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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On a cool early morning in August while backpacking the Wind River High Route a few summers ago, I hiked in the shadow of tall mountains to Jackass Pass at 10,790 feet—a spot I’ve stood on at least a few times before, overlooking the incomparable Cirque of the Towers in the Winds—and affirmed a truth about that patch of rocks and dirt: It still had the power to take my breath away and make my heart speed up a little bit (although the climb to the pass may have had something to do with that).

It was a comfort to see that the effect the Wind River Range has on me had not changed.

Despite lying just south of two of America’s most beloved national parks—Grand Teton and Yellowstone—Wyoming’s Wind River Range exists in a sort of odd state of exalted partial anonymity. Backpackers who go there almost invariably leave feeling they have discovered a mountain paradise (because they have). Yet, the Winds remain off the radar of many people who enjoy putting on a backpack and walking for days through mountains.

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.

After several backpacking trips in the Winds, I find myself drawn back ever more strongly. I’m hoping to return again this summer—but in a sense, I’m always planning my next trip in the Winds. And I’ve hiked through many mountain ranges across the country over more than three decades of backpacking, including the 10 years I spent as the Northwest Editor of Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog. I rank the Winds among “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.”

This story will attempt to convey the many good reasons every avid backpacker should hike in the Wind River Range. Give it a read, I think you’ll be convinced. Click any photo to read about that trip. Please share your thoughts on this article—or your favorite Wind River Range hikes—in the comments section below this story. I try to respond to all comments.

I’ve helped many readers of my blog plan a very enjoyable backpacking trip in the Winds. See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can do that for you.

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range.”

1. Well, There’s the Mountains and Lakes…

Outside the High Sierra and Colorado Rockies, no mountain range in the Lower 48 matches the majestic heights of the Winds. Stretching for almost 100 miles from north to south and spanning more than 7,000 square miles, the Winds are home to about 40 peaks rising above 13,000 feet, including Wyoming’s highest, 13,804-foot Gannett Peak.

And besides the High Sierra, there may be no mountain range in the country with as many lovely alpine lakes and tarns as the Wind River Range—you will lose count of the lakes you hike past and regret not camping beside.

Plus, much of the Wind River Range lies within federally designated wilderness, enjoying all the protections conveyed on those lands: no motors, no visitor centers, no roads crossing the range anywhere. Unlike national park gateway towns like Springdale, Utah (Zion), Jackson, Wyoming (Grand Teton), and Bar Harbor, Maine (Acadia), the handful of small towns that ring the range remain uncrowded places with a feel of authenticity, where you can feast on a great dinner or breakfast pre- or post-trip and grab lodging without busting your travel budget or wading through herds of drive-by tourists.

As many seasoned backpackers know, if you’re looking for a remote and inspiring adventure in the best of the Rocky Mountains, arguably nothing beats the Winds.

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

2. No Permit Complications

With many marquis national parks and trails—Yosemite, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, Zion, the John Muir Trail, Teton Crest Trail, and Wonderland Trail and others—you must plan and reserve a backcountry permit months in advance of your trip. And there’s no guarantee you’ll get it. (Learn some smart strategies for success at that in my “10 Tips for Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit.”)

Not so in the Wind River Range—just show up, throw your pack on, and start hiking. You still must figure out when and where exactly to go and perhaps corral some backpacking partners, but there are no bureaucratic hoops to jump through.

That’s very appealing for backpackers who don’t always plan their trips months in advance or who struck out getting a permit somewhere else—or who find themselves changing plans due to wildfires, a common summer occurrence these days.

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3. The Solitude

While there’s no permit system to limit the numbers of backpackers wandering the Winds—and a few areas are popular—the vastness of the range and difficulty of exploring deeply into it (see below) creates natural limitations on human density there. You will often see numerous vehicles parked at popular trailheads like Elkhart Park and Big Sandy, but people spread out in this backcountry once you’re more than a day’s hike from a trailhead. I’ve walked trails in the Winds many times seeing very few other backpackers.

The Winds also lie quite far from big cities and major airports, a major factor limiting the numbers of people; and in much of the range, the Continental Divide—nexus of the best scenery in the Winds—lies many miles from the nearest trailhead. Backpacking in the Winds demands a real commitment of time and effort.

The off-trail hiking opportunities are abundant (for people with the skills for that) and virtually guarantee hours and days of solitude—as I’ve experienced on various trips there, including backpacking the 96-mile Wind River High Route, two-thirds of which is off-trail, and on a cross-country section of a loop hike through Titcomb Basin. My companions and I encountered other backpackers when following trails—though usually relatively few of them—but seeing other people when crossing remote passes and valleys where no trail exists were so rare they became a surprising pleasure.

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And you can stay entirely on trail and still enjoy a high degree of solitude, as my wife, a friend, and I did in late summer 2022 on a five-day, 43-mile loop through an area of the Winds I had mostly not seen before. We enjoyed one of the best backcountry campsites I’ve ever had—to ourselves (as was true of every camp on that trip)—crossed four high passes and walked past countless gorgeous lakes. And I think the total amount of time we spent with other people within sight amounted to under two hours… over five days.

And a friend and I had a similar experience of long stretches of solitude mixed with some busier trails on a four-day, 41-mile loop in August 2023 that crossed four passes on the Continental Divide, traversed the popular Cirque of the Towers, and featured beautiful camps by lakes every night—a route I subsequently dubbed the best backpacking trip in the Winds.

Plus, the Winds have a short peak season—generally mid-July to early or mid-September—and you’ll see fewer people by pushing the boundaries of that season with a good weather window (among my “12 Expert Tips for Finding Solitude When Backpacking”), remaining mindful that snow can fall in September.

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

4. It’s Not Easy… And That’s Good

Besides their location far from big cities and major airports, another major factor limiting the numbers of people backpacking in the Winds is the simple difficulty of hiking there. You will walk miles of rugged wilderness trails to reach the prime goods, above 10,000 feet much of the time and crossing passes usually well over 11,000 feet, all of which ratchets up the strenuousness and amplifies fatigue.

You’ll feel like you’ve earned your lakeside campsites and lonely sunsets in the Winds. And having to earn your wilderness helps keep the less-committed away.

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5. You Will Fall in Love With the Winds

The Wind River Range creates its own gravitational pull. Backpackers who go once find themselves returning over and over. I’ve met backpackers who’ve been numerous times and hardly go anywhere else—and I can’t blame them. The Winds offer an overt promise of a beautiful experience that’s quite unique in the country and deliver on that promise every time.

Personally, as someone who prefers seeing new places rather than returning repeatedly to one or two places, I’ve still found myself going back again and again to certain special parks and wilderness areas that never grow ordinary: Yosemite. The Tetons. The Grand Canyon. Glacier. And there are others.

I place the Wind River Range in that elite company. Each time I return reminds me why I do and inspires me to plan the next trip.

And I know I’ll never be disappointed.

See my stories “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,” and all stories about backpacking in the Winds at The Big Outside. Like most stories about trips at this blog, reading those in full requires a paid subscription to this blog.

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It’s hard to frame the experience of walking for days through Wyoming’s Wind River Range in words. The usual superlatives seem inadequate for describing a constant parade of sharp-edged, granite peaks soaring to over 12,000 and 13,000 feet, all reflected in thousands of crystalline alpine lakes. But here’s a truth I’ve learned about the Winds from many trips personally and helping numerous people plan trips there: Backpackers who explore it always leave there feeling they have discovered a very special place—and they want to return, often again and again.

I feel that way after numerous backpacking and climbing trips in the Winds over nearly four decades, including 10 years I spent as the Northwest Editor of Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog. Having had the good fortune of backpacking all over the country, I unquestionably rank the Winds among “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.”

In a very real sense, I’m always planning my next trip in the Winds.

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The options for five-star, multi-day hikes are almost endless in a range that stretches for 100 miles along the Continental Divide, has more than 1,300 named lakes (and at least twice that many lakes total), and spans more than two million acres—virtually identical in size to its much more famous neighbor to the north, Yellowstone National Park. Three spots where I’ve camped in the Winds grace my list of 25 all-time favorite backcountry campsites—and virtually any camp in these mountains would make any backpacker’s all-time list—and several days rank among my most scenic days of hiking ever.

Seeking solitude? With some effort and smart planning, you sure can find it. I have many times backpacked into parts of the Wind River Range, both on and off-trail, and reached areas where we’d encounter just a handful of other people per day—sometimes just a day’s walk from a popular trailhead.

I’ve helped many readers plan an unforgettable backpacking trip in the Wind River Range.
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This story describes 10 backpacking trips all over the Wind River Range that I have personally taken or are slight variations of trips I’ve taken and shares many photos from these trips (which often tell the story better than words). These trips hit well-known and incomparable spots like the Cirque of the Towers, Titcomb Basin, and sections of the Continental Divide Trail in the Winds, as well as trails and passes you may have never heard of.

These trips range in length from just under 30 miles to nearly 100 miles—with most of them falling into that sweet range for many backpackers of around 30 to 45 miles—and from beginner friendly to serious adventures in remote areas. Many trails in the Winds lie between 10,000 and 11,000 feet and passes crossed by trails generally rise to nearly or well over 11,000 feet.

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Each trip described below has a link to a story about it or that area of the Winds. Reading those stories in full, including key trip-planning details and tips, as well as this entire story, requires a paid subscription to The Big Outside.

See my Custom Trip Planning page to learn how I can help you plan your trip in the Wind River Range or any trip you read about at The Big Outside.

Please tell me what you think of the trips described below, share your questions, or suggest your own favorite backpacking trip in the Winds in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

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

The Best Backpacking Trip in the Winds

It’s a tough call to choose one best backpacking trip in the Winds. But after numerous trips all over the range, I’m sliding my stack of chips onto this 41-mile route from Big Sandy Campground, where there’s hardly a moment where you’re not blown away by the scenery. It crosses four high passes on the Continental Divide and meanders past a steady parade of jaw-dropping mountains and lakes you’ll want to camp beside. The trip reaches its climax in the disorientingly vertiginous Cirque of the Towers.

Yes, you will likely encounter at least a few dozen other backpackers on the first and last days. But you’ll also find abundant solitude: A friend and I counted just six other backpackers on our second day. The route also offers opportunities to lengthen the hike, exploring a spectacular cirque and scrambling to the summit of a 12,000-foot peak. And unlike the Wind River High Route, it also presents a reasonable challenge and distance for most backpackers. (Note that camping is prohibited within a half-mile of Lonesome Lake.)

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

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Titcomb and Indian Basins

After hiking a very full day to reach a campsite in a grassy meadow between the two largest Titcomb Lakes, at about 10,500 feet in Titcomb Basin, two friends and I watched the alpenglow paint the 13,000-footers above us golden. On a separate trip to Indian Basin, several of us summitted a 12,000-foot peak and a pair of 13ers on the Continental Divide, Fremont and Jackson peaks.

This pair of lakes basins sit on the west and south sides of 13,745-foot Fremont Peak, Titcomb at around 10,500 feet and Indian at over 11,000 feet. Camping by lakes in either basin, you’ll gaze up at a towering row of peaks on the Divide. Either Titcomb or Indian can be reached on an out-and-back hike of about 28 miles round-trip (to around the middle of either basin) from the Pole Creek Trailhead at Elkhart Park, outside Pinedale. They lie just a few trail miles apart, meaning you could explore or even camp in both on a trip of two to four days.

See my story “Best of the Wind River Range: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin.”

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The Wind River High Route

This high traverse of the entire range really deserves to be called the best backpacking trip in the Winds. But at 96 miles, two-thirds of it off-trail and the vast bulk of it very difficult and fraught with hazards like the threat of rockfall, crossing 10 named alpine passes ranging from nearly 11,000 to nearly 13,000 feet—only one of them on a trail—the high route simply lies beyond the skill set, stamina, and interest of 99 percent of backpackers.

But for those with the chops for a rugged, physically and mentally strenuous, navigationally challenging, high-intensity adventure, it’s also arguably, mile-for-mile, the most jaw-dropping trek through any mountain range in America. While the Cirque of the Towers and Titcomb Basin draw most backpacker attention in the Winds, the WRHR crosses numerous, virtually anonymous high basins just as spectacular as those two.

And needless to say, solitude comes with the territory on the high route. Just show up with your A game.

See my story “Adventure and Adversity on the Wind River High Route.”

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Hailey Pass-Washakie Pass Circuit

Overlapping the 41-mile route that I dubbed “the best backpacking trip in the Winds” (above), this 35-mile lollipop loop from Big Sandy differs in that it bypasses the very steep, loose, unmaintained route over Texas Pass—and thus, foregoes crossing the Cirque of the Towers—sticking to maintained trails and crossing just two passes, both topping 11,000 feet, Hailey and Washakie.

It also visits numerous lakes, offering a campsite by a lovely lake potentially every night. The ascents to and descents beyond both Hailey and Washakie passes offer classic Wind River Range vistas of peaks stretching to far horizons. You can lengthen this hike with side trips to more cirques where soaring cliffs envelope lakes and even scramble one or more 12,000-foot peaks along the way. Plus, while the trails are busy within a half-day’s walk of Big Sandy, there’s plenty of solitude east of the Divide. If you want the best backpacking trip in the Winds that doesn’t require a steep, hard climb up loose scree, this is your adventure.

All of this route is described in my story “The Best Backpacking Trip in the Wind River Range? Yup.”

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Doubletop Mountain-Highline-New Fork Trails Loop

This 43-mile loop from the New Fork/Doubletop Mountain Trailhead at the New Fork Lakes also illustrates how finding solitude in the Winds does not have to come at the expense of the splendor these mountains are known for.

It links up the Doubletop Mountain and Highline/Continental Divide trails to traverse classic Wind River Range high, alpine plateau backcountry, passing many lakes and delivering sweeping views reaching to the Continental Divide. It crosses four passes—none of them presenting a very long or arduous ascent—and explores secluded lake basins that feel like hidden Shangri-las. It also entails less than a mile of moderately difficult scrambling through large boulders on a trail in a narrow canyon.

And if we had added up the total minutes that we were within sight of other people over five days of bluebird weather in the week before Labor Day—arguably the best week of the year to hike in the Winds—it was probably less than two hours.

See my story “Backpacking Through a Lonely Corner of the Wind River Range.”

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See “5 Reasons You Must Backpack 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,” and all stories about backpacking in the Winds at The Big Outside. Like most stories about trips at this blog, reading those in full requires a paid subscription to The Big Outside.

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In late afternoon, near the end of a day of backpacking some 14 miles—mostly above 10,000 feet—two friends and I walked into Titcomb Basin, deep in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, mouths gaping open. Forming a horseshoe embracing this alpine valley at over 10,500 feet, mountains soared more than 3,000 feet above the windblown Titcomb Lakes, including the second-highest in the Winds, 13,745-foot Fremont Peak, on the Continental Divide.

But by that point on the first day of our 39-mile backpacking trip, my companions were fully smitten by the Winds—as I have been since my first trip there more than 30 years ago.

Our three-day, mid-September hike from Elkhart Park, on the west side of the Winds, took us on an up-and-down tour past several dozen lakes (we were tempted to camp at most of them) and over three 12,000-foot passes, one of which, Knapsack Col, we reached via an off-trail route that added a spicy flavor to our trip.

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After several jaw-dropping backpacking and climbing trips and one very long, east-west dayhike across the range, I’ve gotten to know the Winds well enough to rank these mountains among the top 10 best backpacking trips in America, a list that draws from my more than three decades of backpacking, including formerly as the Northwest Editor of Backpacker magazine for 10 years and even longer running this blog.

Every time I return to the Winds—as I did in each of the past four summers, including backpacking the 96-mile Wind River High Route in 2020 (photo above), this beautiful, five-day loop in 2022 (photo below), and a four-day hike I consider the best backpacking trip in the Winds in 2023—I tend to ask myself the same question again and again: “Why don’t I just come here all the time?”

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range.”

With sheer-walled mountains rising to over 12,000 and 13,000 feet, numerous passes over 11,000 and 12.000 feet, and a constellation of trout-filled lakes that offer some of the most scenic campsites you will find anywhere (not to mention some very fine trout fishing), I think you would fall in love with the Winds as quickly as I did.

If you are looking for a trip to take this summer with no permit reservation required, the Wind River Range has numerous trailheads to access various parts of it. And I can help you plan a trip in the Winds (as I have done for many readers of my blog). See my Custom Trip Planning page for details.

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As many time as I’ve walked through the Wind River Range, there remains much I want to explore there. I’m already planning my next trip.

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

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As my friend Chip Roser and I reach Pyramid Lake, in a magnificent stone bowl at 10,571 feet in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, nestled below its namesake peak and the attention-grabbing, soaring face of the 12,000-footer Mount Hooker, the overcast grows increasingly darker. We both look up at the sky, probably sharing the same thought: wondering when the thunderstorms and strong winds the forecast had warned of would finally catch us out here; and hoping to stay dry at least until getting our tents up—and with luck, until after we’ve eaten dinner.

But the rain and wind never materialize—not today, anyway. Instead, although dark-bellied clouds continue shuffling past overhead, the air turns dead calm, temperatures remain mild, and we watch the dappled sunlight dance around the horseshoe of cliffs, spires, and rocky peaks surrounding our camp.

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We had arrived this morning at Big Sandy Campground, trailhead for the disorientingly vertiginous and chronically popular Cirque of the Towers, to the sight of more cars and trucks parked there than I think I’ve seen since the first time I laid eyes on the Cirque—and felt the electric thrill of seeing that jagged skyline of peaks hit me like a shock wave—30 years ago this very month (possibly even in the same week or on the same date, which I no longer remember, except that it was August). Along the last half-mile of road before the parking lot, determined drivers had corkscrewed vehicles into every roadside nook and cranny. In truth, though, Big Sandy has been growing increasingly popular for many years and open spaces in the dirt parking lot for the campground and trailhead have long been a rare find in summer.

Plus, we arrived on the Sunday beginning the third week of August. To come here on this day and not expect to see this place jammed with vehicles is akin to expecting hours of solitude each day on the Tour du Mont Blanc in August or going to St. Peter’s Cathedral in the Vatican and not expecting to find a line. (The cathedral metaphor rings with a sense of aptness for a hike in the Winds.)

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range.”

Our first day on the trail met the expectations set at the parking lot: By the end of our several hours of hiking to Pyramid Lake, we probably passed 50 or 60 people, most within the first few hours. But I feel happy for every one of them and I’m not surprised they would choose this relatively easy valley trail that passes a series of heart-stopping lakes below huge granite walls, all of them a campsite to die for. As a woman in one of the pods of backpackers we passed astutely observed to us, “You just camp at whatever one you feel like stopping at, they’re all gorgeous.”

But I know that we can keep walking deeper into the Wind River Range and reach areas where solitude comes with the territory—and the effort. And we will accomplish that by our second morning on this trip.

I’ve returned yet again to the Wind River Range—the fourth straight summer I’ve backpacked in these mountains, despite the fact that they lie several hours of driving from my home—building on my personal history of at least eight backpacking and climbing trips here (my best estimate; I’ve lost track) going back three decades.

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Chip and I will explore an area of the Winds he has not yet seen and fill in some blank spots in my mental map of the southern Winds—all while I grapple with the question of whether the route we have undertaken deserves the title of “the best backpacking trip in the Wind River Range,” a claim that feels fraught with the potential to invite ardent disagreement in a range where any multi-day hike would rank among the best on almost any backpacker’s personal life list.

We will spend four days—wishing we had planned just one more—on a meandering route that will cross four passes on the Continental Divide and bring us past numerous mountain lakes, each of them pretty enough to want to camp at, though we’ll have to choose just three.

During that night at our camp a short walk from the shore of Pyramid Lake, I step out of my tent and see the sky virtually pulsating with millions of specks of light, some constellations I can identify and many that I can’t, and the Milky Way glowing across the heavens.

There’s not a breath of wind, the temperature feels no lower than 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and it’s so quiet that I suspect two people could conduct a conversation from opposite sides of this lake at normal speaking volume.

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Pyramid Peak, Hailey Pass, and Washakie Lake

As Chip and I descend off Pyramid Peak toward 11,160-foot Hailey Pass, the wind that began blowing hard this morning and seemed eager to hurl us off the peak’s summit just a half-hour ago, now dials up its speed as this river of fast-moving air squeezes through the pass. The strong wind is hard to walk in; gusts literally shove me hard enough several times to nearly send me stumbling off the trail. The wind’s force hardly abates after we cross the pass and descend through countless short switchbacks, stepping cautiously on this steep trail down a slope of loose, sliding scree and pebbles.

Even once we reach the flatter terrain of the valley, the wind still pummels us. We stop to chat for a few minutes with a couple on their way up to Hailey and I tell them, “Trim your sails before you go up there.”

We arose on our second morning as the predawn sun was igniting the broken clouds over Pyramid Lake. We started hiking at 8 a.m., taking an off-trail route from the lake to Hailey Pass that’s more direct than backtracking down the Pyramid Peak Trail to the Hailey Pass Trail—a route that also positioned us to scramble to the 12,030-foot summit of Pyramid Peak, earning its hawk’s-eye view of the valley we hiked up yesterday and of the long arc of the Continental Divide stretching for miles to the north and south.

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

Beyond Hailey Pass, on the east side of the Divide, we follow the Bears Ears Trail, gawking at one towering granite cliff and monolith after another, an alpine rock climber’s paradise. The trail climbs a few hundred feet above long Grave Lake, which sparkles in the bright sunshine, then drops to the lakeshore, passing through forest and meadows and crossing a sandy beach. We walk up the gentle and very pretty valley of the South Fork Wind River and then turn onto the Washakie Pass Trail.

At Washakie Lake, at 10,365 feet, we find an established campsite near the lake’s west end, more than the required 200 feet from the lake. We encountered just five other backpackers during our seven hours of hiking from Pyramid Lake today; several more arrive to camp near Washakie Lake, but the abundant space here keeps everyone beyond earshot and mostly out of sight of one another. Some trees help to partially break the wind, which blows hard throughout the evening: We hear great cannonballs of air fired from somewhere high above us that slowly build in volume until each one tears through our camp with an awful roar, violently shaking our solo tents (which hold up) and sometimes waking us.

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Washakie Pass, Texas Pass, and the Cirque of the Towers

Even after a night of ferocious gusts that made sleep an elusive quarry, the wind gains ferocity, swirling and buffeting us from all sides as we depart Washakie Lake early on our third morning and climb toward the highest point of our trip, 11,611-foot Washakie Pass. At times, we’re both hit by blasts of air and stumble before catching ourselves.

Wearing pants, two base layers and shell jackets against the wind under a gray sky, Chip and I joke about how we might get lifted off the ground at the pass and deposited right back at Washakie Lake to start this climb all over again. But we avoid that fate, walking into a headwind to cross the Divide back to the west side, descending through alpine meadows dotted with wildflowers and boulders almost in competing numbers. At the Hailey Pass Trail junction, 1,200 feet lower than Washakie Pass and back in the valley where we began yesterday, the wind has all but disappeared, the sun shines warmly, and we strip down to shorts and T-shirts.

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After rock hopping over Washakie Creek, we start up the Shadow Lake Trail through a broad, nearly flat valley where the creek bounds playfully over rocks and small cascades and flows smoothly through bends, moving like a dancer on a stage: In the Wind River Range, the mountains and lakes play the leading roles and draw the most attention, but the creeks and rivers play critical supporting roles. Up the valley, the “back side” of the Cirque of the Towers displays a long wall of teeth snarling at the sky.

The maintained trail terminates near Shadow Lake, where we pick up a good use trail up to Billy’s Lake at over 10,600 feet. The trail traces Billy’s lakeshore and continues up this narrow alpine valley walled by granite. Chip says, “This may be the prettiest valley we’ve seen.”

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We follow the faint path past Barren Lake and turn a corner to overlook Texas Lake and the horseshoe of cliffs and talus slopes that comprise the head of this basin. Above the lake, a dauntingly steep slope of talus and scree—basically, a very slow rockslide of busted-up stone—rises to Texas Pass. We can see perhaps 10 people at various points on their climb up that rockpile.

Occasional cairns and a visible, if faint path pounded into the loose rocks by other backpackers leads us upward to Texas Pass, at over 11,400 feet, our second 11,000-foot pass today. After last night’s weather and then watching clouds race across the sky all day, we had feared we would see little of the Cirque of the Towers when we finally got here. But our timing proves serendipitous: An unobstructed view of that famous skyline of granite monoliths, arrayed in a long, unbroken arc, unfurls before us.

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I’ve hiked through the Cirque at least a few times since that first visit 30 years ago, most recently, prior to today, on the Wind River High Route, when three friends and I entered via the common route over Jackass Pass, now visible across the Cirque from us, and exited the Cirque hiking off-trail over New York Pass, which lies barely more than a half-mile as the crow flies southwest of Texas Pass but a slightly greater distance if you’re tracing the wriggling Divide.

And while repeated visits have, for me, reduced the voltage of that initial electric thrill of seeing the Cirque, this new and different prospect resurrects some of that feeling I had that first time walking over Jackass.

A good friend who has hiked in countless incredible landscapes, many of them with me over nearly a quarter-century, backpacked over Texas Pass just a year ago and subsequently wrote to me calling it “the best view I’ve ever had from a pass.” Perhaps he was guilty of recency bias, but not of unwarranted hyperbole: This view of the Cirque and the walk down into it from Texas Pass just might deserve recognition as the best overlook of one of the most soul-stirring mountain vistas in America.

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An unmaintained but surprisingly good dirt path, steep at times but much less so than the ascent to Texas Pass from Texas Lake, leads down to Lonesome Lake. Minutes after we reach the lake, the sky once again suddenly darkens, swiftly followed by thunder and lightning. The rain comes so lightly at first that we assume it might amount to nothing. But when the gray veil obliterates the peaks from sight, I suggest to Chip that we get a tent up fast.

Seconds after we finish hurriedly pitching it, the rain begins pounding our thin walls; we can barely hear one another over the drumming downpour. But the tent keeps us warm and dry while we wait about 30 minutes for the thunderstorm to pass. Then we quickly pack up the tent and resume hiking. The clouds give way—mostly—to blue sky and warm sunshine as we climb, repeatedly turning around to take in the panorama. Not long after we took temporary refuge in a tent, we walk over Jackass Pass at 10,760 feet, making our third crossing of the Continental Divide today and fourth of this trip.

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The Gear I Used See my reviews of the outstanding backpack, two tents (this one and this one), boots, sleeping bag, rain jacket, down jacket, air mattress, and stove I used on this trip.

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Not sure this is for you? See my stories “How to Know How Hard a Hike Will Be,” “How to Plan a Backpacking Trip—12 Expert Tips,” “Bear Essentials: How to Store Food When Backcountry Camping,” and this menu of all stories offering expert backpacking tips at The Big Outside.

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Less than an hour into our five-day backpacking trip into the Wind River Range, we turn onto the Doubletop Mountain Trail and within minutes splash across the shallow New Fork River at a spot where it’s flowing just inches deep; I ford it with boots on, walking gingerly on my toes to—happily—keep my socks dry. On the other side, just before beginning a long climb out of this valley, we run into a couple coming down the trail and stop to chat.

They’re finishing a 10-day hike punctuated by some challenging weather—a not-atypical Winds stew of rain, hail, wind, thunder, and lightning—but they tell us, it was a beautiful walk through the mountains. By contrast, my wife, Penny, our friend Chip Roser and I are heading out on a 43-mile loop with a forecast for five just about perfect, sunny days at the tail end of August into early September, with highs in the 60s and nights possibly down into the 30s.

Once we move on, it occurs to me that the fact that they took a trek that long and we are embarking on a hike of half the days and distance illustrates the trail and route options in the Winds.

We climb for a couple of hours under a blazing sun through hot, shadeless switchbacks in an old burn now populated by wildflowers and young trees, our perspective of the hills around us slowly expanding as we gain elevation. Finally leaving the burn behind, we enter conifer forest where the trail parallels Willow Creek and crosses the meadows of Martin Park. Less than four hours of leisurely hiking drops us at the doorstep of Rainbow Lake, where we find a spot for our tents nearby in the forest.

After setting up camp, Chip and I explore farther up the trail, which soon breaks out of the woods into classic Wind River Range high country: Just ahead, a tiny lake lies still in a meadow littered with boulders on a rolling plateau of wildflower and rock gardens. Miles in the distance, the Continental Divide shoulders up over 13,000 feet into the stratosphere. We will walk toward that giant wall of peaks over the next couple of days.

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At our turn-around point, we meet a local rancher out for a day ride on his horse with his two dogs. He smiles, pleased with how he’s spending this day, probably covering at least 15 trail miles before returning to his ranch back down in the valley, not far from where we started hiking. On our way back to camp, we pass three other backpackers.

That brings our total human encounters for our first day to six—illustrating another aspect of the Winds, which had been central to my thinking when planning this loop from a trailhead I’ve never visited before in several trips here, following a route mostly on trails I’ve never walked: Avoid the few highest and most popular trailheads and/or venture more than a typical day’s hiking distance into these mountains and you’ll not only travel through a landscape that stuns at every turn. You will often still find some solitude.

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Doubletop Mountain Trail

We leave Rainbow Lake on another bluebird morning after a milder night than expected: I had stepped outside during the night in just a T-shirt and underwear without a shiver, though I may have been distracted by the ocean of stars riddling the sky.

The Doubletop Mountain Trail meanders generally eastward over open terrain where we repeatedly climb 400 to 500 feet over a low rise and drop into another lake basin or creek valley. Wildflowers remain colorful above 10,000 feet on these late-summer days, a post-card foreground against the backdrop of the peaks along the Divide.

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By early afternoon, dark, anvil-shaped clouds mass above us and slowly drift in the same general direction we’re hiking. We see battleship-gray veils falling from the sky in the distance—rain showers—but never feel a drop ourselves or hear any thunder; and before very long, the threat surrenders again to sunny skies.

The trail leads us along the shores of the pretty Cutthroat Lakes followed by the No Name Lakes and smaller tarns where cliffs rise above wind-rippled waters. We traverse the plateau to Summit Lake and begin a steady ascent on the Highline Trail—which coincides with the Continental Divide Trail—reaching another lake where I hunt around for a campsite until meeting a couple already camping there.

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Not wanting to be interlopers in their little piece of heaven, we push on a little bit farther to an unnamed tarn and walk a few hundred feet off-trail past it to a dry, grassy, broad bench overlooking a vast meadow liberally salted with glacial-erratic boulders. That meadow slopes downward to a lake well below us, beyond which loom a pair of monstrous twin towers, 12,119-foot Sky Pilot Peak and 12,224-foot Mount Oeneis. It’s a magnificent camp to cap a nearly 10-mile day when, once again, we passed fewer than 10 people—two of them a couple we met at Rainbow Lake yesterday.

Besides joining my list of all-time favorite backcountry campsites, this spot—indeed, this entire day—foreshadows the grandeur awaiting us.

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Highline Trail

I began exploring Wyoming’s Wind River Range about 30 years ago, at first on climbing trips to the Cirque of the Towers. In the years since, I’ve returned several times to backpack here, take a long, glorious, 27-mile, east-to-west dayhike across the Winds, and just a few years ago, make a 96-mile, south-to-north traverse of the range on the Wind River High Route, two-thirds of which is off-trail—one of the most stunning and challenging adventures I’ve ever undertaken.

As we set out on our third morning, much of the landscape we’re walking through sparks memories of the last time I backpacked this section of the Highline Trail, following a 41-mile loop from Elkhart Park, outside Pinedale on the west slope of the Winds. While planning this 43-mile loop that Penny, Chip, and I are now on the middle day of, I was eager to revisit this great stretch of the Highline where that previous trip and this one overlap—but also to see a chunk of the Winds that will be entirely new to me, and which I suspect might receive relatively little backpacker traffic. That includes a trail that I know might pose some difficulties—a trail we will reach today.

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Puffy, white clouds float listlessly overhead, amounting to no more than a couple of brief episodes of spitting raindrops on us as we steadily ascend the Highline/CDT past a series of small lakes and tarns, in more open, high country where it looks like there’s abundant camping, to the shores of the largest and prettiest in this string of pearls, Elbow Lake, at 10,794 feet (which, to my dismay, remains on my list of the best backcountry campsites I’ve hiked past).

Above Elbow Lake, we cross a stark, rocky tableland of small tarns to a junction where the CDT/Highline Trail swings south but we turn north. After a lunch break in the lee of a small cliff beside the highest tarn in this basin, we hike a few more minutes uphill to cross Shannon Pass, at 11,169 feet. Beyond it, the Shannon Pass Trail zigzags through talus and boulder fields, past more wind-rippled tarns and late-summer snowfields speckled with dirt and stones, through switchbacks down a steep slope into the striking bowl enclosing Peak Lake, at the foot of the vertiginous rock tooth of 12,165-foot Stroud Peak.

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range.”

Trickling down from its headwaters in the alpine valley above Peak Lake, a little creek called the Green River enters and exits the lake at the very beginning of a 730-mile journey to where it merges with the Colorado River in southern Utah’s Canyonlands National Park.

Then we turn onto the trail where I’m expecting—correctly, as it turns out—that we’ll hit this trip’s most difficult terrain.

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

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range” and all stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

The Gear I Used See my reviews of the outstanding backpack, tent, boots, sleeping bag, down jacket, air mattress, and headlamp I used on this trip, and the warmer sleeping bag that my wife used on this trip.

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An elegant, high-elevation, multi-day walk through a magnificent mountain range is the stuff of dreams for many backpackers, and there may be no walk better than the Wind River High Route. Traversing a range with few equals by any measure—elevations, abundance of alpine lakes and glaciers, remoteness, length and breadth, or raw splendor—the WRHR embodies everything we imagine a great hike in the mountains should be.

There are multiple, high, largely off-trail traverses of the range that have been described as the “Wind River High Route.” In August 2020, three friends and I backpacked the route that appears to gaining popularity, mapped by the long-distance backpacker Andrew Skurka. It traces a roughly 96-mile, south-north course that weaves back and forth across the Continental Divide about a dozen times, 65 miles of which is off-trail, with more than 30,000 feet of cumulative elevation gain and loss.

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Almost relentlessly rugged and physically and mentally taxing, with navigational challenges, and mile-for-mile arguably the most jaw-dropping trek through any mountain range in America—and I’ve taken many of the very best over the past three decades, including the 10 years I spent as the Northwest Editor of Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog—the WRHR stays mostly between 10,000 and 12,000 feet on or near the Continental Divide.

It crosses 10 named alpine passes ranging from nearly 11,000 feet to nearly 13,000 feet—nine of them off-trail—and tags the southernmost and northernmost 13,000-foot summits in the Wind River Range, 13,192-foot Wind River Peak and 13,355-foot Downs Mountain.

It passes countless alpine lakes while crossing one amazing valley or cirque after another—and confronting you with what can seem like endless miles of talus, scree, some snow and glacial ice and a bit of third-class scrambling, but no technical terrain. For its entire length, it crosses no roads, rarely even coming within a moderate day’s hike of the nearest road.

In all respects, the Wind River High Route offers one of the most remote, arduous, and glorious wilderness adventures anywhere.

In this story, I share photos from our August 2020 weeklong traverse of the Wind River High Route. Read my feature story about this trip “Adventure and Adversity on the Wind River High Route” (which requires a paid subscription to The Big Outside to read in full, including my insights on planning that trip).

If you have any questions or comments about this hike or the Winds in general, please share them in the Comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

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After reaching the summit of 13,192-foot Wind River Peak—the southernmost 13,000-footer in the Winds—on our second morning, we tackled perhaps the most difficult and dangerous section of the Wind River High Route: the very steep and loose descent of West Gully (photo above). With virtually every step downhill landing on unstable boulders, talus, and scree, we had to stay focused for the entire two-and-a-half hours it took us to get down it. Still, we had two near-misses, with one boulder tumbling past a member of our group, and another member slipping in a thin stream of water running over a slab and nearly sliding over the brink of a short cliff.

Early on our third morning, we crossed Jackass Pass (photo above), at just under 10,800 feet, gateway to the world-famous Cirque of the Towers—and the only one of 10 named alpine passes we crossed on the Wind River High Route that was on trail. I’ve hiked over Jackass Pass several times over the years, climbing in the Cirque and on a 27-mile, east-west dayhike across the Winds, and this view never fails to steal my breath away.

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Many miles and hours later on day three, as evening set in, we hiked and scrambled over huge boulders and talus en route to Raid Peak Pass at around 11,600 feet (photo above). That afternoon, we had hiked off-trail up the valley of the East Fork River, soaking in frigid pools between stunning cascades tumbling over granite slabs in the river, and walking below one towering cliff after another (lead photo at top of story). After crossing Raid Peak Pass, we carefully found a safe route down steep and exposed rock slabs and made camp in the Bonneville Lakes basin around 7 p.m., 12 hours after we started that day’s hiking.

After climbing steeply from our camp in the Bonneville Lakes basin to Sentry Peak Pass on our fourth morning, we traversed another stunning valley (photo above) past Middle Fork Lake en route to Photo Pass, the second of three tough ascents on that long day. A little while before shooting this photo, we passed a family at their campsite by Middle Fork Lake, who had impressively backpacked in some 20 miles with two young children to reach this lonely valley.

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On our fifth afternoon, we spent hours scrambling over talus and snow traversing the stark valley of the Alpine Lakes—a dramatic rockscape almost devoid of greenery and guarded on both flanks by soaring cliffs and at both ends by passes well over 11,000 feet. Reaching our second off-trail pass of that day, Alpine Pass at about 12,150 feet, we overlooked yet another stark landscape of rock and snow and a long descent (photo above) before we made camp in grassy meadows.

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I’ll remember that fifth day traversing the Alpine Lakes basin, crossing Alpine Lakes Pass and the long descent over rocks and snow on its north side as one of the most glorious on the Wind River High Route. To cap it off perfectly, after the sun set behind the towering wall of peaks to our west, we reached grassy meadows in the wind-scoured, treeless valley beyond the pass and called it a night at what may have been our best campsite of the trip (photo above), listening to the roar of the South Fork of Bull Lake Creek below us.

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Even on a trip with long, hard days, day six was huge. Hiking shortly after 6 a.m., we forded the North Fork Bull Lake Creek in a stunning valley below 13,810-foot Gannett Peak, Wyoming’s highest, followed by a tough, 2,000-foot ascent over talus, snow, and scree to 12,750-foot Blaurock Pass, one of the highest on the WRHR. Then came another long, hard downhill and ascent to West Sentinel Pass at around 11,900 feet—where, now on the most remote, northern section of the WRHR, we crossed a few glaciers, beginning with the Gannett Glacier (photo above).

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range.”

On our final day on the Wind River High Route, we departed our camp near Baker and Iceberg lakes and hiked over a plateau at around 13,000 feet toward 13,355-foot Downs Mountain. Even in August, the wind blew cold, but an alpine sun under bluebird skies helped warm us. As we traversed the final stretch of high terrain along the Wind River High Route, I turned around to capture an image of one of my companions with the mountains we’d crossed over the past couple of days spreading out behind him (photo above).

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

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

Six of us have embarked on a one-day, 27-mile crossing of the southern Winds, from the Bears Ears Trailhead in Dickinson Park on the east side to the Big Sandy Opening Trailhead on the west side. With a cumulative elevation gain of about 4,500 feet, this alpine traverse will have us above 11,000 feet for many hours today, drinking up expansive vistas of soaring granite cliffs and peaks rising above 12,000 feet on the Continental Divide. In fact, the excitement began building on our nearly two-hour drive in the dark from Lander to the Bears Ears Trailhead: We saw a bull moose, several pronghorn, and a bull elk along the road. It was a reminder of the wildness of this mountain range that extends for about 100 miles and has more than 40 summits rising above 13,000 feet.

Unfortunately, we’re all badly sleep-deprived. We got about three hours of slumber after meeting up last night in Lander, then rose before 2 a.m. to leave town at 3 a.m.

But just before sunrise, around four miles into our hike, we hit the plateau above treeline, at 10,500 feet. Stepping into a breeze from the west that is keeping the smoke to the east of us—so far—we gaze up at the kind of azure sky you only see high up in the mountains. The panorama of stone monoliths and spires and boulder-strewn ground seems to revive all of us; we start cruising across this rolling plateau toward the twin pinnacles called the Bears Ears. Shelli Johnson jokes, “Wish I was sleeping in now!”

I’m confident everyone in this group will complete this hike; we’ve all done much longer and harder ones. But our journey’s ultimate objective, I think, is less about distance than about time—time together with friends, that is, sharing a big adventure in a beautiful place.

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 Annual Big Hike

I’ve developed an annual tradition of an ultra-hike with a group of friends. Every year, we rendezvous in a different, spectacular location, sometimes for one huge day, sometimes for a multi-day trip. Our party’s makeup changes slightly every year, depending on people’s schedules: Some regulars are occasionally unable to make it, and often we add one or two new faces.

Todd Arndt, a friend from Idaho, has been doing these trips with me for a decade or more, including a 44-mile, 11,000-vertical-foot, rim-to-rim-to-rim dayhike across the Grand Canyon and back; a seven-day thru-hike of the John Muir Trail, averaging 31 miles per day; and just a year before this Winds outing, an epic, one-day, 50-mile traverse of Zion National Park. Jon Dorn, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, and I have shared many adventures, but he first joined this posse for our Zion traverse and brought Shelli Johnson, introducing her to our group—and I already feel like she’s been a close friend for years. This year, Shelli, who lives in Lander, enticed us into taking this ultra-dayhike in her back yard, the Wind River Range.

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range.”

Hannah North, another longtime friend and rock-climbing partner of mine from Idaho, is one of this year’s newcomers; she retired earlier this year and has hiked 30 days already this summer, including just finishing a 10-day backpacking trip the length of the Winds. Our other newbie is Jon’s friend Josh Berlin, from outside Boston. He’s been training on New England trails for today, but has hiked more than 20 miles in a day just once before, and is coming from sea level. Before this day’s over, he will generously provide us with its biggest moment of suspense.

The regular shuffling of the deck of participants in this annual hike explains a large part of the magic of these adventures. Regulars look forward to it; newcomers jump right in and become instant bosom pals. That’s what happens when you team up for a huge physical challenge amid incomparable scenery.

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Lizard Head Plateau

After nearly four hours and nine miles at a somewhat leisurely pace, we drop our packs beside the trail on the west side of Mt. Chauvenet to make the 20-minute, off-trail side hike to its 12,250-foot summit, a few hundred vertical feet and one-third of a mile away. A bit of boulder scrambling lands us on top, where we gaze west at a long escarpment that includes Buffalo Peak, Camel’s Hump, and Mounts Washakie and Hooker.

Dappled sunlight pokes through streaks of high cirrus clouds and the temperature sits comfortably in the fifties as we pick up our packs again and resume walking across the Lizard Head Plateau. There’s hardly a patch of vegetation taller than an alpine aster out here. This is the payoff of this hike: Huge vistas most of the way, in one of the biggest, most rugged ranges of the Rocky Mountains. We pass below Lizard Head Peak and its glacier, and then descend switchbacks into the forested valley of the North Fork Popo Agie River.

On the way down, I roll my right ankle for the fourth time today. The first two twists were sharp and painful, but the third and fourth actually not so bad. I pause and flex the ankle around; the pain dissipates within minutes, and I resume walking without any real discomfort. Innumerable sprains from hiking and trail running over the years have made my ankles like some old toy held together with rubber bands. Oh, well, what can you do?

As we’re snacking and treating water from the North Fork Popo Agie, a rain shower abruptly rolls through. Within minutes, though, it passes. Then we’re off again, hiking through more sunshine toward the scenic pièce de résistance of this little jaunt.

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Cirque of the Towers

Why do we set out on these huge days of hiking? Why not backpack this 27-mile traverse as an overnight or three-day trip instead? I suppose the answer is kind of like some personal relationships: complicated.

I think part of the motivation is simply that we all have busy lives and many obligations, yet we want to explore as much stunning wilderness as we can. If we can’t carve out three days for this hike, but we can complete it in a day, why wouldn’t we? Planning a hike like this some months in advance, as we always do, also gives us a goal to get in shape for. (Then again, sometimes we don’t all have the time to train adequately, but make the hike, anyway.) So maybe the short answer is: We do it because we can. Finishing it is, in and of itself, a powerful reward.

Want more? See “The 20 Best National Park Dayhikes” and “Extreme Hiking: America’s Best Hard Dayhikes.”

The biggest motivator, though, may be a simpler explanation: One of us proposes a fantastic trip (often me, this time Shelli) and invites others, and it sounds too good to turn down.

Around 2:30 p.m., we reach Lonesome Lake in the Cirque of the Towers, a mind-boggling horseshoe of sheer-walled, granite peaks standing shoulder to shoulder, scratching at the clouds. I look up at the familiar toothy skyline, recalling details of alpine rock climbs I’ve done here in past years. I remember vividly the feeling I had the first time I hiked over Jackass Pass on the approach from the other side, when I got my first look into the Cirque. Jaw dropping is overused hyperbole, but at that moment, I thought my teeth were going to fall out of my head. I doubt this view could ever really lose its power to awe me.

We hike up through the Cirque to Jackass Pass, where mighty gusts of wind knock us around and drown out our shouts to one another. From Jackass, it’s a steep descent on a trail of loose, gravelly rock, to North Lake and on down to Big Sandy Lake. Afternoon begins its creep into evening; leg muscles grow weary and feet are starting to feel a bit pounded. Still, it’s been such a pleasant day in terms of cool temps and a nice breeze that I’ve honestly hardly broken a sweat.

At Big Sandy Lake just after 5 p.m., we face a flat, mostly wooded, six-mile hike out to the Big Sandy Opening trailhead, where Shelli’s husband Jerry is waiting to drive us about two hours back to Lander. Our group strings out, walking at individual paces, everyone fine with hoofing the last, easy leg of this trek solo.

When hiking alone, I let myself fall into a comfortable rhythm, soaking up the quiet of the forest, sorting through various things on my mind. I think now about how my kids are nearing the age where they’ll be ready for big dayhikes like this. I sense that knowing I do these hikes inspires them—my son already talks about joining me on longer hikes. Taking these hikes also hews to my tip number 10 for raising outdoors-loving kids.

Somewhere in the last few miles, I feel my internal gas tank’s idiot light click on, and make a mental note: All things considered, three hours of sleep seems woefully inadequate rest before a 27-mile dayhike. Shoot for at least five hours next time.

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Big Sandy

One at a time, we straggle into the parking lot, where Jerry greets us with enough food and beverages that it feels like Thanksgiving after this calorie-intensive day. As we laugh and rub sore feet, daytime fades to dusk. Thinking back on some of the most scenic single days of hiking I’ve ever enjoyed, I believe this traverse of the southern Winds will join that list.

Jon announces he’ll walk back up the trail with a beer to greet Josh, the last straggler. A little while later, Jon returns at a hurried pace, saying he went a mile up the trail and saw no trace of Josh. He grabs a headlamp to head back out; a few of us do the same.

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In the West Gully of 13,192-foot Wind River Peak, a steep bowling alley of loose scree and boulders that look poised to roll into someone’s femur and crack it like a peanut shell, four of us move cautiously downhill, searching for the safest path through one of the most hazardous stretches of the 96-mile Wind River High Route.

With every other step triggering a small rockslide, there’s little opportunity to relax our focus for a moment. We walk with patient deliberation. The descent grows relentless.

Nearing the bottom of the gully, I step gingerly onto a large rock—it must easily weigh 300 pounds—and inadvertently kick it loose. As it tumbles downhill, I yell at Joe, who’s just below me, “Watch out! Watch out! Watch out!” He turns as it rolls past his leg, missing him by inches.

But this will be only our first close call today.

Maybe 30 minutes later, moments before reaching Lake 11,185 in the valley bottom, I start across a sloping granite slab. A wafer-thin snowmelt stream a little too wide to leap over pours down the slab and plunges over a short waterfall—a sheer drop of perhaps 15 feet onto rocks awaiting anyone slipping here. I eyeball the stream, place a foot on a tiny dry spot in the middle of it, and then stride across to the other side. 

Out of habit, I turn to watch Kristian, who’s behind me, cross the water slick. 

He takes one step, slips on the wet rock and goes down, suddenly sliding out of control. Instinctively, I crouch at the stream’s edge and reach toward him—and we lock hands and forearms just before he whips past. With our arms still locked, he carefully rises to his feet and steps onto dry rock. And we both exhale loudly, our eyes wide as dinner plates.

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Indeed, with our 2,000-foot descent of West Gully finally behind us—after two-and-a-half mentally grueling hours—the sense of relief feels palpable.

I’ve joined my Boise friend Justin Glass, his brother-in-law Joe Souvignier, and Justin’s friend Kristian Blaich on a 96-mile, south-to-north traverse of the Wind River High Route, 65 miles of which is off-trail.

Weaving back and forth across the Continental Divide about a dozen times, the WRHR stays mostly between 10,000 and 12,000 feet, crosses 10 named alpine passes ranging from nearly 11,000 feet to nearly 13,000 feet—nine of them off-trail—and tags the southernmost and northernmost 13,000-foot summits in the Wind River Range, 13,192-foot Wind River Peak and 13,355-foot Downs Mountain.

Rugged, physically and mentally strenuous, and navigationally challenging almost without relent, it’s also arguably, mile-for-mile, the most jaw-dropping trek through any mountain range in America—and I’ve taken many of the very best over the past three decades, including 10 years I spent as the Northwest Editor of Backpacker magazine and even longer running this blog.

And now, on our second afternoon on the Wind River High Route, it has already become abundantly clear that it promises a constant stream of adventure seasoned with hazard.

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The Wind River High Route

“It’s like having your own Yosemite with nobody here.”

Justin says this as we gaze at a miles-long chain of granite towers with vertical, 2,000-foot faces looming above the broad valley of the East Fork River—including 12,532-foot Raid Peak and other summits unnamed on the map. We’re hiking off-trail up the valley through open meadows on our third afternoon on the Wind River High Route. 

Just a shallow but energetic creek up here near its headwaters, the East Fork leaps over dozens of small cascades and waterfalls and swirls through granite bowls. Before long, tired of merely look at the crystalline creek, we shed our packs and clothes and each find a pool to fully immerse ourselves in the frigid water. It feels marvelous.

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range.”

We began this day in the cool air of early morning with the ascent to a windy Jackass Pass at 10,790 feet, reaching it at 7 a.m. There, under bluebird skies, we stared at the jagged, granite skyline of the Cirque of the Towers, golden in the low-angle sunlight. After descending several hundred feet to circle around Lonesome Lake, we made a long, steep, off-trail hike and scramble over New York Pass at around 11,400 feet. The gully descent on the other side seemed like a playground compared to West Gully on Wind River Peak. Then we spent a few hours hiking trails and seeing perhaps a few dozen backpackers before turning off-trail again into the solitude of the East Fork River Valley.

We’re now far enough into the WRHR to have wrapped our heads around the totality of its character, from the myriad challenges and unrelenting strenuousness of it to grandness on a scale rarely matched anywhere.

Traversing a range with few equals in the country by any measure—elevations, abundance of alpine lakes and glaciers, remoteness, length and breadth, or raw splendor—the Wind River High Route embodies everything we imagine a great hike in the mountains should be.

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

It passes countless alpine lakes while crossing one amazing valley or cirque after another—and confronting you with what can seem like endless miles of talus, scree, some snow and glacial ice and a bit of third-class scrambling, but no technical terrain. For its entire length, it stays on or near the Continental Divide, rarely coming within a day’s hike of the nearest road.

In all respects, the Wind River High Route offers one of the most remote, arduous, and glorious wilderness adventures anywhere.

At Lake 10,586, the uppermost of a string of liquid pearls in the East Fork Valley, we commence a 1,000-foot ascent over talus and boulders the size of cars to Raid Peak Pass, at around 11,600 feet—our third high pass today. With the aim of completing the 96-mile Wind River High Route in a week—an aggressive itinerary even if this route wasn’t two-thirds off-trail—we’re putting in 12- and 13-hour days that average nearly 14 miles and several thousand vertical feet.

Crossing Raid Peak Pass as the sun sinks toward the horizon, we scramble through cliff bands down to the Bonneville Basin Lakes. There, in fading light and cool wind, we pitch our tents at 7 p.m.—12 hours after we started hiking.

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Huge, Hard Days

In a sharp-edged wind that nips at our faces, we stand on rocky, mostly barren tundra at around 11,600 feet, staring at a topographical puzzle. Ahead of us, the ground rises like an earthen wave, steepening to what looks from this distance very much like a cliff standing between us and 12,259-foot Europe Peak.

Somewhere on that wall—which has already fallen into evening shadow—the Wind River High Route weaves through ledges and breaks in cliff bands to gain the high plateau above it, where we hope to find water and a place to pitch our tents for our fourth night on the WRHR.

As we did yesterday, we’re embarking on our third hard climb today: We’ve already made a couple of steep, off-trail grinds to Sentry Peak Pass at nearly 11,600 feet and Photo Pass at over 11,400 feet. In the valley beyond Photo Pass, we ate up more than an hour locating the route through convoluted terrain, bushwhacking through forest and scrambling ledges around high lakes, but ultimately reaching the alpine zone at the base of Europe Peak.

Now, where Europe Peak’s east face steepens, we zigzag along ledges and scramble carefully up gullies of crumbling rock to reach the Continental Divide at around 12,000 feet north of Europe Peak, and then walk down a broad, gently rolling alpine plateau. Around 8 p.m., we find tiny patches of nearly flat, not-too-rocky ground for our tents a short walk from a tongue of snow about the size of a football field with a small pond of open water at one end. We eat dinner in a cool wind as darkness falls.

Hiking such long days, we rise with or before first light and start walking while the early-August air still feels like October at these high elevations. At any random moment on any given day, it’s hard to immediately recall where we camped the night before. Except for lunch and brief breaks, we don’t stop walking until dusk.

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And every hour of every day, we traverse an alpine wonderland of rocks, scant vegetation, wind-whipped lakes, some of them partly frozen, and peaks towering over 12,000 and 13,000 feet, with glaciers pouring off them.

In early afternoon on our fifth day, we follow a steep, green strip of grass and moss up the edge of a gully to Douglas Peak Pass, at over 11,600 feet. There, we look down the long valley of the Alpine Lakes—a trough almost devoid of green and one of the most starkly beautiful places I’ve ever seen. At the valley’s far end, some four miles and at least that many hours away, today’s next objective, Alpine Lakes Pass, is visible as a notch in a tall ring of stone that encloses the valley like the sides of a giant bathtub.

We descend over ground carpeted with of rocks and boulders of all sizes and commence a circuitous, slow, and arduous traverse of the valley, hiking and scrambling over talus and snow and navigating around three larger lakes and a handful of smaller ones, all at around 11,000 feet.

In the short time we spend along the shore of one lake, three separate car-sized blocks of snow calve with a loud whump into the iceberg-choked water. High above another lake, we cross a wide, grassy shelf sprinkled with rocks; it looks like a little piece of the Scottish Highlands transported to the Wyoming mountains. (Along with the East Fork valley two days ago, it’s among the nicest backcountry campsites I’ve regrettably hiked past.) Then we follow a system of narrow ledges and scramble on hands and feet up a fourth-class ramp. Here and there, wildflowers erupt from little patches of thin soil.

Most surprisingly, we run into five backpackers hiking in the opposite direction—a couple in their twenties and three guys who look college-age—exchanging with them expressions of wonder over the places we’re seeing out here.

In early evening, we reach Alpine Lakes Pass at about 12,150 feet. With each of us feeling the physical strain of these days, we begin another long, downhill slog over rocks, talus, and snow. As darkness looms, we stop for the day on grassy benches above the loud churning of the South Fork Bull Lake Creek.

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The Remotest Corner of the Winds

Around 6:30 a.m. on our sixth morning, layered up against a cold wind in a mountain shadow, we step into the shallow but icy South Fork Bull Lake Creek and cross to its opposite bank. After eating and packing up by headlamp, we started hiking 30 minutes ago, as the predawn light began brightening this valley. We face a huge day.

By midday, we’ll enter the fourth section of the WRHR and the most-remote area of the Winds, its northeast corner, home to towering peaks and the greatest concentration of glaciers in the range. With much of that section near or above 12,000 feet in the alpine zone, entirely exposed to wind and weather, potential campsites are almost non-existent. Our plan is to reach the marginally protected Iceberg and Baker lakes area for our last night on the Wind River High Route—and position ourselves to finish with one final, long day tomorrow.

Ninety minutes beyond the South Fork, we ford the North Fork Bull Lake Creek in a stunning valley below glaciers and 13,810-foot Gannett Peak, Wyoming’s highest. That’s followed by a brutal, 2,000-foot ascent over talus, snow, and scree to 12,750-foot Blaurock Pass, the highest on the Wind River High Route. From there, the Winds stretch far to the north and even farther to the south, a stirring panorama and a powerful visual representation of the tough miles we’ve walked—and the daunting terrain that still awaits.

See all of my stories about backpacking in the Wind River Range at The Big Outside.

The Gear I Used See my reviews of the outstanding backpack, ultralight tent, trekking poles, down jacket, and sleeping bag I used on the Wind River High Route.

I recommend wearing lightweight or midweight, waterproof-breathable boots; see all of my reviews of hiking shoes and backpacking boots and my “8 Pro Tips for Preventing Blisters When Hiking.” Gaiters would also be helpful in wet snow.

Find the best gear, expert buying tips, and best-in-category reviews like “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs” and “The 10 Best Down Jackets” at my Gear Reviews page at The Big Outside.

See my expert tips in these stories:

“How to Prevent Hypothermia While Hiking and Backpacking”
“5 Tips For Staying Warm and Dry While Hiking”
“7 Pro Tips For Keeping Your Backpacking Gear Dry”

Whether you’re a beginner or seasoned backpacker, you’ll learn new tricks for making all of your trips go better in my “12 Expert Tips for Planning a Wilderness Backpacking Trip” and “A Practical Guide to Lightweight and Ultralight Backpacking.” If you don’t have a paid subscription to The Big Outside, you can read part of both stories for free, or download the e-guide versions of “12 Expert Tips for Planning a Wilderness Backpacking Trip” and the lightweight backpacking guide without having a paid membership.

We pause along the trail above Seneca Lake, looking out over water bluer than the cobalt sky, glistening in bright sunshine. A bit farther, reaching a “low” pass at just over 10,600 feet in the Wind River Range, we see the jagged crest of the Continental Divide, pushing several summits to nearly 14,000 feet. The sense of anticipation leaps a notch higher. Then we crest another rise to see Island Lake backdropped by the long procession of razor peaks framing Titcomb Basin.

At this point, just a few hours into our backpacking trip, we are already smitten with the Winds.

My good friends and backpacking partners Todd Arndt, Mark Fenton, and I have come to the Winds in mid-September to hike a three-day, roughly 41-mile loop from Elkhart Park. Tonight, we will camp in one of the most scenically awe-inspiring spots anywhere in the West: Titcomb Basin. Just one trail accesses Titcomb, entering from its mouth at the south end of that stunning valley. We’ll go in that way, but we won’t leave that way.

After spending a night in Titcomb, we plan to explore a potentially spicy, but established off-trail route over 12,240-foot Knapsack Col at the upper, northern end of Titcomb Basin. It’ll be the first of two high passes we’ll cross that day. Our three-day tour of the west side of the northern Winds, mostly above 10,000 feet, will also bring us to several dozen lakes and the rim and floor of Pine Creek Canyon.

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As we eat up the miles to Titcomb, the peaks grow closer and the views keep getting better. We pass several other parties, many carrying fishing rods, most heading back out to civilization as we head into the wilderness on this Tuesday. We stroll by the junction with the Indian Pass Trail, which leads to another lake-filled basin at the foot of the Continental Divide. Twenty years ago, five friends and I camped up there, climbing a few peaks and intending to climb more—but spending much of six days under a tarp because of daily, intense thunderstorms and hailstorms. Somehow, we recall laughing quite a bit through those cold, wet days; no doubt the alcohol we packed in helped. Some trips become memorable for not going quite as planned.

After hiking some 14 miles that feel farther than that—probably because of the constantly up-and-down trails, and the fact that we’ve spent most of the day above 10,000 feet—the three of us rock-hop the creek and drop our packs in a grassy meadow between the two largest Titcomb Lakes.

While Todd and Mark are both seeing the Winds for the first time, I’ve cultivated a long-running, occasionally stormy, but largely rewarding love affair with them.

As the three of us watch the alpenglow paint the 13,000-footers above us golden, I’m thinking about how this moment, this entire day feels, to borrow a beloved quote from Yogi Berra, like déjà vu all over again.

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Titcomb Basin

An alpine valley at over 10,500 feet deep in the Wind River Range, Titcomb Basin lies below peaks on the Continental Divide that soar 3,000 feet above the Titcomb Lakes, the highest of which is 13,745-foot Fremont Peak. High peaks flank the valley on three sides. The environs force you to perpetually look around at the mountains towering above it—because many people coming here have quite possibly never seen a place like it before. (That’s why I put it on my list of 25 all-time favorite backcountry campsites.)

Strange as it sounds, this Winds hike is something of a consolation prize for us. I had a backcountry permit reservation, made back in March, for six-day backpacking trip in Glacier National Park. Mark, Todd, and I had been eagerly looking forward to it for months. Then, in what has become a regular summer occurrence throughout the West in this age of accelerating climate change, a wildfire broke out in the park, weeks before our September 2017 trip dates. In the days leading up to our trip, smoke covered the park in a thick, noxious cloud that obscured views and threatened human health. Park management stopped issuing backpacking permits. We had to cancel.

I scrambled to find a backup destination. A very helpful website, airnow.gov, showed that the smoke blanketing much of the Western mountains had somehow not reached the Wind River Range. Mark grabbed a flight to meet up with Todd and me and we made the drive to Wyoming—to find blue skies.

During the night in Titcomb, I step outside the tent for a moment and end up standing in the chilly air for several minutes, staring up at the Milky Way, a glowing cloud against the ink-black dome of a sky riddled with stars. In the morning, Mark, who lives outside Boston, says to me, “You got up last night and saw that sky, right? Wasn’t that amazing? You just don’t see a sky like that back East.”

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Knapsack Col

We leave our camp in Titcomb shortly after 7 a.m. on our second morning, under gray skies threatening rain. Walking up the valley with a strong, cool wind at our backs, we pass a couple other parties still in camp; we had also seen tents and lights of two other parties down valley from us last night.

Where the maintained trail ends at the far end of the uppermost Titcomb Lake, we follow a cairned use path into the upper basin, staying to the right of the creek, walking over granite slabs and sometimes marshy ground. The cliffs and pinnacles of Mounts Sacagawea and Helen, Spearhead Pinnacle, Dinwoody Peak, Bobs Towers and others soar high above us; we crane our necks to look up at them.

We turn west up a side valley toward Knapsack Col, scrambling carefully over and through some truck-size talus blocks that seem a little sketchy. (See my tips about the route in the Take This Trip section at the bottom of this story.) While traversing the talus, we meet a woman descending from the pass. She tells us she works at McMurdo station on Antarctica from October through February. Now she’s backpacking the Wyoming section of the Continental Divide Trail solo, taking a month. She’s looking forward to meeting up with her boyfriend at Big Sandy and hiking in to the Cirque of the Towers together.

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The scree headwall leading to Knapsack Col proves not as steep as it looks from a distance. We pick our way up it, choosing the lowest-angle route (starting up to the right, then angling up left to the pass) without much trouble, reaching the 12,240-foot pass three hours after leaving our camp. It’s breezy but not terribly windy or cold, and the rain has held off, although we can now see dark clouds approaching from the west.

We follow another use path down the fairly steep scree on the Peak Lake side of Knapsack Col—the headwaters of the Green River—soon descending easier terrain in a valley hemmed in by yet more spires and jagged teeth of peaks topping 12,000 and 13,000 feet. The intermittent path fades out in spots, but it’s not hard navigating straight down the valley. We stop for lunch at a small tarn, emerald green with glacial silt. No one else is out here; in fact, although we passed several parties on the hike in to Titcomb yesterday, we will see just a handful of backpackers for the rest of our trip.

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range.”

Contact This hike lies almost entirely within the Bridger Wilderness of the Bridger-Teton National Forest, fs.usda.gov/btnf.

See “The 10 Best Backpacking Trips in the Wind River Range.”

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