America’s most stunning landscapes are protected within our 63 national parks, and some of the very finest scenery within our national heritage can be reached on dayhikes. Some of these hikes you may not have done yet or heard of. Others are famous, but there’s a reason for that: They are mind-blowingly gorgeous, so they stand out even in parks with multiple, five-star footpaths. You take these hikes for a one-of-a-kind experience.

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

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

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

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

South Kaibab Trail, Grand Canyon

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

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

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

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Upper Yosemite Falls, Yosemite

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

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

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

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Highline Trail, Glacier

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

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

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

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and backpacking the Continental Divide Trail through Glacier.

Angels Landing and West Rim Trail, Zion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cascade Pass and Sahale Arm, North Cascades

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

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

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

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

Garnet Canyon, Grand Teton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Half Dome, Yosemite

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

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

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

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

Navajo Knobs Trail, Capitol Reef

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

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

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

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Clingmans Dome and Appalachian Trail, Great Smoky Mountains

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

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

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

Third Beach to Strawberry Point, Olympic

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

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

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

The Pacific Northwest is a wet place.
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Delicate Arch at Sunset, Arches

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

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

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

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

Skyline Trail, Mount Rainier

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

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

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

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

Dawson-Pitamakan Passes Loop, Glacier

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

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

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

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

Anhinga Trail, Everglades

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

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

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

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Lake Solitude, Grand Teton

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

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

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

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

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So you’re a novice backpacker, or you’re planning your first backpacking trip in a big, Western national park, or you have kids you want to take on a relatively easy backpacking trip—and you want to sample the best scenery, trails, and backcountry campsites that experienced backpackers get to enjoy in our national parks. No worries. These 10 trips in Grand Teton, Zion, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Olympic, Rocky Mountain, Mount Rainier, Canyonlands, and two in Yosemite (photo above) are ideal for beginners and families, with easy to moderately difficult days and simple logistics, while delivering the spectacular vistas that each of these parks is famous for.

In fact, two of them (Yosemite and Grand Teton) were among the very first multi-day hikes I took as a novice backpacker more than three decades ago, and seven (Zion, Grand Teton, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Olympic, Mount Rainier, and Rocky Mountain) were among my kids’ earliest trips, which we took when they ranged in age from six to 10. They are also among the nicest multi-day hikes I’ve taken over more than three decades (and counting) of carrying a backpack, including the 10 years I spent as a field editor for Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog.

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

Besides delivering on all you expect from a backpacking trip in a flagship national park, any of these outings will help prepare you for bigger, more ambitious adventures. And like many stories at this blog, much of this one is free for anyone to read, but reading it all and seeing the entire list of backpacking trips is an exclusive benefit for paid subscribers to The Big Outside.

I can help you plan any of them—or any trip you read about at this blog, including beginner-friendly backpacking trips not in national parks, avoiding the need to reserve a permit months in advance. See my Custom Trip Planning page.

See also my stories “The 10 Best National Park Backpacking Trips,” “10 Tips for Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit,” “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” and “10 Tips for Taking Kids on Their First Backpacking Trip.”

Please tell me what you think of these trip ideas or offer your own in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Grand Teton’s Paintbrush-Cascade Canyons Loop

Distance: 19.7 miles
Difficulty: Moderate

The 19.7-mile loop linking up Paintbrush and Cascade canyons from String Lake offers something of a highlights reel of Grand Teton National Park and is undoubtedly among the most scenic sub-20-mile, multi-day hikes in the National Park System. With nearly 4,000 feet of elevation gain and loss, the loop crosses one of the highest points reached via trail in the park, 10,720-foot Paintbrush Divide, where the panorama takes in a jagged skyline featuring some of the highest summits in the Tetons. It also passes by beloved Lake Solitude, nestled in a cirque of cliffs, and below the striped cliffs of Paintbrush Canyon and waterfalls and soaring peaks of Cascade Canyon.

We backpacked this popular loop over three days with our kids when they were young, camping at Upper Paintbrush the first night and North Fork Cascade the second, and seeing moose in Cascade Canyon; I’ve also dayhiked it. It can be hiked in either direction—and the Paintbrush side is steeper and more strenuous whether going up or down it. But by going counter-clockwise, you enjoy a steady view of the Grand Teton looming high above the North Fork of Cascade Canyon; and you finish down Cascade Canyon, where most of the group can avoid the final slog through the woods and take the boat shuttle across Jenny Lake—with in-your-face views of the peaks—while someone hikes the last 45 minutes to retrieve the car at String Lake.

Click here now to get my expert e-book
to this beginner-friendly backpacking trip in Grand Teton National Park.

I can personally help you plan this trip (or any trip you read about at my blog), from permit to daily hiking plan, through my custom trip planning; click here to learn how—and to read hundreds of comments from others who’ve received my custom trip planning, many of which were for backpacking in the Tetons.

See all stories about backpacking in Grand Teton National Park at The Big Outside (some of which require a paid subscription to read in full), including “A Wonderful Obsession: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail,” “The 5 Best Backpacking Trips in Grand Teton National Park,” “How to Get a Permit to Backpack the Teton Crest Trail,” and “Walking Familiar Ground: Reliving Old Memories and Making New Ones on the Teton Crest Trail” about taking our kids at young ages on the TCT.

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The Best First Trip in the Grand Canyon

Distance: 21 to 23.5 miles
Difficulty: Moderate to strenuous

While this is one of the most strenuous trips on this list, for beginner backpackers or families with good stamina who are up for a somewhat bigger challenge, crossing the Grand Canyon from rim to rim constitutes one of the most scenically astonishing experiences in the entire National Park System. Beginning at either the South or North Rim, you will descend through a constantly changing environment and multiple layers of geology, from vistas encompassing a huge swath of the canyon to intimate side canyons with rushing creeks and waterfalls.

The distance ranges from 21 to 23.5 miles depending on whether you combine the South Kaibab Trail or Bright Angel Trail with the North Kaibab Trail, and the cumulative elevation gain and loss is well over 10,000 feet. Many backpackers spread it over three days. Still, water sources are regular and you’re hiking the best-constructed trails in the entire canyon.

Want a shorter Grand Canyon sampler? Hike 16.5 miles rim to river to rim: down the South Kaibab Trail and up the Bright Angel Trail over two or three days, with one night at Bright Angel Campground on the Colorado River and a possible second night at Havasupai Gardens Campground along the Bright Angel Trail to break up the long climb back up from the river.

See my story “Fit to Be Tired: Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in a Day” for photos from this trip and my tale of dayhiking rim to rim, “How to Get a Permit to Backpack in the Grand Canyon,” and “10 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do.”

Click here now for my expert e-book to backpacking the Grand Canyon rim to rim.

The Magnificent Heart of Yosemite

Distance: 37.2 miles (with shorter options)
Difficulty: Moderate

Anyone looking for a five-star introduction to backpacking in Yosemite that hits marquis highlights and is beginner friendly need look no further than this 37.2-mile loop from Yosemite Valley. From the popular Happy Isles Trailhead at the east end of The Valley, it winds through the core of the park, starting with ascending the Mist Trail past 317-foot Vernal Fall—which rains a heavy mist on hikers—and thunderous, 594-foot Nevada Fall. The distance includes the optional, out-and-back climb of the steep and exposed cable route up Half Dome, where the summit view of Yosemite Valley is arguably only outdone by the view you’ll get later on the hike from a thousand feet higher on the knife-edge summit ridge of Clouds Rest.

From a campsite on the edge of the alpine meadows at Sunrise, you’ll get a sweeping view of the granite castles of the Cathedral Range. And the hike, spread over four to five days, follows a couple stretches of the world-famous John Muir Trail, descending it on the last day past a calendar-photo vista of Half Dome, Liberty Cap, and Nevada Fall.

See my story “Where to Backpack First Time in Yosemite” for a description of this route, and a much more detailed description with complete trip-planning guidance in my e-book “The Best First Backpacking Trip in Yosemite,” which also covers alternate multi-day hiking itineraries beginning and ending at various trailheads ringing this core area of the park, including routes from Tuolumne Meadows and stunning Tenaya Lake. Click here to see all e-books available at The Big Outside, including three trips in Yosemite.

This is Yosemite’s most popular area for backpacking; permits are hard to get. See “How to Get a Yosemite or High Sierra Wilderness Permit.”

And check out “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in Yosemite,” “Hiking Half Dome: How to Do It Right and Get a Permit,” and all stories about backpacking in Yosemite at The Big Outside.

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

Glacier’s Glorious Gunsight Pass Trail

Distance: 20 miles
Difficulty: Moderate

Much of the more than 700 miles of trails in one-million-acre Glacier National Park traverse remote wilderness, requiring a commitment of multiple days backpacking in northern mountains thick with grizzly bears, where weather can shift. But the 20-mile traverse of the Gunsight Pass Trail, from Gunsight Pass Trailhead to Lake McDonald Lodge, is one of the logistically easiest and shortest multi-day hikes in the park. Both trailheads are on the Going-to-the-Sun Road and served by the park’s free shuttle bus.

Most of all, though, the hike takes in some of the park’s best scenery, including one of its largest rivers of ice, the Blackfoot Glacier (seen from a distance), scores of waterfalls, and backcountry camps at Gunsight Lake and Lake Ellen Wilson that rank among the prettiest in the park.

Spread it out over four days and add the optional, 6.6-mile, out-and-back side hike to Sperry Glacier—which involves more than 1,700 vertical feet of up and down and some steep sections, making it a relatively demanding side hike for many adults and children. That stunning trail ascends steadily across a barren, rocky, more recently deglaciated landscape, and passes through a narrow notch in the cliffs at Comeau Pass to reach an overlook of the Sperry Glacier.

Unlike trails around Logan Pass and Many Glacier, this route is not crowded with dayhikers. I’ve backpacked it twice—the second time with our kids when they were nine and seven, taking three days—and saw mountain goats near Gunsight Pass both times. The moderately graded trail never gets terribly steep, so it feels easier than the distances suggest, although the long descent to Lake McDonald is a thigh-pounder; still, hike it east to west because in the other direction, the day one uphill from Lake McDonald would be a strenuous and long slog, much of it exposed to the hot sun.

See my story “Jagged Peaks and Wild Goats: Backpacking Glacier’s Gunsight Pass Trail,” “5 Reasons You Must Backpack in Glacier National Park,” “How to Get a Permit to Backpack in Glacier National Park,” “10 Backpacking Trips for Solitude in Glacier National Park,” and all stories about backpacking in Glacier at The Big Outside.

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

Zion’s Otherworldly West Rim Trail

Distance: 14 miles
Difficulty: Moderate

Only in a national park that features The Narrows—which, admittedly, ranks hands-down as one of the best backpacking trips in America and certainly one of the best in the Southwest—could the West Rim Trail be overshadowed. More than a few longtime Zion backcountry denizens have told me the West Rim is their favorite trail in the park—and having dayhiked and backpacked it, I’d say it is, in many ways, just as enchanting as The Narrows.

From the plateau on the trail’s upper sections, you overlook a labyrinth of white-walled canyons and green-topped mesas. Then the trail drops about 2,500 feet in 4.7 miles, zigzagging down a cliff face and through a landscape of towering beehive rock formations and walls streaked in vivid burgundy and salmon hues.

The approximately 14-mile, one-way, north-to-south, mostly downhill hike from Lava Point on Kolob Terrace Road to the Grotto Trailhead in Zion Canyon—requiring a shuttle (available in Springdale)—can be done in one day by fit hikers. But an overnight at one of the campsites along the West Rim Trail lets you see this incomparable scenery in the glorious light of early morning and at sunset, and makes it a more feasible objective for families and novice backpackers. Add just just under a mile for the side hike up Angels Landing, one of the most spectacular and iconic summits in the National Park System.

See my stories about a family backpacking trip on the West Rim Trail, a 50-mile dayhike across Zion that included the West Rim Trail, my e-book to a two-day backpacking trip through Zion’s incomparable Narrows (another relatively beginner-friendly trip), and all stories about Zion at The Big Outside.

See also “7 Great Southwest Backpacking Trips for Beginners,” and read this story about another easy, one- or two-night hike in Capitol Reef National Park’s Spring Canyon.

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The Wild Olympic Coast

Distance: 17.5 miles
Difficulty: Easy to Moderate

Along the 73 miles of seashore within Olympic National Park, you can’t buy fried seafood, ice cream, or a T-shirt. The longest strip of protected wilderness coastline in the contiguous United States, it’s one of the few remaining pieces of ocean-view real estate in the Lower 48 that the explorer Capt. George Vancouver would recognize.

Backpacking the 17.5-mile southern stretch of the Olympic coast from the Hoh River north to La Push Road became one of my kids’ most memorable backpacking trips—mostly for the hours they spent playing in tide pools on the beach (they were nine and seven at the time). But it’s also a hike any adults would find gorgeous and fascinating.

You will walk surprisingly rugged and muddy overland trails in the deep shade of giant trees in one of Earth’s largest virgin temperature rainforests, and scale rope ladders dangling down eroding headlands. Along the beach, you will pass tide pools and boulders teeming with sea stars, mussels, and sea anemones, with sometimes mist-shrouded views of scores of tall stone pinnacles, called sea stacks, rising out of the ocean, some close enough to walk to them at low tide. You may sight seals, sea otters, whales (and to my kids’ delight, lots of slugs).

A fun, beautiful, beginner- and family-friendly trip, especially with school-age kids, it’s also less crowded than the more popular northern stretch of the Olympic coast, an easier permit to obtain—and one of America’s most unique backpacking adventures.

See my story “The Wildest Shore: Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast.”

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

See also “7 Great Southwest Backpacking Trips for Beginners,” and all stories about national park trips and family adventures at The Big Outside.

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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Olympic, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Glacier, Zion, Grand Teton, Mount Rainier, Canyonlands, Sequoia, Great Smoky Mountains. To backpackers, these names read like a list of America’s greatest cathedrals in nature—and no surprise, because these parks harbor some of the most scenic wilderness trails in the country. Hike any of them and it will earn a spot on your personal top-10 list. Knock off every trip on this list and you will experience some of the finest landscapes not only in the nation, but on the planet.

Over the past three decades—including the 10 years I was a field editor for Backpacker magazine and longer running this blog—I’ve had the good fortune of backpacking dozens of trips in our national parks—and multiple trips in the most-beloved parks. Countless thousands of miles later, this list represents my picks for the very best multi-day hikes you will find in America’s national parks.

Ready to be blown away? Read on and discover your next unforgettable trip.

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 descriptions below have links to feature-length stories about those trips, with numerous photos and often a video. While anyone can read part of those stories for free, reading them in full—including tips and details on planning those trips—is an exclusive benefit for paid subscribers to The Big Outside.

See my E-Books page for my detailed, expert e-books to several of the trips described below, and my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan any trip you read about at my blog, customizing it to your preferences and answering all of your questions about it.

Remember that all of these parks require a backcountry permit, which can be hard to get; apply for a permit reservation as soon as they become available, often months in advance. Find the smartest strategies for navigating that application process in my “10 Tips For Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit.”

Please share your thoughts or questions and offer your own trip suggestions in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments and answer any questions.

Want to start with a fairly easy trip?
See “10 Perfect National Park Backpacking Trips for Beginners.”

The Wild Olympic Coast

Distance: 17.5 miles, 2 to 3 days
Why It’s Unique: Sea stacks, giant trees, beach campsites, exciting rope ladders, abundant sea life.

Backpacking the 17.5-mile southern stretch of Olympic National Park’s 73-mile-long wilderness coastline, you will walk in the shadow of scores of sea stacks rising up to 200 feet out of the ocean and giant trees in one of Earth’s largest virgin temperature rainforests. You will see tide pools and boulders teeming with sea stars, mussels, and sea anemones while hiking along the beach, traverse surprisingly rugged and muddy overland trails, and scale rope ladders dangling down eroding headlands.

You also just may spot seals, sea otters, and whales. A fun, beginner- and family-friendly trip, especially with school-age kids, it’s also less crowded than the more popular northern stretch of the Olympic coast and a relatively easier permit to obtain.

See my story “The Wildest Shore: Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast.”

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Grand Canyon Traverse

Distance: 21 to 23.5 miles, 2 to 3 days
Why It’s Unique: Incomparable canyon vistas, geology older than life on Earth, unforgettable campsites, desert oases and wildflowers.

Backpacking across the Grand Canyon via either of two possible routes on the three main “corridor” trails—the South Kaibab or Bright Angel with the North Kaibab—is truly a hike like no other in the world. From long vistas spanning the Grand Canyon’s staggering vastness of towering rock formations and almost 40 geologic layers, to immersion in tributary canyons with soaring walls and waterfalls, your perspective constantly changes. Every backpacker should take this trek or other multi-day hikes in the Big Ditch.

While there are no “easy” trips that descend into the Grand Canyon, this route is definitely the most amenable for beginner backpackers or first-timers there. My expert e-book “The Best First Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon” lays out in detail everything you need to know to plan and take this trip.

But given the enormous demand for backcountry permits on those three trails, other options are easier to get a permit for. Experienced backpackers seeking a higher-level adventure may want to check out my stories “Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Thunder River-Deer Creek Loop,” “‘Let’s Talk Water:’ Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Gems,” “Not Quite Impassable: Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch Loop,” and “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon,” and my expert e-book to the last one, also titled “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon.”

See “10 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do,” “5 Reasons You Must Backpack in the Grand Canyon,” “How to Get a Permit to Backpack in the Grand Canyon,” 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 the easier trip described above, “The Best First Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon.”

Yosemite South of Tuolumne Meadows

Distance: 65 to 74 miles, 5 to 8 days
Why It’s Unique: Famous landmarks like Half Dome, Clouds Rest, Tenaya Lake, Nevada Fall, and Tuolumne Meadows, plus some of Yosemite’s most-remote wilderness.

This just may be the perfect Yosemite backpacking trip: You see iconic vistas like the view from atop the sheer, 2,000-foot Northwest Face of Half Dome, and enjoy the solitude and scenery of one of Yosemite’s largest chunks of wilderness, the remote Clark Range in the park’s southeast quadrant.

Besides Half Dome, this 65-mile hike’s highlights include another of the best summits in the park, Clouds Rest (1,000 feet higher than Half Dome); thunderous, 594-foot-tall Nevada Fall; the stunning granite domes of Tuolumne and Tenaya Lake and the peaks of the Vogelsang area; the highest pass crossed by a trail in Yosemite, Red Peak Pass in the Clark Range; and the lakes and creeks at the headwaters of the Merced River. Permit and camping regulations and how you plan out the daily itinerary dictate whether you hike 65 or 74 miles (the latter involving more but shorter days as well as a bit of backtracking, but following a more moderate itinerary).

See my story about that trip, “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking South of Tuolumne Meadows,” which provides basic details on planning it as a rigorous 65-mile hike (and requires a subscription to read in full); and my expert e-book “The Best Backpacking Trip in Yosemite,” which gets into much greater detail about planning and taking that trip on a moderate 74-mile itinerary.

See also my story about a comparably remote and gorgeous, 87-mile hike, “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite,” and my expert e-book to that trip, “The Best Remote and Uncrowded Backpacking Trip in Yosemite,” which includes shorter variations of it.

Backpackers with less experience or hitting Yosemite for the first time may prefer to check out my story “Where to Backpack First Time in Yosemite” and my very popular e-book “The Best First Backpacking Trip in Yosemite.”

Check out “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in Yosemite,” “Backpacking Yosemite: What You Need to Know,” and all stories about backpacking in Yosemite at The Big Outside.

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

Glacier’s Northern Loop Made Better

Distance: 65 miles, 5 to 6 days
Why It’s Unique: Megafauna like mountain goats, bighorn sheep, moose, elk, and grizzly and black bears, breathtaking mountain scenery, primal wilderness.

Few places in the continental United States harbor the breadth of megafauna found in Glacier. You will likely see mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, and moose—and quite possibly black and grizzly bears. Neck-craning cliffs slash into Montana’s big sky, and glaciers pour down mountainsides.

This 65-mile route expands on the popular, 52-mile Northern Loop from Many Glacier, adding Piegan Pass and the entire Highline Trail to create arguably the best multi-day hike in Glacier. It also features the Many Glacier area, Stoney Indian Pass, the Ptarmigan Wall and Ptarmigan Tunnel, and some of the park’s finest lakes and most-remote wilderness. Have a sense of urgency about this trip: The park’s glaciers are on the fast track to extinction.

Get my expert e-books to backpacking Glacier’s Northern Loop and the Continental Divide Trail through Glacier.

See my story “Descending the Food Chain: Backpacking Glacier National Park’s Northern Loop,” and my expert e-book “The Best Backpacking Trip in Glacier National Park,” which covers all the details on planning that trip, including my tips on the best way to do it and best campsites.

See also “How to Get a Permit to Backpack in Glacier National Park.”

A traverse through Glacier on the Continental Divide Trail offers a similarly complete Glacier experience, overlapping part of the Northern Loop while taking in other areas that rank among the prettiest corners of the park. See my stories “Wildness All Around You: Backpacking the CDT Through Glacier” and “Déjà vu All Over Again: Backpacking in Glacier National Park,” my e-book “Backpacking the Continental Divide Trail Through Glacier National Park,” and all stories about backpacking in Glacier at The Big Outside.

I’ve helped many readers plan unforgettable backpacking and hiking trips.
Want my help with yours? Click here now.

Zion’s Narrows

Distance: 16 miles, 2 days
Why It’s Unique: A narrow canyon with towering, multi-hued walls, hanging gardens, and pools to wade.

Little wonder that Zion’s Narrows is one of the most sought-after backcountry permits in the National Park System. With sandstone walls that rise up to a thousand feet tall and close in to just 20 to 30 feet apart, the Narrows of the North Fork of the Virgin River has few, if any rivals among the canyons of the Southwest.

Hiking in shallow water for much of the route’s 16 miles, you’ll gradually descend deeper and deeper as the canyon scenery evolves, marveling at the sight of water pouring from solid rock and enjoying one of your most unusual nights of backcountry camping.

Backpacking The Narrows from top to bottom delivers a far superior experience to dayhiking it partway up from the bottom, with real solitude and some of the trip’s best scenery and tightest narrows in the upper canyon, which bottom-up dayhikers never see.

Read 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.”

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plus a FREE e-book. Join now!

The Teton Crest Trail

Distance: 27-39 miles, multiple variations, 3 to 5 days
Why It’s Unique: Big views for much of its distance, beautiful wildflowers and campsites, and that incomparable, mind-boggling Tetons skyline.

Unquestionably one of America’s premier multi-day treks, the Teton Crest Trail stays above treeline for much of its traverse through the range, with nearly constant, long views of the peaks. Certain spots along the TCT have entered the place-name vocabularies of Tetons aficionados: Death Canyon Shelf, Hurricane Pass, the South and North Forks of Cascade Canyon, Lake Solitude, and Paintbrush Divide, one of the highest points reached by trail in the park, at nearly 11,000 feet.

After more than 20 trips in the Tetons backpacking, climbing, and dayhiking—and most recently backpacking the Teton Crest Trail again in August 2019, with three friends who’d never been on the TCT and loved it every step of the way—I have learned that you can return repeatedly and never fail to be awed by these peaks.

I have also learned the ins and outs of every aspect of this trek, from successfully getting one of the most sought-after backcountry permits in the entire National Park System, to the pros and cons of the various possible hiking itineraries. I share my expert tips in my e-book “The Complete Guide to Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail in Grand Teton National Park.”

I can also personally help you plan a Teton Crest Trail hike (or any trip you read about at my blog), from experience-based tips on navigating the permit process to a daily hiking itinerary. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how—and to read comments from hundreds of readers like you who’ve used my custom trip planning, many of them for the Teton Crest Trail.

See all stories about backpacking the Teton Crest Trail at The Big Outside, including “How to Get a Permit to Backpack the Teton Crest Trail,” “The 5 Best Backpacking Trips in Grand Teton National Park,” and “A Wonderful Obsession: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail,” about my most-recent trip on the TCT.

Didn’t get a Tetons permit? Check out an excellent hike in its neighbor park. See my story, “In Hot (and Cold) Water: Backpacking Yellowstone’s Bechler Canyon.”

Itching to backpack in the Tetons? See my e-books to the Teton Crest Trail
and the best short backpacking trip in Grand Teton National Park.

Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail

Distance: 93 miles, 8 to 10 days
Why It’s Unique: Roaring rivers gray with glacial “flour,” countless waterfalls, giant trees, incomparable wildflowers, and ever-changing views of ice- and snow-cloaked Mount Rainier.

One of America’s best multi-day hikes—especially of more than a week—the Wonderland Trail makes a 93-mile, strenuously up-and-down circuit of the peak widely considered the queen of the Pacific Northwest, if not of the entire Lower 48: 14,411-foot Mount Rainier.

The Mountain boggles the mind. Seeing it appear as you round a bend can stop you in your tracks in disbelief over its staggering relief. The Wonderland Trail features innumerable waterfalls and views of Rainier, and some of the best wildflower meadows you will ever walk through.

Don’t underestimate this trip’s strenuousness: With a cumulative elevation gain and loss of over 44,000 feet, the trail regularly dishes up 2,000-foot and 3,000-foot ascents and descents. But the difficulty also depends on planning logistics like which direction you hike the loop and where to begin it, all of which I cover in detail in my expert e-book “The Complete Guide to Backpacking the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park.”

Plus, there isn’t another multi-day hike quite like it.

See my stories “5 Reasons You Must Backpack Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail,” “How to Get a Permit to Backpack Rainier’s Wonderland Trail” and “An American Gem: Backpacking Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail,” about a recent 77-mile hike on what I consider the WT’s best sections (a route described as one of the alternate itineraries in my e-book), and “Wildflowers, Waterfalls, and Giant Slugs at Mount Rainier,” about a three-day, 22-mile family backpacking trip from Mowich Lake to Sunrise.

If you strike out on a Wonderland permit, consider another big multi-day hike a bit farther north in Washington’s Cascades that’s described in my story, “Primal Wild: Backpacking 80 Miles Through the North Cascades.”

Click here now to get my expert e-book
“The Complete Guide to Backpacking the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park.”

The Needles District of Canyonlands

Distance: 7 to 20+ miles, 2 to 3 days
Why It’s Unique: 300-foot-tall, candlestick-like pinnacles, natural arches, narrow slot canyons.

Waves of rippling rock look like a petrified ocean on a red planet. Sandstone spires rise up to 300 feet tall, with giant heads bigger around than the column on which they sit. Stratified cliffs stretch for miles.

The Needles District doesn’t have the severe, strenuous elevation gain and loss endemic to backpacking in the Grand Canyon and some other Southwest canyons. What it does have is fascinating geology that provides something of a Southwest canyons highlights tour.

Scarce water sources pose the biggest challenge, but the distances between them aren’t too great to prevent inexperienced backpackers from exploring Chesler Park and Big Spring, Squaw, and Lost canyons, as well as the Peekaboo Trail.

This relatively easy hike, with a variety of route options, explores a landscape that’s different in many ways from other favorite corners of the Southwest canyon country.

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

Are you up for a more difficult and remote multi-day hike with greater solitude and mind-blowing scenery? Check out my story “Farther Than It Looks: Backpacking the Canyonlands Maze.”

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

Sequoia’s Mineral King Area

Distance: 40 miles, 4 to 6 days
Why It’s Unique: Beautiful lakes and campsites, jagged granite peaks, passes over 11,000 feet, and backcountry groves of giant sequoias.

Looking for a full-value High Sierra backpacking adventure?

This 40-mile loop from Sequoia’s Mineral King area delivers (see lead photo at top of story), from passes up to 11,630 feet high with sweeping views of the majestic southern High Sierra to tranquil backcountry groves of giant sequoias that you may have all to yourselves.

I found the scenery photogenic around every turn, with row upon row of huge, granite spires looming thousands of feet above deep canyons, and campsites beside crystalline mountain lakes reflecting cliffs and razor-sharp peaks—and campsites that made my list of the 25 best spots I’ve ever slept in the backcountry.

While the John Muir Trail and popular paths in Yosemite do not typically offer much solitude, this trip shows a quieter side of the High Sierra without compromising on natural beauty.

See my story “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park.”

I’ve helped many readers plan this trip in Sequoia and others in the High Sierra. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help plan your next trip.

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

Bottom to Top in the Great Smoky Mountains

Distance: 34 miles, 3 to 4 days
Why It’s Unique: Unparalleled forest diversity, long views from the Appalachian Trail, and lovely streams and cascades.

While the Great Smokies may appear out of place on a list of Western national parks, there are good reasons why these forested mountains are beloved by backpackers.

I discovered their magic on a 34-mile loop from near Fontana Lake up to a stretch of the Appalachian Trail along the park’s crest. That grand tour of this half-million-acre park included rocky streams tumbling through cascades; some of the 1,600 species of flowering plants (76 listed as threatened or endangered); and gazing out over an ocean of blue ridges from 6,643-foot Clingmans Dome and the park’s highest bald, 5,920-foot Andrews Bald.

I also found a surprising degree of solitude, even during the fall foliage season.

See my story “In the Garden of Eden: Backpacking the Great Smoky Mountains” and all stories about hiking and backpacking in western North Carolina at The Big Outside.

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.”

See all stories with expert backpacking tips at The Big Outside.

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We can all remember specific places that we consider the best days of hiking we’ve ever had. I’ve been exceptionally fortunate: I have hiked many trails in America and around the world that would probably make anyone’s list of most-scenic hikes. From numerous trips in iconic national parks like Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon, and Glacier to the John Muir Trail and Teton Crest Trail and some of the world’s great treks, including the Alta Via 2 in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, the Tour du Mont Blanc, New Zealand’s Tongariro Alpine Crossing, Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls trails, and the icy and jagged mountains of Norway and Patagonia, here’s a list of the hands-down prettiest days I’ve ever spent walking dirt and rock footpaths.

I think you’ll find some places in here to add to your must-do list.

I’ve taken these adventures over the course of more than three decades working as an outdoor writer and photographer, formerly as Northwest Editor of Backpacking magazine for 10 years and even longer running this blog. Many of the photos in this story are from adventures widely recognized as classics, while others are from places you may not have heard of before.

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 of my most scenic days of hiking runs to 39—yep, I know that seems like a lot of picks for a list of best days ever. (You should see some of the days I cut from this story.) I think as you go through this list of truly great hikes, you’ll understand my struggle to winnow it any further as you try to decide which of them to prioritize for your own to-do list. I think I’m giving you a whole lot of great choices.

Scroll through the photos and short anecdotes from each trip. They include links to stories at The Big Outside about those places, with my tips and information on how to plan those trips. Like many stories at this blog, part of those stories are free for anyone to read, but reading them in full, including my tips and information on how to plan those trips, is an exclusive benefit for paid subscribers to The Big Outside.

And I can help you plan any of these trips or any other you read about at this blog—giving you the benefit of my many years 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 and the world’s best backpacking trips and treks.

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

Happy trails.

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Hiking Yosemite’s Clouds Rest and Half Dome

Traversing the slender summit ridge of 9,926-foot Clouds Rest, we walked what felt like a high wire between sphincter-puckering abysses in the heart of Yosemite National Park. Below one elbow, a drop-off of several hundred feet; on the other side, 4,000 feet—that’s a thousand feet taller than the face of El Capitan. It’s arguably the best summit view in Yosemite and one of the best reached by a trail in all of California’s High Sierra. On the first day of a 151-mile grand tour of that flagship park, four of us walked from the granite-framed shores of Tenaya Lake over Clouds Rest and on to one of America’s most famous summits: Half Dome. And after all that, we still weren’t even finished for the day.

See my story about that hike, “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking South of Tuolumne Meadows,” “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in Yosemite,” “The 12 Best Dayhikes in Yosemite,” “Backpacking Yosemite: What You Need to Know,” “How to Get a Yosemite or High Sierra Wilderness Permit,” and all stories about backpacking in Yosemite at The Big Outside.

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

Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim

We breezed down the narrow crest of the Grand Canyon’s South Kaibab Trail as the first light of day fell on one of the planet’s most magnificent and unfathomable landscapes: a mile-deep chasm with twisting side canyons, walls stacked in multi-colored layers, and an army of stone towers each standing thousands of feet tall. Three friends and I walked across the canyon from the South Rim to the North Rim, and back again—42 miles with over 22,000 feet of up and down—in one very long day. I’ve repeated the r2r2r running and hiking in one day and hiking it over two days. Wherever I hike for the rest of my life, I’m sure I’ll always rank hiking rim to rim among my greatest trail days ever.

See my stories “Fit to be Tired: Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in a Day,” “How to Hike the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in a Day,” “A Grand Ambition, or April Fools? Dayhiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim,” “9 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do,” and all stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

Do your Grand Canyon hike right with these expert e-books:
“The Best First Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon”
“The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon”
“The Complete Guide to Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim”

Trekking the Alta Via 2 in the Pale di San Martino, Dolomite Mountains

Often described as “the world’s most beautiful trail,” the Alta Via 2 traces a roughly 112-mile/180km path through northern Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, which thrust a dizzying array of spires and serrated peaks into the sky, gleaming like polished jewels in sunshine and virtually pulsing with the salmon hue of evening alpenglow. On my family’s hut-to-hut trek of a 39-mile/62km section of the AV 2, jaw-dropping views became routine.

But on the day we hiked from the Rosetta Hut (lead photo at top of story), in the sub-range known as the Pale di San Martino, down to the small mountain town of San Martino di Castrozza, we walked below one sheer limestone tower after another on a path that clung to vertiginous mountainsides, sometimes chopped from the face of a cliff.

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

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Walking Across Zion

From the red-rock Kolob Canyons in the park’s northwest corner to the 2,000-foot, creamy white and blazing burgundy cliffs of Zion Canyon, Zion National Park harbors some of the most uniquely beautiful and beloved natural real estate in the entire National Park System. Hiking 50 miles across the entire park in a day, tagging highlights like Angels Landing and the West Rim Trail, seemed like the perfect way to experience a park without peer. That’s what several friends and I figured, anyway. Our adventure was proof that, even when events don’t proceed quite as planned, it can be a great day.

See my story “Mid-Life Crisis: Hiking 50 Miles Across Zion in a Day,” “The 10 Best Hikes in Zion National Park,” and all stories about Zion National Park at The Big Outside.

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Trekking Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls Trails

Nearly every day that my family spent trekking hut to hut on Iceland’s 34-mile/55km Laugavegur Trail and 15.5-mile/25km Fimmvörðuháls Trail struck me as one of the prettiest days of hiking I’ve ever had.

Among those seven days of hiking, I feel compelled to spotlight four: The morning we spent dayhiking the peak named Bláhnúkur, from the hut at Landmannalaugar in Iceland’s Central Highlands (see the lead photo in this story); our third day on the Laugavegur, hiking from Álftavatn to Emstrur (photo above); and both days on the magnificent Fimmvörðuháls, hiking the spine of a narrow crest between two deep chasms and crossing a moonscape created by recent volcanic eruptions (photo at left) on day one, followed by descending a river valley past more than two dozen big, powerful waterfalls one after another—probably the single best waterfalls trail I’ve ever seen.

My advice: Just go trek both the Laugavegur and the Fimmvörðuháls trails.

See my feature story about my family’s hut trek on these two trails, “A Family Hikes Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls Trails,” “9 Great Hikes and Walks Along Iceland’s Ring Road,” and “Earth, Wind, and Fire: A Journey to the Planet’s Beginnings in Iceland.”

Hike one of the world’s great treks using my e-book
“The Complete Guide to Trekking Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls Trails.”

Hiking from Many Glacier to Logan Pass, Glacier National Park

In the cool hours of early morning, my hiking partner and I set out from the Many Glacier complex on the east side of the park, heading toward Swiftcurrent Pass and eventually Logan Pass on the Going-to-the-Sun Road: a traverse of 15.2 miles with about 2,000 feet of uphill. Neither of us had hiked these trails before, so we carried no expectations—and were amazed at every turn.

We walked below towering cliffs spliced by ribbon waterfalls, climbed to a notch hundreds of feet above the Grinnell Glacier, and followed the Highline Trail, an alpine footpath with sweeping views of the Northern Rockies where sightings of mountain goats and bighorn sheep are common.

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

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

Trekking the Tour du Mont Blanc in the Alps

Some hikes need no introduction. The Tour du Mont Blanc is one of them. One of the most storied, popular, and step-for-step majestic trails on the planet, the roughly 105-mile (170k) footpath around the “Monarch of the Alps,” 15,771-foot (4807m) Mont Blanc, passes through three countries—France, Italy, and Switzerland—delivering a cultural and culinary experience to match the scenery.

While there are few mediocre kilometers on the trek, one of our nine days walking it with family and friends really stood out scenically: day four, hiking from the Rifugio Elizabetta Soldini mountain hut into the resort town of Courmayeur, Italy, below a staggering array of knife-like spires.

See my story “Hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc at an 80-Year-Old Snail’s Pace.”

Save yourself a lot of time and avoid mistakes.
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Backpacking the John Muir Trail from Evolution Basin to Mather Pass

The John Muir Trail, aka “America’s Most Beautiful Trail,” is a 211-mile journey through one of the most picturesque mountain ranges in the country—the High Sierra, which Ansel Adams dubbed “The Range of Light.” When a few friends and I knocked off the JMT in a week, we packed two or three normal days of hiking into each day. (The scenery was morphine for our aching feet.)

But I have to give the edge to the day we ambulated from Evolution Lake in Kings Canyon National Park all the way to the Upper Basin of the South Fork Kings River: past the glassy lakes of the Evolution Basin, over 11,955-foot Muir Pass, through LeConte Canyon with its soaring granite walls, and over 12,100-foot Mather Pass, which we crossed as the setting sun set puffy clouds overhead afire.

I more recently returned to the Evolution Basin on a 130-mile hike, much of it on the JMT, and, yea, it’s still just as pretty as ever.

See all stories about backpacking the John Muir Trail at The Big Outside, including “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail: What You Need to Know,” “How to Get a John Muir Trail Wilderness Permit,” “10 Great Section Hikes on the John Muir Trail,” and “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail in Seven Days: Amazing Experience, or Certifiably Insane?“

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

Two Days Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail

Having backpacked the Teton Crest Trail multiple times and taken perhaps two dozen hiking, climbing, and backcountry skiing trips throughout the Teton Range, I’ve gotten to know these incomparable peaks pretty well. But the two sections of the TCT that stand out scenically for me are the sections from Death Canyon Shelf to Hurricane Pass and from the North Fork of Cascade Canyon over Paintbrush Divide.

My experiences on those stretches of trail include a bull elk waking us by clomping around just outside our tents; early-morning moose sightings; uninterrupted views of these famously jagged mountains; and endless fields of wildflowers. I’ve had many magical days in the Tetons since my first backpacking trip there more than three decades ago, but I still consider those sections of the TCT its finest.

See my stories “A Wonderful Obsession: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail,” “5 Reasons You Must Backpack the Teton Crest Trail,” and “10 Great Big Dayhikes in the Tetons,” and all stories about backpacking in Grand Teton National Park at The Big Outside.

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

Hiking Capitol Reef’s Navajo Knobs Trail

Although it dwells in the shadow of the other four of Utah’s Big 5 national parks—Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches, and Canyonlands—I’ve long seen Capitol Reef as chronically under-appreciated. And that was before I hiked the Navajo Knobs Trail, which I now consider one of the most beautiful dayhikes in the entire National Park System.

A moderate, out-and-back hike (9.4 miles with 1,620 feet of up and down if you do it all, but the scenery is spectacular however far you go), it shares a trailhead with the short, very popular hike to Hickman Natural Bridge, but soon splits from it—and sees very light hiker traffic beyond that junction. The trail passes an overlook of Hickman Bridge, winds upward to a stunning viewpoint from the canyon rim 1,000 feet above the green Fremont River Valley, and then meanders along the rim, with almost constant views of the cliffs and rumpled topography of the Waterpocket Fold, giant formations like Pectols Pyramid, The Castle, and Fern’s Nipple, and the Henry Mountains in the distance.

It culminates with a fun bit of easy scrambling to the tiny summit of one of the pinnacles named the Navajo Knobs, worth the effort for the prospect it offers of the varied and fascinating geology and topography of Capitol Reef National Park.

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

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Two Days in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains

The Sawtooths are another place where it’s difficult to pick just one or even a few standout days because there are so many—especially given how many days I’ve spent in those mountains that have been my home range for nearly three decades. But I feel comfortable spotlighting two (with the caveat that I could have chosen so many more).

On a July day some years back, my wife, Penny, and I started hiking in a cool, morning fog that hung thickly over the Sawtooth Valley and, four-and-a-half hours later—after almost seven miles and climbing 4,200 vertical feet uphill, after passing some beautiful alpine lakes and tarns, and culminating with a bit of airy scrambling, we stood on the small stone block that’s the 10,751-foot summit of Thompson Peak, the highest in Idaho’s Sawtooths. Our reward (besides virtually every moment of the hike itself): a 360-degree panorama of the entire Sawtooth Range and the White Cloud Mountains across the valley.

And in August 2025, Penny and I, joined by two friends, backpacked a four-day route deep into the Sawtooths. On our third day, we hiked past several lovely and lonely wilderness lakes (including the lakes we camped by the previous night and that night), bagged two summits, and crossed three passes. It feels both hard to imagine a better day and yet such a common experience in the Sawtooths.

Watch for my upcoming story about that August 2025 trip. Meanwhile, see my story “The Roof of Idaho’s Sawtooths: Hiking Thompson Peak,” my e-book “The Best Backpacking Trip in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains,” and all stories about backpacking in the Sawtooths Mountains at The Big Outside.

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Backpacking the Wonderland Trail

No multi-day hike in the contiguous United States compares with the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier—because there’s no mountain in the Lower 48 like glacier-clad, 14,410-foot Mount Rainier. The sight of “The Mountain” repeatedly filling the horizon at a seemingly unbelievable scale is thrilling every time. But this trail also features some of the most beautiful wildflower meadows you will ever see, countless waterfalls and cascades, crystalline creeks and raging rivers gray with “glacial flour,” and likely sightings of mountain goats, marmots, deer, and possibly black bears.

On the second day of a 77-mile hike on what I consider the WT’s best sections (a route described as one of the alternate itineraries in my Wonderland Trail e-book), two friends and I walked from the glorious meadows of Summerland on Rainier’s east side to more meadows west of Sunrise and eventually our campsite at Granite Creek, drinking in some of the best vistas along a path rich with amazing scenery.

See my stories “5 Reasons You Must Backpack Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail” and “An American Gem: Backpacking Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail.”

Want to hike the Wonderland Trail? Get my expert e-book
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Hiking New Zealand’s Incomparable Tongariro Alpine Crossing

I could create a separate list just of the most spectacular days I’ve spent in New Zealand. It would include day two on the Kepler Track, at least one day on the Dusky Track, and sea kayaking in Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound, all in Fiordland National Park, as well as days on the Cascade Saddle Route and the Whanganui River.

And in late fall 2024, I returned to New Zealand for my fourth trip, this one with my family, and we trekked the classic and popular Milford and Routeburn tracks—and the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. A 12-mile/19.4km traverse of Tongariro National Park in the central North Island, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing deserves ranking among the world’s great trails for its almost constant views of active, rugged volcanoes, massive craters, and lakes that all but glow with color. That’s why it’s on this list of mine.

See my stories “Hiking New Zealand’s Epic Tongariro Alpine Crossing” and “Super Volcanoes: Hiking the Steaming Peaks of New Zealand’s Tongariro National Park,” and all stories about adventures in New Zealand at The Big Outside.

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Five Days Exploring the Wind River Range

Few places foil my attempts to pick favorite days of hiking more doggedly than the Winds—because few days walking through those mountains are mediocre. But I can spotlight a handful that feel extra special.

A one-day, 27-mile, east-west traverse I made of the southern Wind River Range with friends felt like a stroll through mountain paradise. We spent much of our hike above 11,000 feet, drinking up vistas of peaks rising above 12,000 feet on the Continental Divide. We scrambled up 12,250-foot Mount Chauvenet, crossed the Lizard Head Plateau gaping at thick glaciers, and then put an exclamation point on our adventure by walking across the Cirque of the Towers, a horseshoe of sheer-walled granite peaks scratching at the clouds.

On the first day of a 39-mile backpacking trip, two friends and I hiked from the Elkhart Park trailhead, past Island Lake and several others, to camp in Titcomb Basin—an alpine valley at over 10,500 feet, where peaks on the Divide soar more than 3,000 feet above lakes rippling in the wind.

Three companions and I backpacked one of the most audacious and magnificent wilderness adventures in the country: traversing the range south to north on the 96-mile Wind River High Route. While most of that week arguably belongs on this list, our fourth day began with crossing Sentry Peak Pass and passing a tiny tarn reflecting a row of incisor mountains in the upper valley of Middle Fork Lake (photo near the top of this story), moved on to a second 11,000-foot pass and eventually reached 12,000 feet on the Divide at Europe Peak.

Backpacking a 43-mile loop, my wife, a friend, and I started our second day from one of the best backcountry campsites I’ve ever had (photo above of reflection in a tarn), walked a stunning stretch of the Highline/Continental Divide Trail past two of the prettiest backcountry lakes I’ve hiked past and more lakes that came close, crossed three high passes, and finally, camped by a lake that reflected the alpenglow on the peaks.

Most recently, on a four-day hike in August 2023, a friend and I crossed three passes on our third day, the middle one, Texas Pass, depositing us in the Cirque of the Towers via a back door of sorts that may have sealed my impression that we were on the best multi-day hike in the Winds. Watch for my upcoming story about that trip.

See all stories about backpacking in the Winds at the Big Outside, including “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range,” “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Wind River Range? Yup,” “Backpacking Through a Lonely Corner of the Wind River Range,” “Best of the Wind River Range: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin,” “Adventure and Adversity on the Wind River High Route,” and “A Walk in the Winds: Dayhiking 27 Miles Across the Wind River Range.”

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

Our 27-mile Winds dayhike is one of “America’s Best Hard Dayhikes.”

Backpacking The Narrows, Zion National Park

Tough call deciding whether the first or second day backpacking Zion’s Narrows deserves a spot on this list. But take this classic, two-day backpacking trip and you’ll get to decide for yourself. Walking down the mostly shallow North Fork of the Virgin River between close sandstone walls that rise up to a thousand feet overhead, with trees and lush hanging gardens contrasted against rock painted in a rainbow of colors, Zion’s Narrows keeps getting more spectacular with every step.

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

Click here now to get my e-book to Backpacking Zion’s Narrows.

Hiking Above the Gray Glacier, Torres del Paine National Park, Chile

A rumble of thunder ripped through the air, audible over the persistent wind—but it wasn’t thunder. A few hundred feet below our rocky overlook in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, a slowly widening ring of small bergs floated in the lake, shrapnel from a massive chunk of ice that had just calved off the snout of the Grey Glacier. We were ascending a trail over a mountainside scoured to bedrock by ancient ice, scaling hundred-foot-tall steel ladders anchored to the earthen walls of gorges, while looking out over a river of ice two miles across and 17 miles long. Part of the spectacular “W” trek in this park in Chile’s Patagonia region, it was a 19-mile day that ended when we walked up to the Paine Grande Lodge after dark, buzzing with excitement.

See my story “Patagonian Classic: Trekking Torres del Paine,” and all stories about hiking in Patagonia at The Big Outside.

Hiking Mount St. Helens

The catastrophic eruption that decapitated Washington’s Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, removing almost 1,300 vertical feet of mountaintop, ironically created one of America’s most strikingly beautiful, fascinating, and coveted dayhikes. On a climb up the mountain’s standard Monitor Ridge route—10 miles and 4,500 vertical feet up and down, most of it over a rugged and stark moonscape of loose rocks, pumice, and ash—you’ll soak up views of several Cascade Range volcanoes, and eventually stand atop the rim’s crumbling cliffs, gazing out over a vast hole 2,000 feet deep and nearly two miles across.

See my story “Three Generations, One Big Volcano: Pushing Limits on Mount St. Helens.”

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

Three Days on the Continental Divide Trail in Glacier

On a couple of long, north-south traverses of Glacier in September 2018 and again in September 2023, mostly following two variations of the Continental Divide Trail from the Belly River Trailhead to Two Medicine, friends and I saw bighorn sheep, mountain goats, black bears, moose, and a grizzly bear, and heard elk bugling almost every morning and evening—and we enjoyed mountain views unlike anywhere else in America.

As difficult as it is to pick out which days on those hikes stood out, I can point to three in particular: hiking the Ptarmigan Tunnel Trail from the Belly River Valley to Many Glacier; hiking below the cliffs of the Garden Wall to cross Piegan Pass; and following the high, alpine Dawson Pass Trail from Pitamakan Pass to Dawson Pass—jaw-dropping, all of them.

Glacier does that to me every time I go there.

See my stories about those two trips, “Wildness All Around You: Backpacking the CDT Through Glacier” and “Déjà Vu All Over Again: Backpacking in Glacier National Park,” “10 Backpacking Trips for Solitude in Glacier National Park,” and all stories about backpacking in Glacier at The Big Outside.

Save yourself a lot of time. Get my expert e-book to backpacking the CDT through Glacier.

Backpacking Mosquito Creek to Toleak Point, Southern Olympic Coast

You won’t find much on the longest strip of wilderness coastline in the contiguous United States, the shore of Washington’s Olympic National Park—just seals, sea lions, sea otters, bald eagles, many species of seabirds and whales, and trees 10 to 15 feet in diameter and growing over 200 feet tall. On the middle day of a three-day, 17.5-mile backpacking trip, hiking from Mosquito Creek to Toleak Point, my family explored tide pools and boulders coated with mussels, sea stars, and sea anemones, looked out on scores of stone pinnacles rising out of the ocean, and camped on a wilderness beach. I’m not sure who had more fun, the kids or the adults.

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

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

Two Days Backpacking Paria Canyon and Buckskin Gulch

Backpacking Buckskin Gulch and Paria Canyon yet again in April 2025, I was reminded just how uniquely spectacular they both are. With walls that rise to perhaps 200 feet tall and close in so tightly at times that an adult wearing a backpack can barely squeeze through, Buckskin is widely regarded as the longest slot canyon in America.

And Paria Canyon, hiked by itself or in combination with Buckskin, has long been widely considered one of the best backpacking trips in the Southwest—and I would argue one of the top three or five, for its own deep narrows section stretching for miles.

Walking through these canyons always reveals that the greatest magic of narrow canyons is how the diffused light paints the orange and red walls in too many shades of those colors to quantify, as well as shades of brown and a deep black that looks like an oil spill—creating stark contrasts that delight and mystify the human eye and brain. Buckskin and Paria each deserve a day on this list.

See my stories “Not a Dull Moment: Backpacking Buckskin Gulch and Paria Canyon” and “The Quicksand Chronicles: Backpacking Paria Canyon,” and all stories about hiking and backpacking in southern Utah at The Big Outside.

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

Backpacking the High Sierra Trail, Sequoia National Park

We weren’t far into a nearly 40-mile family backpacking trip in Sequoia before I realized it promised to be one of the most photogenic places I’ve ever hiked. Part of one of the biggest chunks of contiguous wilderness in the Lower 48, it’s home to many of the highest mountains outside Alaska, lonely backcountry groves of giant sequoias, and crystal-clear alpine lakes.

On our third day, hiking the High Sierra Trail from Bearpaw Meadow toward 10,700-foot Kaweah Gap, we traversed a cliff face hundreds of feet above the deep Middle Fork Kaweah River. We stopped for lunch and a swim at the Hamilton Lakes, which are almost completely enclosed by towering cliffs and pinnacles. By late afternoon, we found campsites at Precipice Lake at 10,400 feet, its glassy, green and blue waters reflecting white and golden cliffs (one of my 25 all-time favorite backcountry campsites).

See my story “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park.”

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Four More Days in the Grand Canyon

If the Grand Canyon looms large in this story—and in others at The Big Outside, like “The 12 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest”—that’s because it looms even larger in my perspective and that of probably every backpacker who ventures into it. In fact, besides hiking rim to rim to rim (described above), I can think of at least a few more days of backpacking in the Big Ditch that rank among my most scenic ever.

Those would include the second day on the very rugged and infrequently hiked, 34.5-mile Royal Arch Loop, which featured just about everything that makes backpacking in the Grand Canyon unique: sweeping views, a sandy beach beside the Colorado River, an intimate side canyon with lush hanging gardens, a high solitude quotient—even some spicy scrambling and a fun rappel off a cliff—not to mention one of the best campsites in the entire canyon, below Royal Arch (one of my 25 all-time favorite backcountry campsites).

It would also include the day that two friends and I traversed most of the Escalante Route, one of the of the prettiest and most adventurous “trails” (if it can be called that) in the canyon, on a 74-mile hike from the South Kaibab Trailhead to Lipan Point. And I’d have to include day three on yet another rugged and remote GC hike, the 25-mile Thunder River-Deer Creek Loop, which features some of the canyon’s loveliest waterfalls, narrows, and desert oases.

Oh, and then there’s almost any day on the Gems Route, the most remote section of the Tonto Trail, from the South Bass Trailhead to the Boucher Trail.

See my stories “Not Quite Impassable: Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch Loop,” “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon,” “Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Thunder River-Deer Creek Loop,” “Let’s Talk Water: Backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Gems,” and “10 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do.”

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Backpacking the Rockwall Trail, Kootenay National Park, Canadian Rockies

My family’s second day on the 34-mile (54k) Rockwall Trail in Kootenay National Park was long and hard—12 miles over two 7,000-foot passes—but we had the most effective painkiller: views that even impressed our 14- and 12-year-old kids. One of Canada’s most popular and stunningly scenic hikes—and really deserving a spot on the list of the world’s finest treks—it follows the base of an almost unbroken limestone cliff up to 3,000 feet (900m) tall. We started that day below 1,154-foot (352m) Helmet Falls, one of the tallest in the Canadian Rockies, and hiked to Numa Creek, crossing meadows carpeted in wildflowers below hanging glaciers, and sighting four mountain goats at Tumbling Pass.

See my story about backpacking the Rockwall Trail in Kootenay National Park.

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Climbing Norway’s Highest Peak

Under a brilliantly blue morning sky in the highest mountains in northern Europe, my wife, Penny, our friend, Jeff Wilhelm, and I started a 5,000-foot climb of the highest peak in Norway, 8,100-foot Galdhøpiggen. It was the final day of a 60-mile trek in Jotunheimen National Park—another trip which every day could legitimately be the one chosen for this story—and we could have lounged in our last hut, but were glad we didn’t.

Ascending a treeless mountainside, we gained increasingly longer views of a rugged, Arctic-looking landscape vibrantly colorful with shrubs, mosses, and wildflowers, where cliffs and peaks look like they were chopped from the earth with an axe. At the chilly, windblown summit, we stood above a sea of snowy mountains and glaciers. And, of course, it being Europe, there was a hut at the summit where we could buy hot cocoas.

See my story “Walking Among Giants: A Three-Generation Hut Trek in Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park” and all stories about international trips at The Big Outside.

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What makes for a great backpacking trip? Certainly top-shelf scenery is mandatory. An element of adventurousness enhances a hike, in my eyes. While there’s definitely something inspirational about a big walk in the wild, some of the finest trips in the country can be done in a few days and half of the hikes on this list are under 50 miles. Another factor that truly matters is a wilderness experience: All 10 are in national parks or wilderness areas.

I’ve probably thought about this more than a mentally stable person should, having done many of America’s (and the world’s) most beautiful multi-day hikes over more than three decades (and counting) of carrying a backpack, including my 10 years as a field editor for Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog. In the final analysis, though, the criterion that matters most is more simple and intuitive: that it’s undeniably a great trip. And that character shows itself over and over in my picks for the 10 best backpacking trips in the country.

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

Each hike here merits a 10 for scenery. The longest trips on this list can be chopped up into smaller portions. Each description below includes a difficulty rating on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the hardest in terms of strenuousness and challenge. I’ve listed them in a random order that’s not intended as a quality ranking; I think that’s impossible.

I regularly update this list as I take new trips that belong on it—but it has remained largely unchanged for a while (I think you’ll see why), except for adding new photos and links to new stories each time I revisit one of these trails or parks; as well as adding some new Close Runners-Up trip suggestions, which accompany each hike in my top 10.

My advice: Do every one of these top 10 and runner-up hikes that you can, when you can—many of the top 10 are harder to get a permit for than the runners-up, so the latter group provide good backup plans. You won’t be disappointed with any of them.

The descriptions and photos below link to stories at The Big Outside that have more images and information about these trips (most of which require a paid subscription to read in full)—including tips on planning each one yourself and when to apply for a backcountry permit, which is generally months in advance.

See my affordable, expert e-books to several of the trips described below and my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan any of these classic adventures, variations of them, or any trip you read about at The Big Outside. You might also find helpful tips in my stories “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips” and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”

If you have a trip to suggest, please tell me about it in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I hope to get to them all. It’s a tough assignment, but I’m on it.

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A Grand Tour of Yosemite

Distance: 152 miles, with multiple shorter variations
Difficulty: 4

John Muir saw more than a few world-class wildernesses, and he focused much of his time and energy on exploring and protecting Yosemite. A lot of people would legitimately argue it’s the best national park for backpackers. After several trips there, I had thought I’d seen Yosemite’s finest corners, including many trails in the park’s core, its section of the John Muir Trail, and the summits of Half Dome and Clouds Rest.

Then, in two trips totaling seven days spread over two years, I backpacked 152 miles through the biggest patches of wilderness in the park, south and north of Tuolumne Meadows (also shown in the lead photo at the top of this story)—and discovered Yosemite’s true soul, a vast reach of deep, granite-walled canyons, peaks rising to over 12,000 feet, and one gorgeous mountain lake after another dappling the landscape. And after those two trips, I returned again to backpack a 45-mile hike that I subsequently dubbed “Yosemite’s Best-Kept Secret Backpacking Trip.”

See my stories “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking South of Tuolumne Meadows,” about the 65-mile first leg of that 152-mile grand tour of Yosemite, “Best of Yosemite: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite,” about the nearly 87-mile second leg, “Backpacking Yosemite: What You Need to Know,” and all stories about backpacking in Yosemite at The Big Outside.

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

Want more of a less-committing, introductory backpacking trip in Yosemite? See my story “Where to Backpack First Time in Yosemite.” The trip I suggest in that story is described in much greater detail in my e-book “The Best First Backpacking Trip in Yosemite.” That e-book offers planning tips and suggested daily itineraries for a primary route and alternate itineraries for backpacking trips in the spectacular core of Yosemite, between Yosemite Valley and Tuolumne Meadows.

Close Runners-Up:

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in Yosemite” and “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park,” about a 40-mile family backpacking trip that featured campsites that made both my top 25 all-time favorites and my list of the nicest backcountry campsites I’ve hiked past, plus all stories about backpacking in the High Sierra at The Big Outside.

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Two Hikes in Glacier National Park

Distance of each: 90-94 miles, with shorter variations
Difficulty of each: 3

With rivers of ice pouring off of craggy mountains and cliffs, deeply green forests, over 760 lakes offering mirror reflections of it all, megafauna like bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, moose, and grizzly and black bears, and over a million acres in Montana’s Northern Rockies, most of it wilderness, little wonder that Glacier is so popular with backpackers.

Two big hikes of over 90 miles—both of which have multiple possible shorter variations—deservedly grace this top 10 list. On both, my companions and I saw all of those sights and large beasts described above—yes, including grizzlies—and enjoyed a surprising degree of solitude even while hitting many of the park’s highlights.

One, a 90-miler through northern Glacier, split into 65- and 25-mile legs, was a variation of a hike known as the Northern Loop, following a route I customized to hit some of Glacier’s best scenery, including the entire Highline Trail, the Many Glacier area, Piegan Pass and Stoney Indian Pass, the Ptarmigan Wall and Tunnel, and some of the park’s finest lakes and most-remote wilderness.

On the second hike, three friends and I backpacked about 94 miles through Glacier, from Chief Mountain Trailhead at the Canadian border in the park’s northeast corner to Two Medicine, combining parts of the primary and alternate routes of the Continental Divide Trail, and adding the high, alpine trail from Pitamakan Pass to Dawson Pass above Two Medicine. Yet again, we saw bighorn sheep, mountain goats, black bears, moose, and a griz, and heard elk bugling almost every morning and evening (because it was September)—not to mention vistas unlike anywhere else in America.

See my story about the two-stage, 90-mile hike “Descending the Food Chain: Backpacking Glacier National Park’s Northern Loop,” my story “Wildness All Around You: Backpacking the CDT Through Glacier” about the 94-mile hike, and “Déjà vu All Over Again: Backpacking in Glacier National Park,” about my most recent, weeklong hike in Glacier on a variation of the CDT route.

Get my expert e-books to backpacking Glacier’s Northern Loop and the CDT through Glacier.

And check out “10 Backpacking Trips for Solitude in Glacier National Park,” “How to Get a Permit to Backpack in Glacier National Park,” and all stories about backpacking in Glacier at The Big Outside.

Close Runners-Up:

Think of the Canadian Rockies this way: They resemble Glacier but with more and bigger glaciers and covering a much vaster area. For much of its distance, the 34-mile Rockwall Trail in Kootenay National Park passes below a long chain of sheer cliffs and mountains that conjure images of numerous El Capitans lined up in a row, but with thick tongues of glacial ice pouring off them. And the 27-mile Skyline Trail in Jasper National Park remains above treeline for more than half its distance, with nearly constant panoramas of massive walls of rock and a sea of mountains in every direction.

Retaining a surprising degree of anonymity considering that they’re situated between Glacier and Yellowstone, the Beartooth Mountains rise to over 12,000 feet and are most uniquely characterized by high, rolling, alpine plateaus over 10,000 feet. Like Glacier, the Beartooths have deep, glacier-carved canyons with remnant patches of ancient ice, and are home to moose, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, elk, bald eagles, gray wolves, black bears, and grizzlies—plus hundreds of trout-filled alpine lakes. See my story “Backpacking the High and Mighty Beartooth Mountains.”

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Teton Crest Trail

Distance: 33-40 miles, multiple variations
Difficulty: 4

One of my first big, Western backpacking trips was on the Teton Crest Trail in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park, and it so inspired me that I’ve returned more than 20 times since to backpack, dayhike, rock climb, backcountry ski, and paddle a canoe in the Tetons. I can’t imagine that jagged skyline ever failing to give me chills.

Running north-south through the heart of the national park and adjacent national forest lands, the Teton Crest Trail stays above treeline for much of its distance, with expansive views of the peaks, but also drops into the beautiful South Fork and North Fork of Cascade Canyon, Paintbrush Canyon, and the upper forks of Granite Canyon, and crosses Paintbrush Divide at 10,720 feet.

Various trails access it, allowing for multiple route options, any of them making for one of America’s premier multi-day hikes.

See my stories  “A Wonderful Obsession: Backpacking the Teton Crest Trail,” “5 Reasons You Must Backpack the Teton Crest Trail,” “How to Get a Permit to Backpack the Teton Crest Trail,” and “Walking Familiar Ground: Reliving Old Memories and Making New Ones on the Teton Crest Trail,” plus all stories about backpacking the Teton Crest Trail at The Big Outside.

I’ve helped countless readers plan a perfect, personally customized itinerary on the Teton Crest Trail. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan your trip.

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

Close Runners-Up:

A two- or three-day hike linking any of the east-side canyons in Grand Teton National Park, such as the nearly 20-mile Paintbrush Canyon-Cascade Canyon loop (the most popular in the park). See “The 5 Best Backpacking Trips in Grand Teton National Park.” Or virtually any backpacking trip in the Wind River Range (see below).

The Wonderland Trail

Distance: 93 miles, with shorter variations
Difficulty: 4

No multi-day hike in the contiguous United States compares with the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier—because there’s no mountain in the Lower 48 like glacier-clad, 14,410-foot Mount Rainier.

Backpacking the Wonderland Trail, one repeatedly sees Rainier fill the horizon at a seemingly unbelievable scale, a sight always thrilling and inspiring. This trail features some of the most beautiful wildflower meadows you will ever see, countless waterfalls and cascades, crystalline creeks and raging rivers gray with “glacial flour,” and likely sightings of mountain goats, marmots, deer, and possibly black bears.

Accessed from several trailheads, it can be thru-hiked in its entirety—commonly done over nine to 10 days—or you can backpack shorter trips of varying lengths on sections of the Wonderland. The full loop is a strenuous trip, with over 44,000 cumulative vertical feet of elevation gain and loss, and choices you make like which direction to hike the loop, where to begin it, and whether to take a popular detour onto the higher and more-scenic Spray Park Trail, all affect the trip’s overall difficulty—which I spell out in detail in my expert e-book “The Complete Guide to Backpacking the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park.”

This much I will guarantee: The Wonderland Trail is the kind of adventure that stays with you long afterward.

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

Close Runner-Up:

See my story “Full of Surprises: Backpacking Mount Hood’s Timberline Trail” about a trip very similar in character to the Wonderland Trail—but much shorter and requiring no permit reservation—the 41-mile Timberline Trail around Oregon’s Mount Hood.

Want to hike the Wonderland Trail? Get my expert e-book
“The Complete Guide to Backpacking the Wonderland Trail in Mount Rainier National Park.”

Zion’s Narrows

Distance: 16 miles
Difficulty: 2

The North Fork of the Virgin River carves out a uniquely deep, slender, and awe-inspiring redrock canyon in Utah’s Zion National Park, with walls up to 1,000 feet tall that close in to just 20 feet apart in places. Springs gush from cracks in the walls, nourishing lush hanging gardens. On clear nights, a black sky riddled with stars fills the narrow strip visible between the rock walls soaring overhead.

In the low-water levels when backpackers typically make the two-day descent of The Narrows, you’re walking most of the time in water from ankle-deep (most commonly) to, occasionally, waist-deep, over a cobblestone riverbed that makes for slow progress.

Click here now for my e-book to Backpacking Zion’s Narrows.

But you’ll feel no desire to rush through one of the most enchanting hikes in the National Park System (especially since the lower end is often crowded with dayhikers, while the trip’s first day and second morning are much quieter).

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

Close Runners-Up:

Paria Canyon and Buckskin Gulch
Traversing Zion National Park
The Needles District and Maze District of Canyonlands National Park
Coyote Gulch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Death Hollow Loop, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument
Aravaipa Canyon, Arizona

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

John Muir Trail

Distance: 221 miles
Difficulty: 4

The John Muir Trail’s 211 miles from Yosemite Valley to the highest summit in the Lower 48, 14,505-foot Mount Whitney in Sequoia National Park, has often been described as “America’s Most Beautiful Trail”—and hyperbolic as it sounds, it’s hard to argue against that lofty claim.

The two- to three-week journey through California’s High Sierra (totaling 221 miles, including the 10-mile descent off Whitney, not actually part of the JMT) stays mostly above 9,000 feet as it traverses mile after jaw-dropping mile of a landscape of incisor peaks, too many waterfalls to name, and countless, pristine wilderness lakes nestled in granite basins.

You climb over numerous passes between 11,000 and over 13,000 feet, with views that stretch a hundred miles. Although not a place for solitude during the peak season (mid-July to mid-September), the JMT may be the one hike on this list that every serious backpacker probably aspires to accomplish.

The hardest part may be what comes long before you lace up your boots: getting a JMT permit, which necessarily requires figuring out your itinerary and how many days you will spend on the trail.

See all stories about backpacking the John Muir Trail at The Big Outside, including “How to Get a John Muir Trail Wilderness Permit,” “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail: What You Need to Know,” an “Ultimate, 10-Day, Ultralight Plan” for a JMT thru-hike, and “Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail in Seven Days: Amazing Experience, or Certifiably Insane?”

Close Runners-Up:

See “10 Great John Muir Trail Section Hikes,” “High Sierra Ramble: 130 Miles On—and Off—the John Muir Trail,” “Heavy Lifting: Backpacking Sequoia National Park,” my story about a remote, partly off-trail, 32-mile traverse of the John Muir Wilderness, and all stories about High Sierra backpacking trips at The Big Outside.

Want to hike the Teton Crest Trail, John Muir Trail, or another trip on this list?
Click here for expert custom trip planning you won’t get elsewhere.

South Kaibab to Lipan Point, Grand Canyon

Distance: 74 miles, with shorter variations
Difficulty: 5

Every backpacking trip I’ve taken in the Grand Canyon deserves a spot on this list—the place possesses all the qualities of a great adventure, in a landscape like nowhere else on the planet. But when a longtime backcountry ranger in the park told me this 74-mile hike was “the best backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon,” of course I had to check it out.

After backpacking it, I decided: He’s right.

For starters, the South Kaibab is one of the best trails in the entire National Park System. Beyond that, this route follows one of the of the prettiest and most adventurous “trails” in the canyon, the Escalante Route, which involves some tricky route-finding and exposed scrambling. This hike also includes an outstanding section of the Tonto Trail, the beautiful and surprisingly rigorous Beamer Trail, and another lovely, rim-to-river footpath, the Tanner Trail.

Plus, you’ll enjoy some of the best backcountry campsites you’ve ever spent a night in, including beaches on the Colorado River, and the kind of solitude that’s rare in many national parks.

See “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Grand Canyon.”

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

I’ve helped many readers plan a perfect, personally customized backpacking itinerary in the Grand Canyon—a place where trip planning is complicated by seasonal temperature extremes and road access, scarce water sources, high competition for backcountry permits, and significant differences in character and difficulty between trails and routes.

See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan your Big Ditch backpacking trip.

Close Runners-Up:

Almost any other trip in the Grand Canyon. See “10 Epic Grand Canyon Backpacking Trips You Must Do,” “How to Get a Permit to Backpack in the Grand Canyon,” and all stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

Hike all of “The 12 Best Backpacking Trips in the Southwest.”
For a beginner-friendly trip, see “The 5 Southwest Backpacking Trips You Should Do First.”

The Southern Olympic Coast

Distance: 17.5 miles
Difficulty: 2

The 17.5-mile hike from the Hoh River north to La Push Road, on the southern coast of Washington’s Olympic National Park, is still one of my kids’ most memorable backpacking trips—mostly for the hours they spent playing in tide pools on the beach (they were nine and seven at the time). But it’s also one that backpackers of all ages find gorgeous and fascinating.

It features giant trees in one of Earth’s largest virgin temperature rainforests; frequently mist-shrouded views of scores of sea stacks rising up to 200 feet out of the ocean; boulders wallpapered with sea stars, mussels, and sea anemones; rugged and very muddy hiking on overland trails around impassable headlands; sightings of seals, sea otters, whales, and to my kids’ delight, lots of slugs; and rope ladders to climb and descend very steep terrain—including cliffs.

Consequently, while just as scenic, it’s less crowded than the more popular northern stretch of the Olympic coast. The 73-mile-long finger of the park on the Pacific Ocean protects the longest stretch of wilderness coastline in the contiguous United States—and one of America’s most unique backpacking adventures.

See my story “The Wildest Shore: Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast.”

Close Runner-Up:

Honestly, nothing.

But for classic wilderness trips in the Pacific Northwest, I suggest the hike to Cascade Pass and up Sahale Arm to Sahale Glacier Camp, in North Cascades National Park, with a jaw-dropping campsite view; this 80-mile hike (and shorter variations of it) in the North Cascades; the Spider Gap-Buck Creek Pass Loop in the Glacier Peak Wilderness; and certainly, Mount Hood’s Timberline Trail.

See all stories about Olympic National Park and stories about the North Cascades at The Big Outside.

See “Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites.”

The Wind River Range

Distance: multiple routes and distances
Difficulty: 3 to 5

The Winds can’t honestly be described as “undiscovered,” by any stretch. Still, as popular as a few corners are, much of this Wyoming range offers a rare combination of periods of solitude amid some of the most dramatic peaks and beautiful mountain lakes in the country—lots of lakes. Rank U.S. mountain ranges according to the best scenery and lakes, and I think the top two are the Winds and the High Sierra—and you could argue which is number one for as many years as it would take to visit every lake in the Winds.

I’ve taken several trips into the Winds over the past three decades, backpacking, climbing, and one really long dayhike—all of them outstanding, but a few places stand out.

One was a camp in Titcomb Basin—where granite peaks rise to over 13,000 feet from lakes at over 10,000 feet—on a 41-mile loop where two friends and I hiked past a constellation of beautiful lakes and took a spicy off-trail route over 12,240-foot Knapsack Col.

On long stretches of a lonely, 43-mile loop in a less-visited area of the Winds, we enjoyed one of the best backcountry campsites I’ve ever had, crossed four high passes, and walked one stunning trail after another past numerous alpine lakes, including two of the prettiest backcountry lakes I’ve hiked past without camping at.

I’ve climbed in and hiked through the Cirque of the Towers on multiple epic adventures, including a 27-mile, east-west dayhike across the Winds and a 96-mile, mostly off-trail, south-north traverse of the Wind River High Route. But most recently, a friend and I hiked across the Cirque to cap off a four-day loop from Big Sandy that crosses four passes and features camps by beautiful lakes—a route I consider the best multi-day hike in the Winds.

The Winds can seriously make you wonder: “Why don’t I just come here all the time?”

Don’t forget anything important! See “An Essentials-Only Backpacking Gear Checklist.”

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

Close Runner-Up:

See my stories about another high, rugged mountain range where you can find solitude, northern Utah’s High Uintas: “Backpacking—and Sandbagging—Utah’s Uinta Highline Trail” and “Tall and Lonely: Backpacking Utah’s High Uintas Wilderness.”

Ready to hike one of the world’s great treks?
Click here now for my e-book “The Perfect, Flexible Plan for Hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc.”

Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains

Distance: 36 miles, with longer and shorter variations
Difficulty: 2

The Sawtooths are one of the West’s most under-appreciated mountain ranges, with national park-caliber scenery, but nowhere near the numbers of hikers found in the most popular parks (although more and more backpackers are exploring the few popular areas of the Sawtooths).

Having backpacked and climbed through most of the range since settling in Idaho more than 20 years ago, the multi-day hike I’d recommend there is a five-day, roughly 36-mile route from Redfish Lake to Tin Cup Trailhead on Pettit Lake, including an out-and-back side trip to one of the finest lakes basins in the entire range.

Requiring a short shuttle that can be arranged locally—the Sawtooth trails aren’t conducive to creating long loop hikes—this trip crosses four passes over 9,000 feet and features campsites on some of the Sawtooths’ best mountain lakes, below endless jagged ridgelines.

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

Close Runners-Up:

See my stories “Mountain Lakes of Idaho’s Sawtooths—A Photo Gallery,” “The Best Hikes and Backpacking Trips in Idaho’s Sawtooths” and “Going After Goals: Backpacking in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains,” about a 57-mile hike in the more remote southern Sawtooths.

See also my story about the Idaho Wilderness Trail, a nearly 300-mile, long-distance trail I helped conceive that passes through the Sawtooths, and all stories about Idaho’s Sawtooths and neighboring White Cloud Mountains at The Big Outside; plus my story about another under-appreciated mountain range dappled with gorgeous lakes, northeastern Oregon’s Wallowas, “Learning the Hard Way: Backpacking Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness.”

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

Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned backpacker, you’ll learn new tricks for making all of your trips go better in my stories “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be,” “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” and “A Practical Guide to Lightweight and Ultralight Backpacking.” 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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As a parent of two young adults who’s taken them outdoors since before they can remember, I’ll share with you the biggest and in some ways most surprising lesson I’ve learned from these trips: Our outdoor adventures have been the best times we’ve had together as a family—and not just because the places are so special. The greatest benefit of these trips is that they have given us innumerable days with only each other and nature for entertainment—no electronic devices or other distractions that construct virtual walls within families in everyday life.

For my family, our experiences together outdoors make up most of our richest and favorite memories. They have brought us closer together.

That’s a gift we’ve given ourselves as a family, one that I’ve cherished every minute of (well, most of the minutes, anyway). I also know our kids will appreciate it more and more as they get older—and perhaps they will pass this gift on to children of their own someday.

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.

No matter where you go or what you do with your kids, you can reap that reward. But if you want to share with your family the very best experiences and places in nature, well, I have a pretty darn awesome list for you.

For this story, I’ve picked out the 10 very best adventures my family has taken and I’ve written about at The Big Outside—which also rank among the most beautiful and inspiring trips I’ve taken over more than three decades as an outdoors writer, including many years running this blog and previously as a field editor for Backpacker magazine.

This tick list includes seven national parks, three world-class paddling adventures, three trips that should be on every backpacker’s to-do list, America’s most scenic and fascinating volcano hike, and cross-country skiing or hiking among the greatest concentration of active geysers in the world.

Not surprisingly, all of these trips are extremely popular and require planning and making reservations months in advance.

The writeups below all link to my full feature story about each trip at The Big Outside, which include more images and detailed tips on planning each one yourself (and which require a paid subscription to read in full).

You may also want to peruse my list of 10 all-time favorite adventures, domestic and international—there are definitely trips that could be on either list.

I’d love to read your comments about any of these trips or the entire list, and other readers and I would appreciate any advice you have on any of these trips. Share your thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Here’s wishing you many years of forging lasting memories together as a family.

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1. Three Generations, One Big Volcano: Hiking Mount St. Helens

I’ll make you this guarantee: Mount St. Helens is one of the coolest dayhikes in America, period. Hikers on the standard route, Monitor Ridge, soon emerge from shady rainforest onto a stark, gray and black moonscape of volcanic rocks, pumice, and ash, with infinite views of the Cascade Range, including other snow-capped volcanoes like Hood, Adams, and Rainier.

It’s also a tough hike at 10 miles round-trip and 4,500 vertical feet up and down, most of it on rugged terrain that varies from loose stones and dirt to ash that’s like hiking a giant sand dune. We had a special component to our trip up and down the mountain: a three-generation family group with a 66-year spread between the youngest, my 10-year-old daughter, and the oldest, my 76-year-old mother. When I scored last-minute permits to hike the mountain, I wasn’t sure everyone could make it. Then, hours into the ascent, events seemed to take an ominous turn.

Read my story “Three Generations, One Big Volcano: Hiking Mount St. Helens” to find out how it all turned out.

Mount St. Helens was one of “My Most Scenic Days of Hiking Ever.”

2. The Magic of Hiking to Yosemite’s Waterfalls

Stand at the brink of a thunderous waterfall that drops a sheer 1,400 feet over a cliff. Hike a trail in the heavy shower of mist raining from a clear, blue sky. Dayhike through one of the most iconic landscapes in America—Yosemite Valley.

The Valley’s towering cliffs and waterfalls will awe any adult and even the most cynical teenager. But for kids, there are also the thrills of walking through the mist from a giant waterfall, and moments like traversing the narrow catwalk blasted out of granite on the final steps to the top of Upper Yosemite Falls. Hiking in Yosemite should be a must for every avid hiker.

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

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

3. Tackling America’s Best Easy, Multi-Day Float Trip

For 52 miles through Stillwater Canyon in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, the Green River slowly unfurls beneath a constant backdrop of giant redrock cliffs and spires. Off the water, you camp on sandy beaches and slickrock benches, hike to centuries-old Puebloan rock art and cliff dwellings, and maybe even spot bighorn sheep scrambling around on precipitous rock faces.

An easy trip for beginners and families—our party of 17 ranged in age from four to 80 and included eight kids—floating the Green River stood, for years, as my family’s gold standard for river trips (eventually replaced, when our kids got older, by the last trip on this list).

See my story “Still Waters Run Deep: Floating the Green River in Canyonlands” and all stories about river trips at The Big Outside.

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4. Trekking the Tour du Mont Blanc in the Alps

My list would be incomplete without one of the biggest, most beautiful and fun adventures my family has ever taken. And you’ll find the Tour du Mont Blanc (also the lead photo at top of story) on just about any list of the world’s greatest trails. The main reason is the sheer majesty of this roughly 105-mile/170-kilometer walking path around the “Monarch of the Alps,” 15,771-foot/4,807-meter Mont Blanc. Passing through three Alpine nations—France, Italy, and Switzerland—and over several mountain passes reaching nearly 9,000 feet, it delivers almost constant views of glaciers, pointy peaks and “augilles,” and the snowy dome of Mont Blanc.

Making this trip all the more special was the fact that we had three generations of my extended family represented, including my 80-year-old mother.

Read my story “Hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc at an 80-Year-Old Snail’s Pace.”

Get my expert e-book “The Perfect Plan for Hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc.”

5. Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast

For our kids, who were nine and seven, this three-day backpacking trip on the wilderness coastline of Washington’s Olympic National Park ranked as a favorite for all the expected reasons that children love a wild ocean shore: playing for hours in water, exploring the variety of sea life in tide pools, and picking, awestruck, through the myriad flotsam from civilization like old, salt-worn buoys (my son took one home).

For adults, the scores of offshore sea stacks, giant trees, and natural beauty make the Olympic coast one of America’s classic backpacking trips.

See my story “The Wildest Shore: Backpacking the Southern Olympic Coast.”

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

6. Dropping Into the Grand Canyon

Sure, any trip in the Big Ditch is worthy of a top 10 list—you could fill a top 10 list just with Grand Canyon hikes. But in this rugged terrain and unforgiving environment, choosing the right backpacking route becomes critical; most trails are rough, many trailheads remote.

This four-day, 29-mile hike combines two of the most spectacular and accessible trails coming off the South Rim—the Grandview and South Kaibab—with an easier, less-busy stretch of the Tonto Trail that delivers constant, big views.

See my story “Backpacking the Grand Canyon Grandview Point to the South Kaibab” and all stories about backpacking in the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

Want my help planning any trip that you read about at my blog?
Click here now for expert advice you won’t get anywhere else.

7. Like No Other Place: Paddling the Everglades

Seeing scores of large, exotic birds like brown pelicans, roseate spoonbills, white ibises, and black anhingas. Canoeing among remote islands to camp on a wilderness beach you have all to yourself. Watching a dolphin surface just off your canoe’s bow and swim a wide circle around you. Paddling a flatwater river shared with alligators (kept at a safe distance).

It’s hard to overstate how exciting and fun this park is for adults and children. And the trip my family took when our kids were ten and almost eight was one of the most beginner-friendly in the Everglades.

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

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

8. Backpacking Zion, a Land of Otherworldly Scenery

Many hikers content themselves with exploring the trails of Zion Canyon and the popular dayhike up Angels Landing—all worthwhile. But backpack into the backcountry and you discover a sprawling landscape that’s unique even in the Southwest.

Cliffs of pure white and blood-red sandstone soar hundreds of feet overhead, rock ripples like water, and you walk along a high rim looking down on a labyrinth of slot canyons and isolated mesas. This trip’s moderate difficulty and multiple itinerary options make it ideal for families and beginner backpackers.

See “Backpacking Through the Otherworldly Scenery of Zion,” “Hiking Angels Landing: What You Need to Know,” “The 10 Best Hikes in Zion National Park,” and “The Best Hikes in Utah’s National Parks” at The Big Outside.

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

9. Exploring Yellowstone

Visiting the world’s first national park, Yellowstone, should be a requirement of American citizenship (and I would gladly contribute to a fund to make it affordable for every family). Besides the opportunity to see a range of wildlife that nearly mirrors what North America looked like before Columbus, you can watch geysers erupt and see natural hot springs, whistling fumaroles, bubbling mud pots, and some beautiful waterfalls.

I’ve visited many times, with my kids and before I had a family, in every season. It’s wonderful for everyone, at any stage in life, partly because so many of its highlight features can be seen on short walks. And to me, cross-country skiing the almost flat, 2.5 miles of trail through Yellowstone’s Upper Geyser Basin, past one-fourth of the active geysers in the world (and the greatest concentration of them), is one of the most fascinating experiences in the National Park System.

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

Gear up smartly for your trips.
See the best-in-category reviews and expert buying tips at my Gear Reviews page.

10. Rafting Idaho’s Incomparable Middle Fork Salmon River

For a complete package of sheer thrills, five-star scenery, immersion in a vast wilderness, beautiful campsites, repeated episodes of children shrieking with joy, and an experience guaranteed to be a family favorite that you’ll want to repeat—not to mention eating like every day was Thanksgiving—few trips we’ve taken as a family compare to our guided float down Idaho’s Middle Fork of the Salmon River.

Flowing like an artery through the heart of the second-largest federal wilderness in the continental United States, the nearly 2.4-million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the Middle Fork is widely considered second only to the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in terms of raw beauty. My family might argue it’s better—and we’ve take three Middle Fork trips.

See my stories “Reunions of the Heart on Idaho’s Middle Fork Salmon River” and “Big Water, Big Wilderness: Rafting Idaho’s Middle Fork Salmon River,” and all stories about river trips at The Big Outside.

See my All Trips List, all stories featuring my expert outdoors tips, and all stories about family adventures at The Big Outside.

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America’s 63 national parks preserve over 52 million acres of uniquely beautiful and genuinely awe-inspiring places in nature, and the payoff for our country’s foresight in protecting them is a lifetime’s worth of unforgettable experiences—many of them entirely feasible, safe, and really fun for families with kids of all ages. Best of all, you’ll find that sharing these adventures will create your best times together as a family, as they have for mine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stand in the Shadow of a Giant Sequoia

Any Age

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

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

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

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

Feel the Magic of Yellowstone

Any Age

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

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

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

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

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Float the Green River Through Canyonlands National Park

Ages 4 and Up

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

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

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

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

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Climb Into Natural Arches

Ages 5 and Up

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

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

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

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

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

Hike Zion’s Breathtaking Trails

Ages 6 and Up

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

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

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

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

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

Stand Beneath Yosemite’s Waterfalls and Summit Half Dome

Ages 7 and Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve helped many readers plan unforgettable adventures in Yosemite and elsewhere.
Want my help with yours? Find out more here.

Ascend Into the Tetons

Ages 7 and Up

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

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

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

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

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

Immerse Yourself in the Wild Everglades

Ages 7 and Up

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

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

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

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

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

Hike and Camp on the Wild Olympic Coast

Ages 7 and Up

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

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

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

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

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

Backpack in Glacier National Park

Ages 8 and Up

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

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

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

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

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

Descend Into the Grand Canyon

Ages 8 and Up

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

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

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

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

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

Sea Kayak Back to the Ice Age

Ages 8 and Up

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

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

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

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

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

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As we neared Gunsight Pass in Glacier National Park, on a three-day family backpacking trip, a man and woman in their fifties stopped to talk with us. They sized up our kids and smiled; Nate was nine and Alex was seven. “We’re impressed!” they told us. “We never had any luck trying to get our kids to backpack when they were young.” We chatted a bit and then headed off in opposite directions on the trail.

After they were out of earshot, Alex turned to me, wanting to clarify a point: “You didn’t get us to do this,” she told me. “We wanted to do it.” Her words, of course, warmed my heart. But her comment also spotlighted the biggest lesson for parents hoping to raise their kids to love the outdoors: Create experiences that make them eager to go out again the next time.

Sure, all kids are different. Offering advice to parents on how to raise their kids treads on dangerous ground—kind of like telling members of my extended Italian-American family how to make pasta sauce.

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.

But my wife and I have had good success. Our kids are now young adults and and still look forward to our regular backpacking, skiing, paddling, and other adventures. They also amassed an impressive list of pretty hard-core trips on their wilderness CVs by a very young age, from sea kayaking in Alaska’s Glacier Bay and descending a technical slot canyon in Utah’s Capitol Reef National Park, to numerous backpacking trips in national parks like Grand Teton, Zion, Olympic, and the Grand Canyon, and trekking hut to hut in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park, on the Tour du Mont Blanc, and in Spain’s Picos de Europa, among other international adventures.

(See a menu of stories about many of our trips at my Family Adventures page, and see my Book page to read about the year we spent taking wilderness adventures in national parks threatened by climate change.)

I think much of what we’ve learned could be helpful to most families, and it boils down to these 10 basic guidelines laid out below. Like many stories at The Big Outside, part of this story requires a paid subscription to read: The first six tips below are free for anyone to read, but reading the rest—including tips I don’t think you’ll find from other sources—is an exclusive benefit for readers with a paid subscription to The Big Outside. If you’re already a subscriber, thank you for that, I appreciate it.

See the many comments at the bottom of this story, and please share your own thoughts, questions, experiences, and tips there, too. I try to respond to all comments. Click on any photo to see the story about it.

1. Give Away Your Baby Stroller

As soon as your toddler can walk, give some friends that stroller and let your child walk everywhere you go, whether around town or on a trail. Sure, walking with a little one requires patience. But it turns children into strong hikers at a young age and gets them used to the idea that they will walk rather than be carried.

I preferred a child-carrier backpack to a stroller, even in urban settings, for those occasions when one of my kids needed a break from walking. It gives you exercise, is more convenient on stairs, and helps communicate to kids that our family carries packs—that we’re hikers.

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2. Don’t Give in to Frustration and Apathy

Let’s face it: Hiking, camping, or doing almost anything outdoors with babies, toddlers, and preschoolers is often more work than fun. Don’t get discouraged; take them out anyway. If you wait until they’re older, you may find that your child isn’t interested. Introduce children to the outdoors while they’re very young and make it part of your family lifestyle, so that you nurture in them a long-term love for it.

I can help you plan the best backpacking, hiking, or family adventure of your life.
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3. Take Baby Steps

Don’t push your kids too hard. This one’s especially hard for parents who have always been very active, but pushing them risks creating a negative association with the outdoors. Start small, with short hikes, and work gradually up to longer outings. Think of it as pulling them along rather than pushing them. This also helps prevent the need to abandon plans, which is sometimes necessary (see tip #5) but can be disappointing for everyone involved.

What’s familiar and easy to you may seem scary and intimidating to a kid. Evaluate your child’s readiness for something new based not just on its physical difficulty, but how well your child handled previous experiences that presented comparable stress.

Example: When I considered taking my kids, at age nine and seven, sea kayaking and wilderness camping for five days in Glacier Bay, Alaska, I decided they were ready for it because they had done several backpacking trips, rock climbed, floated and camped on a wilderness river, and cross-country skied through snowstorms to backcountry yurts. They had managed stressful situations well and understood the need to follow instructions and that trips have uncomfortable moments. Despite how wet and raw it was at times, they loved Glacier Bay.

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4. Employ Bribery Strategically

Bring along motivators like their favorite candy bar to eat halfway through a hike and a favorite stuffed animal. Do things that create positive associations for kids, like giving them their own gear (headlamp, pack, walkie-talkie, etc.), and letting them be the hike leader or take charge pitching the tent.

Remember: What a child says now does not necessarily reflect how she will feel 20 minutes from now. I’ve been reminded time and time again that a seemingly tired kid is often just a hungry kid. They don’t have nearly the fat reserves and muscle mass of adults, so they need to rest and refuel more frequently, sometimes every hour.

Look for warning signs: grumpiness, a slowing pace, growing quiet, or a faraway look. Remind them frequently to take a drink. A 10-minute rest and a fat chocolate bar can swing a kid’s attitude 180 degrees.

Keep the magic going with my “10 Tips For Getting Your Teenager Outdoors With You”
and my “7 Tips for Getting Your Family on Outdoor Adventure Trips.”

5. Tear Up Your Agenda

Whether hiking with kids or on a serious mountain climb, I think people often get into trouble simply because they focus too much on the destination, overlooking that it’s really about the journey. Don’t be so wedded to your agenda that you fail to see when it’s time to switch to Plan B.

Taking children outdoors, especially younger ones, does not always go according to plan. Adults hike for exercise, the views, and to get somewhere; young kids want to throw rocks in a creek and play in the mud. Let them. Explain to kids that there will be time for playing, but also a time for hiking. Encourage your teenager to invite along a friend. Find a balance that makes everyone happy, giving children some say without relinquishing all control.

Take a great, family-friendly backpacking trip using my expert e-books.
Click here now to see them all.

6. Talk and Listen

Establish a rule up front: no whining. Tell your children they can talk about any situation they’re not happy with, but draw the line at complaining just to complain. Everyone will be happier.

At the same time, explain to your kids what you will be doing and what’s expected of them. Welcome their questions and address their concerns. Make sure they know that you won’t ask them to do anything they are not comfortable with, and that you will provide whatever help they need. Make them feel like they’re part of the decision-making process, so they have a sense of control over their own fate, which goes a long way toward relieving stress, no matter what your age.

I’m also a big believer in taking charge when necessary. My friend Shelli Johnson, a life and leadership coach, adventure guide, and blogger at yourepiclife.com, framed this advice wonderfully: “If you want to go hiking as a family, don’t ask your child or children, ‘Do you want to go hiking?’ Just say, ‘We’re going hiking.’ Trust me on this. You’re in charge, and if you’re serious about wanting a family that hikes and spends a lot of time outdoors, be the captain.”

Planning a backpacking trip? See “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips”
and “10 Tips for Taking Kids on Their First Backpacking Trip.”

See a menu of all stories about our many family outdoor adventures at my Family Adventures page at The Big Outside.

I wrote about taking our young kids on 11 wilderness adventures in national parks facing threats from climate change in my National Outdoor Book Awards-winning book, Before They’re Gone—A Family’s Year-Long Quest to Explore America’s Most Endangered National Parks, from Beacon Press.

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Imagine this: You’re heading out on a long, beautiful hike deep in the backcountry, but instead of a full backpack, you carry a light daypack. You’ve avoided hassles with getting a backcountry permit and there’s no camp to set up and pack up. I love backpacking—and I do it a lot. But sometimes, I prefer to knock off a weekend-length—or longer—hike in one big day.

A completely different way to experience a hike, walking 15 to 20 or more miles in a day feels liberating in how lightly you travel and how much ground you can cover. The following list of 15 hikes represents the very best long—and huge—dayhikes I’ve taken over more than three decades of hiking all over the country, as a longtime field editor for Backpacker magazine and running this blog.

I’ve taken huge dayhikes many times simply because I had just one day free and wanted to see as much as possible. But there are some long stretches of trail that, to me, just cry out to be hiked in a day—for aesthetic reasons and because the length and access are just right and the scenery top shelf. The hikes on this list possess those qualities.

Like many stories at The Big Outside, part of this story is free for anyone to read, but reading about all of the hikes in this story requires a paid subscription to this blog.

If you have a favorite long dayhike that you think belongs on this list, tell me in the comments section at the bottom of this story, and I’ll try to get to it. Or just tell me what you think of my list. I try to respond to all comments.

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 Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim

Arguably the granddaddy of ultra-dayhikes, traversing the Grand Canyon from the South Rim to the North Rim and back again constitutes not only the most demanding stroll on this list, but a mind-blowing, top-to-bottom tour of one of Earth’s most magnificent and unfathomable natural features—twice in one day. By its shortest route (depending on which trails you use), the r2r2r, as it’s known, is 42 miles round-trip with a cumulative elevation gain and loss of over 21,000 feet.

Backpacking the route requires obtaining one of the most hard-to-get backcountry permits in the National Park System, so if you possess the fitness and skills to knock it off in a day, that may offer your best chance of actually doing it. Of course, the shorter (and perhaps saner) alternative is to hike across the canyon in just one direction, halving the distance, using available shuttle services to travel between the rims before or after your hike (depending on your lodging arrangements).

I hope it goes without saying that this is an extremely arduous undertaking in an extreme environment and should only be attempted by very fit, experienced desert hikers: Every time I’ve done it, I’ve seen a surprising number of people attempting to hike it in just one direction (rim to rim) who were already suffering mightily long before they would finish it. This is no place to experiment with how far you can hike in a day: Be certain you are prepared for this massive undertaking.

See my stories “Fit to be Tired: Hiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in a Day,” “How to Hike the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim in a Day,” and “A Grand Ambition, Or April Fools? Dayhiking the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim to Rim,” and all stories about the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

Click here now for my expert e-book to hiking the Grand Canyon rim to rim!

Logan Pass to Many Glacier, Glacier National Park

Take one of the prettiest moderate-length dayhikes in the National Park System—Glacier’s Highline Trail—and tack on waterfalls, a view from above a glacier, and a walk down a valley flanked by peaks, and you have the 16.4-mile, point-to-point traverse from 6,646-foot Logan Pass on the Going-to-the-Sun Road to Many Glacier, via Swiftcurrent Pass. This hike delivers uninterrupted views of the park’s jagged peaks and cliffs, and there’s a good chance you’ll see bighorn sheep and mountain goats. The distance includes the optional but very worthwhile side hike—1.2 miles and a steep 1,000 feet—to the Grinnell Glacier Overlook, a notch in the long cliff known as the Garden Wall.

See my stories “The 8 Best Long Hikes in Glacier National Park” and “Descending the Food Chain: Backpacking Glacier National Park’s Northern Loop,” and all of my stories about Glacier National Park at The Big Outside.

Do you want to backpack in Glacier? See The Big Outside’s E-Books page for a menu of all expert e-books available at this blog, including to two five-star trips in Glacier.

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Tenaya Lake to Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park

From the post-card view of the granite domes and cliffs flanking Tenaya Lake, to two of Yosemite’s finest summts and two of its most spectacular waterfalls, this 21-mile traverse hits many of the park’s best and most famous landmarks.

After admiring the view from Tenaya Lake’s southwestern shore, hike up 9,926-foot Clouds Rest, culminating with its gripping, sidewalk-width summit ridge, with a drop-off of several hundred feet on the left and a cliff on the right that falls away a dizzying 4,000 feet—a thousand feet taller than the face of El Capitan.

Then comes Half Dome’s thrilling cable route (lead photo at top of story) and a view of Yosemite Valley that would otherwise require you to have rock climbing skills or wings—for which you need a permit—followed by a descent of the Mist Trail past 594-foot Nevada Fall and 317-foot Vernal Fall, before finishing at the Happy Isles Trailhead in Yosemite Valley.

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

Gear up right for huge hikes like this. See the best hiking shoes and the best hiking daypacks.

Traversing Zion National Park

Few “dayhikes” on any list of ultra-hikes stretch as long as this—or get as scenic—but the north to south traverse across Zion National Park has earned something of a cult following among uber-fit hikers and ultra-runners.

From Lee Pass Trailhead to East Entrance Trailhead—with a short shuttle-bus ride in Zion Canyon from The Grotto to Weeping Rock—you’ll navigate a 47-mile grand tour of some of the most amazing scenery in the Southwest: deep chasms with burnt-red and white walls, soaring cliffs and beehive rock formations, and edge-of-the-rim walks high above labyrinths of slot canyons.

Throw in a few stunning, short side hikes along the way—Northgate Peaks, Angels Landing, and Hidden Canyon—and you log more than 50 miles on one of the most incredible days of hiking in the entire National Park System.

For a shorter but still full day of hiking that’s a reasonable length for many more fit hikers and trail runners, hike the West Rim Trail, 16.6 miles from the upper trailhead near Lava Point to the Grotto trailhead (shuttle bus stop no. 6) in Zion Canyon, a mostly downhill hike with about 800 vertical feet uphill and 3,600 feet downhill.

But the most scenic stretch of the West Rim Trail lies between its lower switchbacks, starting below Walter’s Wiggles and the spur trail to Angels Landing, and the upper junction with the Telephone Canyon Trail—and you can see all of that on an out-and-back dayhike from the Grotto that’s the same distance as hiking the West Rim Trail from top to bottom, without requiring a shuttle—but of course, requiring you to hike up and down about 3,000 vertical feet.

See my stories “The 10 Best Hikes in Zion National Park,” which provides details about an ongoing trail closure that has prevented completing this full traverse, although it’s still possible to hike about 40 miles from Lee Pass to Zion Canyon, and “Mid-Life Crisis—Hiking 50 Miles Across Zion In a Day,” and all stories about Zion National Park at The Big Outside.

If you like this list, check out “The 25 Best National Park Dayhikes.”

Paintbrush-Cascade Canyons Loop, Grand Teton National Park

Probably the most popular backpacking trip in the park, the nearly 20-mile Paintbrush Canyon-Cascade Canyon loop from String Lake Trailhead, with a bit over 4,000 feet of elevation gain and loss, sees hikers and runners regularly notching it in a day.

The scenery is classic Tetons: serrated peaks and deep canyons with rock walls soaring thousands of feet overhead, and waterfalls tumbling off those walls in Cascade Canyon. Plus, the loop crosses one of the highest points reached on any trail in the park, 10,720-foot Paintbrush Divide, where the panorama takes in a huge chunk of the Tetons. It also passes cliff-ringed Lake Solitude in the North Fork of Cascade Canyon, where you’re looking straight down the glacier-carved valley at the towering north walls of the Grand Teton and Mount Owen.

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

Dying to backpack in the Tetons? See my e-books to the Teton Crest Trail
and backpacking the beginner-friendly loop described above.

Presidential Range ‘Death March’

This archetypal huge dayhike—the first known traverse dates back to 1882—the 20-mile, 8,500-foot “Death March” of New Hampshire’s Presidential Range remains above treeline for 15 miles, with vistas spanning the White Mountains. And the distance and difficulty hit a sweet spot—within reach for fit hikers, yet hard enough to fire aspirations, especially given the notoriously rocky and steep character of trails in the Whites.

Starting at one of the trailheads below 5,367-foot Mount Madison (the Air Line and Osgood Trail are personal favorites) and hiking south to Crawford Notch (to tick off the harder, northern summits first), purists tag all nine summits along the way, including the Northeast’s highest, 6,288-foot Mt. Washington—where winds exceed hurricane force an average of 110 days a year, and the average year-round temperature is below freezing, at 27.2° F. Pack some layers.

See my stories “Step Onto Rock. Step Down. Repeat 50,000 Times: A Presidential Range ‘Death March’,” “Big Hearts, Big Day: A 17-Mile Hike With Teens in the Presidential Range,” and all stories about the White Mountains at The Big Outside.

Get ready for your next big hike. See my stories “Training For a Big Hike or Mountain Climb”
and “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be.”

High Divide-Sol Duc Loop, Olympic National Park

Like the above hike, this 18-mile loop with over 3,000 feet of elevation gain is popular with backpackers, but a doable objective for many fit dayhikers—and a great day in a mountain range that’s largely beyond reach to all but backpackers and climbers on strenuous, multi-day outings.

Hiking counterclockwise, you’ll pass lovely Sol Duc Falls, with its triple columns, and climb through old-growth rainforest to higher meadows carpeted with lupine and other wildflowers. On a clear day, the High Divide Trail’s long alpine traverse delivers views across the deep, lushly green trench of the Hoh River Valley to ice- and snow-blanketed Mount Olympus. After passing beautiful Heart Lake, set in another sprawling meadow, the loop makes a gentle descent below ancient, giant trees along the Sol Duc River. You’re likely to see elk and mountain goats at higher elevations and black bear almost anywhere.

See all of my stories about Olympic National Park at The Big Outside.

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Crossing the Wind River Range

Huge vistas for much of the way, in one of the highest ranges of the Rocky Mountains, are the payoff on this 27-mile, east-west crossing of the southern Winds, from the Bears Ears Trailhead in Dickinson Park to the Big Sandy Opening Trailhead.

With a cumulative elevation gain of about 4,500 feet, this traverse stays above 11,000 feet for many miles, with views of peaks rising above 12,000 feet on the Continental Divide. Don’t pass up the 20-minute, off-trail side trip up 12,250-foot Mount Chauvenet, overlooking a row of peaks that includes Buffalo Peak, Camel’s Hump, and Mounts Washakie and Hooker. But the hike’s highlight is the Cirque of the Towers, a mind-boggling horseshoe of sheer-walled granite peaks standing shoulder to shoulder.

See my story “A Walk in the Winds: Hiking a One-Day, 27-Mile Traverse of Wyoming’s Wind River Range,” and all stories about the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

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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.

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

I 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.

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

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.

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

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.

Click here now to get my expert e-book to backpacking Zion’s Narrows.

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.

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

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.

Want to hike the Teton Crest Trail, John Muir Trail, or another trip?
Click here for expert advice you won’t get elsewhere.

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.

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

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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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”
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Sunset in the Everglades

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

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

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

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Dawn on Nepal’s Annapurna Circuit

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

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

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

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

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Sunset at Delicate Arch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Here’s a question I’ve struggled with. Because of the timing of my trips, I often end up hiking and backpacking solo. I enjoy that (and enjoy groups). However, as a result, I’ve had a number of bear and moose encounters that have left me a little uncomfortable, and with a feeling of powerlessness in those situations. I’ve read about bear encounters and technically know what to do (making noise, etc.), but I’ve sometimes exhausted all those tricks and found myself still staring at a bear in my path. What do you recommend I do—especially about hiking solo?

It’s made me more conservative recently—in particular, I had made plans to hike the Teton Crest Trail in September, had the permit, etc., but ended up dayhiking instead (Cascade Canyon, Paintbrush Canyon). Those dayhikes were awesome and it was probably the smarter decision, as there ended up being storms up on the crest. But, truth be told, I really made that decision to dayhike instead of backpack largely because I feel like I can do everything I’m technically supposed to with regard to bear encounters and still feel powerless when I’ve exhausted all my tools and tricks.

I hate that feeling (and I’ve had it a few times) where I’ve done everything I’m “supposed” to do and it comes down the bear’s choice. He’s still staring at me and eventually—fortunately for me—each time, the bear has made the choice to amble off in another direction.

Thoughts?

Dave
Ann Arbor, MI

Hi Dave,

Many people can appreciate those sentiments, including me. I’ve taken many solo trips, and had many bear encounters solo and with companions, some of them up close. A friend and I had one encounter in Glacier National Park with a grizzly sow with two cubs at a distance of about 30 feet, and it’s very unnerving. (The sow and cubs barely even looked in our direction; they weren’t interested.)

More recently, on a 94-mile backpacking trip through Glacier in September 2018, another friend and I had to wait out a griz that was grazing very close to the trail ahead of us—too close to the trail to consider hiking past the bear. We blew air horns but that had no impact on this bruin. We watched it from about 200 yards away across a meadow for nearly an hour before we finally decided to bushwhack a wide arc around that section of trail, making noise all the way, which worked—but we lost at least an hour of hiking time.

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The chances of a violent encounter are extremely low, but the consequences are high, of course, and you never know.

I’ve had numerous encounters with black bears where I threw rocks to chase them off (they were always going for my food, not me). That would be a dangerous response to grizzly bears. Moose can be dangerous, especially during the fall rutting season, but every encounter I’ve had with one has been non-confrontational, even though maybe one or two were fairly close range.

You can find other sources for tips on how to hike safely in bear country, and the definitive text on that is the book Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance, by Stephen Herrero.

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Your question is about deciding whether or when to backpack solo in bear country, so I’ll tell you how I approach that question.

I think specifically about the place and the likelihood of a bear or moose encounter while hiking solo. For instance, I’ve seen moose in the Tetons at least three times, always at an adequate distance to not antagonize them, and I have encountered a black bear there on a couple of occasions, never threatening, over the course of probably more than 20 trips in the Tetons backcountry (including some remote, off-trail areas). I suspect bear encounters in the Tetons are rare because of the park’s management of backpackers and food in camping zones, and the regular hiker and backpacker traffic keeping bears away from many trails. But grizzly bears have taken up residence in the Teton Range, increasing the hazard of being alone.

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Given all that, and the regular human traffic in the Tetons in summer (it does taper off in September), and the fact that much of the terrain—especially along the Teton Crest Trail—is in meadows or above treeline, with long sight lines, I consider the Tetons a relatively safe park for someone with the right skills to backpack solo.

However, I wouldn’t recommend solo backpacking, for example, in Glacier, where there’s a high concentration of black and grizzly bears and moose, or in many parks in Alaska. Maybe not in the Olympic Mountains, either, because of a high concentration of black bears and dense forest increasing the likelihood of a surprise, close encounter. (I shot the lead photo of a black bear at the top of this story in the Olympic Mountains; it was just off the trail we were backpacking down, and showed no aggression toward us, but we moved along quickly.)

As for specific, solo-hiking strategies, here are mine.

• Planning months ahead certainly helps you avoid having to hike solo. While I’ve done it many times, I rarely backpack solo these days, mostly because I plan my trips months in advance and that helps in finding friends and family who can join me. (I prefer having companions, and I tend to miss my family more when I’m out solo, which makes it less enjoyable for me.)

• When in grizzly country, I always carry this pepper spray. (Tip: Practice pulling the plastic locking clip off it, because it’ll be very hard to think straight when you see a bear charging. Also, before removing the clip, look at it closely, or even take a photo of it in place, so that you know how to put it back in place; I’ve seen a friend replace it upside-down, which can allow it to accidentally deploy the spray when bumped.)

• I carry an air horn. (Small bells are useless—their noise doesn’t travel very far.) I have a couple of Falcon Personal Safety Horns (so I can give one to a companion, too). They’re small, weigh just a few ounces, easy to clip to a shoulder strap or belt, and very loud. (Don’t point one at someone and blast it, or fire it off near your face, it’s painfully loud.)

While pepper spray is only effective when a bear is within about 15 to 20 feet, an air horn can frighten off a bear at a distance, or just let it know you’re there. I’ll occasionally give my air horn a blast when walking through dense forest or brush in bear country, when I can’t see far. While my anecdote (above) from a griz encounter in Glacier illustrates that horns are not always effective at hazing a bear to leave an area, I’ve read about them working well, and it’s such a loud and unnatural noise that I believe it would work sometimes—including possibly with other large animals, like moose.

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• Hiking in daylight, and not too early in the morning or after sunset, makes you safer because most animals are more active between dusk and dawn. Safe food storage in camp also makes you safer, and I might feel more inclined to carry a bear canister, even if it’s not required, when I’m solo. (See my favorite canister in my review of essential backpacking accessories.)

• Be aware of whether you’re hiking into the wind or downwind—when moving downwind, animals will detect your scent from a greater distance, whereas upwind, they are less likely to smell or hear you at a distance. Also, be conscious of ambient noise levels: A loud river nearby could drown out your noise, while quiet surroundings enable animals to hear you from a greater distance—and occasionally, for you to hear them.

• Whether solo or with companions, give your itinerary to someone reliable, along with the phone number of the park ranger station or local authorities, and tell them to report you missing if they haven’t heard from you within a day after you expected to finish your trip.

• You could carry a GPS/communication device, like a Garmin inReach, that would allow you to signal for a rescue and send a nightly message to someone back home to let that person know you’re fine. With any type of emergency beacon, you significantly reduce the rescue-response time if you do have an emergency.

• Perhaps most importantly, whether solo or with companions, ask park rangers about the location and details of any recent bear activity, because that can tell you a lot about where it’s relatively safe and unsafe to hike at any particular time. Bears are always on the move, and at any given time, certain locations in a park are more dangerous than other areas.

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That’s about all you can do short of carrying a large gun—which isn’t permitted in some places, and it’s heavy. Plus, a handgun is not going to stop a bear or moose; the rifles used to kill them are high caliber and one bullet often isn’t enough. And imagine trying to aim and fire a rifle at a bear at close range, charging at 30 mph.

Pepper spray would likely be much more effective at close range: The spray disperses widely and virtually always turns a bear away, whereas you may shoot and miss with a gun, or just enrage the bear more if you hit it without really injuring it. From a distance, a gunshot may dissuade a bear, but I’ll choose the pepper spray and air horn over a gun.

To my last bullet point above, my brother-in-law, Tom Beach, who worked as a backcountry ranger in Yellowstone for about 10 years, offered these thoughts on this question, and I think his general advice applies to many places with grizzly or brown bears:

“I would backpack solo in most of Yellowstone (and was almost always solo when I was a backcountry ranger on foot), but there is about 10 to 15 percent of the park where I would never go solo due to the grizzly bear concentration (and these areas change from month to month depending on the bears’ main food sources). The challenge is that the Park Service will give you a permit to hike solo just about anywhere, and so you have to have a lot of experience/local knowledge to know better. People should be sure to ask questions about recent bear activity or sightings in the area where they are planning to go, when they pick up their permit.”

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My suggestions do not completely eliminate risk of a hostile animal encounter, of course. But statistically, you are far more likely to be injured in a fall when hiking, whether solo or with companions, than to have an animal encounter. When solo, I think much more about being careful to avoid that kind of accident.

In general, though, most animals—including another you didn’t mention, mountain lions—detect people long before we are aware of them, and we probably usually fail to ever know how many animals are nearby.

I remember, several years ago, after dayhiking with my family when my kids were quite young to Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park—a busy trail with a constant stream of dayhikers—I ran into someone at the campground at Many Glacier who said he was in a boat on the lake below the trail around the same time we were hiking it. He said he could see something like a dozen bears grazing peacefully very near the trail, but hidden by vegetation from the hikers passing close by, and the bears just seemed oblivious to the people.

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Good luck, keep in touch.

Best,
Michael

—Michael Lanza

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On a remote, sandy beach on Washington’s Olympic coast, we stop in our tracks and gaze up. A wall of muddy earth rises some 300 feet into jungle-like rainforest. A thick strand of hemp rope dangles down this steep, eroding embankment. A ladder of wooden steps built into the muddy ground rises in tandem with the rope.

We’re going up it.

We’ve reached this spot after an hour of stepping and clambering cautiously over a beach tiled with big boulders, each one coated with wet, slick kelp and barnacles. Our group of six—including my wife, Penny, our school-age son, Nate, and daughter, Alex, my brother-in-law, Tom Beach, and his 15-year-old son, Daniel—crossed that beach while racing the clock against an incoming tide that was rapidly transforming that rocky stretch of coast to ocean. Now, this rope ladder marks the start of a three-mile-long overland trail through the rainforest. This detour off the beach is necessary to get around Hoh Head, an impassable section of coast where cliffs rise straight out of the pounding ocean.

“Oh, there’s a slug! There’s ANOTHER slug!” Nate excitedly calls out every sighting of these slimy creatures that are as long as his hand as I follow Alex and him up the rope ladder—bracing myself to, in theory, catch a tumbling kid.

It’s early on the first afternoon of our three-day, 17.5-mile backpacking trip on the southern stretch of the Olympic coast, from the Hoh River north to La Push Road. On the outer edge of the Olympic Peninsula, Olympic National Park protects the longest strip of wilderness coastline in the contiguous United States. You can’t order fried seafood or buy a T-shirt anywhere along these 73 miles of seashore. In fact, it’s one of the few remaining pieces of ocean-view real estate in the Lower 48 that Lewis and Clark or Capt. George Vancouver would recognize.

It’s also one of America’s most stunningly beautiful shores. Up and down the coast, scores of stone pinnacles—called sea stacks—rise as much as 200 feet out of the ocean, some of them topped with a copse of a few trees, others just bare rock. Some lie close enough to the beach to walk to them at low tide; others erupt from the sea far offshore. They were once part of the mainland. Composed of harder sandstone than much of the headlands that face the Pacific, the sea stacks remained standing after the waves eroded away softer rock and dirt surrounding them.

Seeing the stacks that stand hundreds of yards from the beach speaks volumes about what the ocean does to this coast.

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Olympic National Park

We follow the overland trail through primeval rainforest, where mosses grow thickly on enormous trees. On this windward side of the Olympic Mountains, up to 14 feet of rain a year sustain one of Earth’s largest virgin temperate rainforests, an ecosystem possibly containing more living biomass than anywhere in the world. Sitka spruce and western red cedar grow to 150 feet tall, with diameters of 10 or 15 feet; Douglas fir and western hemlock soar well over 200 feet. Ferns carpet the ground.

Offshore upwellings of nutrient-rich cold water nurture a food chain ranging from the foundation species of life—phytoplankton and zooplankton—to invertebrates, many kinds of fish, seals, sea lions, sea otters, and humpback, gray, minke, and blue whales. Salmon spawn in wild rivers. You can see bald eagles, tufted puffins, and many seabirds. Olympic National Park offers a tremendous diversity of recreational activities, but its greatest value may be in the incredible diversity of life it sustains.

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As we hike, fog swirls around in the treetops—although not far to our right, inland, we can see blue sky. Just a few hours ago, in Forks, the little town on US 101 that has reinvented itself as a tourist destination for fans of the vampire book series, Twilight, it was sunny and in the 70s. Here on the coast, it’s foggy and in the 50s. That’s not unusual here.

Even during this relatively “drier” season, in mid-August, boot-sucking mud defines much of the trail. And while my topographical map, with its 80-foot contour intervals, suggests this trail is a gentle stroll through the woods, in reality the path plunges repeatedly into 20-foot-deep ravines and climbs steeply back out of them. We walk toe-to-heel across slick logs over bogs of knee-deep muck, stride over tree roots as big around as an anaconda, and scramble up and down numerous wooden ladders and steps built into the saturated earth. This trail around Hoh Head will be the roughest three miles of the trip.

By mid-afternoon, having taken five hours to hike a bit more than five miles, we grab a spacious campsite in the forest near Mosquito Creek. Beyond the edge of our site, an eroded bluff drops steeply about a hundred feet down to a rocky beach buffeted by waves as the tide rolls in.

The kids drop their packs and dart immediately down the trail to the beach. After pitching our tents, I find them wading knee-deep in a wide pool where Mosquito Creek backs up behind the beach. They have already constructed sand castles, and outfitted long chunks of driftwood as battleships, complete with sand-and-stick cannons. As they launch into extended explanations of their ships, I touch the cool creek water and note that the air temp is still in the 50s, and the sun a faint orb glowing weakly through the gray overcast. But my kids don’t even seem to notice the chill.

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I just stumbled upon The Big Outside! Wow! Amazing! Thank you for it! I LOVE it!

We have two girls, ages 11 and 9. Our first “major” backpacking trip last year was to Olympic National Park. Covered 30 miles in 8 days. Obstruction Point to Moose Lake, Third Beach to Toleak, and Graves Creek to O’Neil. What a trip! Each girl carried about 10 pounds and my husband and I each about 40 pounds. This trip took three to four months of planning. We fell in love with the Pacific Northwest.

Unfortunately, I dropped the ball this year in planning another fantastic westward-bound trip. I am scrambling to put something together. I am looking at North Cascades, primarily because they do not accept online reservations—first come, first served.

I would like any recommendations for this area. Interested in a loop but doesn’t necessarily have to be. We just love the mountains, old-growth forests, lakes, wildflowers, etc. Not interested in camping on top of mountains. Thought we could definitely do a 4- to 5-day trip, or hike in, spend a few nights, hike out and do another section. We are flying in on a Sunday, so hoping for good luck obtaining a permit since it is during week, instead of a weekend.

Thank you and hike on!

Jennifer
Cincinnati

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for writing and for the nice words about The Big Outside, I’m glad you enjoy it.

Good on your family for doing such an ambitious first backpacking trip in Olympic National Park! My family has also backpacked the southern Olympic coast, and my wife and I (before kids) backpacked a five-day loop in the northeast corner of the Olympic Mountains (which is much drier than the west side) from Obstruction Peak to Deer Park, Gray Wolf Pass, Lost Pass, Cameron Pass, Grand Pass and Grand Lake, which I recommend when your kids are ready for something a little more rugged.

I’m also a big fan of the Pacific Northwest. (I was Backpacker magazine’s Northwest Editor for many years.) You’re planning a trip to one of my favorite mountain ranges, the North Cascades, where I’ve dayhiked, backpacked, and climbed numerous times. It’s pretty rugged and there aren’t many multi-day loop options, although there are almost-loops that are pretty long. But there are trails I’m familiar with that would be good choices for your family, I think.

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

We backpacked with our kids, when they were nine and seven, from Hannegan Trailhead, which is just outside the park’s northwest corner, about 3.5 miles to a backcountry campsite called Hannegan Camp, which is in the national forest and doesn’t require a permit. About a half-mile or less before Hannegan Pass, it’s a nice spot where the kids played in a small creek and we had views of Ruth Mountain. On a weeknight, you probably wouldn’t find that camp full. We used it as a base camp for dayhikes up to Hannegan Pass and Hannegan Peak (one mile and 1,200 feet above Hannegan Pass via a pretty good trail with excellent views); and out-and-back partway onto Copper Ridge, a rolling, alpine ridge with spectacular views of the North Cascades and Mount Shuksan. We were there in mid-summer 2010 and there was a lot of snow in some places. There’s also a user trail, not shown on maps but pretty good, from Hannegan Pass leading south across alpine terrain to the snowy slopes of Ruth Mountain (which I skied some years back with friends in late July!). All three side hikes from Hannegan Camp are really scenic with a quick payoff of views.

The full backpacking loop of Copper Ridge and the Chilliwack River Trail from Hannegan Trailhead is a more rugged and strenuous loop of some 34 miles, which I’ve long wanted to do, but we didn’t attempt with our kids on that trip because of its length, the time we had, and the amount of snow still on the ground then.

One of the most popular hikes in North Cascades National Park is Cascade Pass, 3.1 miles one-way and 1,800 feet from the trailhead at the end of Cascade River Road (outside Marblemount). I’ve hiked to the pass a few times, including once with our kids when they were two and about four months. From Cascade Pass, you can continue another 2.2 miles and 1,800 feet on the trail up Sahale Arm to Sahale Glacier Camp at 7,200 feet, one of my 25 favorite backcountry campsites ever. It’s a rugged hike and very exposed to bad weather, but a wonderful spot with amazing views and a chance of seeing mountain goats. You can break up the ascent over two days by spending the first night in Pelton Basin camp, just beyond Cascade Pass, then hiking to Sahale Glacier Camp from there on day two. I give more tips on that trip in this Ask Me post.

You should also see this story about hikes in North Cascades National Park, which offers more details about Cascade Pass/Sahale Arm, Hannegan Peak, and another good possibility for your family, the Heather Pass-Maple Pass Loop, which you should save for a nice day and later summer, when most of the snow has melted off.

Another kid-friendly trip to consider in Olympic National Park, which you may still be able to get a permit for, is Royal Basin, also in the park’s northeast corner. I backpacked there by myself once; it’s gorgeous. You actually begin outside the national park boundary, on the Dungeness River Trail, where you don’t need a permit to camp within the first mile in one of the nice, established sites on the river, amid big trees. Royal Lake is a beautiful spot ringed by peaks, about eight steadily rising (never steep) miles from the Dungeness River Trailhead via the Royal Basin Trail. Spend two nights at Royal Lake, and on your free day hike the unmaintained, user trail heading south from the lake less than a mile up into Royal Basin; the trail isn’t shown on maps, but it’s a pretty good path into the alpine zone with lots of wildflowers, some small tarns for playing and a swim on a hot day, and an arc of rocky peaks. You can also follow a faint and steep use path that leads to a pass between Mount Deception and Mount Fricaba overlooking Deception Basin, a spectacular and remote cirque. I didn’t descend into that basin, but it looked quite steep and rugged.

I hope that’s helpful. Let me know how your trip goes. Get in touch anytime and thanks again for following The Big Outside.

Best,
Michael

Michael,

My sincere thanks for responding to my email. You are full of information. I hope your website gets more families like mine to become more adventurous.

Since I last wrote, we have decided to tackle the Cascade Pass Trail you described and do the Sahale Glacier. We spoke with the ranger there and it should be no problem to do that since we will be backpacking in the area for five days. He said one of those five days we should be able to score the site. We will also spend some time in San Juan Islands and have hired a guide to take us kayaking/camping with the orcas and sea life. However, I always like to have plan B, so I will check out your suggestions with Hannegan and Copper Ridge. I bought the Falcon Guide, Hiking in the North Cascades, by Erik Molvar, which should educate me more on the hikes.

I certainly will let you know how this trip fares. It should be epic just like last year’s trip. I am “on the ball” now and am looking into the Grand Tetons for next year! So little time, so many awesome adventures to be had!

Many thanks!
Jennifer

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—Michael Lanza

When the National Park Service turns 100 on Aug. 25, it will mark not just the diamond anniversary of what writer and historian Wallace Stegner famously called “the best idea we ever had”—it marks the evolution and growth of that idea from a handful of parks created in the early days to a system in many ways without parallel, that protects 52 million acres of mountain ranges, canyons, rivers, deserts, prairies, caves, islands, bays, fjords, badlands, natural arches, and seashores in 59 parks. Without that protection, these places that draw visitors from around the world would otherwise almost certainly have been exploited and destroyed.

After the designation of Yellowstone in 1872 (lead photo, above) as the world’s first national park, several more followed before the NPS was born in 1916, many of them now legendary names: Sequoia, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Crater Lake, Glacier, Haleakalā, Hawaii Volcanoes, Wind Cave, Lassen Volcanic, Mesa Verde, Rocky Mountain. During the same time period, President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed 18 national monuments (a number exceeded by only one president, Barack Obama, who has designated 19 monuments), many of which later became national parks, including Grand Canyon and Olympic.

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Throughout 2016, The Big Outside is featuring numerous stories about national parks to celebrate the National Park Service centennial, including the photo gallery below of images from nearly all of the national parks I’ve visited (close to half of the 59, so I have more work to do), and some NPS-managed national monuments.

Read more about the Park Service’s history and how you can join its centennial celebration at nps.gov/subjects/centennial. Find a national park and more information about the NPS at nps.gov/findapark.

See the All National Parks Trips page for a menu of all stories about national parks adventures at The Big Outside, or click on the name of any park in the list below of some of my favorites for stories I’ve posted at this blog about that park.

Canyonlands National Park
Everglades National Park
Glacier National Park
Glacier Bay National Park
Grand Canyon National Park
Grand Teton National Park
Mount Rainier National Park
North Cascades National Park
Olympic National Park
Rocky Mountain National Park
Sequoia National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Yosemite National Park
Zion National Park

Click directly to these stories for ideas for your next trip:

“Photo Gallery: 10 Amazing National Park Adventures (and How to Pull Them Off)”
“5 Classic (Age-Appropriate) National Park Adventures For Families”
“Photo Gallery: 11 National Parks, One Year”
“10 Tips For Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit”

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

Do you like The Big Outside? I’m Michael Lanza, the creator of The Big Outside, recognized as a top outdoors blog by a USA Today Readers Choice poll and others. Subscribe for updates about new stories and free gear giveaways by entering your email address in the box at the bottom of this story or in the left sidebar, and follow my adventures on Facebook and Twitter.

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You can’t order fried seafood or buy a T-shirt anywhere along the 73 miles of seashore of Olympic National Park. What you will find is the longest strip of wilderness coastline in the contiguous United States, home to seals, sea lions, sea otters, bald eagles, tufted puffins, and many seabirds, and humpback, gray, minke, and blue whales. Salmon spawn in wild rivers. Up and down the coast, scores of stone pinnacles—called sea stacks—rise as much as 200 feet out of the ocean. It’s one of the few remaining pieces of ocean-view real estate in the Lower 48 that Lewis and Clark or Capt. George Vancouver would recognize.

On a three-day, 17.5-mile backpacking trip on the southern stretch of the Olympic coast, from the Hoh River north to La Push Road, my family camped on the wilderness beach, explored tide pools and boulders coated with mussels, sea stars, and sea anemones, and walked through one of Earth’s largest virgin temperate rainforests, where Sitka spruce and western red cedar grow to 150 feet tall, with diameters of 10 or 15 feet, and Douglas fir and western hemlock soar well over 200 feet.

It’s still one of my kids’ favorite trips and one of my top 10 family adventures.

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Get a sense of that adventure from the photo gallery below, and then read my full story from that trip, which has many more photos and a video.

See also menus of all of my stories about family adventures, Olympic National Park, and national park adventures at The Big Outside.

Do you like The Big Outside? I’m Michael Lanza, the creator of The Big Outside, recognized as a top outdoors blog by a USA Today Readers Choice poll and others. Subscribe for updates about new stories and free gear giveaways by entering your email address in the box at the bottom of this story, at the top of the left sidebar, or on my About page, and follow my adventures on Facebook and Twitter.

This blog and website is my full-time job and I rely on the support of readers. If you like what you see here, please help me continue producing The Big Outside by making a donation using the Support button at the top of the left sidebar or below. Thank you for your support.

When carrying a bear canister, where and how would you place it in the pack? Toward the bottom above the sleeping bag? More toward the top of the pack just below the shoulderblades? Would you store it vertically and pack stuff around it, or just store horizontally across the pack? This is my first year going places that require a canister, and I can’t find an answer.

Rickard
[Originally submitted as a comment at my story “Video: How to Load a Backpack.”]

Hi Rickard,

Good question. Bear canisters are increasingly required in public lands from the High Sierra national parks and wilderness areas to Grand Teton National Park and Olympic National Park, and they can be very convenient even in backcountry areas where they’re not required, especially where you won’t easily find trees appropriate for hanging food. But a canister weighs about two-and-a-half pounds and takes up a significant portion of a backpack, so packing it smartly becomes paramount.

The answer depends on the size and primarily on the shape and dimensions of your pack. A large backpack (roughly 60 liters or bigger) is usually wide enough to lower the bear canister inside horizontally, which is the most efficient way to pack it because it spans the pack’s width. Some smaller packs (about 50 liters and under) are not wide enough, and then your only option is to insert the canister vertically and stuff items around it as well as you can. The one advantage of inserting it vertically is that the top of it will be near the top of your pack, so you can easily access snack or lunch food that’s in the canister. When I load it vertically, I leave the canister lid mostly unscrewed, so I can quickly pop it open without removing it from the pack and having to stuff it back in there again.

If you load the canister into your pack horizontally, place it roughly halfway down in the backpack, in the middle of your back—probably atop your sleeping bag, tent, and clothing stuff sack (which are items you probably won’t need to access during the day). If it’s horizontal, you’re probably not taking it out until you’re in camp, so it should contain only food that you don’t need to access during the day. (You don’t have to keep all of your food in the canister when you’re hiking.)

You’ll want to keep daytime/lunch/snack food outside the canister to have it handy, so keep in mind that the canister probably won’t actually be filled with food while you’re on the trail; there will be extra space inside it. I fill that extra canister space with other stuff, like my clothing stuff sack, rather than having a half-full canister.

Most people find that canisters hold less food than they had expected or hoped, especially the first time you use one. Choose foods that are less bulky, like pita bread or tortillas instead of bagels, and high in calories for their weight and volume (examples: oatmeal, peanut butter, dried mangoes). Plan your trip’s food specifically down to each meal and each day, and load your canister before your trip to ensure all you’re bringing fits inside it—bearing in mind that there’s no need to fit your first day’s food in the canister.

By the way, I prefer the Bear Vault BV500 bear canister for its excellent space-to-weight ratio. See more about it in my review of my favorite backpacking accessories.

See all of my backpack reviews and backpacking gear reviews, my “5 Tips For Buying the Right Backpack,” and all of my stories about backpacking at The Big Outside.

Good luck.

Michael

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NOTE: I can help you plan the best backpacking, hiking, or family adventure of your life. Got a question about any trip, gear, or topic I write about at The Big Outside? Send it to me at michaelalanza79@gmail.com. For $40, I’ll answer your questions via email to help ensure your outdoor experience is a success. I will also provide a telephone consult for $50. Write to me and I will tell you whether I can answer your question (I usually can). First scroll through my Ask Me page and All Trips page, skills stories, and gear reviews for answers to your questions before writing to me.

Do you like The Big Outside? I’m Michael Lanza, the creator of The Big Outside, recognized as a top outdoors blog by a USA Today Readers Choice poll and others. Subscribe for updates about new stories and free gear giveaways by entering your email address in the box at the bottom of this story, at the top of the left sidebar, or on my About page, and follow my adventures on Facebook and Twitter.

This blog and website is my full-time job and I rely on the support of readers. If you like what you see here, please help me continue producing The Big Outside by making a donation using the Support button at the top of the left sidebar or below. Thank you for your support.

This is National Parks Week, a good time to contemplate the writer and historian Wallace Stegner’s famous quote: “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.” Are you planning to visit a national park this week or this year? Here’s a gallery of photos from several parks I’ve visited (including Olympic, photo above) to offer a little inspiration.

You’ll find stories, photos, videos, and trip-planning tips and information at The Big Outside about adventures in many national parks, and I’m planning to post more parks stories in the coming weeks and months.

See a gallery of photos from (almost) every national park I’ve visited, and a menu of all of my stories about parks at my All National Parks Trips sub-page at my All Trips page.

If you’re not visiting a park this week, celebrate National Parks Week by starting the planning now for your next park trip. After all, life’s too short to not visit at least one national park every year.

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Do you like The Big Outside? I’m Michael Lanza, the creator of The Big Outside, recognized as a top outdoors blog by USA Today, a Trip Advisor site, and others. Subscribe for updates about new stories and free gear giveaways by entering your email address in the box at the top of the left sidebar or on my About page, and follow my adventures on Facebook and Twitter.

This blog and website is my full-time job and I rely on the support of readers. If you like what you see here, please help me continue producing The Big Outside by making a donation using the Support button at the top of the left sidebar or below. Thank you for your support.

Last month, a storm caused a power outage at Mount Rainier National Park during a two-week period when rangers received about 2,000 requests from backpackers and climbers for backcountry permit reservations for 2016. (One of those requests, coincidentally, was mine.) The outage sparked a “critical failure” of the park’s reservation system, forcing management to abandon it and announce they would issue permits only first-come, first-served for all of 2016—not convenient for anyone traveling a distance to explore Rainier’s backcountry or thru-hike the Wonderland Trail.

Rainier’s crisis throws a spotlight on a larger dilemma facing the National Park Service: In an age when we can swipe and click to purchase almost any product or service, many national parks have plodded into the Digital Era with an archaically 20th-century system for reserving and issuing permits to camp in the backcountry—a system involving snail mail and fax machines. (If you’re not old enough to remember the 1980s and 1990s, Google “fax” on your smartphone.) At some parks, you must actually still show up in person, stand in line, and hope for the best.

Finally, though, it appears the national parks are making a bold leap into the 21st century, a change that should make exploring the backcountry of most parks—or at least getting permission to do so—much easier.

Getting a backcountry permit reservation for a popular park—think Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, Mount Rainier, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, and Great Smoky Mountains, among others—generally requires making a reservation weeks or months in advance; otherwise, your only option is to show up at the park’s backcountry office and stand in line (with your fellow, non-planning free spirits) for some of the backcountry campsites issued first-come no more than a day in advance. At the Grand Canyon, Denali, Everglades, and others, you might have to do that two or three mornings in a row. Anyone who has applied for an advance permit reservation has probably wondered why many parks require an unnecessarily time-consuming process of printing and filling out a form by hand (a lost art form that no one’s trying to find), mailing or faxing it in, and then waiting weeks for a response.

And every park has its own system and dates for reserving a permit in advance. That hodge-podge of individualized permit systems evolved because parks had different operational, resource-protection, and wilderness-management needs, Jeffrey G. Olson of the NPS Office of Communications told me in an email.

At many parks, including Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Sequoia-Kings Canyon, and Olympic, you can only submit a reservation application by mail, fax, or in person. Some popular parks, including Everglades and Denali, don’t accept advance reservations—you just show up and see what you can get. (Other parks, like North Cascades and Capitol Reef, also only issue backcountry permits in person no more than a day in advance; but so few backpackers go there that those permits aren’t hard to obtain. Still, an online, advance-reservation system would assure visitors they’re getting the hike of their choice, and would probably reduce processing time for visitors and staff.)

But this may change as soon as next year.

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Reserving Park Permits Online

The website recreation.gov, working with the newly formed U.S. Digital Service (USDS), is now evaluating proposals for a service contract to create an online reservation system for national park backcountry permit reservations, Olson told me. It will involve “extensive use of end user feedback throughout the development process to ensure that the government is able to deliver a public service that meets their needs and expectations,” Olson wrote to me.

The recreation.gov reservation system is expected to go online in 2017, and NPS policy requires that parks consider it before other online systems, but individual parks will not be required to use the recreation.gov system, according to Olson. He told me that users will still be able to call and in some cases email backcountry rangers at parks to get answers to questions during trip planning.

Do you like The Big Outside? I’m Michael Lanza, the creator of The Big Outside, recognized as a top outdoors blog by USA Today, a Trip Advisor site, and others. Subscribe for updates about new stories and free gear giveaways by entering your email address in the box at the top of the left sidebar or on my About page, and follow my adventures on Facebook and Twitter.

Some parks, including Rocky Mountain, Grand Teton, Canyonlands, Great Smoky Mountains, and as of last month, Glacier, already have an online reservation system in place. On March 15, Glacier replaced its previous advance-reservation lottery with an entirely online reservation system that uses pay.gov. I submitted a reservation application online for this year using Glacier’s new system, and it worked smoothly and quickly. Mirroring policy at most parks, Glacier will still hold about half of backcountry campsites for first-come permits issued daily.

Two weeks into the new online system, Glacier had received about 2,000 permit applications, park spokeswoman Margie Steigerwald Public Affairs wrote to me in an email. “Our staff is processing the applications more efficiently and the use of pay.gov has made payment more secure,” she wrote.

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As it happens, even before the storm and power outage that trashed Rainier’s permit reservation system, the park had been working with the University of Washington Information School on developing an entirely online system, which will launch in March 2017. (Unfortunately, it isn’t ready to launch this year.) Rainier’s Public Information Officer, Kathryn Steichen, told me the park had already considered the recreation.gov system that’s in development, but decided, with the blessing of the NPS, to create its own system.

At Rainier—which has seen the number of permit reservation requests that come in during the second half of March, when the park begins accepting them for the coming hiking and climbing season, leap from several hundred five years ago to more than 2,600 last year—all requests submitted this year will be returned unprocessed and fees refunded.

Rainier’s strictly first-come permit system will be something of a year-long birthday present to western Washington backpackers, who will probably see less competition for permits from out-of-staters in a park that issued 6,319 permits, representing 12,838 people, and 434 permits for Wonderland Trail thru-hikes, in 2015. Park Superintendent Randy King acknowledged in a statement: “The ability to make a reservation for popular hikes in the park, especially the high demand backcountry campsites on the Wonderland Trail, is an important visitor service that offers certainty for those planning an overnight hike. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide that service for this summer.”

So I may not get my chance to thru-hike the Wonderland Trail this year, as I’d hoped. But I’ll welcome the opportunity to submit a permit reservation request entirely online—without having to blow the dust off my old fax machine—to hike the Wonderland in 2017.

See my “10 Tips For Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit,” “Tent Flap With a View: 25 Favorite Backcountry Campsites,” a photo gallery of every national park I’ve visited, and all of my stories about national park adventures and backpacking at The Big Outside.

Backpacking in the Grand Canyon, Glacier, Olympic, Rocky Mountain, North Cascades, and Mount Rainier (lead photo, above) national parks. Hiking to Yosemite’s waterfalls. Paddling the Everglades and sea kayaking Glacier Bay. Rock climbing in Joshua Tree, and cross-country skiing in Yellowstone. In one magical year, we took 11 national park adventures with our kids, sharing experiences that expanded their understanding of their world, times filled with joy and wonder.

I wrote about that year of family wilderness adventures in my book, Before They’re Gone—A Family’s Year-Long Quest to Explore America’s Most Endangered National Parks, which won a National Outdoor Book Award honorable mention. In it, I also explore how climate change is affecting each of these incomparable places in a singular and tragic way, virtually ensuring that they will all be radically changed in a generation—by the time my children are my age.

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The photo gallery below contains a photo from each park we visited. Click on the name of any park above to read my story at The Big Outside about it, where you will see more photos, trip-planning information, and often a video. Read an excerpt from my book.

And see menus of all of my stories about Family Adventures and National Parks trips at The Big Outside.

I invite you to subscribe to this blog by entering your email address in the box at the top of the left sidebar or on my About page, and follow my adventures on Facebook and Twitter.

This blog and website is my full-time job and I rely on the support of readers. If you like what you see here, please help me continue producing The Big Outside by making a donation using the Support button at the top of the left sidebar or below. Thank you for your support.

We are planning a trip across the country in July to Seattle/Tacoma. We have six kids (ages one to 12). We’re planning to drive all the way across and back in about a month. There are lots of places we’d like to experience, but we don’t want to just spend 30 nights in 30 different places, so we are planning spend two to three nights in the most interesting places and four nights in and around Yellowstone. We aren’t campers, don’t boat/canoe, and while we enjoy hikes with the kids, anything more than a few miles (or less if there is significant elevation change) is challenging. Given your experience and all of our constraints, I was curious which parks/areas you might recommend we visit (vs. better to visit later when the kids are older and some of those constraints are removed).

I’d also be curious, given that you live in Boise, if you thought Boise is worth visiting on our trip?  We were looking at Twin Falls and some of the surrounding areas (City of Rocks, Craters of the Moon, Bruneau Dunes) and were considering a stop at Boise as well.

We’ve driven our kids as far south as the Florida Keys, east as Cape Breton, north as Saguenay Fjord, west as the Mississippi (except for the two oldest that joined us on a visit to Portland/Seattle when they were young), and pretty much everywhere in between. We have taken our kids to more than 70 national parks, monuments, historic sites, and battlefields, as well as a dozen or so Parks Canada sites.

Thanks for any help you can provide and best of luck in all of your efforts!

Best regards,
Tony and Anne
Baltimore, MD

(Originally submitted as a question on Twitter to @MichaelALanza)

Hi Tony and Anne,

Thanks for writing and I’m excited for your family with your plans, it’ll be a wonderful adventure.

First of all, many national parks have plenty of scenery, activities, and natural features that are easily accessible for people who can’t or don’t want to walk far, as you’ve probably already discovered. We’ve taken our kids to parks since they were babies and always had fun. Having young kids doesn’t have to prevent you from visiting many parks. Yellowstone, in fact, is great for families with young kids.

That said, I would agree with your strategy of allocating your time appropriately. Here’s roughly how I’d plan to spend my time on a trip between D.C. and Seattle/Tacoma.

Although I haven’t yet visited Badlands National Park, I’ve read about it and would like to do some hiking there. Spend a day on your trip out; if you like it, you can always add a day then or on the way back.

Drive through the Needles area of the Black Hills in South Dakota—beautiful area, I’ve rock climbed there. Same with Devils Tower, in eastern Wyoming, where you might take a short walk, but not being climbers, you probably won’t feel a need to spend more than a half-day in either place.

Grand Teton and Yellowstone are parks I have visited many times and never grow tired of. See my story “The Ultimate Family Tour of Yellowstone” (which includes the 20-minute walk through the Midway Geyser Basin; see the lead photo at the top of this story). You could fill three to four days in Yellowstone, but spend a day in Grand Teton, too, even if you do nothing more than drive the park road and take the ferry across Jenny Lake for a short, easy hike up Cascade Canyon, or hang out on the small beach at String Lake, where you have a stunning view of the mountains.

Craters of the Moon and the City of Rocks National Reserve in Idaho are both very scenic and unusual and worth a half-day or a full day’s visit, even if you don’t intend to do much hiking. You will find they are a few hours’ drive apart because of the remote roads, and neither has much more development than a road (dirt road in the City of Rocks, but fine for cars), camping, bathrooms, and trails. Same with Bruneau Dunes State Park. I would check out photos and descriptions of all of them online and see whether you think your family would be very interested, and choose at most one or two of them, rather than giving them a top priority over the parks I’m suggesting.

We love Boise, of course, but I won’t tell you it’s national park caliber or should be a top priority on your trip. It’s a nice city and worth a stop if it’s conveniently located for a hotel night along your route. The Boise Foothills are pretty and the Downtown has a variety of good restaurants and historical sites.

The last national park along your drive to Tacoma will be Mount Rainier. Snow covers many of the trail well into July and not infrequently into August, although many are still hikeable, and the park roads are open, of course. You can drive to Paradise and Sunrise and have great views without hiking at all, or take short hikes from either place. See my favorite hikes at Rainier.

I don’t know whether you’ll have time, but from Seattle/Tacoma, you’re within two to three hours of Olympic National Park, a fabulous place, with areas you could visit with your family. From lodging in the town of Port Angeles, you can drive up to Hurricane Ridge, which has a visitor center and short hikes with incredible views of the Olympic Mountains on a clear day. You can drive around to the Hoh River Trail, a flat trail through some of the most majestic, old-growth, temperature rainforest in the U.S. Then drive out to the coastal area of the park for one of the short, flat hikes through rainforest to the wilderness beaches and views of sea stacks at either Third Beach (about 3.5 miles round-trip) or Sand Point (six miles round-trip). You can also drive to Ozette Lake or Rialto Beach.

You may want to scroll through all of my stories about family adventures and about national park trips at The Big Outside, and in particular see my “10 Tips For Raising Outdoors-Loving Kids,” “Boy Trip, Girl Trip: Why I Take Father-Son and Father-Daughter Adventures,” my “10 Tips For Keeping Kids Happy and Safe Outdoors” and “My Top 10 Family Adventures.”

I hope that’s helpful. Good luck.

Best,
Michael

Michael,

All very helpful. Thanks again for all the help.

Tony

In Ask Me, I share my response to a reader question. Got a question about hiking, backpacking, gear, or any topic or trip I write about at The Big Outside? Send it to me at mlanza@thebigoutside.com, message me at facebook.com/TheBigOutside, or tweet it to @MichaelALanza. I will answer the ones I can in a post, using only your first name and city, with your permission. I receive a high volume of questions, so I cannot always respond quickly. Scroll through my Ask Me page and All Trips pages, skills stories, and gear reviews for answers to your questions before writing to me.

—Michael Lanza

I invite you to subscribe to this blog by entering your email address in the box at the top of the left sidebar, and follow my adventures on Facebook and Twitter.

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I’ve been checking out your excellent backpacking posts and think you may be the right person to help me out with my search. My partner and I have taken a year off work to travel around the U.S. We had a great time hiking and canyoneering in Escalante. So now we’re in the Northwest, and want to find a great wilderness base camp where we can set up for a few days and explore the surrounding area. I’ve heard great things about Idaho, but Washington, Montana and Wyoming are all within striking distance, too. So much choice! If you have any recommendations for us—even if it’s just a wilderness area to hone in on—they would be most gratefully received.

Thanks,
Brian
London, England

Hi Brian,

Thanks for writing and for following The Big Outside. Wow, that’s a sweeping question! I guess you’re asking me to suggest some of my favorite places if I had to narrow it down to a few within the states you mentioned.

In Washington, one of the best states for wilderness and mountains, I’d say Olympic National Park (lead photo, above), and start with the trails beginning from the Sol Duc campground, like the loop on the High Divide Trail. Also the Olympic coast. And North Cascades National Park is another favorite place.

In Idaho, check out all of my stories about the Sawtooth Mountains and neighboring White Cloud Mountains. In Montana, there are many options, but my first choice would be Glacier National Park. And you’ll find lots of stories at my site about Yellowstone, the Tetons, and the Wind River Range in Wyoming.

I hope that helps get you started. Good luck.

Best,
Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks so much for the advice. We are looking at your options with much anticipation!

Brian

In Ask Me, I share and respond to a reader question. Got a question about hiking, backpacking, gear, or any topic or trip I write about at The Big Outside? Send it to me at mlanza@thebigoutside.com, message me at facebook.com/TheBigOutside, or tweet it to @MichaelALanza. I will answer the ones I can in a post, using only your first name and city, with your permission. I receive a high volume of questions, so I cannot always respond quickly.

—Michael Lanza

In an exclusive interview with The Big Outside for my book on parks and climate change, he talks about how the National Park Service is responding to the climate threat, and the possibility of employing drastic measures like irrigating giant sequoia trees.

Jarvis, who began his NPS career in 1976 and took over as director in October 2009, oversees America’s 58 national parks and more then 300 other units of the park system at a time when scientists are learning more about the myriad threats posed by warming temperatures. Those include the expected disappearance of Glacier National Park’s glaciers within a decade; snowpack declining virtually everywhere and the sweeping impacts of that on rivers, recreation, and ecosystems; more, larger wildfires and invasive species devastating forests across the West; and the gradual inundation by rising seas of park lands from the Olympic coast to Acadia to the Everglades.

He says he began working on climate issues 20 years ago. Jarvis has served as a park biologist, chief of natural and cultural resources at several parks, superintendent at Craters of the Moon National Monument, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and Mount Rainier National Park, and director of the Pacific West Region.

The Big Outside: Numerous national parks are trying to educate visitors about climate change. Visitors to Glacier, for example, can learn why the park’s glaciers are expected to disappear by around 2020. You’ve noted that, in sharp contrast with the previous administration, you are now permitted to talk about climate change. What is the Park Service’s role in the public conversation about climate?

JJ: “First and foremost is my willingness to say the National Park Service does have a role in climate change. My goal is for the public to understand that there are significant effects happening in the parks right now, and that they need to be aware of that.”

The Big Outside: Researchers and park employees that I’ve interviewed use terms like “tidal wave” in referring to the impacts of climate change on parks. What can realistically be done, given the breadth of these impacts?

JJ: “‘Tidal wave’ is not a very good metaphor for climate change—it’s not episodic, it’s going to be a creeping change. From the Park Service standpoint, we’ve just recently developed our climate response strategy, which has four components. One: the parks provide an extraordinary place to monitor climate change effects. Two: the NPS has to communicate what it’s learning and observing on the ground. The third piece to this approach is mitigation, reducing the carbon footprint of park operations. The NPS should be a leader in all aspects of recycling, alternative fuels, energy efficiency, and sustainable design and construction. Finally, the park system is going to scenario planning and seeing what places will be the most vulnerable and how to adapt. The new visitor center for the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor is designed for a three-foot sea-level rise, as an example.”

[The Big Outside Note: Read more about climate change and national parks, including the NPS Climate Change Response Strategy, at nature.nps.gov/climatechange.]

The Big Outside: There’s an impassioned debate among public-lands managers these days about how far to go to preserve vulnerable iconic species as ecosystems change drastically—whether, for instance, to “assist” migration by relocating species to habitats where they can survive, or to directly manipulate an ecosystem to preserve a species. What specific measures, if any, do you think should be taken along these lines?

JJ: “The Park Service is not into single-species management. Unlike the ESA (Endangered Species Act) or in some cases refuges set aside for one critical species, we strive for ecosystem integrity and saving all of the parks, even the non-charismatic species out there. I think it’s even more critical in these challenging times of climate change that we try to save all the parks.”

The Big Outside: What about the question that some have raised of irrigating giant sequoia groves in order to save them?

JJ: “There are iconic species, no doubt about it, that may require some heroic efforts on our part to maintain. It’s not like giant sequoias can migrate, and climate change may cause them greater stress in their present habitat. We are beginning to discuss things like assisted migration. I can’t say we’re ready to go there, though the peregrine falcon and California condor are examples (of similar strategies).”

[The Big Outside Note: Both the peregrine falcon and the California condor were endangered and recovered through active management—captive breeding and reintroduction to suitable habitats.]

“We may be faced with situations like irrigating the giant sequoias and transplanting them farther north in the Sierra. I think it’s inexcusable to lose them. We are going to be forced into heroic efforts with some species.”

The Big Outside: Does the climate crisis demand a different approach to managing parks, one that treats them as a part of a larger ecosystem rather than as individual preserves?

JJ: “If there’s any silver lining, climate change is forcing us to think and act at the landscape scale. No longer can we think of parks as islands. We have to be planning migration corridors, so species can migrate northward.”

The Big Outside: What other specific measures will the NPS take to address climate change?

JJ: “The NPS is pushing to completely fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which at its height in the past was $900 million; it now generates much more than that, but (the revenue) goes into the Treasury, and Congress decides how much funding LWCF gets. They may use some of that money to purchase connective land between parks (to create migration corridors).”

[The Big Outside Note: The LWCF was created by Congress in 1964 to use specific federal revenue sources to finance acquisition of public properties for recreation. In 1977, the fund’s authorization was increased to $900 million annually, but Congress has never given it more than $369 million, despite the fact that the fund’s revenues far exceed that amount. In 2010, Congress and President Obama authorized $38 million in LWCF funding, up from $27 million in 2009.]

The Big Outside: Let’s talk about one park that appears to be critically endangered. What do you think will become of the Everglades, most of which would be inundated by a 23-inch rise in sea level—which is at the lower end of projections of worldwide sea rise?

JJ: “We continue to work hard to restore the natural flows of freshwater into the Everglades. By restoring the Everglades’ natural water flow, you build in a stronger resiliency to sea-level rise. Some mangrove swamps will move in that system, but it’s not like it’s going to be an abyssal plain. It’s going to be changed.”

The Big Outside: What are your thoughts on the political impasse in Congress over taking action on climate change?

JJ: “Congress acts as the will of the people. One of the challenges of climate change is that it’s not well understood by the general public. There’s a lot of confusion about the difference between climate and weather. It hasn’t hit them personally yet. That’s one of the peculiar and unique aspects of the national parks—the parks provide an opportunity to show people the change that has occurred within their own lifetime, even between their last couple of visits.

“Lake Mead is at 38 percent (of capacity); the last time it was that low, it was being filled. At a Colorado River water users meeting at NPS, some people were telling me that Lake Mead may never fill again. The reality is that you may (someday) not be watering your lawn. This is not just an issue of wild lands. It’s going to hit you at home soon.”

The Big Outside: One prominent federal climate scientist told me he’s optimistic that what’s occurring can be a teaching moment for America. Where do you see room for optimism in the future of the parks under a new climate regime?

JJ: “A core value of the NPS is optimism. We don’t want to paint a bleak picture. The role for the national parks is to tell the American story, good and bad, and learn from it. We’ve told the stories of Japanese-American internment, slavery, civil rights, and now we’re called upon to tell this story as well.

“Just last year, we did 28 listening sessions around the country as part of America’s Great Outdoors. Eighteen of those were with youths—we didn’t allow anybody in the room who was over 25 but me. There is a lot of optimism among young people, but there’s also a strong dose of reality. They feel they’ve been handed a future that has a lot of challenges. But the young people I’ve talked to, urban and rural, very diverse, have a great deal of optimism.

“We need to help feed that optimism, (to demonstrate) that this country is capable of addressing this issue. We’re not going to stop climate change tomorrow, but we can help slow it down, adapt, lead the world, and preserve these extraordinary places.”