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

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

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.

On that trip, my family backpacked a six-day, nearly 50-mile loop through the High Uintas Wilderness—and “High” fits this place like a favorite, old sweater. Nearly all of our walk remained above 9,000 feet and at least half of it over 10,000 feet, including three passes over 11,000 and 12,000 feet. That’s higher than many multi-day hikes in the West, including much of Yosemite and the Teton Crest Trail, and it compares with (and provides good preparation for) backpacking the John Muir Trail and Wind River Range. On top of that, we summited 13,528-foot Kings Peak, Utah’s highest.

I returned to the High Uintas with my 24-year-old son during an unusual window of largely good weather in early October 2024. We backpacked nearly 60 miles, mostly on the Uinta Highline Trail, enjoying great camps, vast lake basins and 12,000-foot alpine passes, brilliant sunsets, night skies streaked with the glow of the Milky Way. Perhaps most uniquely, we enjoyed a degree of remoteness and solitude that feels like discovering buried treasure.

There are many reasons to explore the Uintas—which span nearly 60 miles in northeastern Utah, one of the rare U.S. mountain ranges that extend east-west—and I think the photos in this story might help persuade you.

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The Uinta Mountains are home to an estimated 2,000 lakes, all of Utah’s peaks over 13,000 feet, and more than half of the state’s 12,000-footers. Outside popular destinations like Kings Peak, many trails and summits see little traffic, even though many pose no greater challenge than non-technical, off-trail hiking. Do some research and you’ll discover peaks where years pass between summit visitors.

For backpackers and mountain climbers willing to put in the effort, in the High Uintas Wilderness—Utah’s largest wilderness area at over 450,000 acres—solitude is as plentiful as the wildflowers.

See my stories “Backpacking—and Sandbagging—Utah’s Uinta Highline Trail,” and “Tall and Lonely: Backpacking Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness,” and “Big Scenery, No Crowds: 10 Top Backpacking Trips for Solitude.” Those stories, like most stories about trips at The Big Outside, require a paid subscription to read in full, including my tips on planning those trips yourself.

I’ve helped many readers plan a great backpacking trip in the High Uintas and elsewhere.
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Water makes up about 60 percent of our bodies—and, I suspect, 100 percent of our hearts. We crave it not only physically, for survival, but emotionally, for spiritual rejuvenation. We love playing in it for hours as children and we paddle and swim in it as adults. We’re drawn by the calming effects of sitting beside a stream or lake in a beautiful natural setting, an experience that possesses a certain je ne sais quoi—a quality difficult to describe, but that we can all feel.

And nothing beats taking a swim in a gorgeous backcountry lake.

I’ve come across quite a few wonderful backcountry lakes over more than three decades of exploring wilderness—including about 10 years as the Northwest Editor of Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog. I’ve just updated and expanded this list of my favorites—adding a lake I camped beside last year in Montana’s Beartooth Wilderness—to give you some eye candy as well as ideas for future adventures, and perhaps compare against your list of favorite backcountry lakes.

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.

Click on the links to my stories in these brief writeups to learn more about each of these trips. Part of this story is free for anyone to read, but reading the entire story is an exclusive benefit of a paid subscription, which also provides full access to all the numerous stories about trips at The Big Outside, and those include my tips on planning those trips. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan a trip to any of these lakes.

If you know some gorgeous lakes that are not on my list, please suggest them in the comments section below this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Here’s to your next peaceful moment beside a gorgeous lake deep in the mountains somewhere.

Elizabeth Lake, Glacier National Park

Early on the second morning of a six-day, 94-mile traverse of Glacier National Park, mostly on the Continental Divide Trail, three friends and I set out from the backcountry campground at the head of Elizabeth Lake, hiking along the sandy shore. An elk bugled from somewhere in the forest nearby. The glassy water reflected a razor-sharp, upside-down reflection of the jagged mountains flanking it. Among many lovely backcountry lakes in Glacier, Elizabeth Lake is one of the finest.

See my stories “Wildness All Around You: Backpacking the CDT Through Glacier” and “Descending the Food Chain: Backpacking Glacier National Park’s Northern Loop,” plus my e-books “The Best Backpacking Trip in Glacier National Park” and “Backpacking the Continental Divide Trail Through Glacier National Park.”

I can help you plan any trip you read about at my blog. Find out more here.

Helen Lake, John Muir Trail, Kings Canyon National Park

In the wake of a violent thunderstorm, we crossed 11,955-foot Muir Pass on the John Muir Trail in Kings Canyon National Park in early evening on the eighth day of a nine-day, 130-mile hike through the High Sierra. Finding what seemed the only two patches of rock-free ground, we pitched our tents above Helen Lake, at around 11,600 feet. The next morning, the rising sun ignited the peaks across Helen Lake, the scene captured in razor-sharp reflections in the lake and a tiny tarn near our camp—burning that almost accidental camp above Helen Lake into memory for all three of us.

See my story about that trip, “High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail,” and “10 Great John Muir Trail Section Hikes.”

Planning a backpacking trip? See “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips”
and this menu of all stories with expert backpacking tips at The Big Outside.

Tarn Along the Highline Trail, Wind River Range

Searching for a suitable campsite along the Highline Trail late one afternoon on a five-day, roughly 43-mile loop hike in the Winds, my wife, a friend, and I reached an unnamed, small tarn—and the view stopped us in our tracks. From our camp a few hundred feet off-trail beyond the tarn, we overlooked grassy meadows littered with glacial-erratic boulders that sloped down to another lake. Beyond that, 12,119-foot Sky Pilot Peak and 12,224-foot Mount Oeneis towered over the valley. I shot this photo as we hit the trail the next morning.

See “Backpacking Through a Lonely Corner of the Wind River Range” and all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

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Alice Lake, Sawtooth Mountains

Idaho’s Sawtooths must be in contention for the title of American mountain range with the most beautiful lakes—maybe eclipsed only by the High Sierra and Wind River Range. Like the Sierra and Winds, backpacking in the Sawtooths brings you to the shores of multiple lakes every day, shimmering in sunlight, rippled by wind, or offering a mirror reflection of jagged peaks on calm mornings and evenings. Alice (also shown in lead photo at top of story) is one of the larger and prettier of them, a spot I’ve visited several times without getting tired of the view across it to a row of sharp-edged peaks.

See all of my stories about Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, including “The Best of Idaho’s Sawtooths: Backpacking Redfish to Pettit,” “Jewels of the Sawtooths: Backpacking to Alice, Hell Roaring, and Imogene Lakes,” and “The Best Hikes and Backpacking Trips in Idaho’s Sawtooths,” and my e-guide “The Best Backpacking Trip in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains,” which describes a route that includes Alice Lake.

After the Sawtooths, hike the other nine of “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.”

Precipice Lake, Sequoia National Park

Precipice wasn’t even our intended campsite on the third day of a six-day, 40-mile family backpacking trip in Sequoia, in California’s southern High Sierra. We planned to push maybe a mile farther, to camp on the other side of 10,700-foot Kaweah Gap. But when we reached Precipice Lake at 10,400 feet, and saw its glassy, green and blue waters reflecting white and golden cliffs, and took a bracing swim, it wasn’t a hard sell when I suggested we spend the night there. It became one of my 25 all-time favorite backcountry campsites.

See my story about that trip, “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park,” and all of my stories about Sequoia National Park at The Big Outside.

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

Lake Solitude, Grand Teton National Park

Hiking in the chilly, early-morning shade of the North Fork of Cascade Canyon, we looked up to see a huge bull moose sauntering through a meadow speckled with wildflowers, maybe a hundred yards from us. Minutes later, thanks to our early departure from camp, we reached the rocky shoreline of at Lake Solitude—the first people there that morning, enjoying a true period of “solitude” at this spot that’s enormously popular with dayhikers. In the calm morning air, the lake lay absolutely still, mirroring in sharp detail a cirque of cliffs, rocky mountainsides, and lingering patches of old snow.

See my story about my most recent trip in the Tetons, “A Wonderful Obsession: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail,” my stories “Walking Familiar Ground: Reliving Old Memories and Making New Ones on the Teton Crest Trail” and “American Classic: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail,” and all of my stories about the Teton Crest Trail and Grand Teton National Park.

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

No Name Lake, Glacier National Park

On the last night of a seven-day, north-south hike through Glacier, right after making the Dawson Pass Trail’s awesome alpine crossing from Pitamakan to Dawson passes, two friends and I spent our final night at No Name Lake—which I’d hiked past without stopping on a very similar, six-day trip five years before (see this story).

The next morning brought the kind of calm air that creates a perfect, mirror-like lake reflection—this one enhanced by the coincidental angle of the sun across the cliffs above the lake that lent it such striking, high-contrast light. Happening upon a moment like that makes me gasp.

See my story “Déjà Vu All Over Again: Backpacking in Glacier National Park” and all stories about backpacking in Glacier at The Big Outside.

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Rainbow Lake, North Cascades National Park Complex

After a relentless, seven-mile-long, 3,500-foot uphill slog to Rainbow Pass in the Lake Chelan National Recreation Area, a friend and I descended to a wonderful, wooded campsite on the shore of Rainbow Lake. We stuffed fistfuls of huckleberries into our mouths, then walked down to the lakeshore, where the setting sun was setting larch trees—their needles turned golden in late September—afire. It seemed a fitting final night of an 80-mile trek through the heart of the North Cascades National Park Complex.

See my story about that trip, “Primal Wild: Backpacking 80 Miles Through the North Cascades,” and all of my stories about the North Cascades.

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Overland Lake, Ruby Crest Trail

Near the end of my family’s second day of a four-day, approximately 36-mile traverse of Nevada’s underappreciated Ruby Crest Trail, a nearly 2,000-foot uphill slog landed us at a pass at about 10,200 feet. Almost 1,000 feet below us, a stone bowl held Overland Lake like a pair of cupped hands. Beyond it, the backbone of the Ruby Mountains stretched for many miles—exciting us over the alpine walk that awaited us. We descended into that bowl to make camp on a rock ledge jutting into one corner of the lake, at around 9,400 feet. The Ruby Crest Trail cuts a snaking route along the spine of Nevada’s Ruby Mountains, a north-south range of granite-rimmed lake basins and arid valleys carved by ancient glaciers. Overlooking this hike would be your loss.

See my story “Backpacking the Ruby Crest Trail—A Diamond in the Rough.”

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Island Lake, Wind River Range

As I mentioned above, few mountain ranges in America are as blessed with gorgeous backcountry lakes as Wyoming’s Winds. That makes it hard to pick out just one or two as favorites, but Island Lake deserves a shout out as much as any and more than most. Two friends and I hiked past it on a three-day, 41-mile loop from the Elkhart Park Trailhead to Titcomb Basin and over Knapsack Col in the Winds—and if we didn’t already have our hearts set on spending that night in Titcomb, we could have easily pitched our tents by Island for the night.

Read my feature story about that 41-mile hike, “Best of the Wind River Range: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin,” and check out all of my stories about the Winds at The Big Outside.

Don’t let red tape foil your plans.
See my “10 Tips For Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit.”

Wanda Lake, John Muir Trail, Kings Canyon National Park

The seven-day thru-hike of the John Muir Trail that I made with some friends featured many unforgettable moments and a lifetime’s worth of stunning scenery—and aching feet—but few moments as quietly lovely as the early morning that we hiked along the shore of Wanda Lake. We were climbing toward 11,955-foot Muir Pass when we reached this uppermost lake in the Evolution Basin, a high valley scoured from granite by long-ago glaciers and studded with lakes. As my friend Todd walked along the lakeshore, I captured perhaps my best image from that entire trip.

See my story “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail in Seven Days: Amazing Experience, or Certifiably Insane?” See also all of my stories about backpacking the John Muir Trail.

Ready for a better backpack? See “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs”
and the best ultralight backpacks.

May Lake, Yosemite National Park

A friend and I reached May Lake on the last afternoon of one of my top 10 best-ever backpacking trips, a weeklong, 151-mile tour of the most remote areas of Yosemite. We arrived as the sun dipped toward the western horizon, casting beautiful, low-angle light across the lake, which sits at the base of craggy, 10,845-foot Mount Hoffman. But you can visit May on an easy dayhike of 2.5 miles round-trip. Bonus: There’s a High Sierra Camp on May’s shore that’s a good base camp for hiking the area, including the steep jaunt up Hoffman, which has arguably the nicest summit view in Yosemite.

See more photos, a video, and trip-planning tips in my story about the 87-mile second leg of that 151-tour of Yosemite, “Best of Yosemite, Part 2: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite,” and my story about the 65-mile first leg of that adventure, “Best of Yosemite, Part 1: Backpacking South of Tuolumne Meadows,” and “The 10 Best Dayhikes in Yosemite” (including May Lake and Mount Hoffmann) at The Big Outside.

Plan your next great backpacking adventure in Yosemite
and other flagship parks using my expert e-books.

Quiet Lake, White Cloud Mountains

A longtime backcountry ranger in Idaho’s Sawtooth National Recreation Area (SNRA) got my attention when he told me that Quiet Lake was his favorite in the White Clouds, which are part of both the SNRA and one of America’s newest wilderness areas. He wasn’t overhyping it. When I backpacked to Quiet Lake with my son, following a partly off-trail route that was moderately strenuous and not too difficult to navigate, we hit the summit of a nearly 11,000-foot peak with an amazing panorama of the White Clouds, traversed a barren, rocky basin with four alpine lakes, and pitched our tent by the shore of Quiet, below the soaring north face of 11,815-foot Castle Peak, highest in the White Clouds. And we didn’t see another person the entire time. If you need a bit of peace and quiet—not to mention breathtaking natural beauty—go here.

See my “Photo Gallery: A Father-Son Backpacking Trip in Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains,” and all stories
about Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains at The Big Outside.

Get the right shelter for your trips. See “The 10 Best Backpacking Tents”
and my expert tips in “How to Choose the Best Ultralight Backpacking Tent for You.”

Lake Sylvan, Beartooth Wilderness

Quite by accident, two friends and I saved the best campsite for our last night on a five-day August hike through Montana’s Beartooth Wilderness. We pitched our tents a short walk from the shore of Lake Sylvan, tucked into a cirque below the cliffs of Sylvan Peak, which rises to nearly 12,000 feet. That night capped a trip where we enjoyed complete solitude at two of our four camps and for several hours each day while hiking below jagged peaks, seeing small glaciers at the heads of glacially carved cirques, to one pass at around 11,000 feet, and across the treeless tundra of a plateau at over 10,000 feet.

See my story “Backpacking the High and Mighty Beartooth Mountains.”

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Minaret Lake, Ansel Adams Wilderness

The relentlessly steep trail brought us to stunning Iceberg Lake at almost 9,800 feet and continued, even more strenuously, upward over talus and scree to Cecile Lake, at 10,260 feet at the feet of the 11,000- and 12,000-foot High Sierra spires known as the Minarets, lined up like chipped and broken bowling pins. With the “trail” terminating there, we found our way across more talus and down a steep gully to Minaret Lake—arguably the prettiest among several lakes we’d already seen that day. We found a spot for our tents amid conifer trees a short walk from the lakeshore and enjoyed a sunset and sunrise that ranked among the best of several great ones on that trip.

See my story about that trip, “High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail,” and “10 Great John Muir Trail Section Hikes.”

Start out right. See “10 Perfect National Park Backpacking Trips for Beginners”
and “The 5 Southwest Backpacking Trips You Should Do First.”

Ouzel Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park

Tucked into the ponderosa pine forest at around 10,000 feet, in the park’s Wild Basin area, Ouzel is reached on a moderate hike of less than five miles and 1,500 vertical from the Wild Basin Trailhead. Although it gets some dayhikers, you can have a protected campsite in the trees there all to yourself, as my family did on a three-day, early-September backpacking trip. My kids, then 10 and seven, played and fished for hours in the shallow waters near our camp and the lake’s outlet creek.

See my story “The 5 Rules About Kids I Broke While Backpacking in Rocky Mountain National Park.”

Want to take your family backpacking? See these expert e-books:
“The Best Short Backpacking Trip in Grand Teton National Park”
“The Best First Backpacking Trip in Yosemite”
“The Best Backpacking Trip in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains”

Mirror Lake, Eagle Cap Wilderness

Early on the clear and calm, third morning of a 40-mile family backpacking trip in Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness, I left our campsite and walked down to the shore of this lake, anticipating the scene I’d capture in pixels. Mirror Lake, in the popular Lakes Basin, earns its moniker, offering up a flawless reflection of its conifer- and granite-rimmed shore and the cliffs of 9,572-foot Eagle Cap Peak high above it. Our hike made a long loop through some less-visited areas of the wilderness, but you can reach Mirror Lake on weekend-length hikes, too.

See my story “Learning the Hard Way: Backpacking Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness,” and all of my stories about backpacking in Oregon at The Big Outside.

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Peak Lake, Wind River Range

As I’ve written elsewhere at this blog, take a long walk in the Winds and you can hardly swing an extended tent pole without hitting a lake or tarn. I have now backpacked past Peak Lake on separate 41-mile and 43-mile loop hikes in the Winds (which overlapped by just several miles of trail that did not grow dull on the return visit). Shimmering at the bottom of a tiny bowl, surrounded by peaks resembling giant incisors, Peak Lake can be reached from a few different directions—none of them short walks, which helps keep this jaw-dropping little basin in the Winds relatively quiet. Both times I’ve walked past it, the only company I had was my two companions.

See my stories “Backpacking Through a Lonely Corner of the Wind River Range” and “Best of the Wind River Range: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin,” and all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

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Oldman Lake, Glacier National Park

On day six of a weeklong hike through Glacier National Park, three of us reached Pitamakan Pass on a bluebird morning and set our packs down; we had to spend some time enjoying this prospect. Behind us, Pitamakan Lake and Seven Winds of the Lake nestle in the cliff-ringed cirque that we just hiked through on the Continental Divide Trail. But even more impressive, the view south took in the immense horseshoe of cliffs and forested mountainsides cradling Oldman Lake, below the sharp point of Flinsch Peak and the 2,000-foot stone wall of Mount Morgan rising virtually out of the waters of Oldman.

See my story “Déjà Vu All Over Again: Backpacking in Glacier National Park” and all stories about backpacking in Glacier at The Big Outside.

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

Thousand Island Lake, John Muir Trail, Ansel Adams Wilderness

Thru-hiking southbound on the John Muir Trail, among the first of many moments that signal how this trek seems to keep getting better and better is when you descend toward Thousand Island Lake in the Ansel Adams Wilderness. Yosemite—a pretty impressive place in its own right—now lies miles behind you. Banner Peak, scraping the sky at nearly 13,000 feet, has been in sight for some miles and looming ever larger. Then you catch your first glimpse of the lake, speckled with islets, and it takes your breath away.

Remind yourself that much more of this kind of stuff still awaits you.

See my stories “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail in Seven Days: Amazing Experience, or Certifiably Insane?” “High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail,” and “10 Great John Muir Trail Section Hikes.”

And see my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan your JMT thru-hike—as I’ve helped numerous other readers.

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

Not on these trips, though.

From lonely corners of the majestic High Sierra (including, believe it or not, Yosemite), the North Cascades region, and Utah’s High Uintas and Maze District of Canyonlands, to the Wind River Range, Idaho’s beloved Sawtooths, the Eagle Cap Wilderness and a pair of rugged and remote adventures in the Grand Canyon, here are 12 multi-day hikes where you’re guaranteed to enjoy a degree of solitude—at least on long stretches of the trip—that’s equal to the scenery. All of these trips meet several of my “12 Expert Tips For Finding Solitude When Backpacking.”

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.

They also happen to be some favorite trips among countless wilderness walks I’ve taken over more than three decades (and counting) of backpacking, including the 10 years I spent as a field editor for Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog.

Each trip described below has a link to a full story about it, with many photos and often a video. Reading those stories in full, including key trip-planning details and tips, as well as this entire story, is an exclusive benefit of a paid subscription to The Big Outside.

Please tell me what you think of these trips—or add your own suggestions—in the comments at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

And I can help you plan any of them or any trip you read about at this blog. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how.

Start planning your next adventure now! See “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips”
and “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips.”

Glacier Peak Wilderness

The five-day, 44-mile Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass loop in Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness has earned a reputation for spiciness—which keeps the crowds down. The reason is the off-trail route over 7,100-foot Spider Gap, which holds snow all summer and can be hazardous, depending on the firmness of the snow.

But for backpackers with the skills to manage that pass—which isn’t terribly steep or dangerous when done in soft-snow conditions, as my family did when our kids were 12 and 10—the rewards include five-star views of Glacier Peak and the sea of lower, jagged mountains surrounding it, some of the best backcountry campsites you’ll ever have (or perhaps hike past), and unforgettable wildflower displays and panoramas like you get from Liberty Cap, a short side hike from Buck Creek Pass (photo above).

See my story “Wild Heart of the Glacier Peak Wilderness: Backpacking the Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass Loop,” and all stories about backpacking in Washington at The Big Outside.

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Beartooth Wilderness

On a five-day, peak-of-summer, mid-August hike through Montana’s Beartooth Wilderness, two friends and I walked for miles and hours a day—most of the trip—without any other people in sight. At two of our four campsites, there was not another person within miles—including near a lake less than five miles from the trailhead where we started and finished the trip, in a cirque below the cliffs and slopes of a striking, nearly 12,000-foot peak.

And our route reminded me in many ways of backpacking in a Northern Rockies neighbor of the Beartooths, Glacier National Park: We hiked long stretches through alpine terrain with views of soaring cliffs, jagged peaks, and small glaciers at the heads of dramatic, glacially carved cirques. In contrast to Glacier, though, the Beartooths reach higher elevations. We hiked to one stunning pass at over 11,000 feet and crossed the treeless tundra of a plateau at over 10,000 feet—and, yea, saw no one at either spot.

See my story “Backpacking the High and Mighty Beartooth Mountains.”

I’ve helped many readers plan unforgettable backpacking and hiking trips.
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The Gems Route, Grand Canyon

For three days of a six-day hike from the Grand Canyon’s South Bass Trailhead to the Hermit Trailhead, five friends and I saw no one. Backpacking much of the Gems Route—named for several tributary canyons, including Ruby, Turquoise, Sapphire, Agate, and Topaz—we had amazing camps every night entirely to ourselves, with a vivid Milky Way glowing overhead.

The route traverses the longest segment of the 95-mile-long Tonto Trail with no bailout path the South Rim: the 29 miles from Bass Canyon to Boucher Creek, described by the park’s website as the Tonto’s “most difficult and potentially dangerous” leg for the lack of perennial water. (We twice carried six to eight liters of water—up to about 17 pounds each.)

But every day was a walk through a majestic landscape constantly reshaped by shifting light, with views reaching from the river to both rims. And these tributary canyons of the Colorado might, by themselves, be national parks in most other states.

See my story “‘Let’s Talk Water:’ Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Gems,” “10 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do,” and all stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

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Southern Sawtooth Mountains

I’ve dayhiked, backpacked, and climbed numerous times in Idaho’s glorious Sawtooths, peaks that look to me like a love child of the High Sierra and the Tetons (if somewhat smaller); and with the exception of a few popular spots, I wouldn’t describe them as crowded. But for solitude and scenery that justifies my “love child” claim, I recommend diving deep into the range’s interior. 

On a 57-mile trip from the Queens River Trailhead, penetrating an area that’s a solid two days’ walk from the nearest roads, a friend and I saw some of the prettiest and loneliest mountain lakes of the dozens that grace the Sawtooths, and lonely valleys framed by endless rows of jagged peaks.

See my story “Going After Goals: Backpacking in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains,” “5 Reasons You Must Backpack Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains,” and all stories about backpacking in Idaho’s Sawtooths at The Big Outside.

Click here now for my e-book to the best backpacking trip in Idaho’s Sawtooths!

High Uintas Wilderness

The first hint at the solitude we’d enjoy on a nearly 50-mile loop hike in northeastern Utah’s High Uintas (including an optional eight-mile dayhike of Kings Peak, highest in Utah) came at the trailhead, where there were a grand total of two cars. We didn’t see another person until the second evening in camp, on a pretty mountain lake we had to ourselves, when two hikers passed by and one remarked, “Well, there are other people out here!” Our third day passed without encountering another human and we had a campsite for two nights in an 11,000-foot basin ringed by 13,000-foot peaks with no one in sight.

And during an unusual window of good weather in early October 2024, my 24-year-old son and I backpacked nearly 60 miles, mostly on the Uinta Highline Trail, enjoying 12,000-foot alpine passes and vast lake basins, great camps with stunning sunsets, night skies with the Milky Way glowing brilliantly—and a degree of solitude found only when hiking deep into big wilderness.

See my stories “Tall and Lonely: Backpacking Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness,” “Backpacking—and Sandbagging—Utah’s Uinta Highline Trail,” and all stories about backpacking in Utah at The Big Outside.

Planning a backpacking trip? See “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be”
and this menu of all stories with expert backpacking tips at The Big Outside.

Northern Yosemite

Yosemite exceeds expectations in many ways, including that its reputation for crowds simply doesn’t square with the reality of backpacking throughout most of the park. On an 87-mile trek through northern Yosemite (shorter variations are possible), a friend and I crossed three remote, 10,000-foot passes; wandered through rock gardens in canyons beneath 12,000-foot peaks; camped on a lake’s sandy beach that looked like it was transplanted from southern California; hiked up a canyon resembling Yosemite Valley but twice as long and without the roads, buildings, and crowds; and stood on a summit known for “the best 360 in Yosemite.”

And every day, we walked for hours without seeing another person. When you’re ready to explore as deeply into the Yosemite backcountry as a person can wander, head north of Tuolumne Meadows into the park’s biggest, loneliest wilderness.

See my story “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite,” my e-book to that trip, “The Best Remote and Uncrowded Backpacking Trip in Yosemite,” plus “How to Get a Yosemite or High Sierra Wilderness Permit,” “Backpacking Yosemite: What You Need to Know,” and all stories about backpacking in Yosemite National Park at The Big Outside—including my story about another trip that offered a surprising amount of solitude, “Yosemite’s Best-Kept Secret Backpacking Trip.”

Plan your next great backpacking adventure in Yosemite
and other flagship parks using my expert e-books.

See all stories about backpacking at The Big Outside, including “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips” and “Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites.”

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It is one of those unfortunate inevitabilities of life, like death and taxes: Occasionally on backpacking trips you will hike past one of the most sublime patches of wilderness real estate you have ever laid eyes on, a spot so idyllic you can already see your tent pitched there and you standing outside it, warm mug in your hands, watching a glorious sunset. But it’s early and your plan entails hiking farther before you stop for the day—not camping there. Or your permit isn’t for that site. Or even worse, you are looking for a campsite, but someone else has already occupied this little corner of Heaven.

Disappointment is an awfully large pill to swallow, especially if you know you may never get back to that place. Then again, you might make a note on your map and return there someday. Goals are a powerful motivator.

My recently updated story “Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites” has photos and descriptions of the best spots in the wilderness where I’ve ever spent a night over the past three-plus decades, including many years running this blog and previously as a field editor for Backpacker magazine for 10 years. So it seems fitting to spotlight the best camps I never had but wish I did—all of them places potentially awaiting your tent.

Just make sure you get there before someone else grabs it.

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.

This list grows every year—an inevitable outcome of backpacking frequently—giving you more ideas for trips to take. The descriptions below include links to stories at The Big Outside about those trips, with more images and information about planning them. Those stories about trips, and many other stories at this blog, require a paid subscription to read in full, although you don’t need a subscription to purchase any of my E-books or my Custom Trip Planning.

Please share your questions or suggestions about these campsites or others in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Hamilton Lakes, Sequoia National Park

Granted, there are a lot of great campsites in the High Sierra. But some really do stand out even from the many extraordinary sites—in fact, two of our camps on this Sequoia trip made my list of 25 favorite backcountry campsites.

After a morning hike along a stretch of the High Sierra Trail that traverses hundreds of feet above the cliff-flanked canyon of the Middle Fork Kaweah River, we reached the largest of the Hamilton Lakes, nestled in a bowl of granite at 8,235 feet, just in time for a long lunch break. Everyone took a swim in the invigorating water, but mostly we just soaked up the panorama of jagged peaks rising to over 12,000 feet that surround the lake.

See my story about that 40-mile, family backpacking trip, “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park,” with lots of photos and a video, and all stories about backpacking in the High Sierra at The Big Outside.

Get the right pack for you. See “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs”
and the best ultralight backpacks.

Alaska Basin, Teton Crest Trail

There’s hardly a bad place to pitch a tent (legally) in all of Grand Teton National Park—and certainly not even a mediocre spot along the Teton Crest Trail. In fact, my list of 25 favorite backcountry campsites includes two along the TCT. But simply because I’ve always been successful at getting my desired campsites on my backcountry permit, I have always hiked through the one area along the TCT that lies outside the national park and doesn’t require a permit for camping: Alaska Basin.

But I’ve hiked through it enough times to realize what I’m missing. The two campsites shown in these photos happen to be perfect perches we passed that lie just off the TCT in the basin. Both have broad, flat areas of clean granite with amazing 360-degree panoramas of the mountains and cliffs surrounding Alaska Basin. That’s why I’ve recommended Alaska Basin as a campsite depending on the type of hiking itinerary people are seeking when I provide custom trip planning for the TCT.

See my story about my most-recent trip on the TCT, “A Wonderful Obsession: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail.”

Get my Teton Crest Trail e-book or my custom trip planning for the TCT.

Yuma Point, Grand Canyon

On the last, hard but stunningly pretty day of a 40-mile hike from the South Kaibab to the Hermit trailhead, our group of six family and friends ascended the often steep and difficult Boucher Trail—yet another tortured footpath that illustrates why the words “hard but stunningly pretty” describe so many trails in the Big Ditch. After a long uphill grind, we reached the long, level bench the Boucher Trail follows below Yuma Point, at just over 5,400 feet, and saw immediately why in-the-know GC backpackers consider it one of the very best campsites in the canyon.

Several spacious, obviously pre-used camps on dirt sit right behind a large, flat rock ledge at the brink of cliffs overlooking a huge swath of the canyon from more than 3,000 feet above the Colorado River. Yes, I sure did imagine laying my pad and bag out on that ledge, gazing up at a night sky crazy with stars and then watching the sunrise light up the canyon. Those camps lie a short walk off the Boucher Trail 5.2 miles from the Hermit Trailhead, at 6,640 feet—and that’s about the only relatively “easy” way to get there. One drawback: Yuma Point lies right below the Dragon Corridor, where the sky is filled with a daily invasion of constant sightseeing overflights between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.

See “Backpacking the Grand Canyon: Tonto West to Boucher Trail” and all stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

Planning your next big adventure? See “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips”
and “Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites.”

Death Hollow, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument

I’d read on some websites that viable campsites were non-existent in Death Hollow, in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. And looking at the contour lines of this deep and generally narrow cleavage in the slickrock plateau, it did seem like a bad bet to assume one would find good camps in there. Turned out, that was wrong.

On the middle day of a three-day hike on the 22-mile Death Hollow Loop, two friends and I backpacked down the dramatic canyon of Death Hollow, frequently walking in the creek amid small cascades and weaving our way around deep, calm pools and other obstacles and hazards—and bushwhacking through thickets of poison ivy that stood taller than us. And we passed a handful of camps where we’d have been happy to spend a night on one of the best backpacking trips in the Southwest, where each of our three days presented different terrain and scenery, a sort of three-in-one wilderness adventure in landscapes that repeatedly made me to pause and just gape.

See my story “Backpacking Utah’s Mind-Blowing Death Hollow Loop” at The Big Outside.

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Liberty Lake, Ruby Crest Trail

On the last afternoon of my family’s backpacking trip on Nevada’s Ruby Crest Trail, a steady uphill climb deposited us at the edge of Liberty Lake, a cobalt eye tucked tightly within a shoreline of granite slabs, patches of evergreen forest, and a talus mountainside. We followed the trail around and above the lake, where we stood on a ledge overlooking the lake and the long chain of the Ruby Mountains stretching into the distance (lead photo at top of story). Although camping there didn’t fit neatly into our four-day itinerary, it was easy to see why other backpackers had set up camp nearby.

Liberty Lake was not the only highlight of an approximately 36-mile, south-to-north traverse of the Ruby Crest Trail. We enjoyed a campsite on another beautiful alpine lake, wildflowers in bloom, relatively few other backpackers, and long stretches of hiking above 10,000 feet, traversing an almost treeless alpine zone for miles.

See my story about my family’s trip, “Backpacking the Ruby Crest Trail—A Diamond in the Rough,” at The Big Outside.

Get a full wilderness experience.
See “12 Expert Tips For Finding Solitude When Backpacking.”

Imogene Lake, Sawtooth Wilderness

Returning to Imogene Lake again for the first time in some years, on a weekend backpacking trip with my then-11-year-old daughter, I was reminded just how gorgeous this sprawling water body is. On calm days—like we had on that visit—the water reflects an Impressionist painting-like panorama of pine forest and rocky peaks.

I was actually planning to finally atone for my sin of having hiked past Imogene on at least two or three previous occasions by setting up camp here with my daughter. But we got a late start on a Friday and rolled in to Hell Roaring Lake—four miles below Imogene—after dark. So we just dayhiked to Imogene. I’ll camp there yet—I swear. Meanwhile, Hell Roaring is a pretty nice spot, too, and close enough to visit Imogene on a morning hike.

See my story “Jewels of the Sawtooths: Backpacking to Alice, Hell Roaring, and Imogene Lakes,” about father-son and father-daughter backpacking trips in Idaho’s Sawtooths, and all stories about backpacking in the Sawtooths, including in the remote southern Sawtooth Wilderness and “The Best Hikes and Backpacking Trips in Idaho’s Sawtooths.”

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Below Nevills Arch, Owl Canyon, Bears Ears National Monument

Consider this a shining example of “if we’d just hiked a little while longer, and started early enough to beat the party that got there first, we’d have camped here.” On the second morning of our three-day loop through Owl and Fish canyons, in southeastern Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, we walked through the amphitheater where striking Nevills Arch presides over a sort of royal court of tall, red cliffs and pinnacles that resemble melted candles—and right past the lone campsite on flat, packed dirt that sits within the warm embrace of that amphitheater.

Having camped (at a pretty nice spot, anyway) just an easy 30-minute or shorter walk farther up Owl Canyon, it was a little painful seeing how close we’d come to enjoying this camp—although the small group who’d camped there were still packing up as we strolled past it. One of the best backpacking trips in the Southwest, the two- to three-day Owl-Fish loop offers an unusual combination of qualities: short distance, incredible scenery (and night skies), solitude, rugged hiking and scrambling, and a permit that’s easier to get than for better-known Southwest backpacking trips.

See my story “Backpacking Southern Utah’s Owl and Fish Canyons” and all stories about backpacking in Utah at The Big Outside.

Elbow Lake, Wind River Range

In the week before Labor Day 2022, a prime time to be in the mountains, my wife, Penny, our friend, Chip, and I backpacked a five-day, roughly 43-mile loop from the New Fork/Doubletop Mountain Trailhead at New Fork Lakes, mostly exploring an area of the Winds I had not seen before. But we also walked a stretch of the Highline Trail (part of the Continental Divide Trail) which I had hiked previously (on this trip), reminding me not only how nice that trail is but that I’ve now hiked past Elbow Lake twice without laying out my sleeping bag there.

I rank that day among the prettiest I’ve ever hiked in the Winds—and that’s saying a lot. We started out from one of the best backcountry campsites I’ve ever had, overlooking the lower of the Twin Lakes, 12,119-foot Sky Pilot Peak, and 12,224-foot Mount Oeneis, following the Highline Trail past several alpine lakes and tarns to sprawling Elbow Lake—embraced by granite slabs and grassy earth where you can’t help but picture your tent pitched. From there, we continued to a pair of high passes and more spectacular lakes.

And as happened throughout that trip, we passed fewer than 10 people all day.

See “Backpacking Through a Lonely Corner of the Wind River Range” all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside. National forest and wilderness managers require camping at least 200 feet from any lake or trail in the Winds.

Do you love backcountry lakes?
Check out these photos of the most gorgeous wilderness lakes I’ve ever seen.

Iceberg Lake, Ansel Adams Wilderness

Two companions and I walked one of the finest sections of the John Muir Trail on a nine-day, north-south trek of nearly 130 miles through the Ansel Adams and John Muir Wildernesses and Kings Canyon National Park, exploring high lakes basins and crossing passes at 11,000 to 12,000 feet. But one highlight came early in that trip, when we detoured off the JMT to hike below the row of jagged spires called the Minarets in the Ansel Adams.

On the steep uphill hike from Ediza Lake—itself a nice spot to pitch a tent—we reached Iceberg Lake, tucked into a compact bowl at 9,774 feet right at the foot of sheer rock walls that rise to sharp points. Not far from the lakeshore, we saw some perfect little patches of dirt for tents. The Minarets can be visited on a weekend or three- to four-day hike that will give you a great sampler of the central High Sierra.

See photos and read about this area in my story “High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail,” and check out “10 Great John Muir Trail Section Hikes” and all stories about backpacking in the High Sierra at The Big Outside.

I can help you plan this or any other trip you read about at my blog. Find out more here.

Dead Horse Lake, Uinta Highline Trail, High Uintas Wilderness

In an unusual window of warm and mostly clear weather in early October, my 24-year-old son, Nate, and I backpacked nearly 60 miles through Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness, mostly on the Uinta Highline Trail—which blew us away. We had some great camps, but one we sadly walked past was beside Dead Horse Lake, at around 10,900 feet at the head of a lake-filled basin tucked inside a ragged horseshoe of castle-like peaks between Red Knob Pass, at 12,000 feet, and Dead Horse Pass, at 11,600 feet.

Getting there isn’t easy from any direction—which typically ensures more solitude—and neither is getting out. Hiking southbound from the lake on the Uinta Highline, we climbed below tall cliffs and sheer buttresses soaring several hundred feet above us, the trail tilting steeply upward, weaving through huge boulders, and frequently consisting of no more than a goat path of boot prints across sliding scree. At Dead Horse Pass, I told Nate, “I think I know what killed the horse.”

Still, the High Uintas, and especially the Uinta Highline Trail, deserve more attention from serious backpackers than they get: This place is a big, majestic wilderness with 13,000-foot peaks and over 1,000 mountain lakes. Go there.

See my story “Backpacking—and Sandbagging—Utah’s Uinta Highline Trail” and all stories about backpacking in Utah’s High Uintas at The Big Outside.

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The Narrows, Zion National Park

Rather than pick one of the campsites in Zion’s Narrows that a friend and I hiked past—we stayed in campsite one, which made my list of 25 favorite backcountry campsites—I have to give all of the 11 other designated campsites in The Narrows a collective spot on this list.

On the second day of an overnight, top-to-bottom backpacking trip of The Narrows, we checked out campsites two through 12, and I eventually gave up on the idea of picking a favorite. Each one sits within sight and earshot of the burbling river, below sheer, multi-colored walls rising hundreds of feet to a ribbon of sky overhead. Some may have a little more space or some other appeal; but given the location, any one of them guarantees you an incomparable night.

See my story “Luck of the Draw, Part 2: Backpacking Zion’s Narrows.”

Do this trip right using my e-book “The Complete Guide to Backpacking Zion’s Narrows.”

Indian Ridge, Yosemite National Park

On our first night in the backcountry during a four-day, 45-mile hike in Yosemite, a friend and I carried water up onto Indian Ridge, on Yosemite Valley’s North Rim, and found a great campsite a short walk from an unnamed dome overlooking a panorama that took in Half Dome and distant mountains to the south. We watched a sunset linger until the final light of day dripped from the sky.

But not long after hitting the trail the next morning, we saw where we wished we had camped. A little farther down Indian Ridge, the terrain opens up and flat spots abound just off the trail—where we saw no other backpackers. We had a much closer and more spectacular view looking directly at the huge Northwest Face of Half Dome just across the deep gulf of the Valley. Park regulations require camping at least a half-mile from the North Rim of Yosemite Valley—which is easy to achieve and have plenty of spots to choose from on Indian Ridge—and more significantly, you have to carry water up there.

But I don’t know of another spot in the backcountry where you can camp with that kind of view of Yosemite Valley.

See my feature story about that trip, “Yosemite’s Best-Kept Secret Backpacking Trip.”

Get the right shelter for your trips. See “The 10 Best Backpacking Tents”
and “How to Choose the Best Ultralight Backpacking Tent for You.”

Elizabeth Lake, Glacier National Park

I first included Elizabeth Lake on this list after backpacking Glacier’s magnificent Northern Loop, which I describe how to plan and hike in my e-book “The Best Backpacking Trip in Glacier National Park.” But since then, I’ve returned to Glacier to make a comparably awe-inspiring, 90-mile, north-south traverse of the park, mostly following the Continental Divide Trail, but with some variations I built into the route to show friends who accompanied me what I consider some the finest scenery in Glacier (described in this e-book).

And on our first night of that more-recent trip, we camped at Elizabeth Lake—and I got the photo above early the next morning, as the calm, chill air turned the lake into a mirror reflecting the surrounding, jagged peaks. So technically, I’ve now hiked past Elizabeth (twice, actually) and camped there, but I decided it still belongs on this list so that you don’t risk passing up a chance to spend a night there.

See my stories about backpacking Glacier’s Northern Loop and Gunsight Pass Trail and about traversing the park mostly following the Continental Divide Trail, and my most recent hike in Glacier, a weeklong traverse mostly on the CDT with an itinerary and camps that varied from the first CDT trip.

Glacier ranks among “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.”

Jacob Hamblin Arch, Coyote Gulch

I had fully intended for our group of two families to spend our second night backpacking Coyote Gulch right beneath Jacob Hamblin Arch; I remembered, from a trip there years earlier, that it’s a magical spot to layover and watch the light shift.

But when our group reached Coyote Natural Bridge that afternoon, the kids were ready to call it a day; and it being about an hour (at a family pace) downstream from Jacob Hamblin, and not a bad place at all to pitch tents on the broad, sandy beach below the bridge (it was formerly on my top 25 best backcountry campsites list), I quickly gave up on the idea of reaching the arch. I also knew the arch is a popular spot, so all available sites could be snapped up by the time we got there. It turned out they weren’t, and a prime campsite, on the upstream side looking right up at the arch, was actually empty when we got there the next morning. Oh, well.

See my story about backpacking Coyote Gulch and dayhiking slot canyons and trails in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and neighboring Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef national parks for more photos, videos, and detailed trip-planning information.

After Coyote Gulch, hike the rest of “The 12 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest.”

Island Lake and Peak Lake, Wind River Range

Take a long walk in the Winds and you can hardly swing an extended tent pole without hitting a lake or tarn. When two friends and I backpacked a roughly 41-mile loop in the Winds, I deliberately planned a route that included a night in Titcomb Basin, where lakes shimmer below the soaring granite walls of 13,000-foot peaks. But we inevitably hiked past countless, pretty lakes that presented alluring campsites.

Two of the most memorable were Island Lake, where we stopped for lunch en route to Titcomb, and Peak Lake, which nestles in a tiny bowl below peaks that resemble incisors, and which we reached after hiking cross-country from Titcomb over Knapsack Col and down a lonely valley to reach the Shannon Pass Trail. On a trip where a shocking number of lakes feel like one of the prettiest spots on the planet, these two have burned lasting images in memory.

See my story about that trip, “Best of the Wind River Range: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin” all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

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By the Colorado River at Hance Rapids, Grand Canyon

While I have camped on the beach at Hance Rapids on the Colorado River (it’s on my top 25 best backcountry campsites list), more recently, I backpacked past that beach on a six-day trip that I concluded—after several trips in the Big Ditch—is “the best backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon.” As we left that beach, we walked past a spacious (and empty!) campsite fully enclosed by trees that cast substantial shade.

Anyone who’s hiked in the canyon understands the value of shade—especially in a campsite. We had many miles to go that day, so we didn’t stop. But the beach at Hance Rapids on the Colorado River has long been on my radar (since I took this three-day hike) as a spot to plan spending a night when hiking through this corner of the canyon. This shady site will be the first place I check for occupants the next time I plan to bed down on that beach.

See my story “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon,” which includes a potential night at Hance Rapids, and all stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

Get my expert e-books to “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon,” and a trip easier for first-timers, “The Best First Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon.”

Marie Lake, John Muir Trail

It was the fourth morning of our seven-day thru-hike of the John Muir Trail through California’s High Sierra, from Yosemite National Park to Mount Whitney. Three friends and I were climbing toward Selden Pass in the John Muir Wilderness and not even thinking about taking a break yet; we wouldn’t stop for the night until hours later.

Below us, Marie Lake lay still in a bowl of granite ledges with trees dotting the landscape, rocky islands in the lake, and an infinite selection of places around the lake to temporarily call home.

This was one of the most painful times I’ve hiked past a beautiful backcountry camp.

And in August 2022, I did it again when two companions and I backpacked past Marie Lake—although only after enjoying a nice swim and lunch there—on a nine-day trek of nearly 130 miles through the Ansel Adams and John Muir wildernesses and Kings Canyon National Park.

See my stories “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail in 7 Days: Amazing Experience, or Certifiably Insane?” “10 Great John Muir Trail Section Hikes,” and “High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail,” and all stories about backpacking in the High Sierra at The Big Outside.

Want my help planning your JMT thru-hike?

I’ve helped many readers plan all the details of this classic trip, including getting a very hard-to-get permit, figuring out how many days to take, and finding the best campsites. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you. 

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

Pyramid Lake, Wind River Range

It sure seems like I keep walking past really nice campsites in the Winds—maybe I just need to spend more time there. On an August trip with my son a few summers back, we aborted a planned four-day loop crossing the Continental Divide twice and finishing through the Cirque of the Towers—because the weather was so bad, with almost continuous rain and virtually no views of the mountains and no sign it would improve. But we did hike from one camp to visit Pyramid Lake and saw enough of its surroundings to know I wanted to return.

Now I’m happy to call this a success story because I did get back to this part of the Winds in August 2023, on a four-day, nearly 41-mile hike crossing four high passes, when a friend and I spent our first backcountry night a short walk from the shore of Pyramid Lake. At nearly 10,600 feet, the lake nestles in a rocky basin at the foot of 11,978-foot Pyramid Peak (which we scrambled up on that trip), 12,454-foot Mount Hooker, and 12,185-foot Tower Peak. (The lake is also a short, cross-country hike from the valley of the East Fork River on the Wind River High Route, which I write about in this story about the Wind River High Route).

See my story about that August 2023 trip, “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Wind River Range? Yup” and all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

Planning a backpacking trip? See “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips”
and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”

Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River, Yosemite National Park

On day three of a four-day, 87-mile, backpacking trip in the remote, northern reaches of Yosemite with my friend Todd, we reached one of that trek’s scenic highlights: the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River. With granite walls soaring hundreds of feet above a crystal-clear river that tumbles over innumerable waterfalls, massive boulders, and a beautiful bed of cobblestones, the canyon bears a striking resemblance to the park’s iconic feature, Yosemite Valley—except that it’s twice as long and has no roads or buildings and few people.

Todd and I actually spent a pleasant night in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, initially sleeping under the stars on a big granite slab by the river, then quickly pitching our tarp in the woods when rain started falling after dark. But we didn’t score one of the several primo campsites we saw in the canyon, either because we walked past them before we were ready to stop for the night, or someone else already occupied them. To grab one of the campsites that sit near any of the waterfalls and great swimming holes, I suggest trying to reach the mid-canyon stretch by early afternoon, before most other backpackers.

See many more images, a video, and trip-planning trips in my story about that backpacking trip in northern Yosemite, “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite,” and all of my stories about Yosemite at The Big Outside, including “Best of Yosemite, Part 1: Backpacking South of Tuolumne Meadows,” about a 65-mile hike south of Tuolumne.

Get my expert e-books to backpacking the 65-mile hike south of Tuolumne Meadows
and the 87-mile hike through northern Yosemite (which includes shorter options).

Bench Lakes, Sawtooth Wilderness

As we hiked past the second-highest of a string of five lakes that sit above 8,000 feet on the east side of the Sawtooths, the glassy waters of a calm early morning offered a perfect reflection of the incisor summit ridge of Mount Heyburn high above us. It was early on a long day my friend Chip Roser and I would spend climbing Heyburn, and would ultimately be one of the day’s finest moments. A rough, sometimes-obscure use trail leads to the Bench Lakes from Trail 101 above Redfish Lake. The highest of the Bench Lakes, at over 8,600 feet, is the most alpine of them and has campsites right at the foot of Heyburn.

See all stories about the Sawtooths at The Big Outside, including “The Best of Idaho’s Sawtooths: Backpacking Redfish to Pettit,” “Photo Gallery: Mountain Lakes of Idaho’s Sawtooths,” and “The Best Hikes and Backpacking Trips in Idaho’s Sawtooths.”

I’ve helped many readers plan an unforgettable backpacking trip in the Sawtooths.
Want my help with yours? Find out more here.

Toltec Beach, Royal Arch Loop, Grand Canyon

As with the Tetons, there’s not likely a bad campsite in the GC—or at least none that I’ve found. But when three friends and I reached Toltec Beach, beside the Colorado River on the Grand Canyon’s very rugged, 34.5-mile Royal Arch Loop, around lunchtime on our second day, we all made a vow to return there. The river offered an area to cool ourselves in the water, there was a tree casting nice shade onto the sand, and the views, of course, were epic.

The Royal Arch Loop makes a top-to-bottom-and-back-up circuit of the canyon—going from a words-can’t-do-it-justice panorama at the rim to dipping your toes in the Colorado. It delivers a highlights reel of just about every type of physical feature that makes backpacking in the Grand Canyon unique: sweeping views, an intimate side canyon with lush hanging gardens nurtured by a vibrant stream, a high solitude quotient, and one drop-dead gorgeous campsite after another.

See my story about that trip “Not Quite Impassable: Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch Loop,” and all stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside

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Snowdrift Lake, Grand Teton National Park

I’ve had the pleasure of gazing upon the emerald waters of this alpine lake four times now—and I actually did once pitch a tent on a slope above the lake, but never in the site at the lake’s eastern end. A long, oval, often wind-battered gem parked at the head of Avalanche Canyon, just a few hundred feet below 10,680-foot Avalanche Divide and the long cliff band named The Wall, Snowdrift is not reached by any official park trail.

But there is an unofficial, unmarked, rough, and strenuous user trail that climbs up Avalanche Canyon; it branches west off the Valley Trail just north of Taggart Lake. It’s a hard trail to carry a pack up, and not much easier to carry a pack down (and finding the easy, safe way through the cliffs below Snowdrift Lake is trickier going downhill than uphill; I’ve done it in both directions). The easiest access to Snowdrift is hiking the good trail from South Fork Cascade Canyon up to Avalanche Divide, then hiking cross-country, over easy terrain, down to the east end of Snowdrift. The campsite is exposed, so don’t go if it’s windy or in bad weather.

See all of my stories about Grand Teton National Park, including this story that describes how to hike to Snowdrift Lake in Avalanche Canyon.

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Phelps Basin and Spider Gap route, Glacier Peak Wilderness

On the first afternoon of a spectacular, five-day family hike of the Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass Loop through Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness—among my favorite wild lands—we camped in a spacious, established site in the woods above Spider Meadow and minutes below Phelps Basin. Two other parties had already grabbed the available sites in Phelps Basin (photo above), as I discovered, to my dismay, when we took an evening stroll up there.

The next morning, we carried our packs up the trail to Spider Gap, passing more campers perched on the bench atop a steep wall of earth high above Spider Meadow (photo at right). Whenever I get back there again, it will be exceedingly difficult to choose between these two spots.

See my story, with lots of images, about our five-day, family-backpacking trip in Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness.

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Arrowhead Lake, Sawtooth Wilderness

Since my first of now many trips into Idaho’s Sawtooths, I’ve often marveled at how these toothy, granite peaks remind me of the High Sierra—without the crowds of hikers found in parts of the Sierra. My friend Jeff Wilhelm and I hiked past Arrowhead Lake on the second morning of a four-day trip and immediately agreed we needed to return with fishing poles and stay longer. I snapped this photo when Jeff walked out onto the granite spit jutting into the lake.

See my story about that backpacking in the remote southern Sawtooth Wilderness and my story “The Best Hikes and Backpacking Trips in Idaho’s Sawtooths.”

Which puffy should you buy? See my review of “The 12 Best Down Jackets” and
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The Wind River High Route

When three friends and I set out on a seven-day, 96-mile traverse of the Wind River High Route—65 miles of which is off-trail, including nine of 10 named alpine passes between roughly 11,000 and 13,000 feet—we expected to be dazzled by one of the very best wilderness treks any of us had ever taken. And it exceeded expectations.

Inevitably, we hiked past many spots we’d love to have set up camp for the night. But two spots, in particular, stood out for me. One was in the valley of the East Fork River, where we hiked below a long chain of towering cliffs and soaked in frigid pools between cascades that tumbled over granite slabs in the shallow river. The second spot was in the long valley of the Alpine Lakes—one of the most starkly beautiful places I’ve ever seen. High above one of those lakes, we crossed a wide, grassy shelf sprinkled with rocks that looked like a little piece of the Scottish Highlands transported to the Wyoming mountains. It pained me to not stop there.

Read my story about that trip, “Adventure and Adversity on the Wind River High Route.”

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Hance Creek, Grand Canyon

This is another success story. The camping area on Hance Creek, on the east side of Horseshoe Mesa, earned a spot on this list when I backpacked past it with my then-10-year-old daughter on this three-day hike. That’s my justification for keeping it on this list—even though I’m happy to report that I’ve since returned and spent a night there (photo above) on a six-day trip that I’ve described as “the best backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon.”

Not to be confused with the beach at Hance Rapids on the Colorado River—which is several trail miles from and a couple thousand feet below the camping area at Hance Creek—the camping zone at Hance Creek is flanked by sheer, vibrantly red walls that by late afternoon cast a long, blessed shadow to give us relief from the sun.

See my story “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon,” which includes a potential night at Hance Rapids.

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Upper Boulder Chain Lakes, White Cloud Mountains

On a 28-mile, one-day loop hike through the heart of one of the most scenic Western mountain ranges that most hikers have never heard of, Idaho’s White Clouds, two friends and I scrambled off-trail up a very steep headwall, passed through a notch in a row of pinnacles, then picked up a trail and descended into the valley of a string of pearls known as the Boulder Chain Lakes. While we would run into backpackers camped at the lower lakes, we saw no one at three of the highest and most remote of the chain, Headwall Lake, Scoop Lake, and Hummock Lake, perched amid copses of conifers beneath peaks of unbelievably white rock that give these mountains their name.

Read my story about a 28-mile dayhike through Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains, with more photos and trip-planning info.

That White Clouds hike is featured in “Extreme Hiking: America’s Best Hard Dayhikes.”

Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned backpacker, you’ll learn new tricks for making all of your trips go better in my “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” “A Practical Guide to Lightweight and Ultralight Backpacking,” and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.” With a paid subscription to The Big Outside, you can read all of those three stories for free; if you don’t have a subscription, you can download the e-book versions of “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” the lightweight and ultralight backpacking guide, and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”

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

I update this list every year and it becomes a little more difficult almost every time. This year, I’ve added fresh photos from a couple of places I revisited in 2024: Painter Basin in Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness and the Grand Canyon, where I backpacked most of the Gems Route, which includes the most remote stretch of the 95-mile-long Tonto Trail. 

Below my top 25 list you’ll find a second list—now just as long—of campsites that were previously in my top 25. Each campsite photo below includes a short description of that trip, and most have a link to an existing story at The Big Outside.

In some cases, the photos from these places show the view a few steps from our tent, rather than the site itself.

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I share a brief anecdote with each photo because, for me, each campsite isn’t merely a beautiful scene: it is a story and a memory. Because that’s what camping in the wilderness is all about.

I’d love to read your thoughts about any of these places or your suggestions for campsites that belong on my list; I’m always looking for trip ideas. Share them in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Sweet dreams.

Sahale Glacier Camp, North Cascades National Park

We slogged up Sahale Arm into a cold, wind-driven rain, unable to see more than a hundred feet in any direction. But as my friend David Ports and I reached Sahale Glacier Camp (lead photo at top of story), the rain and wind abated and the clouds dropped below us, giving us a view of the earth falling away into a bottomless abyss a few steps from our tent door. A mountain goat strolled past our camp.

Perched at the top of Sahale Arm and the toe of the Sahale Glacier, at 7,686 feet, the highest designated campsite in Washington’s North Cascades National Park overlooks what appears to be a boundless, wind-whipped sea of sharpened peaks smothered in snow and ice, among them Johannesburg, Baker, Shuksan, Glacier Peak, and in the far distance, Mount Rainier.

See my story “Exploring the ‘American Alps:’ The North Cascades” and all stories about backpacking in North Cascades National Park at The Big Outside.

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Beside Royal Arch, Grand Canyon National Park

Backpacking the 34.5-mile Royal Arch Loop, the most remote and arguably the most rugged and lonely established South Rim hike in the Big Ditch, three friends and I put in a monster first day to reach the campsite beside Royal Arch—and was it ever worth the effort. We descended Royal Arch Canyon, which involves slow, strenuous, and exposed scrambling in spots—but is also lush with hanging gardens growing along its vibrant creek, which plunges through several crystal-clear pools—until we came into view of the arch, the Grand Canyon’s largest natural bridge (it’s water carved, so technically a bridge, not an arch).

We passed beneath the tall, thick arch (which provided ample shelter during dinnertime rain showers) and walked just beyond it to a flat ledge more than large enough for our two tents, directly beneath a towering sandstone pinnacle. Just steps beyond our ledge loomed a vertical, 200-foot pour-off dropping into the lower section of Royal Arch Canyon—a reminder not to wander far from the tents after dark. Come morning, dawn light would set the red walls of that lower canyon ablaze. For the four of us, all longtime backcountry explorers, this was an all-time best campsite.

See my story “Not Quite Impassable: Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch Loop” with lots of photos, a video, and information on how to pull off this trip, and all stories about Grand Canyon backpacking trips at The Big Outside.

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Helen Lake, John Muir Trail, Kings Canyon National Park

Wind-driven rain and hail pounded us as we backpacked the John Muir Trail through the Evolution Basin on the eighth day of a nine-day, 130-mile hike through the Ansel Adams and John Muir Wildernesses and Kings Canyon National Park in California’s High Sierra, mostly on the JMT. The rain tapered before we crossed 11,955-foot Muir Pass in early evening, but gray-black storm clouds still threatened. A little while later, we pitched our tents on the only tiny patches of rock-free, flat ground we found above Helen Lake, at around 11,600 feet, drawing the curtain on an 18-mile day with over 5,000 feet of uphill and downhill. There have been few days when I’ve walked that far through grander wilderness.

The storm passed, granting us a dry, calm evening. The setting sun cast soft alpenglow upon a peak behind us and burnished the clouds hovering over the western horizon a dark burgundy. But the real payoff came the next morning, when the rising sun ignited the rocky faces of peaks across Helen Lake. The lake and a tiny tarn—more like a big puddle—near our camp offered razor-sharp reflections of our surroundings. Despite the weather that chased us there and our rocky tent sites, Helen Lake burned itself into memory for all three of us as an inspirational spot.

In fact, as always happens when I backpack through the High Sierra, we had a few truly glorious campsites on that August 2022 hike, including at Thousand Island Lake and Minaret Lake. See my story about that trip, “High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail,” and “10 Great John Muir Trail Section Hikes.”

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No Name Lake, Glacier National Park

With two of the six camps on my reserved permit closed due to bear activity when two friends and I arrived at Glacier National Park in the second week of September 2023, we had to scramble to create a new permit based on backcountry campground availability—and ended up with an itinerary very similar to a hike I’d done in Glacier five years before (see this story). But in Glacier, there are no consolation prizes, only trails that awe every time you walk them.

We backpacked a seven-day, north-south traverse of the park, mostly combining the primary and alternate routes of the Continental Divide Trail from the Belly River Valley to Two Medicine, hiking through the Ptarmigan Tunnel and finishing with the Dawson Pass Trail’s alpine traverse overlooking the peaks in the park’s remote heart. But unlike last time, we spent our final night at No Name Lake, where a calm morning brought the kind of lake reflection you want to frame for a wall at home (as I did). Another surprise treat on that trip was beautiful evening and morning light at Morning Star Lake—which would have made this list if not for the serendipitous light at No Name.

See my story “Déjà Vu All Over Again: Backpacking in Glacier National Park” and all stories about backpacking in Glacier at The Big Outside.

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The Narrows, Zion National Park

It was one of the most glaring omissions in my resume as a backpacker: I had never hiked The Narrows of the Virgin River in southern Utah’s Zion National Park. (I actually had a permit to do it in October 2013, when Congress shut down the federal government, closing all the national parks and temporarily crushing my hopes of finally ticking off that classic hike.)

Then an unexpected opportunity arose: I had a window for a four-day trip in early November and saw an unusually good forecast for southern Utah. I broached the idea of backpacking The Narrows to my friend, David Gordon, he leapt at the chance, and we got a last-minute permit for a very popular trip at a time of year when there are far fewer people either competing for a permit or dayhiking from the bottom.

I shot this photo and video of David at our campsite, Narrows no. 1, in early evening; the slot on the left side of the photo is The Narrows—we had emerged from that slot, hiking downstream, just an hour or so earlier.

See my story “Luck of the Draw, Part 2: Backpacking Zion’s Narrows” and all stories about Zion National Park at The Big Outside.

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Death Canyon Shelf, Grand Teton National Park

I could rattle off a list of gorgeous campsites in Wyoming’s Tetons, a park I’ve visited well over 20 times and never get tired of. But I decided to include just the two camping zones I consider the best places to bed down in the Tetons backcountry and can be reached by trail: Death Canyon Shelf (above and at right) and the North Fork of Cascade Canyon (below).

I’ve camped a few times in different spots on Death Canyon Shelf, a broad, three-mile-long bench at about 9,500 feet. With the earth dropping away abruptly into Death Canyon on one side, cliffs rising some 500 feet on the other side, and views across the jagged peaks and canyons of the Tetons—reaching all the way to the Grand Teton—there are few spots with such sweeping and dramatic panoramas. I’ve watched moose in Death Canyon through binoculars from the cliff tops and deer grazing around our campsite, was awakened one night by a bull elk outside our tent—and have usually caught a spectacular sunset followed by an equally glorious sunrise.

After the Teton Crest Trail, hike the other nine of “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.”

North Fork of Cascade Canyon, Grand Teton National Park

On my most-recent backpacking trip on the Teton Crest Trail, in August 2019, three friends and I started up the North Fork of Cascade Canyon on our second afternoon—having already enjoyed two days of a constant stream of breathtaking scenery. Where the trail emerges from forest into boulder-strewn meadows with a first, sweeping view of the canyon, my friend David looked over his shoulder and exclaimed, “Wow!” He was gazing down the canyon at the sheer north face of the Grand Teton rising several thousand feet above us (photo above).

We found a campsite in a copse of pine trees with a ledge that afforded an unimpeded view down the canyon as the setting down turned the Grand golden and then ruby red (photo at left). Getting an early start the next morning, we passed a massive bull moose strolling across a meadow on our way to Lake Solitude—which we had to ourselves at a time of day when its still waters offered a perfect mirror image of the surrounding cliffs and peaks. And the eye candy just kept getting better as we hiked the TCT high up a canyon wall to Paintbrush Divide at 10,700 feet.

See my stories “A Wonderful Obsession: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail” and “American Classic: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail,” and my e-book “The Complete Guide to Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail in Grand Teton National Park.”

I’ve helped many readers plan an unforgettable backpacking trip on the Teton Crest Trail. Visit my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan yours.

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Precipice Lake, Sequoia National Park

It almost seems unfair to compare other places to the High Sierra, Wyoming’s Teton Range and Wind River Range, Glacier National Park, or the Grand Canyon; those destinations dominate this list in part because I keep returning to them, but I think the photos speak for themselves. On a six-day, family backpacking trip in Sequoia National Park, we camped at two alpine lakes that deserved placement on this list: Precipice Lake and Columbine Lake (see Past Favorite Backcountry Campsites below these 25 favorites).

Precipice wasn’t even part of the planned itinerary; we intended to go beyond it, over Kaweah Gap, to camp in the Nine Lakes Basin. But when we reached Precipice in late afternoon on our third day, we decided within minutes to stop for the night. Cliffs of clean, white granite with black streaks ring much of the compact lake’s shoreline. The mouth of the outlet creek provides an excellent pool for a chilling dip. Granite ledges above the lake have flat areas for tents or to just lay out bags and sleep under the stars (as my 12-year-old son and I did). The evening alpenglow on the cliffs reflected in the lake and on 12,040-foot Eagle Scout Peak towering above Precipice, put the icing on the cake.

See my story “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park” and all stories about backpacking in the High Sierra at The Big Outside.

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Titcomb Basin, Wind River Range

The views kept getting better with every mile on the first day of a three-day, 41-mile loop that two friends and I backpacked from the Elkhart Park Trailhead in Wyoming’s Wind River Range in mid-September. But as we entered the long, alpine valley called Titcomb Basin to find a campsite for the night, craning our necks at the cliffs and peaks towering overhead, we immediately realized it was one of the prettiest backcountry spots any of us had ever seen.

An alpine valley at over 10,500 feet, Titcomb Basin sits below mountains on the Continental Divide that soar more than 3,000 feet above the Titcomb Lakes in the valley, the highest of which is 13,745-foot Fremont Peak. In fact, high peaks flank the valley on three sides like a long, narrow horseshoe. The only easy way in and out is via the trail entering the mouth of the basin. The next day, we hiked an off-trail route over Knapsack Col at about 12,200 feet, at the upper end of Titcomb, descending another trailless alpine valley speckled with wildflowers. 

Every time I return to the Winds, it feels like a reminder that I need to get there more often. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had a mediocre campsite in the Winds, including the six nights I spent in August 2020 on the 96-mile Wind River High Route.

Read my feature story about that 41-mile hike, “Best of the Wind River Range: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin” and all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

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Alice Lake, Sawtooth Wilderness

In the last week of June—not yet summer in the mountains—my son, Nate, and I backpacked with two friends to one of the gems of Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness: Alice Lake. While the ground was mostly dry and snow-free in the valleys, we had a frigid ford of a creek running knee-deep and fast with snowmelt, and then encountered up to three feet of snow still on the ground for the last hour or so to Alice Lake, which sits at 8,598 feet below an eye-catching row of granite pinnacles. We found Alice still partly frozen over. But the calm of late afternoon and then the next morning served up a glassy reflection of the snowy peaks beyond that illustrates why this area is a favorite among Sawtooths aficionados.

I’d been to Alice Lake a few times before, as had Nate, on his first wilderness backpacking trip—and one of the first of our annual “Boy Trips”—when he was six years old. In fact, on this recent visit, I recognized and pointed out to Nate the campsite where, seven years earlier, I hurriedly threw up our tent just before a violent thunderstorm rolled in. This time, we just spent one night out there, early enough in the season that we had a chilly night and no mosquitoes. Alice Lake has become popular and is usually overcrowded on summer weekends; plan to be there on a weeknight or pick another spot.

See my stories “The Best of Idaho’s Sawtooths: Backpacking Redfish to Pettit,” “Jewels of the Sawtooths: Backpacking to Alice, Hell Roaring, and Imogene Lakes”  “The Best Hikes and Backpacking Trips in Idaho’s Sawtooths,” and all stories about backpacking in the Sawtooths at this blog, plus my e-book “The Best Backpacking Trip in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains.”

Lastly, don’t miss two more photos from Sawtooths campsites that I’ve had to bump to my list of Past Favorite Backcountry Campsites (see below)—which tells you something about the alpine lakes of the Sawtooth Mountains.

Click here now for my expert e-book to the best backpacking trip in Idaho’s Sawtooths!

Below the Chocolate Drops, Maze District, Canyonlands National Park

After an arduous descent with some exposed scrambling off Maze Overlook, on a five-day, roughly 46-mile, early March backpacking trip in the Maze District of southern Utah’s Canyonlands, three friends and I followed occasional cairns down the South Fork of Horse Canyon. After some searching, we located our quarry—a small but clear pool perhaps four inches deep, one of the few springs we would find flowing in The Maze.

Our packs newly laden with many pounds of water, we hiked about a half-mile beyond the spring into the mouth of a canyon traversed by the Maze’s Chimney Route. Turning onto a sandy footpath, we walked up a short, dead-end side canyon and found soft, flat ground for our tents, surrounded on three sides by tall cliffs of desert varnish. Rising above the canyon rim behind our camp, one of the Chocolate Drops—distinctive stone towers, visible for miles in every direction, colored a darker shade of brown than most of the surrounding landscape—seemed to peer down at us curiously.

We spent two nights in that wonderful, secluded campsite, dayhiking a nearly nine-mile loop from it that linked up two thrilling and improbably circuitous routes through the Maze, and marveling at how the simultaneously warm and cool light of March days constantly transformed our campsite’s canyon walls.

See my story about that trip, “Farther Than It Looks—Backpacking the Canyonlands Maze” and all stories about Canyonlands National Park at this blog.

Hike all of the “10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest.”

Evolution Lake, John Muir Trail, Kings Canyon National Park

The first time I walked up to the shore of Evolution Lake, on my thru-hike of the John Muir Trail, I couldn’t see the lake. Arriving there after dark, we laid out our sleeping pads and bags on granite slabs under the stars and quickly nodded off. Catching our first glimpse of our environs at first light the next morning actually made it more magical, because we got to watch daylight slowly reveal this magnificent alpine valley to us.

The second time I walked up to Evolution Lake, on a nine-day, 130-mile hike through the High Sierra in August 2022, my two companions and I arrived on a beautiful morning—and that’s a place that will make you turn in a circle and gape. At 10,852 feet, surrounded by soaring cliffs that rise to tall peaks on all sides, including the 13,000-footers Mounts Mendel and Darwin and the 12,329-foot Hermit, it’s the lowest lake in the Evolution Basin and has the most protected camping. While we were moving on—commencing one of the JMT’s sections that earn it the nickname “America’s most beautiful trail” (a day that concluded at Helen Lake, described in the writeup above)—part of me wished we were spending the night there. I’ve also felt that way both times I’ve backpacked past Wanda Lake in the upper end of Evolution Basin.

See my stories “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail in 7 Days: Amazing Experience, or Certifiably Insane?” “High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail,” and “10 Great John Muir Trail Section Hikes,” and all stories about backpacking the JMT at The Big Outside.

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Elizabeth Lake, Glacier National Park

The chilly September air pinched our faces as we took the first steps from our campsite on Elizabeth Lake, on our second morning backpacking the Continental Divide Trail through Glacier. The still, glassy water captured a razor-sharp, upside-down reflection of the jagged mountains flanking it. Then we heard the sound: a high-pitched, nasal whine that built into something like a shriek, the note suspended for several seconds before it was abruptly cut off. It was an elk somewhere in the forest nearby, bugling an invitation to prospective mates.

The campsite at the head of Elizabeth Lake, tucked into the forest just a minute’s walk from the lakeshore beach, not only graced us with that elk bugle, but we also saw our first two bears of the trip while hiking along the lake that morning. While we would hear elk bugling almost every morning and evening on that trip, and more bears as well as mountain goats, bighorn sheep, and moose, Elizabeth Lake awed us with its morning reflection of mountains and set the tone for a consummate Glacier experience that turned into one of my all-time best backpacking trips.

See my story “Wildness All Around You: Backpacking the CDT Through Glacier” about that 94-mile backpacking trip. Click here to get my downloadable e-guide that will tell you everything you need to know to plan and take that trip (including some shorter variations of it), and click here for my e-guide to the best backpacking trip in Glacier.

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Along the Highline Trail, Wind River Range

Backpacking one of the premier long footpaths in the Winds, the Highline Trail, on a five-day, roughly 43-mile loop from the New Fork/Doubletop Mountain Trailhead at New Fork Lakes, my wife, Penny, our friend, Chip, and I reached an unnamed, small tarn beside the trail late one afternoon and the view stopped us in our tracks. We walked around the tarn and a few hundred feet beyond it to a flat area on a low rise.

We pitched our tents overlooking grassy meadows littered with glacial-erratic boulders that sloped languidly down to the lower of the Twin Lakes. Beyond that lake, the far side of the valley shot upward to a pair of behemoths reaching for the clouds: 12,119-foot Sky Pilot Peak and 12,224-foot Mount Oeneis. Culminating a day when the miles we hiked—10—again exceeded the number of other people we saw, it felt like we’d found an appropriate home for the night.

See “Backpacking Through a Lonely Corner of the Wind River Range” and all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

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Overland Lake, Ruby Crest Trail

My family reached Overland Lake in late afternoon on day two of a four-day, approximately 36-mile traverse of the Ruby Crest Trail in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains. Immediately—and literally—the three teenagers (including a friend of our daughter’s) staked out their tents turf on the flat top of rocky ledges just a few steps (but several feet) above the wind-whipped waters of the lake.

Although the wind blew all that night—and my wife and I pitched our tent in a more protected spot amid trees about 25 feet behind their tents—we all enjoyed eating and hanging out on that ledge while the evening sun poured alpenglow onto the west-facing peaks and cliffs above Overland Lake.

For several years, I’d been hankering to hike the Ruby Crest and explore a wilderness area that sees relatively few backpackers and dayhikers compared to marquis parks and mountain ranges around the West. We saw wildflowers blooming and incredible terrain, as well as relatively few mosquitoes… or other backpackers. Overland is a logical stop for Ruby Crest Trail backpackers, sitting at the southern end of a 12-mile day that stays high above treeline, with sweeping views.

See my story “Backpacking the Ruby Crest Trail—A Diamond in the Rough.”

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Painter Basin, High Uintas Wilderness

On the third afternoon of a six-day, roughly 58-mile loop hike in northeastern Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness, we reached our second 11,000-foot pass of the day—Trail Rider Pass at 11,700 feet—and paused to catch the breath stolen away by both the climb and the view of an imposing row of 13,000-foot peaks, including 13,528-foot summit of Kings Peak, Utah’s highest.

Then we descended through switchbacks into an alpine garden of rocks and creeks called Painter Basin, where we pitched our tents at around 11,000 feet in the long shadow of Kings Peak. The sun dipped behind Kings, igniting the tall, billowing clouds that filled the sky in a wide arc overhead—a beautiful evening that foreshadowed a night sky riddled with stars. The next day, we dayhiked some 10 miles and 2,500 vertical feet to the crown of Utah, a fun and scenic day.

I returned to Painter Basin in early October 2024 (going on short notice with an unusually good weather window) with my son on the first night of a four-day, roughly 60-mile traverse mostly on the Uinta Highline Trail—and Painter graced us with lovely dawn light on those big peaks. Much of both trips occurred between 10,000 and 12,000 feet and delivered a considerable degree of solitude and beauty.

See my stories “Backpacking—and Sandbagging—Utah’s Uinta Highline Trail” and “Tall and Lonely: Backpacking Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness” and all stories that feature the High Uintas Wilderness at The Big Outside.

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See “12 Expert Tips For Finding Solitude When Backpacking.”

Johns Hopkins Inlet, Glacier Bay National Park

For one of the trips for my book about taking our kids on wilderness adventures in national parks facing threats from climate change, we took a five-day sea kayaking trip in southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay, where cliffs shoot straight up out of the sea and razor peaks smothered in ice and snow rise thousands of feet overhead. We watched bald eagles and other birds flying overhead, harbor seals popping up out of the water near our boats, Stellar sea lions honking and carrying on while sprawled on the rocks of South Marble Island, and brown bears roaming rocky beaches looking for food.

We spent two nights at this campsite near the mouth of Johns Hopkins Inlet. From there, we kayaked up the inlet to within about a quarter-mile of the mile-wide snout of the Johns Hopkins Glacier; a thousand or more seals occupied floating icebergs or swam around the inlet. Throughout the evenings and mornings in camp, we listened to that massive glacier calve another bus-size chunk of itself into the sea every 20 or 30 minutes, with an explosive sound the native Tlingits called “white thunder.”

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

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Beside Hance Rapids, Colorado River, Grand Canyon National Park

The first day of a three-day backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon with my 10-year-old daughter, Alex, and two other families was a tough one: descending nearly 5,000 vertical feet in 6.5 miles on the rugged New Hance Trail. By the time we reached our campsites beside the Colorado River, everyone was whipped. But sometimes it takes a hard day of hiking to reach a magical spot, and this lonely corner on the floor of the Big Ditch is a pretty good place to rest tired legs.

Our front porch offered a view of redrock cliffs just across the river. The gravelly drone of Hance Rapids drowned out all other noise. Night fell like a black curtain to reveal a sky riddled with far more bullet holes than all the road signs in Arizona combined (and these holes glowed). Morning brought a sharp chill to the air—it was November—and the slow, patient unfolding of dawn light descending (kind of like very tired backpackers) from the South Rim a vertical mile above us to the mid-canyon geologic layers and, finally, bathing our campsite in warmth. We left there completely rejuvenated.

See my story “A Matter of Perspective: A Father-Daughter Hike in the Grand Canyon” for more images, a video, and tips on planning this trip, and all stories about Grand Canyon backpacking trips at The Big Outside . See also my story “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon,” about a trip where the beach at Hance Rapids is a potential campsite, and get my expert e-book also titled “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon” to find out all you need to know to plan and pull off that amazing multi-day hike.

So many spots where I’ve camped in the Grand Canyon would make most people’s list of best camps ever. But I’d be remiss to not mention that every one of our camps for five nights on the GC’s Gems Route—the most remote section of the Tonto Trail and one of the canyon’s most remote trips—featured breathtaking views and a shocking amount of solitude. See my story “Let’s Talk Water: Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Gems.”

Get my expert e-books to “The Best First Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon”
and “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon.”

Pyramid Lake, Wind River Range

After several multi-day hikes all over the Winds, I’ve gotten to know those mountains well and slept in so many beautiful spots that it’s hard to select just a few among them for this story. But after hiking to Pyramid Lake once before, I fulfilled my vow then to return, pitching my tent there on the first night of a four-day loop from Big Sandy in August 2023.

A friend and I camped in a meadow an appropriate distance from the lakeshore, where we enjoyed a sunset that set clouds aglow and a dawn that made the peaks surrounding the lake appear to glow. That proved to be a portentous start to our 41-mile hike, which crossed four high passes, featured camps near gorgeous lakes each night—Washakie and Arrowhead followed Pyramid—and delivered the kind of solitude one can find in the Winds when you’re prepared to work for it.

I’m willing to go out on a limb and call it the best multi-day hike in the Winds.

See my story “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Wind River Range? Yup” and all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

Do you love backcountry lakes?
Check out these photos of the most gorgeous wilderness lakes I’ve ever seen.

Thousand Island Lake, John Muir Trail, Ansel Adams Wilderness

Few backcountry campsites launch a backpacking trip as beautifully as the first evening my two adventure partners and I spent on a nine-day, 130-mile hike through the Ansel Adams and John Muir Wildernesses and Kings Canyon National Park, mostly on the John Muir Trail. From our camp above the shore of Thousand Island Lake (shown in lead photo at top of story), we watched a sunset that blazed furiously, igniting tiers of billowing clouds drifting past in what seemed like an endless light show with multiple, unexpected encores.

As has happened, I think, every time I’ve backpacked through the High Sierra, that adventure granted us the gift of more than a few really nice camps, including Helen Lake (above) and Minaret Lake. John Muir dubbed the High Sierra the “Range of Light” and the moniker has stuck because of the way those mountains seem to cling tightly to and refuse to release the abundant sunlight they receive. Stir a fast-moving cloudscape into a sunset like we had at Thousand Island Lake and you get a scene to remember forever.

See my story about that trip, “High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail,” “10 Great John Muir Trail Section Hikes,” and all stories about backpacking in the High Sierra at The Big Outside.

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

Dome Glacier, Ptarmigan Traverse, Glacier Peak Wilderness

The first four nights of camping on the Ptarmigan Traverse in Washington’s North Cascades are in the alpine zone with 360-degree views of some of the most severely vertiginous and heavily glaciated and snow-covered peaks in the Lower 48. With clear skies, any of those camps might among the most memorable you’ve ever had. But besides White Rock Lakes (scroll down to the list of Past Favorite Backcountry Campsites, below), my other favorite campsite on the Ptarmigan was on the Dome Glacier, base camp for our climb of Dome Peak. Throughout a clear evening, with a sea of clouds filling the valleys below us, we looked south to the white pyramid of the volcano Glacier Peak, glowing above the clouds in the dusk light.

Climbers traditionally begin the Ptarmigan Traverse at Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park and walk south, largely hewing close to the Cascade Crest. Beyond Dome Peak, from the Cub Lake area in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, the route descends to the Downey Creek Trailhead on Suiattle River Road. The route is mostly off-trail and crosses six glaciers; expert skills at glacier travel and navigating off-trail through mountains are required. See an excellent route description at summitpost.org/ptarmigan-traverse/154644.

Find the right tent for you. See “The 10 Best Backpacking Tents”
and “5 Expert Tips For Buying a Backpacking Tent.”

Below the East Face of Mount Whitney

In frigid blasts of wind raking the snow-covered mountainside in April, our party crested a steep slope to find ourselves facing one of the most-photographed and unforgettable mountain vistas in America: the East Face of California’s 14,505-foot Mount Whitney, highest peak in the Lower 48. On a flat pan of snow at 12,000 feet below that jagged skyline, we pitched our high camp, from which we made a successful ascent of Whitney’s Mountaineers Route the next day.

Spending two clear, starry nights in that camp, we saw the East Face in the varying light of all times of day, from dawn to sunset, dusk to dark. When I mentioned to one of our climbing partners that Whitney’s East Face was the only place I’ve seen that conjures mental images of the peaks of Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia, this man—who’s also been to Patagonia—told me that he’d been thinking the same thing.

See my story about that trip, “Roof of the High Sierra: A Father-Son Climb of California’s Mount Whitney.”

Toleak Point, Olympic National Park

On my family’s second day of backpacking the southern Olympic coast, we had already marveled at a massive boulder in the intertidal zone on the beach that was wallpapered with hundreds of mussels, sea anemones, and vividly orange or purple starfish. We had also climbed down an 80-foot cliff on a rope ladder that was missing several rungs at its bottom.

Late that afternoon, we found a spot for our tents on the beach at Toleak Point, where dozens of the rock pinnacles called sea stacks rise out of the ocean just offshore. As the kids played in a tide pool, a sea otter emerged from the pool’s other end and flopped across the beach to plunge into the ocean. A seal cavorted in the waves near us. When I went to explore the sea stacks exposed at low tide, a great blue heron lifted off of one and soared away over the beach like a winged dinosaur. Another of the trips my family took for my book, this three-day hike on Washington’s Olympic coast is still remembered by our kids, as well as my wife and me, as one of our all-time favorite trips.

See my story “The Wildest Shore: Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast,” with more photos, a video, and my tips on how to pull off this trip.

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Lake Ellen Wilson, Glacier National Park

Our weeklong backpacking trip had featured too many wildlife sightings to count—including bighorn sheep and numerous mountain goats, not to mention that we had an impending date with a sow grizzly bear and her two cubs. The scenery blew us away every day. I would have forgiven Lake Ellen Wilson, our final night’s campsite, for being anticlimactic.

But upon arriving there, we soaked tired feet in the lake’s cold, emerald-colored waters, a 20-second walk from our campsite, gazing around at a basin ringed by thousand-foot cliffs with several waterfalls pouring off of them. Then we laid down on the sun-warmed pebbles on the beach, which felt like a heated bed with built-in massage. For my friend Jerry Hapgood and me, dropping off into an afternoon nap on them was the default setting. It turned out to be our best campsite of the trip.

See my story “Descending the Food Chain: Backpacking Glacier National Park’s Northern Loop,” about backpacking my modified and expanded version of Glacier National Park’s Northern Loop, with more photos, for information on how to pull off this trip, and all stories about backpacking in Glacier at The Big Outside.

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

Big Spring, Paria Canyon, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument

I’d known that Paria Canyon could hold some surprises. But our two-family party found a little more adventure than we’d anticipated—which became evident when the other dad in our group, Vince, plunged hip-deep into quicksand on our first afternoon. But he managed, with considerable effort, to extricate himself; and by the next day, the kids had figured out how to identify shallow quicksand that they could stomp around in, howling with laughter. (Before the trip was over, Vince’s wife, Cat, and I would also take a quicksand dip.) We hiked for five days, mostly in the cold but usually ankle-deep Paria River, through a canyon that ranged from narrow with sheer walls to a big, open chasm between distant cliffs. While every campsite was really nice, the one at Big Spring (above), on our second night, took first prize.

Paria, which straddles the Utah-Arizona border and enters the Colorado River at Lees Ferry (where we finished our hike), at the beginning of the Grand Canyon, is unquestionably one of the great, multi-day canyon hikes of the Southwest—partly explaining why it’s so difficult to snag a permit to backpack it. But the permit system also preserves an unusual degree of solitude and a unique wilderness experience: We saw very few other people over five days, and spent much of that time on our own. (The BLM allows 20 people to start backpacking the Paria daily; we grabbed nine spots.)

See my story “The Quicksand Chronicles: Backpacking Paria Canyon,” with my tips on how to plan this trip.

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Past Favorite Backcountry Campsites

As I visit new places, I occasionally add new campsites to the list above, and have to remove some great spots from the list (to keep it to 25, a somewhat random but sensible number). But bumping a site from my list doesn’t diminish its attraction, of course. So I will keep those former favorites in the list below, to give you even more ideas and goals for future adventures.

Upper Lyman Lakes, Glacier Peak Wilderness

On the second day of a five-day, 44-mile family hike through Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness, we ascended a long finger of snow and crossed the pass that represents the crux of this trip in terms of technical difficulty, Spider Gap, at 7,100 feet. From there, we descended snow into the head of a valley sculpted and scoured by ice just a geologic moment ago, the Upper Lyman Lakes basin.

The Lyman Glacier poured down the cliffs of 8,459-foot Chiwawa Mountain into the vividly emerald waters of the uppermost lake. Barren, snow-speckled peaks and cliffs ringed the valley on three sides. A creek leapt from the lake’s far shore, crashing over stones and a small waterfall, below which some of us took a frigid and very brief bath. Wildflowers sprung hopefully from the few, shallow patches of soil. We pitched our tents on a grassy knoll near a copse of conifer trees, with an unobstructed view of that entire basin. And we spent most of the evening watching the shifting light across the mountains until sunset lit the clouds afire, watching a pair of bucks and a few doe wander through our campsites, and, well, swatting mosquitoes. (It was late July in the North Cascades, after all.)

See my story “Wild Heart of the Glacier Peak Wilderness: Backpacking the Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass Loop.”

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Benson Lake, Yosemite National Park

At dusk on the second day of a four-day, 86-mile backpacking tour of northern Yosemite—the park’s biggest swath of wilderness—my friend Todd Arndt and I strolled up to perhaps the most unlikely sight deep in the mountains: a sprawling, sandy beach that looks like it got lost on its way to Southern California. After hiking almost 23 miles that day, the trip’s longest, wiggling our toes in the cool sand and standing in the icy lake water in our bare feet reduced us to cooing babies.

A longtime backcountry ranger in Yosemite had told me that I’d find the park’s best backcountry beach at Benson Lake—but I never would have imagined such a vast expanse of fine sand deep in the mountains. It was one of many surprisingly gorgeous backcountry secrets I discovered over seven days of backpacking 151 miles through Yosemite’s most remote corners.

See my story “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite,” and my story about the three-day, 65-mile first leg of that weeklong odyssey, “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking South of Tuolumne Meadows.”

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

Tanner Beach, Grand Canyon National Park

A longtime backcountry ranger who has hiked every named trail in the Grand Canyon wrote an email to me recommending that I try a route off the South Rim—only a section of which I’d hiked before—that he described as “the best backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon.” Given the source of that endorsement, how could I not do it? So two friends and I backpacked a six-day, 74-mile, point-to-point traverse that took us down to campsites on the Colorado River and, of course, back up to the rim.

That hike showed us many diverse personalities of the canyon, from one of its most scenic and popular trails, the South Kaibab, to one of its most remote and primitive paths, the Escalante Route. We experienced some of the highest levels of solitude I’ve ever had on Grand Canyon trails—hiking for hours without encountering another person, and having little company at three of our four campsites. But we also spent a fun evening at a campsite with a very friendly rafting party that graciously fed us well.

And our last campsite, shaded by a rock ledge at Tanner Beach, turned out to be the best camp on the best backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon. I think you’ll see why when you read my story about that beautiful hike—titled, appropriately, “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon.” Click here now for my e-book of the same title, which will tell you everything you need to know to plan and execute that trip.

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

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Columbine Lake, Sequoia National Park

Whichever direction you approach this lake from, you will pay for the privilege of a night here with significant toil. Filling a stone basin at nearly 11,000 feet, below the distinctive spire of Sawtooth Peak and an arc of snaggle-toothed mountains, Columbine is reached either via a 600-foot hump up through dozens of switchbacks from Lost Canyon; or a much harder 1,200-foot scramble, sans maintained trail, up a steep mountainside of sliding scree from Monarch Lakes to 11,630-foot Sawtooth Gap, where a primitive but better path leads down to Columbine. (We took the former and descended from Sawtooth Gap to Monarch Lakes—and were glad we did not carry backpacks up that route.)

Once there, though, your effort is (mostly) forgotten. We explored the granite ledges on the northshore of the lake, where crevices and small bowls in the granite hold tinypockets of water and you sometimes have to scramble on all fours over short, vertical walls. Alpenglow painted the peaks a salmon hue in the evening–of course—and sunrise cast an unbelievable pallet of orange, yellow, and reds onto a curlicue sculpture of clouds hovering just above one jagged ridge nearby. While not easy on the legs, Columbine Lake is very easy on the eyes.

See my story “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park” about this six-day backpacking trip, which included Precipice and Columbine lakes, with many more photos, a video, and information for planning this trip yourself. As of 2021, Sequoia National Park prohibits camping within 100 feet of Columbine’s lakeshore, to help protect the lake from use impacts.

Whitie Cox Camp, Middle Fork Salmon River, ID

Boy, it’s hard to pick one campsite that outdoes all others on the Middle Fork of the Salmon—they’re all pretty darn nice, often on large beaches in a canyon flanked by cliffs and mountainsides of pine forest, rocky crags, and golden grasses rising to summits 3,000 feet overhead. But for me, one stands out, and my family has, just by coincidence, camped there on both of our six-day rafting and kayaking trips down the Middle Fork.

In July 2019, on our second Middle Fork trip, joined by 20 good friends that included families with teens and young adults, we once again spent our second of five nights on the river at Whitie Cox camp. Just above a sweeping bend in the river, the camp has views up and down the canyon and a sprawling beach where the group sat in a large circle of folding chairs and talked and laughed for hours. After dark, some of us laid out our pads and bags on the sand and slept under the stars to the sound of the river softly murmuring past. In early morning, several of us hiked nearly a thousand feet up a ridge to an amazing vista up and down the canyon.

The Middle Fork, deep in central Idaho’s sprawling, 2.4-million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, is rightly known as one of the great multi-day, wilderness river trips in America—if not the greatest—for its mix of breathtaking scenery, frequent rapids up to class III and IV, numerous hiking opportunities, hot springs, world-class trout fishing… and beautiful campsites.

See my story about that most-recent trip on Idaho’s Middle Fork Salmon River, and my story about my family’s first trip down the Middle Fork when our kids were four years younger.

See also my story about my involvement helping to create a new long-distance trail through the vast wilderness areas of central Idaho, which includes the Middle Fork Salmon River Trail, “America’s Newest Long Trail: The Idaho Wilderness Trail.”

Camp Schurman, Mount Rainier National Park

Camp Schurman sits at 9,460 feet, on the very tip of Steamboat Prow, a cleaver of busted volcanic rock and dust. Two massive glaciers, the Emmons and Winthrop, part around this stone prow in a way that illustrates how frozen water behaves much the same as its liquid form. More than four square miles of moving ice, thousands of years old, and stretching over nearly 9,000 feet of elevation, the Emmons is the largest glacier in the Lower 48; the Winthrop isn’t much smaller. When two friends and I set off to climb the Emmons in early August a few years ago, with much of the snow melted off the glaciers, they displayed heavy scarring: huge, frighteningly beautiful crevasses as plentiful as waves on a storm-tossed ocean.

A two-foot-high, oval, stone wall shielded our tentsite from the irrepressible, bone-chilling wind. Standing outside our tent, I was struck by the mind-boggling scale of Mt. Rainier. Looking up at the mountain, I couldn’t fit it all within my peripheral vision. And yet, I knew I was looking at a tiny fraction of Rainier—which made me feel both very small and very fortunate for just being there.

Getting There From White River Campground at 4,400 feet, five miles past the White River ranger station (get a climbing permit there), hike the Glacier Basin Trail 3.2 miles to Glacier Basin Camp, at 6,000 feet. Follow a climbers’ trail up into the basin, reaching the Inter Glacier (good training ground for new climbers) at around 6,800 feet. Climb to Curtis Camp on the ridge north of Mt. Ruth, then descend off the ridge onto the Emmons Glacier and continue to Camp Schurman at 9,460 feet.

Map/Guidebook Trails Illustrated Mt. Rainier no. 217, $11.95, (800) 962-1643, natgeomaps.com. Mt. Rainier—A Climbing Guide, by Mike Gauthier, $18.95, mountaineersbooks.org.

Contact Mt. Rainier National Park, nps.gov/mora.

Granite Park, John Muir Wilderness

On the second night of a three-day, 32-mile, partly cross-country traverse of the John Muir Wilderness from North Lake Trailhead to Mosquito Flat Trailhead in the High Sierra, we pitched our tents in Granite Park, an aptly named high valley speckled with scores of alpine lakes and tarns and encircled by an arc of 12,000- and 13,000-foot spires of barren, golden stone. In the evening, the sinking sun painted the peaks, lakes, and granitic landscape in a shifting, vivid light that was absolutely captivating. We couldn’t tear our eyes from the light show that went on for a few hours. When the last alpenglow faded away, night brought a sky riddled with stars.

In the morning, we set out early and I got the above shot of my friend Jason Kauffman passing a lake minutes from our campsite.

See my story and more photos about backpacking a 32-mile, partly off-trail traverse in the John Muir Wilderness for information on how to pull off this trip.

“Kid Rock” campsite, Green River, Canyonlands National Park

We made up the name for this campsite; it doesn’t have a name that I’m aware of, though it is an established and large campsite on the Green River in Stillwater Canyon, seven miles above the confluence with the Colorado River. We gave it that name because, minutes after we landed, the eight kids in our five-family crew—ranging in age from four to 12—immediately planted their figurative flag on this boulder at the edge of the campsite and christened it “Kid Rock.” We all now remember that site by the name the kids gave that boulder.

Really, there are many special campsites along this lazy stretch of the Green, which passes through a canyon of soaring redrock cliffs and spires. But besides being spacious and scenic, this one sits at the bottom of a trail that climbs about three miles uphill to White Crack, one of the most spectacular campgrounds on the White Rim.

See my story about floating for five days down the Green River through Stillwater Canyon in Canyonlands National Park, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Rock Slide Lake, Sawtooth Mountains

Having lived in Idaho since 1998, I have explored much of the state’s best-known mountain range, the Sawtooths. But it took me 13 years to finally backpack into the deep interior of the southern Sawtooths, an area speckled with mountain lakes that lies a solid two days’ hike from the nearest roads in any direction.

So when my friend Jeff Wilhelm and I carved out four glorious September days to finally explore this area, we found deep, clear lakes filled with lunker trout, ringed by jagged peaks, and trails that don’t receive many boot prints. Walking through the bright, airy forest there, filled with granite outcroppings, reminded me of the High Sierra—without all the people. We used Rock Slide Lake as a base camp for two nights to give us a day to explore with daypacks, and spent hours on its shore, marveling at the dawn and sunset light there.

See my story about a four-day, 57-mile in the southern Sawtooth Wilderness for more photos and information for planning this trip.

Green River, Dinosaur National Monument

Long shadows leaned over the steadily sliding river as we pulled into our first campsite on a four-day rafting trip on the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado border. From the floor of Lodore Canyon, we gazed up at burgundy cliffs soaring a thousand feet overhead. One friend said to me, “This is probably the nicest campsite I’ve ever seen.” But what was truly amazing was that the second night’s campsite was better than our first—and the third night’s site was even more breathtaking than the first two. For that reason—and because many campsites on the banks of the Green in Dinosaur are equally beautiful—I’m simply lumping all of them together for this list.

See my story about that trip, “Why Conservation Matters: Rafting the Green River’s Gates of Lodore.”

Coyote Natural Bridge, Coyote Gulch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, UT

My memory of my wife’s and my first backpacking trip in Coyote Gulch 16 years earlier was cloudy when we returned recently with our 12- and 10-year-old kids and another family. Sometimes revisiting a place doesn’t measure up to a fond recollection of it; not so with Coyote Gulch, in southern Utah’s Escalante River canyons. It was more scenic even than I remembered. Soaring, red rock walls tower along its length. A steady creek pours over several short waterfalls, its year-round flow keeping the canyon bottom lushly green. And then there are features like Jacob Hamblin Arch and Coyote Natural Bridge.

My plan had been for us to spend our second night at one of the campsites below Jacob Hamblin; but the team was a little too pooped by the time we reached Coyote Natural Bridge to push on more than an hour farther. It turned out to be serendipitous, because we had the sandy beach area around the bridge to ourselves (whereas the campsites at Hamblin are popular). The kids played for hours in the creek and some adults took an evening hike while the others laid down on the warm sand with a book.

See my story about backpacking Coyote Gulch (and hiking slot canyons in the Escalante and at Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef national parks), with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Tiger Key, Everglades National Park, FL

Songbirds chattered and flitted among the trees along the shore. Cormorants and brown pelicans skimmed the water’s surface. Egrets glided overhead. In one secluded cove in Tiger Key, an outermost island of the Ten Thousand Islands in Florida’s Everglades, we sat in our canoes and watched 10 brilliantly pink roseate spoonbills perched in a tree, watching us. In a small bay, we sat rapt while a dolphin swam wide circles around our canoe for about 20 minutes. Every evening, we stood in the warm beach sand watching the blazing red orb of the sun slowly sink into the Gulf of Mexico.

Another of the trips I took my family on for my book, paddling the Everglades was one of the most magical for all of us—for the scenery, the exotic birds, and the unique experience of having a wilderness beach all to ourselves.

See my story about kayaking the East River and canoeing and wilderness camping in the Ten Thousand Islands of Everglades National Park, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

White Rock Lakes, Ptarmigan Traverse, Glacier Peak Wilderness

It was the third day of our six-day trip on arguably America’s premier mountain haute route. A multi-day walk along a high mountain crest, the Ptarmigan Traverse crosses six glaciers and stays high above treeline until the fifth day. We camped by lonely alpine lakes—one of which was still completely frozen and snow-covered in mid-August—below jagged summits in possibly the most vertiginous mountains in the country.

My climbing partners Stefan Kinnestrand and Wes Cooper and I ascended two of those glaciers, the LeConte and the South Cascade, in whiteout conditions on that third day, navigating by GPS while watching very carefully for crevasses. Then we scrambled from another pass down a precarious slope of loose rock so steep that a slip might have concluded with a tumble of several hundred feet right to the bottom. Most of the ground surrounding the White Rock Lakes remained snow-covered that August day, and the lakes were still almost completely frozen. When the fog finally lifted, we got a view across the deep valley of the West Fork of Agnes Creek to the Dana Glacier and Chikamin Glacier pouring off a ridge connecting several rocky peaks and spires. I’ll eventually post a story and more photos from the Ptarmigan Traverse.

Getting There Climbers traditionally begin the Ptarmigan Traverse at Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park and walk south, largely hewing close to the Cascade Crest. Beyond Dome Peak, from the Cub Lake area in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, the route descends to the Downey Creek Trailhead on Suiattle River Road. The route is mostly off-trail and crosses six glaciers; expert skills at glacier travel and navigating off-trail through mountains are required. See an excellent route description at summitpost.org/ptarmigan-traverse/154644.

Spring Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park

Southern Utah’s Capitol Reef has scenery to match its siblings in the National Park System—but when it comes to crowds, this place ain’t no Zion or Yosemite. In the visitor center at the outset of a three-day, family backpacking trip, a ranger told me that we were the only party getting a permit to backpack into Spring Canyon that day.

We hiked below towering, burgundy cliffs with patches of white and orange and black water-stain streaks, passing enormous boulders piled up below the cliffs. More than four hours after setting out from the Chimney Rock Trailhead, we pitched the tent on a grassy bench in Spring Canyon, beneath cliffs topped by domes and spires soaring hundreds of feet overhead. Staying there for two nights, with a day of exploring in between, we saw no other people. If that kind of solitude is rare in the backcountry of many national parks, it’s especially unusual in a spot reached with relatively little effort.

See my story about dayhiking, slot canyoneering, and backpacking in Capitol Reef National Park, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Lagunas Chevallay, Dientes Circuit, Chilean Patagonia

The 35-mile Dientes Circuit through the Dientes de Navarino (“Teeth of Navarino”) on Isla Navarino (Navarino Island), at the southern tip of South America, is chock full of ends-of-the-Earth moments and beautiful campsites. With my friend Jeff Wilhelm and 22-year-old Puerto Williams-based trekking guide Maurice van de Maele, I hiked for four days through a wild, wind-battered landscape of incisor-like rock towers and alpine lakes that gets visited by just a handful of people every year.

About halfway through the trip, the Antarctic wind blew us through Paso Ventarron (Ventarron Pass) as the late-day light pierced clouds above the Lagunas Chevallay. We descended the rocky trail to camp beside the large, unnamed lake shown at the head of the valley in the photo above.

See my story about trekking the Dientes Circuit, with more photos, for information on how to pull off this trip.

East Fork Owyhee River

Guiding our kayaks between tight canyon walls on Deep Creek, we didn’t see the confluence until we practically fell into it, the swift waters spitting us out into a deeper, wider channel: southwest Idaho’s East Fork Owyhee River. The four of us immediately landed and dragged our boats up onto a spacious beach on river right, tired and wet. I felt chilled in my wetsuit from a day that had seen us spend eight hours or more paddling through rain, snow, hail, and wind.

Perhaps a football field’s distance downriver, the East Fork made a sharp left turn and plunged into unseen quarters between sheer rhyolite walls. As evening descended, those cliffs became a study in contrasting light—some in dark shadow, some edged with sunlight, and the white rock of the farthest one glowing as if lit by some internal power source. Though just one of many scenes of staggering natural beauty from an eight-day, 82-mile adventure on the upper Owyhee River system, from Deep Creek to Three Forks, that one has stuck with me.

See my story about kayaking the upper Owyhee River, with more photos, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Little Frazier Lake, Eagle Cap Wilderness

Sometimes the destinations closest to home are the ones you neglect for too long. That was the case for my family with northeastern Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness, just a half-day’s drive for us, but a place we had not yet backpacked in (with the exception of one disastrous attempt, when our son was a toddler, that was aborted due to a nasty stomach virus. But I have skied the backcountry of Norway Basin in the Eagle Cap with friends.) So last summer, we finally took a five-day, 41-mile loop in the southeastern corner of this 350,000-acre wilderness.

We hiked up broad, U-shaped valleys and camped by boisterous streams and lakes that offered mirror reflections of dawn light and alpenglow on rocky, 9,000-foot peaks. I made the side hike up 9,572-foot Eagle Cap for its 360-degree panorama overlooking much of the range; the kids played in streams and had the treat of one of the most spectacular thunderstorms of their lives on our second afternoon. Our third campsite, at Little Frazier Lake, sat near the lake’s outlet creek, where my son worked for hours rearranging rocks; my daughter and I scrambled high up some nearby ledges. And in the morning, the lake offered up a perfect reflection of the stone basin cradling it. I will eventually post a story, with more photos, about this trip.

See my story about this five-day, family backpacking trip in the Eagle Cap, including more photos and a video, for information on planning this trip.

Unnamed Canyon, Beehive Traverse, Capitol Reef National Park

An hour into a three-day, cross-country traverse of the Waterpocket Fold formation in Capitol Reef, my friend David Gordon and I had already taken our first wrong turn, seen a bighorn sheep, and I’d dislodged a boulder that nearly crushed David. (We were off-route.) The incidents were omens for the days to follow, navigating our way through a maze of canyons, cliffs, domes, and towers, where it was not unusual to spend 20 minutes or more hemmed in by seemingly impassable cliffs before finding the narrow ledge or the break in the wall of rock that indicated the direction of our route.

My friend, local guide Steve Howe, spent many seasons working out this cross-country hike, which begins at Grand Wash and zigzags south a very circuitous 17 miles to Capitol Gorge. He calls it the Beehive Traverse, for the type of sandstone towers encountered along the way. He shared a map and GPS data with David and me to let us attempt it ourselves; very few people have hiked the route before us, and most of them were guided by Steve. On our second night, we camped in this unnamed canyon below flying buttresses of golden sandstone.

See my story, with lots of photos and a video, about backpacking the Beehive Traverse in Capitol Reef.

On the Dunes, Great Sand Dunes National Park

Not long into our first day backpacking across the massive sand dunes of this park—which tower several hundred feet tall—I was already convinced that carrying a pack loaded with food and gear for three days as well as two gallons of water up giant dunes was not a brilliant plan. Our group of editors from Backpacker Magazine marched a few miles over the rolling, sometimes steep dunes until we found a relatively flat spot to pitch our tents. Then the magic show began.

It was November, and the light of late afternoon and early evening transformed the shifting, mountainous dunes into three-dimensional works of abstract art. I wandered a wide perimeter around our camp in the evening and early morning, shooting photos of frost on multi-colored dunes that often came to a peak as sharp as on the roof of a house. At times, sand avalanching downhill under our boots made an eerie sound, a phenomenon known as “singing.” I decided the dunes more than made up for the effort expended getting there.

See my story, with more photos, about backpacking at Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes for information on how to pull off this trip.

Lake 8522, Sawtooth Wilderness, ID

We backpacked the Alpine Creek Trail in Idaho’s Sawtooths less than three miles up a sunbaked valley flanked by cliffs to where it ends abruptly in ponderosa pine forest. A steep headwall loomed above us, 500 vertical feet or taller, capped by rocky ledges—a daunting obstacle that would logically turn away most hikers. But I had been told that the basin of unnamed lakes just beyond the pass at the top of this earthen wall was worth the effort of reaching it. So my son, Nate, almost 11 at the time, and I, joined by his buddy, another Nate, and that kid’s dad, Doug Shinneman, clawed and high-stepped our way up a faint, very steep user trail, grabbing branches and slipping in mud, and scrambling up exposed ledges.

At the top, we saw that I’d gotten good advice. A cool forest embraces one side of the blue-green waters of Lake 8522; a granite cliff juts straight out of the water on the other side. We found a spot in the woods for our tents and spent the next couple of days fishing, exploring the higher lakes in the basin, and taking in some sunrises and sunsets that kept my camera busy.

Getting There From ID 75, about 20 miles south of Stanley and 40 miles north of Ketchum, turn west onto Alturas Lake Road and follow it about seven miles to its end at the Alpine Creek Trailhead. Hike the Alpine Creek Trail roughly 2.5 miles to where the maintained trail terminates. Follow a faint, very steep and rough user trail that climbs almost straight uphill several hundred feet, with some scrambling, to a pass that leads into a lakes basin. Lake 8522 is a short walk beyond the pass. This area has some user trails and established campsites, but is not managed like official trails; minimize your impact.

Map Earthwalk Press “Sawtooth Wilderness,” $9.95, (800) 742-2677, omnimap.com.

Contact Sawtooth National Forest Stanley Ranger District, (208) 774-3000, fs.usda.gov/sawtooth.

Doubtful Sound, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand

It was a typical summer day in Doubtful Sound: alternating spells of light mist and steady rain punctuating brief periods without precipitation. The shifting gray overcast delivered about 10 minutes of sunshine the entire day. But the air was warm and the water flat, its dark surface as clear as a just-cleaned mirror. Tendrils of ghost-like clouds floated around granite cliffs that rose straight out of the sea up to 4,000 feet high; and the cliffs wore long coats of thick rainforest that seemed to defy gravity.

Our small group pitched our tents behind a rocky beach, in the forest of podocarp trees and punga tree ferns. After a mild night of periodic showers, we woke and walked to the beach to see the water still and glassy, reflecting the sea cliffs and misty clouds.

See my story about sea kayaking Doubtful Sound, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Tonto Trail, Grand Canyon National Park

If there’s a bad campsite in the Grand Canyon, I haven’t found it yet. But my favorite (so far) is this spot just off the Tonto Trail, on the plateau between Lonetree Canyon and Cremation Creek. We camped here on the last night of a four-day, late-March family backpacking trip from Grandview Point to the South Kaibab Trailhead (another trip my family took for a chapter of my book).

While we were exposed to the wind—which can blow pretty hard—and had to carry water to that camp, those were small tithes for a 360-degree panorama reaching from the South Rim to the North Rim, with countless named temples and buttes within view, most prominently the Zoroaster Temple (visible in the background of the photo above). While the kids played with rocks in the dirt and my wife read, I walked around with my camera, finding an amazing background in every direction.

See my story, with more photos, about backpacking in the Grand Canyon for information on how to pull off this trip.

Indian Basin, Wind River Range

Six friends, 500 pounds of gear and food for a week, one horsepacker to haul our stuff the 15 miles from the trailhead to Indian Basin—and plenty of alcohol, which figures prominently in this adventure tale. We had grand ambitions for several rock and snow climbs of peaks along the Continental Divide that week. We didn’t plan on daily, cold morning showers or the violent afternoon thunderstorms that would dump a couple inches of hail in 30 minutes and threaten to blow our tents to Iowa.

Though we never tied into a rope all week, we did tag a few walk-and-scramble-up summits, including 13,745-foot Fremont Peak in cold wind and fog, and 13,517-foot Jackson Peak. Mostly, though, we huddled in all of our clothes under a tarp in camp, plowing through our alcohol supply and laughing uproariously over things I barely recall. I got the above shot during one of the rare moments of glorious sunshine that made us optimistic about climbing—until the next storm cell drove us back into our tents.

Getting There The Elkhart Park trailhead is 14.5 miles from Pinedale. From US 191 (Pine Street), in Pinedale, turn north onto Fremont Lake/Half Moon Lake Road. In three miles, bear right on Skyline Drive. A short distance beyond a viewpoint overlooking the high peaks, bear right at a fork to parking for the Pole Creek Trail. Follow the Pole Creek, Seneca Lake, Highline (for just a quarter-mile), and Indian Basin trails about 15 miles to Indian Basin.

Map Earthwalk Press “North Wind River Range,” $9.95, omnimap.com.

Contact Bridger National Forest Pinedale Ranger District, (307) 739-5500, fs.usda.gov/btnf.

Dog Lake, Seven Devils Mountains

A fresh September snowfall had just blanketed the Seven Devils, which rise to over 9,000 feet and form the east rim of Hells Canyon in west-central Idaho. My friend Geoff Sears and I started our three-day hike in thick fog, at first catching only glimpses of the craggy peaks.

But the weather slowly cleared through the afternoon, as we leapfrogged surviving segments of a long-abandoned, faint trail leading to Dog Lake, where we put our tent up in a small basin that rarely sees human visitors. That evening and the next morning, under blue skies with no wind, the lake offered up a sharp reflection of the snow-plastered cliffs of black rock.

See my story about another backpacking trip in Hells Canyon.

Getting There From US 95, a mile south of Riggins, Idaho, turn west onto Squaw Creek Road (CR 517). Drive 16.5 miles to Windy Saddle Trailhead, a half-mile before Seven Devils Campground. Hike south on Boise Trail 101 for 7.4 miles. Just after crossing Dog Creek, turn west and look for traces of the faint trail leading about 1.3 miles to Dog Lake; you’ll be mostly bushwhacking through semi-open forest with some blowdowns obstructing the way.

Map The Hells Canyon National Recreation Area map, Hells Canyon NRA website (below).

Contact Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, Riggins ranger district, (208) 628-3916, fs.usda.gov/detail/wallowa-whitman/recreation/?cid=stelprdb5238987.

Mount Baker, WA

It was a wretched campsite, actually. We’d had no intention of staying there, but weather left us without a better choice than to endure an interminable night on that cold ground of sharp stones. The wind-tortured, 9,000-foot saddle separating the Coleman and Deming glaciers on Mount Baker in Washington’s North Cascades was simply where we ended up when Plan A—camping on the summit—crashed in the sea of ambitious dreams. My wife, Penny, and I were climbing our first Pacific Northwest volcano years ago with our friend Larry Gies, through thick fog that reduced visibility to less than 100 feet at times. By late afternoon, we gave up on reaching the summit, pinned our tents to the ground, and dove inside.

But two hours later, a mountain fairy granted us one of those rare, magical events that occur when least expected: Sunshine lit our tents. We stepped outside to see the cloud ceiling below us. We tagged the mountaintop as the setting sun strafed that sea of clouds with red and orange light. You can’t distinguish our tents in the photo above, but they’re in the saddle below us—that miserable, serendipitous spot.

Getting There From I-5 north of Bellingham, follow WA 542 for 33.8 miles. One mile past Glacier, turn right onto Glacier Creek FS Road 39, and continue eight miles to parking for Mt. Baker (Heliotrope Ridge) Trail 677. The trail ends after two miles, at 4,800 feet; continue on the climbers’ trail up the Hogsback to a tenting area at 6,000 feet on the edge of the Coleman Glacier.

Map Green Trails Mt. Baker no. 13, greentrailsmaps.com.

Contact Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest outdoor recreation information, fs.usda.gov/mbs.

How was your 2024? I hope you got outdoors as much as possible with the people you care about—and you enjoyed adventures that inspired you. I’m sharing in this story photos from several backpacking and hiking trips I took this year, from the Grand Canyon in April and southern Utah in May to the Tetons and Montana’s Beartooths in August, Colorado’s San Juans in September, northern Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness in early October—and culminating with three classic Great Walks and dayhiking in New Zealand in late November and December.

That’s a pretty good year, right?

I’m fortunate to be able to get out a lot, and yet, 2024 still felt like an exceptional year for me. Going through my photos always reminds me not just about the details of these experiences and places—but most of all, what’s most important in my life and why I strive to make getting outdoors a top priority. I know you do, too—that’s why you read my 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.

The photos in this story are selected images from those trips. Whether you want to learn more to take any of them yourself or just want to find some inspiration for your own adventures, I think you’ll enjoy this little escape.

Scroll through the photos and short anecdotes from each trip below. Some include links to stories about those places that I’ve already posted—many of which require a paid subscription to The Big Outside to read in full, including my tips and information on how to plan and take those trips. Click any photo to learn more about that trip.

Watch for my upcoming stories about the other places described below.

I can help you plan any of these trips or any others you read about at The Big Outside—giving you the benefit of my three decades of professional experience identifying, planning, and successfully pulling off great adventures. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you, and my expert e-books to some of America’s best backpacking trips.

I’d love to hear what you think of any of my photos or the places shown in them, or upcoming plans you have. Please share your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Enjoy my pictures and start now planning your adventures for 2025.

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The Grand Canyon’s Gems Route

In April, five friends joined me returning to a place I cannot seem to get enough of—the Grand Canyon—to spend six days backpacking about 60 miles following one of the most remote, lonely, and hard multi-day hikes in the canyon: the Gems Route from the South Bass Trailhead to the Hermit Trailhead. I know, I know: “remote, lonely, and hard” describes almost every multi-day hike in the canyon. But consider these salient facts about the Gems Route.

Besides starting and finishing on steep and difficult trails off the South Rim, it traverses the longest segment of the 95-mile-long Tonto Trail with no bailout path the South Rim: the 29 miles from Bass Canyon to Boucher Creek, which the park’s website describes as the Tonto’s “most difficult and potentially dangerous” leg for the lack of perennial water. In April, probably the best month of the year to find water in seasonal creeks (as we did), we each nonetheless had to twice carry up to about 17 pounds of water on our backs.

The Gems Route draws its name from several tributary canyons you cross on the Tonto Trail—including five that we crossed, Ruby, Turquoise, Sapphire, Agate, and Topaz—each one strikingly deep, with towering, brilliantly colorful cliffs. As always on the Tonto, views extend from the Colorado River to both rims and the canyon’s landscape seems to constantly change as the sun marches across the sky. And even by Grand Canyon standards, few hikes offer this much solitude: For three days, we saw no one else.

See my story “‘Let’s Talk Water:’ Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Gems” and all stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

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Owl and Fish Canyons

A May trip to southern Utah began with four of us backpacking the three-day, approximately 17-mile loop through Owl and Fish canyons, in southeastern Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, which begins and ends with rugged hiking and scrambling at the upper ends of both canyons—including a 12-foot corner in a cliff to reach the rim of Fish Canyon (aided by a fixed rope).

While not for anyone uncomfortable with moderate exposure, these canyons evoke better-known places in southern Utah, with tall, red cliffs, towers, the striking amphitheater surrounding Nevills Arch, rippled slickrock, pour-offs and seasonal waterfalls, flowering cacti, cottonwoods, and a surprising abundance of seasonal, clear water in parts of both canyons.

Owl and Fish canyons offer a rare find: incredible scenery (and night skies), awesome campsites, solitude, and a permit that’s easier to get than for better-known Southwest backpacking trips.

See my story “Backpacking Southern Utah’s Owl and Fish Canyons,” “The 12 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest,” and all stories about hiking and backpacking in southern Utah at The Big Outside.

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Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Parks

My wife, Penny, and I also hit a trifecta of parks on our southern trip in May: dayhiking in Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion.

We began in  Capitol Reef, which for many hikers does not come to mind first when contemplating a visit to the Southwest—even though it really has some of the step-for-step nicest dayhikes in the region, including one of the very best, which we hiked: the Navajo Knobs Trail.

In Bryce Canyon at a peak time of year to explore the Southwest, hiking the eight-mile Fairyland Loop reminded me that, even on days when hundreds of tourists are jamming the walkways and overlooks that lie a short stroll from the park’s sprawling parking lots, you can escape the crowds within a mile of hiking virtually any trail, finding quietude and what feels like a deeper connection with Bryce’s hoodoos and amphitheaters.

Lastly, in Zion, we pedaled rented bikes to the end of the road in Zion Canyon—a peaceful, relatively easy, and super scenic little adventure thanks to that road being closed to most private vehicles for most of the year—and I hiked up the West Rim Trail well beyond the junction with the spur trail up Angels Landing, revisiting another beautiful stretch of trail that sees just a smattering of hikers.

See my stories “The Best Hikes in Capitol Reef National Park,” “The Two Best Hikes in Bryce Canyon National Park,” “The 10 Best Hikes in Zion National Park,” “The 15 Best Hikes in Utah’s National Parks,” and all stories about hiking and backpacking in southern Utah at The Big Outside.

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The Tetons

Over three days on the first weekend of August, my son, Nate, and I knocked off a few stellar adventures together in the Teton Range (another place I cannot get enough of). First, we took advantage of a rare, uniquely perfect weather forecast to climb the 13,775-foot Grand Teton in a day via the Owen-Spalding Route—some 17 miles, 7,200 vertical feet, thousands of feet of scrambling and a couple of easy pitches of rock climbing in about 16.5 hours, car to car (with me slowing my 23-year-old son down, not vice versa).

The next afternoon we took an active rest day of sorts, mountain biking some great trails in the Teton Pass area off WY 22.

And on our third day together, we took one of the best long dayhikes in the Tetons, from the boat landing on the west side of Jenny Lake in the park (taking the very scenic boat shuttle across Jenny) up the North Fork Cascade Canyon to Lake Solitude, just over 15 miles and 2,300 feet out-and-back. Near the end of that hike, coming back down Cascade Canyon, not more than about 30 minutes from Jenny Lake, we were surprised coming around a blind turn in the trail to see a huge bull moose standing just steps off the path; we hustled quickly past him.

See “10 Great, Big Dayhikes in the Tetons,” my expert e-books to backpacking the Teton Crest Trail and the best short backpacking trip in the Tetons, and all stories about backpacking in Grand Teton National Park at The Big Outside.

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The Beartooth Mountains

In the middle of August, two friends and I backpacked about 44 miles, with a bit of off-trail hiking, over five days in Montana’s Beartooth Mountains, which conjure mental images of Glacier National Park— although the Beartooths are in many ways more challenging, primarily for having more strenuous trails and higher elevations. But the great advantage of the Beartooths over Glacier is this: no permit reservation required.

That trip featured some gorgeous lakes (at least one likely to eventually grace my story spotlighting the most gorgeous backcountry lakes I’ve seen; see the photo of Lake Sylvan near the top of this story) and waterfalls and sweeping views of classic Northern Rockies landscapes, with deep, glacier-carved, U-shaped creek valleys below soaring cliffs and craggy peaks. But the big climb from the West Fork Rock Creek Valley to Sundance Pass at around 11,000 feet kind of blew us away: We walked through many switchbacks, every step of the way overlooking the arc of mountains, some with remnant glaciers, at the head of that valley.

Watch for my upcoming feature story about that trip at The Big Outside.

The right gear makes any trip go better.
See “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs” and “The 10 Best Backpacking Tents.”

The Continental Divide Trail in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains

I’ve long considered September—especially the first half of the month—arguably the best time of year for backpacking in the mountains of the U.S. West. This year, my wife, Penny, and I headed to the tall and majestic San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado to backpack a four-day, 31-mile loop in the Weminuche Wilderness.

We spent two of those days mostly at around 12,000 feet on a stretch of the Continental Divide Trail, hiking along endless ridge crests in the midst of a turbulent sea of hulking mountains that stretched to every horizon. We heard elk bugling; got battered by very strong, chilly winds and a sudden, late-afternoon thunderstorm that prompted a quick decision to pitch our tent a bit earlier than planned, but in a lovely meadow a short walk from a pretty little alpine lake; and saw just a handful of other backpackers on that piece of the CDT (all of them solo, southbound CDT thru-hikers). That short trip fanned the flames of my desire to put together a longer hike on some or all of the CDT in Colorado or the Colorado Trail.

Watch for my upcoming story about that San Juans loop hike at The Big Outside.

Planning your next big adventure? See “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips”
and “Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites.”

The Uinta Highline Trail

With an unusually good weather forecast for early October, my son, Nate, and I set out to backpack a respectable chunk of the Uinta Highline Trail in Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness (also shown in lead photo at the top of this story), about 60 miles in four days, from the Henrys Fork Trailhead—the shortest approach to Utah’s high point, 13,528-foot Kings Peak—to the trail’s western terminus at Hayden Pass on the Mirror Lake Highway/UT 150. Excited by the forecast and the prospect of yet another father-son adventure together—a countless number of which he, now 24, and I have shared since he was too young to remember our earliest, much more modest trips—we wound up, in almost equal parts, as awed by its majesty as humbled by how tough it is.

I’d backpacked in the High Uintas and hiked up Kings before, with my wife and daughter (on this trip), but Nate had recently decided that, after living in Utah for five years (since college), he needed to finally account for the glaring omission of the state’s high point in his outdoor resume. He had also become more interested in the Uinta Highline Trail, which traverses the range for more than 100 miles, much of it between 10,000 and over 12,000 feet, including numerous high passes. On our four-day hike, we crossed seven passes ranging from just over 11,200 feet to the trail’s high point, Anderson Pass at around 12,700 feet. And we did tag Kings Peak on a bluebird morning.

It being October at lofty elevations, we certainly experienced a multi-course meal of mountain weather, including some strong, cold wind, mornings below freezing—we slept under the stars, looking up at a clear night sky riddled with pinpoints of light floating in and around the glowing streak of our galaxy, and woke each morning with our bags quite wet on the outside from the heavy frost melting on them. (Gear tip: I stayed warm and dry in this bag, and our bags dried out quickly as soon as the morning sun hit them.)

But every day presented vast creek basins and one or two more high passes to cross; the vistas seemed endless. And it being October, each of our very rare encounters with other backpackers surprised us as much as them.

The Uinta Highline Trail is unquestionably one of the most under-appreciated multi-day hikes in the country. I will tell you with a straight face that it deserves comparisons with the John Muir Trail, Teton Crest Trail, Wonderland Trail, and the best backpacking trips in Glacier National Park, Yosemite, the Wind River Range, and Idaho’s Sawtooths. And you will often find more solitude in the Uintas than in some of those other places.

Yes, really. But you underestimate its difficulty at your own peril.

See my feature story about that trip, “Backpacking—and Sandbagging—Utah’s Uinta Highline Trail,” and my story about a previous trip there, “Tall and Lonely: Backpacking Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness,” and all stories about backpacking in Utah at The Big Outside.

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Three Great Walks in New Zealand

I spent more than three weeks from late November to mid-December hiking around New Zealand with my family, including knocking off three of that country’s 11 amazing Great Walks: the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, the Routeburn Track, and the Milford Track.

First stop: the North Island, for some world-class mountain biking in Rotorua, followed by a dayhike of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. It’s 12 miles from the Mangatepōpō Road end to the Ketetahi Road end, with more than 2,100 feet of uphill and a longer descent of more than 3,600 feet (in that direction). Those simple metrics don’t fully communicate the difficulty, from the steepness for sustained stretches on the ascent to the trail’s high point, at the rim of Red Crater, and the descent past Red Crater; or the impact that the strong wind and horizontal rain can have (and we had in spades). But the Tongariro deserves to be ranked among the world’s great treks for its almost constant views of active, rugged volcanoes, its moonscape of broad craters, and lakes that seem to glow with color.

Hopping down to the South Island, we tackled a pair of classic hut treks: three days on the nearly 21-mile Routeburn Track (see photo near the top of this story) in Mount Aspiring National Park and Fiordland National Park, which connects trailheads in the bush via a long, alpine traverse over tussock highlands, past stunning waterfalls and rivers, and over its high point at Harris Saddle. Then we spent four days on the 33-mile Milford Track in Fiordland, widely hailed as one of the world’s great treks, where days of rain had created countless braids of roaring waterfalls in the valleys.

Not surprisingly for any of these trails, we encountered rain and wind—in full force at times—on each of them. But we also experienced everything that makes “tramping” around New Zealand special: the always fascinating forests (or the “bush,” as Kiwis call it); rivers varying in character from calm to raging; alpine traverses where mountains stretch to far horizons; and easily well over a hundred waterfalls tumbling in endless braids down tall, steep mountainsides.

Watch for my upcoming stories from our New Zealand trip. Meanwhile, see my story about my first hike in Tongariro National Park and all stories about adventures in New Zealand at The Big Outside; and find more information about the Great Walks at doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/things-to-do/walking-and-tramping/great-walks.

As you plan your trips for next year, see “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips,” “The 25 Best National Park Dayhikes,” my 25 all-time favorite backcountry campsites, and my Trips page at The Big Outside.

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

Crossing Gunsight Pass at 11,880 feet, Nate and I confer and quickly agree on modifying our goal for today: We’re not heading up to Anderson Pass and Utah’s highest mountain, Kings Peak at 13,528 feet, in the waning daylight, recognizing that we’d ultimately finish this day by headlamp, hunting around in the dark for a decent campsite in the valley on the other side of and far below Kings.

Instead, we take the trail dropping into Painter Basin, finding a camp for our first night in grass and scattered rocks on a nearly treeless plateau practically at the toe of Kings Peak, just as the mountain’s long, pyramidal shadow advances over the basin. Some three miles across at its widest point, Painter is one of the many vast, stark, high basins that define this range as much as its nearly two dozen summits over 13,000 feet.

It will prove a wise decision on a trip where we’d already collaborated in sandbagging ourselves—without yet fully realizing how badly. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

We’ve come to backpack about 58 miles, from the Henrys Fork Trailhead—the shortest approach to Kings Peak—to the western terminus of the Uinta Highline Trail at Hayden Pass on the Mirror Lake Highway/UT 150. I’d backpacked in the High Uintas and hiked up Kings before, with my wife and daughter and a friend of our daughter’s (on this trip); but Nate had recently decided that, after living in Utah for five years (since beginning college there), he needed to finally account for the glaring omission of the state’s high point from his outdoor resume.

And we’ve both had a growing interest in the Uinta Highline Trail, which traverses the range for more than 100 miles, mostly over 10,000 feet, with eight named passes—four each exceeding 11,000 and 12,000 feet. On our four-day hike, we’ll cross seven passes, just one of them (Gunsight) not on the Uinta Highline Trail, ranging from just over 11,200 feet to the trail’s high point, Anderson Pass at around 12,700 feet. And we intend to tag Kings Peak.

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One key fact about our plans: We’ve come in the first week of October, normally beyond the peak season for hiking in many Western mountain ranges because of the real prospect of snow falling or, at the least, cold rain, as well as sub-freezing temperatures at night and possibly during the days. But we saw a forecast for days of dry, unseasonably mild weather and decided to jump on it.

And as much as the forecast, we were excited about the prospect of yet another father-son adventure together—a countless number of which he, now 24, and I have shared since he was too young to remember our earliest, little-kid-appropriate trips.

More than either of us expected, we would end up, in almost equal parts, as awed by the majesty of the Uinta Highline Trail, and the High Uintas in general, as humbled by how tough it is.

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Anderson Pass, Kings Peak, Tungsten Pass, and Porcupine Pass

We awaken before the sun reaches us at 7 a.m., at 11,400 feet in Painter Basin, to find ice crystals in water bottles and heavy frost coating everything, including sleeping bags—as will happen on all three clear, dry, cold nights we’re out here, sleeping under the stars. (We pitched the tent we brought only the first night, just in case.) Cocooned inside our fat bags, we feel none of the dampness or cold, even though the heat coming off our bags melts the frost on the shells of our bags. (See the Gear I Used section below.) We eat a hot breakfast while gazing up at a wall of 13,000-foot peaks, including Kings, burnished golden by the rising sun.

The chilly morning air provides a balanced counterpoint to the warm sun and cool breeze once we start hiking west on the Uinta Highline Trail, climbing steadily over a moonscape of rocky ground almost devoid of vegetation. Ninety minutes after leaving our camp, we drop our packs at Anderson Pass, at 12,700 feet, and after a bite, start up the mountain’s standard route, the rocky north ridge of Kings.

We’ve seen no one since yesterday afternoon on the Henrys Fork Trail, a warm, sunny Sunday, where we ran into several hunters hiking out because they’ve seen no elk (too warm) and backpackers and a few dayhikers returning from Kings Peak. So, of course, minutes after I tell Nate, “We might join a short list of people who’ve had Kings Peak to themselves,” we see two guys descending toward us; they reached the summit and are heading back to the Henrys Fork Trailhead. Like everyone else we’ve spoken with in our first 24 hours out here, they have no intention of continuing west on the Uinta Highline Trail. In our sample population of survey respondents, we were the only ones with that plan.

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Not surprisingly, given that it’s early October, we’ll enjoy a rare degree of solitude on most of our four days out here. Indeed, for the rest of today—a day we’ll hike about 12 miles and cross three passes, in addition to scrambling Kings—we will run into just two other pairs of backpackers, one couple and two men that could be father and son, both heading east on the Highline in the sprawling basin of Yellowstone Creek. Both say we’re the first people they’ve seen.

While a chilling wind scours Anderson Pass and the north ridge of Kings as we ascend it, we step onto the summit in mild, dead calm air. It feels like early September. So, we linger a while on the roof of Utah, drinking up the 360 of towering peaks and creek basins you could drop a small city into.

Some two hours later, a couple miles west of Anderson Pass on the Highline Trail, the sun feels so hot that we stop to zip off pant legs to convert to shorts and strip down to a single light top each. When clouds block the sun, though, it feels much cooler, and strong gusts of icy wind hit us intermittently.

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“The air temp is about 50 and when the wind blows, it feels like 35,” I tell Nate. He finishes my thought: “In the sun, it feels like 70.” It’s that time of year in the mountains: We’ll stop several times today to add or strip off layers, cycling between tolerating too many layers for the sun or not wearing enough for the wind and clouds.

But by later that afternoon, those periods of sunshine feel like a distant memory. Clouds lock arms and march across the sky and cold wind buffets us without pausing to catch its breath. Squalls erupt suddenly, pelting us with graupel as we approach Tungsten Pass, at 11,400 feet—which must be the easiest on the entire Uinta Highline Trail, sitting not very many steps uphill from the basins to either side of it.

We walk across Garfield Basin, yet another vast valley of more than two dozen scattered alpine lakes, sprawling grassy meadows, and conifer forest below around 11,000 feet. Beyond a windblown cluster of tiny lakes and tarns in the upper end of the basin, we climb through switchbacks to Porcupine Pass at 12,200 feet—our third today, in addition to hiking Kings Peak—just as the sun pierces the dark armor of the overcast, throwing brilliant yellow light onto the clouds, the cliffs embracing the basin ahead of us and the lakes far below where we stand. (See lead photo at the top of this story.)

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The scene stops us cold. Nate mutters, “Wow, that’s amazing,” or something like that. Even as the colder wind and the temperature dropping faster than the sun herald the rapid approach of another freezing night—and we can clearly see the several hundred vertical feet and perhaps as much as two miles of hiking between this pass and a prospective camp—we can’t help but linger for several minutes, clicking cameras and just quietly watching one of those moments that sear themselves into the memories from a trip.

Nate races ahead in search of a camp and I follow as quickly as I can. A little while later, not long before sunset, I join him at a patch of level dirt near a small creek several hundred feet off the trail, at around 11,500 feet in the nearly flat plateau at the upper end of this basin. There are no trees, boulders, or even rises or hollows in the terrain to temper the wind.

We lay out our pads and bags to sleep under a night sky liberally salted with twinkling specks from tiny to beaming, amid and around the wide smear of the galaxy. We count several shooting stars before nodding off.

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Red Knob Pass and Dead Horse Pass

Another morning of ice in water bottles and bags wet from the overnight frost greets us when we rise shortly after 6 a.m., as the first light appears in the eastern sky. It feels colder than yesterday. Nate and I pack up hurriedly and throw down a hot breakfast, fingers numbed, eager to get moving for the warmth it’ll bring and because we have many miles to walk today.

We hike for about an hour in the deep and frigid shade of a ridge that rises to well over 12,000 feet. The wind amplifies the cold, but walking quickly, we soon warm up enough to shed our shells and warm hats; once we enter the direct sun, it feels almost balmy again.

The shade and bright sunlight meet along a high-contrast divide splicing the basin ahead of us, a snaking line moving patiently, the shade retreating at the sun’s pace. The sun’s low angle seems to make every angle in the landscape more visible, giving our eyes a superpower to see everything more clearly—every knob and twist in every ridge, every draw and hollow and creek bottom, all the throw rugs of conifer forest strewn across the basins, every subtle variation in the color spectrum of nature.

The world reveals itself to us in the morning and evening light of the low sun. I love getting on the trail this early.

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The High Uintas, the highest of the few mountain ranges in the contiguous 48 states with an east-west orientation, span about 150 miles end to end, but are also broad enough to demand significant time and effort to reach the remote, upper ends of these high basins on foot. The most direct north-south trails across the range often measure about 40 miles.

And therein lies an immutable truth about finding solitude: Hike deeper into the backcountry and you’ll get beyond where most people are go, for no more simple reason than that carrying a backpack that far is both hard and time-consuming. (See my “12 Expert Tips for Finding Solitude When Backpacking.”) We see more signs of trail maintenance, like fresh cuts on blown-down trees (along those occasional stretches of the Uinta Highline in forest), than signs of people. Throughout this day, we will not see another person.

For several miles west of Porcupine Pass, we hike across this gently undulating, high basin, framed by continuous rows of mountains muscling into the sky. The Uinta Highline Trail grows faint and even disappears for long stretches—clearly not receiving enough human traffic to even beat a visible footpath into this dirt and grass. But cairns nearly as tall as an adult, rockpiles visible from a distance, help us stay on course.

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We climb through several switchbacks to another of the Uinta Highline Trail’s best passes, Red Knob, at 12,000 feet, overlooking the lake-filled basin of West Fork Blacks Fork Creek, nearly enclosed within a ragged horseshoe of severe, castle-like peaks. A few hundred yards in the distance, a lone mountain goat meanders along the barren, rocky ridge rising above the west side of the pass.

Ninety minutes later, after descending into and hiking up that basin, we reach the shore of windblown Dead Horse Lake, at around 10,900 feet, one of well over a thousand lakes in the High Uintas. The clouds thicken and the wind bares its teeth. The tall, foreboding cliffs and sheer buttresses that soar several hundred feet tall above the lake hint at the grueling ascent to Dead Horse Pass that lies ahead of us.

Beyond the lake, the trail immediately tilts sharply upward and weaves through blocks of talus, some easily weighing a ton or more. Then it grows even steeper and frequently consists of no more than a goat path of boot prints across sliding scree. I glance to my downhill side a few times just to mentally estimate how long a tumble might result from a slip of a foot.

A slow, steady grind brings us to Dead Horse Pass, at 11,600 feet. I tell Nate, “I think I know what killed the horse.”

The wind and downward arc of the air temperature puts an exclamation point on the fact that it’s 5 p.m. and daylight grows short. We take just a few minutes to drink and snack while looking back over the sea of peaks surrounding and beyond the basin of West Fork Blacks Fork Creek, and then turn around for our first look at the basin of Rock Creek ahead of us, several miles across. Then we hustle downhill, reaching Ledge Lake in under an hour, boiling water for dinner and laying out pads and bags for one last night under this megalopolis of stars.

In camp, Nate scrolls his phone screen surveying our route map, and says, “Oh, no.” I ask what that’s about and he says we have farther to walk tomorrow, our last day, than we both expected: 15 miles. And I respond with genuine surprise: “What?!”

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As we get ready to cook dinner at our campsite on the edge of meadow and open forest a couple minutes’ walk from the shore of the Fourth Chain Lake, at 10,900 feet in Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness, the sound of approaching voices prompts all four of us to look up in surprise. It’s our second evening in the High Uintas and the two hikers coming down the trail toward us are the first people we’ve encountered since we started hiking yesterday afternoon.

Moments later, a man and his college-age son see us and stop, the father remarking, “Well, there are other people out here after all.” He says they’ve come to try to summit Kings Peak, Utah’s highest—and like us, they’re taking the long way to Kings. We joke about our success at social distancing out here—it’s mid-July 2020 and the world remains gripped in the throes of a global pandemic, while we’ve hardly said a word or thought about the topic on the lips of everyone in civilization. Then they continue down the trail toward their camp at a lower lake.

In four decades of hiking and backpacking all over the country, I can probably count on my fingers the number of trips where I’d developed an expectation of not seeing many other people—leading to surprise when it happens. This encounter further reinforces our nascent impression of the Uintas as a wilderness where solitude may be the norm, even in July, first fostered when we arrived yesterday at the Uinta River Trailhead to find just two other vehicles there (and no people). We had passed another Uintas trailhead earlier and seen precisely zero vehicles.

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With my wife, Penny, our teenage daughter, Alex, and her childhood friend, Adele, I’m hiking a six-day, nearly 50-mile loop through the High Uintas Wilderness—and the adjective “High” in the name fits this place like a favorite, old sweater.

Nearly all of our walk will remain above 9,000 feet and at least half of it over 10,000 feet, including three passes over 11,000 and 12,000 feet. That’s higher than many multi-day hikes in the West, including much of Yosemite and the Teton Crest Trail, and it compares with (and provides good preparation for) backpacking the John Muir Trail and Wind River Range. On top of that, we plan to stand on the highest rock in Utah, atop 13,528-foot Kings Peak.

Just two days into it, this trip already feels like a much-needed escape from the stress and home confinement of 2020.

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Two 11,000-Foot Passes in One Day

Early on our third morning, I walk down to the lakeshore. The waters of the Fourth Chain Lake sit absolutely still, offering up a perfect, inverted reflection of the mountains. The air is calm and the temp comfortably cool as mosquitoes buzz around my head—not as thick as I’ve seen elsewhere, although they can be in the Uintas.

By mid-morning, we’re on the trail, hiking toward Roberts Pass—which, at around 11,100 feet, is just a short uphill stroll from the lake. Reaching the pass, Alex stops, looks around and says, “Is this the pass? That was it?”

After descending the other side, we hike mostly through forest until we reach a large meadow southeast of Lake Atwood. It’s past noon and everyone’s hungry—and there’s a good wind to beat down the mosquitoes—so we stop to sit on some rocks and eat. 

Our timing is perfect: As we finish up, a thunderhead rolls in, spitting rain; we start hiking as it turns to a steady rain. The shower lasts less than an hour, the sun re-emerging as we’re walking along Lake Atwood, a broad expanse of wind-whipped water below a row of soaring peaks.

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A tough climb brings us to Trail Rider Pass, the highest point we’ve reached so far on this trip, at around 11,700 feet. But the vista, looking back down to Lake Atwood and ahead into Painter Basin, takes the edge off our weariness. We sit a while, enjoying the view and some nourishment until the wind cools us, then continue down into Painter Basin, following large cairns with Trail 43 rarely visible on the rocky ground.

About eight miles from Fourth Chain Lake, we set our packs down on a patch of flat, not-too-rocky ground a short walk from one of many creeks that comprise the headwaters of the North Fork Uinta River in Painter Basin, an expansive, almost barren plain at 11,000 feet below the hulking behemoth of Kings Peak.

After dinner, with the long, pyramidal shadow of Kings Peak engulfing our campsite and most of Painter Basin, the setting sun ignites billowing clouds so tall they dwarf even the mountains, crowding the sky in a wide arc reaching to every horizon. The light show shifts colors and intensity every few minutes, continually improving on itself until, after maybe an hour, its last ember winks out. Neither the breeze nor the mosquitoes have quit yet as we crawl inside the tents at dusk.

Stepping outside briefly during the moonless night, I stare up at a clear sky riddled with stars. The Milky Way resembles a faint, blotchy streak of clouds. We’ll enjoy a sky like that both nights in Painter Basin.

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Hiking Kings Peak

The Uinta Mountains—which span nearly 60 miles in northeastern Utah, one of the rare mountain ranges that extend east-west—are home to an estimated 2,000 lakes, all of Utah’s peaks over 13,000 feet, and more than half of the state’s 12,000-footers. Outside popular destinations like Kings Peak, many trails and summits see little traffic, even though many pose no greater challenge than non-technical, off-trail hiking. Do some research and you’ll discover peaks where years pass between summit visitors. For backpackers and mountain climbers willing to put in the effort, in the High Uintas Wilderness—Utah’s largest wilderness area at over 450,000 acres—solitude is as plentiful as wildflowers.

On our fourth morning, we hike about a mile off-trail across the gently undulating, open terrain of Painter Basin to intersect Uinta High Line Trail 25, then follow it steadily uphill. Alex and Adele jump out front and set a strong pace. Most jolting to us: the number of people walking this trail. Over the next few hours, we’ll pass dozens of other hikers going up and coming down, virtually all of them sharing our objective. 

Reaching 12,700-foot Anderson Pass, we turn off the trail and begin the more than 800-vertical-foot hike-scramble up the north ridge of Kings Peak.

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“Bear Essentials: How to Store Food When Backcountry Camping”
“How to Prevent Hypothermia While Hiking and Backpacking”
“8 Pro Tips for Preventing Blisters When Hiking”
“5 Tips For Staying Warm and Dry While Hiking”
“7 Pro Tips For Keeping Your Backpacking Gear Dry”
“How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be”

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