By Michael Lanza We’re not even five minutes into our backpacking trip when a sound all too familiar startles us: a long, scratchy rattling noise. We stop abruptly and Pam says, “There it is,” pointing at the rattlesnake lying along the railroad tracks that our trail briefly follows before it moves away from the tracks to trace a winding route down the desert valley of the brown, silted Gila River in southern Arizona. After admiring the snake’s noise-making prowess and size for a few moments—from a safe distance—we walk a wide berth around this fellow so as not to agitate him any further and c ..read more

By Michael Lanza Like many desert Southwest hikes, southern Utah’s Boulder Mail Trail begins from its western trailhead with a lot of laboriously slow walking in soft sand—miles of it, up, down, over, across. When not walking in beach sand, or for brief, merciful spurts, firm sand, we’re hiking over slickrock, that most grippy of ground surfaces where we can move much more quickly—except where the slickrock tilts at severe angles, as it does much of the time. Then it begins an adventurous exercise in strenuous, calf-pumping ascents or cautious descents with backpacks, constantly zigzagging to ..read more

By Michael Lanza A couple of hours up the Nigel Pass Trail, after a lunch break beside boulder-strewn rapids on chalky, glacially silted Nigel Creek, we pop out of forest into sub-alpine terrain with wildflowers and the kind of dense, low brush that conceals grizzly bears better than we think—enjoying our first expansive views of the peaks flanking this valley in Banff National Park. As we make our way farther up the valley, our gentle trail turns steeper, leading us up to Nigel Pass at 7,200 feet (2,195 meters), where we drink up a 360-degree panorama of tall cliffs and treeless mountainsides ..read more

By Michael Lanza How was your 2023? I hope you got outdoors as much as possible with the people you care about—and you enjoyed adventures that inspired you. I’m sharing in this story photos from the seven backpacking trips I took this year (in addition to the usual dayhiking, climbing, skiing, etc.). In early April, I went on a pair of three-day hikes in Arizona’s Aravaipa Canyon and on a section of the Arizona Trail that was in the midst of a wildly colorful wildflower bloom. On a two-family trip to the Canadian Rockies in late July and early August, we backpacked two amazing routes, the Skyl ..read more

By Michael Lanza In the second week of September, the cool air in the shade of the forest nips at our cheeks as we leave our first night’s camp beside Glenns Lake in the backcountry of Glacier National Park, starting at a reasonably early hour for a day where we will walk nearly 16 miles and 6,000 feet of combined uphill and downhill. I’m hiking in a fleece hoodie, pants, and gloves and my friends Pam Solon and Jeff Wilhelm are similarly layered up. Once the sun reaches us within an hour, we’ll strip down to shorts and T-shirts. Where the trail crosses a meadow, the expansive view west across ..read more

By Michael Lanza One of the most immutable truisms about hiking is this: Backpackers, dayhikers, climbers, mountain runners, and others who start using trekking poles almost never hit the trail without them again. No matter how much weight you’re carrying—from an ultralight daypack to a godawful heavy monster backpack—using poles will lessen your chances of an accidental fall and your leg muscles and joints, feet, back, and body will all feel better, thanks to the reduced strain, fatigue, and impact on them. Consider this: I do not know a single experienced dayhiker or backpacker who does not ..read more

By Michael Lanza About three hours into our hike on the Skyline Trail in Canada’s Jasper National Park, a rumble of thunder rips the sky with a sound like a train derailment; moments later, the gray overcast that had rolled overhead maybe 30 minutes earlier starts spraying us with random bursts of raindrops. By the time the five of us have hurried into rain shells and flipped our hoods up, the rain commences in earnest, chauffeured by strong wind just as we emerge from forest into the alpine terrain. Walking into the full brunt of the weather but dressed for it—and this crew has deep experienc ..read more

By Michael Lanza In strong, cool gusts of wind competing against a blazing desert sun, we descend a dusty trail flanked by tall, muscular saguaro and countless small cacti aiming thousands of sharp needles at the legs of anyone who wanders too close to the trail’s edge. Just minutes from the trailhead, we reach the bottom of southern Arizona’s Aravaipa Canyon, splashing across Aravaipa Creek in several strides—the first of scores of crossings we’ll make of this calf-deep, crystal-clear, and cool but not numbing little desert waterway over the next three days. White puffs of downy pollen float ..read more

A Manual for Staying Sane Through the Greatest Adventure of Your Life By Michael Lanza Raising children is a lot of work—any parent knows that. But for people who love the outdoors, combining parenting with their passion for hiking, backpacking, skiing, camping, climbing, kayaking, or other outdoor activities poses added challenges. In many ways, at least when children are young, what you do outside with them is both easier than what you did outside before you had kids (you regress to beginner level) and exponentially harder (for all the cat herding and stuff-management involved). The rewards ..read more

By Michael Lanza While I always prefer to get as far from any road as possible whenever I visit a mountain range, one truth that may—and perhaps must—be said of the Canadian Rockies is that they will leave you smitten with an lifelong, unshakeable love before you even step out of the car. Driving to any trailhead along the 143-mile-long (232-kilometer) Icefields Parkway between Lake Louise and the town of Jasper, or along the Trans-Canada Highway across the mountains, and you will struggle to sound like a literate person as superlatives and simple gasps of “wow” roll repeatedly off your tongue ..read more