Winds, my wife, a friend, and I backpacked a five-day, roughly 43-mile loop from one of the less-busy trailheads on the west side of the range, following some of the most scenic trails I’ve walked in the Winds to high passes and gorgeous lakes around every turn. On a four-day hike, a friend and I camped near a lake every night and crossed four passes, including a sort of “back door” entrance into the amazing Cirque of the Towers, and I left there thinking we’d just done the best multi-day hike in the Winds.

And just last September, on a solo, six-day hike mostly on the Continental Divide Trail through the Winds, I went entire days without seeing other backpackers and walked past too many heart-stopping lakes to count. Watch for my upcoming story about that trip.

See “5 Reasons You Must Backpack in the Wind River Range,” “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range,” and all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

I’ve helped many readers plan a wonderful backpacking trip, ideal for them, in the Wind River Range. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan any trip you read about at this blog and see hundreds of comments from readers who’ve received my trip planning.

Get the right gear for you. See “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs”
and “The 10 Best Backpacking Tents.”

Trek Through Italy’s Dolomite Mountains

Located in the northeastern Italian Alps, with one national park, several regional parks, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Dolomites thrust a dizzying array of spires and serrated peaks into the sky, gleaming like polished jewels in bright sunshine and virtually pulsing with the salmon hue of evening alpenglow. They strike a sharp contrast with the deep, steep-sided, verdantly green valleys and meadows. On a weeklong, hut-to-hut trek through one of the world’s most spectacular and storied mountain ranges, my family hiked a 39-mile (62-kilometer) section of the roughly 112-mile (180-kilometer) Alta Via 2, or “The Way of the Legends.”

An alpine footpath famous for scenery that puts it in legitimate contention for the title of the most beautiful trail in the world, the AV 2 is also known for comfortable mountain huts with excellent food—and a reputation for being the most remote and difficult of the several multi-day alte vie, or “high paths,” that crisscross the Dolomites. On one of the all-time best adventures I’ve ever taken, we discovered that it was all of those things and more.

See my story “The World’s Most Beautiful Trail: Trekking the Alta Via 2 in Italy’s Dolomites.”

I’ve helped many readers plan an unforgettable backpacking or hiking trip.
Want my help with yours? Click here to learn more.

See the Glorious Southern Sierra in Sequoia National Park

With some of the highest mountains in the Lower 48 and a constellation of backcountry lakes, California’s southern High Sierra rank among the prettiest backpacking destinations in America. And Sequoia National Park hosts one of the biggest chunks of contiguous wilderness in the Lower 48—a pristine and incredibly photogenic land of razor peaks and alpine lakes so clear you could stand on the shore and read a book lying open on the lake bottom.

On a six-day, 40-mile backpacking trip in Sequoia, my family hiked through a quiet backcountry grove of giant Sequoias and over 10,000-foot and 11,000-foot passes at the foot of 12,000-foot, granite peaks. We camped at two lakes that earned spots on my list of 25 favorite backcountry campsites.

While many backpackers heading for the High Sierra point their compass at Yosemite and the John Muir Trail—creating enormous demand for those backcountry permits—far fewer set their sights on areas of Sequoia like where my family backpacked. That means it’s an easier permit to get, and the scenery rivals anywhere in the Sierra.

Apply for a permit up to six months in advance for a trip during the park’s quota period of late May through mid-September.

See my story “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park,” about my family’s six-day, 40-mile loop hike there, and all stories about Sequoia National Park at The Big Outside.

Click here now to plan your next great backpacking adventure using my expert e-books.

Wander Into Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains

I have been hiking, backpacking, and climbing in Idaho’s Sawtooths—the wilderness in my back yard (or pretty close)—for almost 30 years. I’ve walked nearly every trail and some outstanding off-trail routes, from the most accessible lakes and mountain passes to the remote interior of the range, visiting numerous, incredibly picturesque alpine lakes that undoubtedly see few visitors. I’ve long thought that the Sawtooths look like they could be the love child of the High Sierra and the Tetons.

I returned there again in August 2025 for a four-day hike that began with walking through a lovely lakes basin I had not seen before. That trip featured several more wonderful and remote lakes (including the above photo), and on which we crossed four high passes and summited one 10,000-foot peak. Watch for my upcoming story about that trip.

Looking for a beautiful Sawtooths adventure that’s a moderate distance? The multi-day hike I’d recommend is a four- to five-day, roughly 36-mile route in the scenic heart of the range.

See my story “The Best of Idaho’s Sawtooths: Backpacking Redfish to Pettit” and my e-book “The Best Backpacking Trip in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains” which tells you all you need to know to plan and pull off that trip and includes three alternate itineraries that allow you to shorten the hike to four days or extend it to six or seven days. And see all stories about backpacking in Idaho’s Sawtooths at The Big Outside.

I’ve helped many readers plan a wonderful backpacking trip, ideal for them, anywhere in the Sawtooths. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you, too.

Planning your next big adventure? See “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips”
and “The 25 Best National Park Dayhikes.”

Trek Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park

Picture this: an Arctic-looking landscape vibrantly colorful with shrubs, mosses, wildflowers, and lichen blanketing glacial-erratic boulders. Cliffs and mountains that look like they were chopped from the earth with an axe. Thick, crack-riddled glaciers pouring like pancake batter that needs more water off starkly barren peaks rising to more than 8,000 feet. Braided rivers meandering down mostly treeless valleys, and reindeer roaming wild. Summit views of a sea of snowy, glacier-clad peaks rolling away to far horizons.

That describes my family’s weeklong, roughly 60-mile/97-kilometer, hut-to-hut trek through Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park—whose name means the “Home of the Giants.”

Our adventure combined pristine wilderness with the most luxurious huts I’ve ever stayed in—some featuring private rooms, hot showers, and restaurant-caliber meals—a trail network that allows for flexibility in route options, and optional side hikes to summits with mind-blowing views of mountains buried in snow and ice, including the highest peak in Norway. Some of us also hiked a spectacular ridge traverse known as “the most famous hike in Norway,” which I’d normally receive as a warning sign, but in this case, it’s a rigorous hike that I’d return to in a second.

Read “Walking Among Giants: A Three-Generation Hut Trek in Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park.”

Find more ideas and inspiration in my All Trips List, which has a menu of all stories at this blog, and in “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips” and “The 10 Best Family Outdoor Adventure Trips.”

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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.

And here’s an insider tip: These adventures aren’t just for families. Adults with a wide range of outdoors experience—including little to none—will find these trips thrilling, fascinating, and inspirational.

This story describes 12 of the very best adventures my family has taken, many of them personal favorites from among the countless trips I’ve taken over three decades as an outdoors writer, including the 10 years I spent as a field editor for Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog.

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here for my e-books to classic backpacking trips. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.

Each trip description below offers a suggested minimum age—which will certainly vary based on every child’s (and parent’s) personal experience and comfort level—and links to a full feature story at The Big Outside, which share more images (and those stories require a paid subscription to read in full, including my detailed tips on planning each trip).

Not surprisingly, all of these trips require planning and making reservations months in advance. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan any trip you read about at this blog.

Please share your experiences, questions, and advice on any of these trips, or suggest your own favorite national park family adventures in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Stand in the Shadow of a Giant Sequoia

Any Age

If you’re going to be a tree hugger, you might as well go big. The giant sequoias of Sequoia National Park can live more than 3,000 years, grow as tall as a 26-story building, and have a base diameter of 36 feet. The General Sherman Tree is the largest in the world at 52,508 cubic feet (1,487 cubic meters), 275 feet tall, and estimated to weigh 2.7 million pounds. The General Grant Tree is the second largest at 46,608 cubic feet (1,320 cubic meters). Try hugging them.

The Giant Forest in Sequoia contains half of the Earth’s largest trees, more than 8,000 sequoias. You can stand under scores of them, including the General Sherman Tree, on a hike of an hour or less. From Wolverton Road, off the Generals Highway, a half-mile trail leads to the General Sherman Tree. The 0.7-mile Big Trees Trail begins at the Giant Forest Museum.

Is your family ready for a bigger adventure? Read about my family’s 40-mile backpacking trip in Sequoia, where we had a wilderness giant sequoia grove all to ourselves, plus see photos of the General Sherman Tree and Grant Grove in my story “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park.” And see all stories about Sequoia National Park at The Big Outside.

Make every adventure better with my “10 Tips For Keeping Kids Happy and Safe Outdoors”
and “5 Tips for Hiking With Young Kids from an Outdoors Dad.”

Feel the Magic of Yellowstone

Any Age

Since Americans first began exploring the Yellowstone region, people have stood in awe of its marvels: megafauna like elk, bison, and grizzly bears, spectacular waterfalls, and more than 10,000 geothermal features, including hot springs, mud pots, fumaroles, and at least 300 geysers—two-thirds of the planet’s known total.

We first took our kids to Yellowstone when they were four and two years old, and although they don’t remember that visit, they delighted in the animals and thermal features—and they could enjoy them because so many of Yellowstone’s highlights can be seen on short walks or hikes that are easy enough to do with very young kids.

Some of my favorite spots, like Grand Prismatic Spring, the park’s largest, in the Midway Geyser Basin, require only a short stroll on a boardwalk. An easy walking tour of Mammoth Hot Springs, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, and even the Upper Geyser Basin (which includes Old Faithful) can be done in an hour or two.

See my stories “The Ultimate Family Tour of Yellowstone,” “The 10 Best Hikes in Yellowstone,” “Cross-Country Skiing Yellowstone,” and all stories about Yellowstone National Park at The Big Outside.

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Float the Green River Through Canyonlands National Park

Ages 4 and Up

Our son was six and our daughter barely four when we took a five-day, five-family float trip mostly on the Green River in southern Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. From the put-in at Mineral Bottom through 52 miles of Stillwater Canyon on the Green and then four miles more on the Colorado River to the takeout at Spanish Bottom, the river slowly unfurls beneath a constant backdrop of soaring redrock cliffs and spires.

Our flotilla of rafts, two kayaks, and a canoe quickly morphed into a slowly drifting party of water-gun fights and occasional swims to cool off, interspersed with frequent moments of gazing at brilliantly red canyon walls rising hundreds of feet above us. Off the water, we took side hikes to high overlooks of the canyon and centuries-old Puebloan rock art and cliff dwellings and camped on sandy beaches and slickrock benches. You might even spot bighorn sheep scrambling around on the canyon’s precipitous rock faces.

The flat water is ideal for beginners, campsites are spacious and lovely, and the scenery is out of this world from put-in to takeout. Rentals of boats and river gear, plus shuttles to the put-in and from the takeout (via a very scenic motorboat tour) are available from local outfitters in nearby Moab.

See my story “Still Waters Run Deep: Tackling America’s Best Multi-Day Float Trip on the Green River” and all stories about floating the Green River at The Big Outside.

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Climb Into Natural Arches

Ages 5 and Up

Arches National Park in southeastern Utah has many geologic wonders to recommend it, but from a kid’s perspective, one of the coolest experiences is scrambling up underneath an arch like Double Arch in the park’s Windows Section or Partition Arch in Devils Garden—the first a short walk, the second a hike of two to three hours round-trip.

For short, easy walks to several arches, feasible with young kids, start in the Windows Section, where you can get up close and personal with Double Arch, Turret Arch, and South Window. For a longer but relatively flat hike of up to a half-day (although you can shorten it), explore Devils Garden, including Pine Tree, Navajo, and Partition arches, and the park’s longest, Landscape Arch.

Skyline Arch, which is a short hike but sits by itself and thus attracts fewer people, sits high on the wall of a narrow canyon, and you can scramble up the canyon’s opposite wall for a bird’s-eye view of the arch. If you have a full day, take a ranger-guided tour of the Fiery Furnace, a maze of narrow canyons.

See my story “No Straight Lines: Backpacking and Hiking in Canyonlands and Arches National Parks,” and all stories about Arches National Park at The Big Outside.

Which puffy should you buy? See “The 12 Best Down Jackets”
and “How You Can Tell How Warm a Down Jacket Is.”

Hike Zion’s Breathtaking Trails

Ages 6 and Up

Even among America’s flagship national parks—gems like Yosemite, Grand Canyon, and Yellowstone—Zion stands out for having several dayhikes that would make the top 10 list of many avid hikers. Angels Landing, The Narrows, the West Rim Trail, Hidden Canyon, and Observation Point, to name just a handful that begin right in Zion Canyon, feature scenery that actually does justice to the adjective “breathtaking.” No other place really compares to Zion.

If your family is ready for a multi-day backpacking trip, Zion offers some of the best in the national parks, including an overnight hike in the Narrows and trips of two to four days in the Kolob Canyons and on the West Rim Trail or combining those two areas of the park on a beautiful traverse. And among technical dayhikes that require appropriate gear and skills like rappelling and navigating and wading slot canyons with cold pools of water, few compare with Zion’s Subway.

These hikes and others range widely in distance, difficulty, and gut-churning excitement quotient, and comfort level doesn’t always correlate directly with age. Stop in the park visitor center for information about these hikes, including current conditions; rangers can let you know when to avoid some of them.

See my stories “The 10 Best Hikes in Zion National Park,” “Hiking Angels Landing: What You Need to Know,” “Pilgrimage Across Zion: Traversing a Land of Otherworldly Scenery,” “Luck of the Draw, Part 2: Backpacking Zion’s Narrows,” my expert e-book to backpacking Zion’s Narrows, and all stories about Zion National Park at The Big Outside.

Explore the best of the Southwest. See “The 15 Best Hikes in Utah’s National Parks”
and “The 12 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest.”

Stand Beneath Yosemite’s Waterfalls and Summit Half Dome

Ages 7 and Up

Yosemite Valley and its surrounding high country was an early inspiration for creating a system of national parks—and the source of that inspiration becomes clearer when you explore beyond the Valley’s busy roads, hiking to its justifiably world-famous waterfalls and the summit of one of Yosemite’s iconic landmarks, Half Dome.

Dayhike the 7.2-mile, 2,700-vertical-foot Upper Yosemite Falls Trail to the brink of that waterfall, which plunges a sheer 1,400 feet through the air; or hike only about an hour to 90 minutes up that trail to a spot close enough to the base of the waterfall to feel the light rain of its mist.

The 6.3-mile, 2,000-vertical-foot loop on the Mist Trail and John Muir Trail takes you through the raining mist of 317-foot-tall Vernal Fall—which can be drenching in late spring—and both below and above the thunderous plume of nearly 600-foot-tall Nevada Fall.

Fit hikers—including older kids—with strong endurance can continue past Nevada Fall to dayhike up the exposed cable route to the summit of Half Dome, a 16-mile, 4,800-foot round trip that requires a permit. Adventurous families can venture beyond dayhiking distance, with myriad choices for five-star backpacking trips of virtually any length and difficulty.

See my stories “The 12 Best Dayhikes in Yosemite,” “The Magic of Hiking to Yosemite’s Waterfalls,” “Hiking Half Dome: How to Do It Right and Get a Permit,” “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in Yosemite,” and all stories about Yosemite National Park at The Big Outside.

See also my e-books to three amazing backpacking trips in Yosemite.

I’ve helped many readers plan unforgettable adventures in Yosemite and elsewhere.
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Ascend Into the Tetons

Ages 7 and Up

Regular readers of this blog know that the Tetons are one of my favorite mountain ranges—I’ve made more than 20 trips dayhiking, backpacking, climbing, and backcountry skiing there—and I rank the Teton Crest Trail among “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.”

But the TCT is an ambitious and moderately strenuous hike of at least four days for most adults. The first Teton backpacking trip I took my kids on, when they were eight and six, was a three-day hike of Grand Teton’s nearly 20-mile Paintbrush-Cascade Canyons Loop.

Probably the most popular backpacking route in the park because of its relatively short distance, easy access, and stellar scenery, it takes you through two of the park’s most stunning canyons and over one of the highest mountain passes reached by a trail in the park, 10,700-foot Paintbrush Divide (which can be difficult to cross, due to snow, until August). Campsites in Upper Paintbrush Canyon have views of soaring, striated canyon walls, and in the North Fork of Cascade Canyon you will drink in a stunning view of the Grand Teton framed by canyon walls—still one of my favorite backcountry campsites ever.

See all stories about backpacking Grand Teton National Park at The Big Outside, including “A Wonderful Obsession: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail,” my story about backpacking the TCT with my family, and “How to Get a Permit to Backpack the Teton Crest Trail,” with tips relevant to applying for a permit for any trip in the park.

Click here now to get my e-book to the best short backpacking trip in Grand Teton National Park. Click here to see all of my e-books.

Immerse Yourself in the Wild Everglades

Ages 7 and Up

The Everglades is the kind of place that will shock you with its uniqueness and abundance of exotic fauna. Paddling sit-on-top kayaks on a placid river that flowed through mangrove tunnels, and canoes in the generally calm, shallow waters of the Ten Thousand Islands, my family watched an almost constant aerial parade of white ibises, black anhingas, tri-colored herons, brown pelicans and great blue herons fly just overhead.

On one paddling tour from the campsite we had to ourselves on a wilderness beach—where we watched the sun sink into the Gulf of Mexico—my son and I twisted around excitedly in our seats as a dolphin circled our canoe several times. On another paddle with my daughter, we exchanged long gazes with a gaggle of roseate spoonbills perched in a tree.

Much of the Everglades is a vast wilderness—at 1.5 million acres, the third-largest national park in the contiguous United States, bigger than Glacier or Grand Canyon and twice the size of Yosemite—offering opportunities for remote, multi-day, water-based adventures. But there are family-friendly options, like paddling canoes for a few hours on a well-marked water route to camp on a beach you have to yourselves.

See my story “Like No Other Place: Paddling the Everglades.”

Paddling the Everglades is one of “The 10 Best Family Outdoor Adventure Trips.”

Hike and Camp on the Wild Olympic Coast

Ages 7 and Up

My kids, who were nine and seven when we backpacked this three-day, 17.5-mile traverse of Washington’s southern Olympic coast, remember playing for hours in tide pools; exploring a massive boulder wallpapered with mussels, sea anemones, and sea stars; and climbing up and down thrilling rope ladders on steep headwalls. Throughout their childhoods, they called it one of their favorite trips (and it’s one of my top 10 family adventures).

The adults on this hike remember it for the rich sea life and birds—we saw seals, a sea otter, a great blue heron, and other wildlife—as well as the scenery, with scores of sea stacks rising straight out of the ocean and giant trees behind the beach.

It’s a surprisingly rugged trip—which goes far in explaining why fewer backpackers hike the southern stretch of the Olympic coast compared to the less-strenuous northern stretch. But many kids who’ve done some dayhiking and backpacking will do just fine—and revel in the adventurousness nature of it. Parents would have to feel either comfortable guiding their kids on the mandatory rope ladders or confident in their kids’ ability to managing them on their own.

See my story “The Wildest Shore: Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast” and all stories about Olympic National Park at The Big Outside.

Planning your next big adventure? See “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips”
and “The 25 Best National Park Dayhikes.”

Backpack in Glacier National Park

Ages 8 and Up

As my family hiked up the Gunsight Pass Trail on our way to that 6,900-foot pass in Glacier National Park, a mountain goat, as white as fresh snow, with sharp, straight horns, hopped onto the trail not 50 feet ahead of us, on a stretch where the path clings to the face of a cliff. We stopped, and my kids, then nine and seven, glanced back and forth between the goat and my wife and me, simultaneously amazed and wondering what came next.

We waited. And when the goat finally relinquished the trail to us, scrambling nimbly down the cliff below, we peered over the brink to see where it went—but it had disappeared. My daughter, Alex, muttered, “I can’t believe it went down there.”

The 20-mile Gunsight Pass Trail traverse from the Jackson Glacier Overlook to Lake McDonald Lodge, both on the Going-to-the-Sun Road, takes in views of glaciers and rocky peaks and features campsites at Gunsight Lake and Lake Ellen Wilson that sit beneath tall cliffs spliced by waterfalls. It offers a relatively short but incredibly scenic backpacking trip with easy transportation logistics: Both trailheads are served by the park’s free shuttle bus. It’s also not crowded with dayhikers like trails around Many Glacier and Logan Pass.

See my story “Jagged Peaks and Wild Goats: Backpacking Glacier’s Gunsight Pass Trail,” “How to Get a Permit to Backpack in Glacier National Park,” my two expert e-books to longer backpacking trips in Glacier, and all stories about backpacking in Glacier at The Big Outside.

See my “10 Tips for Taking Kids on Their First Backpacking Trip”
and my very popular “10 Tips For Raising Outdoors-Loving Kids.”

Descend Into the Grand Canyon

Ages 8 and Up

The Grand Canyon looks impressive from its rim, but you really have to hike down into the Big Ditch to experience the full Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole sensation of its awesome scale. With virtually no vegetation obstructing the long vistas, towers thousands of feet tall appear to balloon to massive dimensions as you slowly approach them, until they dwarf their surroundings, then shrink into the background as you hike farther away. After many visits, I’ve yet to find a mediocre view or a bad backcountry campsite.

Get that experience on a dayhike or backpacking trip into the canyon. Hike either of the easily accessed and best-constructed trails dropping into the canyon from the South Rim. Follow the Bright Angel Trail down as far as you want—there are numerous logical turnaround points within the first few miles, or go all the way to Indian Garden (nine miles and nearly 3,000 feet round-trip).

Or descend the South Kaibab Trail, one of America’s most scenic footpaths, with constant, ridge-crest views of a huge swath of the canyon. Accessible backpacking options off the South Rim allow for trips of two to five days or more.

See my e-book “The Best First Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon” and all stories about the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

Get the right pack for you. See “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs”
and “The 10 Best Hiking Daypacks.”

Sea Kayak Back to the Ice Age

Ages 8 and Up

Southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay is the size of Connecticut and sits at the heart of a contiguous protected wilderness the size of Greece. There are simply few places of this size that are as pristine on the entire planet.

Glacier Bay has seen the fastest glacial retreat on Earth: Two centuries ago, there was no Glacier Bay, just a colossal river of ice 4,000 feet thick and 20 miles wide stretching 100 miles into the St. Elias Mountains. The ice has since pulled back 65 miles, creating a fjord with 1,200 miles of coastline that provides a living window into what the world looked like at the end of the last Ice Age.

On a multi-day sea kayaking trip, camping every night on a secluded, wilderness beach, you can see massive tidewater glaciers explosively calving bus-sized chunks of ice into the sea, humpback whales, orcas, Steller sea lions, mountain goats, seals, sea otters, brown bears, and a variety of birds and wildflowers—not to mention views of some of the more than 50 glaciers covering 1,375 square miles of the park, and peaks that rise to over 15,000 feet.

See my story “Back to the Ice Age: Sea Kayaking Glacier Bay.”

See also all stories about national park adventures and family adventures at The Big Outside.

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The June evening was more than a few hours old when, without warning, the sky suddenly caught fire. The kids, teenagers and ’tweeners, and some of the adults in our group scrambled up onto a nearby rock formation at least 50 feet tall to observe the sunset from high off the ground. Like a wildfire swept forward by wind, hues of yellow, orange, and red leapt across bands of clouds suspended above the western horizon, their ragged bottoms edges, appropriately, resembling dancing flames.

For a span of just minutes that felt timeless, the light painted and repainted the clouds in ever-shifting, warm colors starkly contrasted against the cool, deepening blue of the sky—as if a vast lake had ignited. We stood hypnotized and enchanted on that evening during a long weekend of camping at Idaho’s City of Rocks National Reserve, until the last, dying flames of the celestial conflagration faded and were extinguished. For that brief time, the sunset had us all, adults and kids, completely in its thrall.

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here for my e-guides to classic backpacking trips. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.

I follow a simple rule whenever I’m in the wilderness or any natural setting like the surroundings in the primitive campground at the City of Rocks (the sunset described above is shown in the lead photo at the top of this story): I never miss any dramatic sunset. And I almost never miss a similar sunrise. The reason is simple: These are often the most sublime and inspiring times of the day. Passing on them is essentially depriving yourself of one of the best reasons to be out there.

Catching a great sunset occurs with the serendipity of meeting the person who becomes your spouse (although, thankfully, far more frequently)—it’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time and not blowing the opportunity. The sky conjures a universe of color and emotion in fleeting moments, rushing headlong to a grand finale, after which many observers stop paying attention. But I’ve always enjoyed taking in the slow, quiet onset of dusk, spreading out like a ground fog before rising to overtake the sky. Night then settles in for its long watch, the stars emerging in a flutter of eyes popping open—a few tentatively at first, building to a visual crescendo of hundreds of thousands of specks of light.

From the buildup to sunset through nightfall, it’s the best silent film ever made. I could watch it over and over for a lifetime without ever feeling like its magical spell has diminished in power. The sky’s myriad personality changes across the span of hours from sunset through sunrise make me think that nocturnal animals have it right, and we humans sleep away the sky’s most fascinating hours.

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Sunset in the Everglades

At our campsite on a wilderness beach at Tiger Key in the Ten Thousand Islands of Everglades National Park, which we had to ourselves for two nights on a canoeing trip, our kids, then age 10 and almost eight, abruptly forgot about their sand castles as the enormous, blood-red ball of fire that is the sub-tropical sun appeared to swell and burn with greater intensity and slipped toward the horizon. My entire family stood spellbound as that flaming orb slowly lowered itself into the vast bathtub of the Gulf of Mexico.

Witnessing the dawn comes with the challenge of rising earlier than many people prefer. But after you’ve made the effort to reach a uniquely beautiful and remote corner of the backcountry, trading a dawn that may hold the most precious moments of an entire trip for another hour or two of slumber strikes me as a lost opportunity.

When I’m sleeping outside, the first light of predawn usually awakens me, and I’m glad for that: I want to be awake. I invariably look up to see what the sky has in store. Any signal of an imminent dawn worth observing—like wispy clouds hovering above the eastern horizon, or puffy cotton balls dabbed across the blue dome—will prod me to dress and step outside the tent. If I had slept out under the stars—my default choice if the night promises to stay dry and not buggy, because why sleep inside nylon walls when I can sleep beneath a starry sky?—then all the better: I can watch it from my warm bag.

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Dawn on Nepal’s Annapurna Circuit

I have many times begun hiking before or at first light, often because I had many miles to cover, but also partly because it grants me the great privilege of watching the birth of another day. I’ve watched a carpet of crimson light unroll across mountains and canyons deep in the backcountry of places like Yosemite, the Wind River Range, below the magnificent east face of Mount Whitney, on the crest of the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains, from the canyon rim high above the Green River in Canyonlands National Park, in Evolution Basin on the John Muir Trail, and countless other places.

On a fiercely chilly November morning, our last on the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal, my wife, our new Slovenian friend Gorazd, and I joined a procession of hikers and headlamp beams on a 45-minute walk up Poon Hill—a ritual for Annapurna trekkers. On its open summit, at over 9,000 feet, we gazed at a Himalayan night sky riddled with stars twinkling above the milky silhouettes of five snowy giants glowing faintly in the moonless hour before dawn—including one of the planet’s highest peaks, Dhaulagiri.

The mountains appeared to float above valleys still black with night. Slowly, rich bands of red, orange, and yellow ignited on the eastern horizon. As dawn bled across the sky, flashes of golden light struck the white crown of the first peak, and then hopped across the tops of the others. Within a few minutes, the rising sun turned the world’s greatest mountains blindingly white.

Hitting the trail early usually rewards me with solitude unknown in many places during the daytime hours, and wildlife encounters that are far rarer between mid-morning and early evening. I’ve strolled past bighorn sheep lounging casually beside the Highline Trail in Glacier National Park; heard elk bugling in the Tetons, Yellowstone, Olympic Mountains, and elsewhere; and watched a big bull moose emerge from the pond where it had been feeding on plants in Maine’s Baxter State Park.

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Sunset at Delicate Arch

Science provides a simple explanation for the beautiful light that captivates us at sunset and dawn. When the sun hovers near the horizon, its light passes through more atmosphere before reaching our eyes than it does when it’s directly overhead. That much atmosphere effectively erases the shorter, blue and purple rays of the visible light spectrum from our vision, while the longer red, orange, and yellow light rays remain visible but get more widely scattered across the sky.

But that explanation comes nowhere near sparking the depth of feeling of the actual event—which makes witnessing each possible wild sunrise and sunset a difficult pleasure for me to give up, no matter what obstacle stands in the way.

On the last afternoon of a three-family, spring-break trip to southeastern Utah, where we’d backpacked and dayhiked in Canyonlands and Arches national parks, I could barely muster the energy to lift myself out of the bed where I’d slept most of the day, sicker than I’d felt in recent memory. I willed myself to stand up—it felt like a mountain climb—and to go through with our plans to hike to Delicate Arch in Arches to watch the sunset that evening.

Plan your next great backpacking trip on the Teton Crest Trail, in Yosemite, or other parks using my expert e-guides.

Just four of us went: my friend, Vince, his 13-year-old daughter, Sofi, my 11-year-old daughter, Alex, and me. It’s possible I’ve never hiked a trail more slowly than that evening. Shuffling along, I watched one person after another pass me, even the slowest, oldest, littlest, and least-fit hikers; watching sunset at Delicate Arch is a popular ritual, so there may have been more than a hundred people out there that evening. We gave ourselves more than an hour to hike the mile-and-a-half-long trail, and thanks to my torpid pace, we arrived only minutes before sunset.

We watched that striking natural sculpture of red and orange rock appear, for several minutes, to glow against the backdrop of deepening blue sky and the gleaming, snow-capped La Sal Mountains in the distance. And even though the return walk took even longer because I was so sick—our car was one of the last to leave the parking lot that night—not one step along the way made me regret the effort to watch that sunset.

We don’t get enough of them in a lifetime as it is; I can’t afford to miss any good ones.

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All of America’s 59 national parks possess special qualities and scenery, without a doubt. But southern Utah’s concentration of unique and awe-inspiring landscapes sets its five parks apart from the rest—and they’re each quite different from one another. You should see them all, and a prime season for hiking the Southwest is just around the corner. In this blog post, I’ll share many photos from Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion, and tips on the best ways to explore these parks.

For starters, how do the five southern Utah parks differ from one another?

Arches has more than 2,000 natural stone arches, as well as hundreds of soaring pinnacles, giant fins, and balanced rocks. Bryce Canyon holds the world’s greatest number of hoodoos, or bizarrely sculpted pinnacles created by erosion.

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Canyonlands is a vast wonderland of multi-colored cliffs, deep canyons, tall spires, and two major rivers. Capitol Reef’s Waterpocket Fold, a nearly 100-mile-long, jumbled ridge of rock, conceals sandstone domes, natural bridges, beautiful canyons, and bighorn sheep. And Zion, Utah’s first and one of America’s flagship national parks, may be the most varied and magical, from the 2,000-foot cliffs of Zion Canyon (lead photo at top of story) to a backcountry filled with geologic anomalies.

Ready to plan your next hiking, backpacking, or paddling trip to any of these parks?

Start by getting some inspiration and ideas from the gallery below, which contains photos from the numerous trips I’ve taken dayhiking, backpacking, and paddling in Arches, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, and Zion National Park. Below the photo gallery, find links to the many stories at The Big Outside about these adventures in southern Utah’s national parks, from relatively easy trips ideal for young families (which I took with my family when our kids were young) to very hard-core adventures.

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside, which has made several top outdoors blog lists. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip. Click here to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Follow my adventures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.

Looking for beginner- and family-friendly dayhikes and other trips in southern Utah’s parks? Check out my stories about the best dayhikes in Utah’s national parks, my favorite hike in Bryce Canyon, dayhiking in Arches, and floating the Green River through Canyonlands (one of my family’s best trips ever).

Want to find the best backpacking in the Southwest? See my stories about backpacking Zion’s Narrows, The Needles District of Canyonlands, Spring Canyon in Capitol Reef, and a traverse across Zion, as well as “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest” and “The 5 Southwest Backpacking Trips You Should Do First.” And definitely read my “10 Tips For Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit.”

Plan your backpacking trip in Zion’s Narrows or other flagship national parks using my expert e-guides.

Are you ready for some top-shelf, expert adventures in the Southwest? See my stories about descending Zion’s incomparable Subway, slot canyoneering in Capitol Reef, and one of the most eye-popping backpacking trips I’ve ever taken, a mostly off-trail route along the spine of Capitol Reef’s Waterpocket Fold (photo above).

Like most stories at The Big Outside, most of the feature stories linked here require a paid subscription, which costs just pennies over $4 a month for a full year or as little as 5 bucks for one month. My blog can help you find and plan all of your adventures. Get full value from it. Click here or the blue button below to subscribe now.

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See my All National Parks Trips page for a menu of all stories about national parks adventures at The Big Outside.

Read about my National Outdoor Book Award-winning book, Before They’re Gone—A Family’s Quest to Explore America’s Most Endangered National Parks, which chronicles the year my family spent taking wilderness adventures in 11 parks threatened by climate change.

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We follow a zigzagging line of stone cairns over waves of slickrock in the backcountry of the Needles District of Utah’s Canyonlands National Park. Cliffs and 300-foot-tall sandstone candlesticks tower around us, in more shades of red than Crayola has yet replicated, glowing in the warm afternoon sunshine of late March. Five adults and four kids from three families, we traverse slabs, scramble in single file up the smooth, dry bottom of a narrow water runnel, and pump out calf muscles walking straight up steep ramps. In the desert Southwest, trails haven’t learned the axiom of Euclidian geometry that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. We’re navigating a maze without walls.

Above us, a long, sandstone ridge forms a 200-foot-tall wall, mostly of sheer cliffs, separating Big Spring Canyon from Squaw Canyon. Just below a saddle in that ridge, we use hands and the balls of feet to smear delicately up a short but steeper slab, where a slip could result in a cheese-grater slide and tumble back down to the bottom.

Out of habit and instinctive parental concern, I offer to carry any kid’s backpack up the slab. But they all basically shrug off my offer—while, I can’t help but notice, being kind enough not to openly laugh it off. To them, three 13-year-olds and an 11-year-old, this minor challenge represents a welcome flash of excitement—a mild adrenalin pulse they will remember as one of today’s highlights, not something to worry over. Then each of them scrabbles expertly up it.

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In the slickrock pass between the canyons, we drop our packs for a break and to enjoy a view that would make Dr. Seuss smile. Stratified cliffs stretch out in three directions. Stone towers, with bulbous crowns bigger around than the column on which they sit, seem ever at the verge of toppling over: On top of flouting generally accepted rules of geometry, this Alice’s wonderland ignores the laws of physics. I’m not sure that’s good for backpackers tromping through here who are used to their environment simply behaving the way it’s supposed to behave.

After the snacks have been consumed and the pictures taken, we shoulder packs again and the four kids lead the way down into Squaw Canyon, amused by the continually circuitous route of cairns through a place where you can see for miles and still not be able to see exactly where you’re going.

The Needles District of Canyonlands

I’ve come to southeastern Utah with my son, Nate, and daughter, Alex, and our friends and frequent adventure partners the Serios (Vince, Cat, and daughters Sofi and Lili) and Jeff Wilhelm and his 21-year-old daughter, Jasmine. We’ve planned a spring-break week of backpacking and dayhiking to explore the Needles District of Canyonlands and Arches National Park. First up is this overnight, short, easy hike up Big Spring Canyon and down Squaw Canyon, followed by a dayhike to the incomparable Chesler Park area of The Needles (lead photo at top of story). Then we’ll base camp at a rented condo in Moab for a few dayhikes in Arches.

The Needles District and Arches harbor the kind of geological oddities that fascinate both kids and adults. I’ve walked in the past to almost every spot we’ll visit this week. But by returning with my kids, I can relive vicariously, through them, that magical experience of seeing all of this for the first time.

One of the four geographically distinct areas of Canyonlands National Park, the Needles District covers the high plateau and canyons south and east of the Colorado River and south of Moab. The Colorado and Green rivers subdivide the park’s districts—the other three being the Island in the Sky, The Maze, and Horseshoe Canyon. And the rivers themselves provide a platform for water-based adventures like the classic, multi-day float trip on the Green through Stillwater Canyon, and one-day or half-day, beginner-friendly canoe trips on the Colorado, supported by Moab-based outfitters that will rent you the canoe and water gear and pick you up by jetboat in the afternoon.

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With its trail network and backcountry campsites, the Needles is the district of Canyonlands most conducive to backpacking—although you’re limited in how far you can hike by the scarcity of water, forcing you to carry a lot of it. From our route’s last reliable water in Big Spring Canyon, we’re hauling all we’ll need for nine people for the rest of our first day through our second day.

While that can make it challenging to backpack with kids who can’t yet carry their share of gear and food weight, it just requires recalibrating your sense of how far your family can hike and how many days you backpack.

After the Needles District, hike the other nine of “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest.”

Erosional forces working over unfathomable gulfs of time formed this arid and tortured landscape; but it looks more like the work of giant children squeezing mud from their fists. The desert Southwest has a way of defying comprehension, even among people who’ve come to know it well. I can only imagine what it looks like to the eyes of these kids, since it wasn’t until adulthood that I first gazed in awe and disbelief on this region.

A mile down Squaw Canyon from the pass, we reach our designated campsite near the junction with the Lost Canyon Trail. Tomorrow, Jeff, Jasmine and I will explore the geological abstractions of Lost Canyon, along with the Peekaboo Trail, while the others take the direct route down Squaw Canyon back to our cars.

Tents go up, cook stoves come out. Night falls early in March, gifting us with one of the darkest and most star-riddled skies in the country.

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Chesler Park

Hiking to Chesler Park has the quality of approaching the Emerald City in the land of Oz: Chesler’s outsized, multi-colored towers of Cedar Mesa sandstone form a castle-like rampart on the horizon, looming ever larger as you near it. The day after finishing our overnight backpacking trip, we’re dayhiking some 11 miles out-and-back to Chesler. As our party spreads out on the trail, Nate and I hike together, scrambling atop smaller rock formations along the trail and passing between two close sandstone walls that form a narrow corridor.

The long, morning shadow of 300-foot-tall pinnacles falls over us as we walk up one of the Chesler Park Trail’s few steep sections. At a break in the row of pinnacles, we stroll through a sort of natural doorway into Chesler Park. It’s pretty much as I remember it from a backpacking trip here many years ago: a horseshoe of sandstone spires arcing around a patch of desert about a mile across. We walk to a couple of ledges overlooking Chesler and the badlands outside its walls, where white-capped mushrooms of stone sprout from the earth and yet more burnt-red spires rise in the distance.

I try to persuade the kids to hike a couple miles farther, to the other side of Chesler Park, where the Joint Trail passes through a very narrow, sheer-walled slot in solid rock that I know will delight them. But today, I get no takers. The sun’s hot, our hike will cover about 11 miles without going out to the Joint Trail—and the kids know we’re headed from here to a condo, our first showers in a few days, and real food and ice cream. So I surrender to a wave of momentum that I can’t stop, and we turn around to hike back out.

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Arches National Park

About a mile-and-a-half out the Devils Garden Trail in Arches National Park, just past Landscape Arch—the park’s largest, spanning 306 feet—the trail appears to terminate abruptly. But it doesn’t, a fact made obvious by the hikers ahead of us on this popular trail, leaning forward into a steep, narrow, stone ramp ascending between cliffs. We follow the traffic toward some of the more remote arches in the park’s Devils Garden area, Navajo and Partition.

Within the first hour of hiking into Devils Garden, we had already visited Landscape as well as Tunnel Arch and Pine Tree Arch. Later, two of us will take the half-mile walk out to Skyline Arch. Yesterday, we spent a couple of leisurely hours walking around the park’s Windows Section, ogling and scrambling around a veritable riot of sandstone bridges that boggle the mind: the twin North and South Windows, Turret Arch, and Double Arch, all within a short walk of one another.

Several years ago, when these kids were too young to remember much of their first visit to Arches, we hiked them down the flat, mile-long Park Avenue trail, below signature formations of Arches National Park like the Three Gossips and the Courthouse Towers. We also took them on the 20-minute walk around Balanced Rock, a sight so improbable to them that the term “balanced rock” embedded itself in my children’s vocabulary, as a term referring to any random assemblage of rocks, however tiny or ephemeral, that appeared top-heavy.

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