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The 10 Best National Park Backpacking Trips
By Michael Lanza Olympic, Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Glacier, Zion, Grand Teton, Mount Rainier, Canyonlands, Sequoia, Great Smoky Mountains. To backpackers, these names read like a list of America’s greatest cathedrals in nature—and no surprise, because these parks harbor some of the most scenic... -
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Get Custom Backpacking Trip Planning from an Expert
By Michael Lanza You’re trying to plan a backpacking trip to a classic national park like Yosemite, Grand Teton, Glacier, Zion, Grand Canyon, or some other park or wilderness area—but you’re not quite sure how to do it or where to go. Or the permit process and planning feel overwhelming. Or you... -
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10 Perfect National Park Backpacking Trips for Beginners
By Michael Lanza So you’re a novice backpacker, or you’re planning your first backpacking trip in a big, Western national park, or you have kids you want to take on a relatively easy backpacking trip—and you want to sample the best scenery, trails, and backcountry campsites that experienced... -
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10 Outdoor Adventures to Put on Your Bucket List Now
By Michael Lanza Are you looking for great trip ideas for your bucket list? Well, you’ve clicked to the right place. This freshly updated story spotlights some of the most iconic wildlands in the U.S., including Glacier (photo above), Yosemite, North Cascades, and Sequoia national parks... -
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Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail—A Photo Gallery
By Michael Lanza It’s known as “America’s Most Beautiful Trail” for good reason: There may be no long backpacking trip that’s more spectacular, step for step, than a thru-hike of the John Muir Trail through California’s High Sierra. From Yosemite Valley to the 14,505-foot summit of Mount... -
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The 25 Best National Park Dayhikes
By Michael Lanza America’s most stunning landscapes are protected within our 63 national parks, and some of the very finest scenery within our national heritage can be reached on dayhikes. Some of these hikes you may not have done yet or heard of. Others are famous, but there’s a reason for... -
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5 Expert Tips For Buying a Backpacking Tent
By Michael Lanza The choices in tents for backpacking seem to get better every year, with lightweight models continually getting lighter and other advances that make tents sturdier and more livable without adding weight. But with all the options out there, how do you choose? The answer is... -
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How to Get a Permit to Backpack in Glacier National Park
By Michael Lanza There are two immutable truths about backpacking in Glacier National Park. First, from its stirring landscape, where glaciers hang off muscular mountains and sheer cliffs soar above deeply green valleys dappled with lakes and waterfalls, to almost certain sightings of wildlife... -
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10 Backpacking Trips for Solitude in Glacier National Park
By Michael Lanza Is it possible to find solitude backpacking in a national park as popular as Glacier? The answer is an unequivocal yes—even in Glacier’s relatively short peak season of mid-July through mid-September. And the strategies for doing so are remarkably simple and will not compromise... -
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How to Decide Where to Go Backpacking
By Michael Lanza You can find abundant information online offering advice on how to plan a backpacking trip (including my 12 expert tips)—some of it good and some, frankly, not very thorough or simply clickbait created by sites lacking any expertise in backpacking. But there’s little advice out... -
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Ultralight Backpacking Tents: How to Choose One
By Michael Lanza Switching from a standard backpacking tent to an ultralight tent can shave pounds from your total pack weight—which for many backpackers will be the biggest step they can take toward a lighter pack. But it can be confusing to sort through the various ultralight tents out there... -
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Review: Flylow Baker Bib
Skiing and Riding Bib Flylow Baker Bib $430, 2 lbs. 2 oz./952g (men’s medium) Sizes: men’s XS-XXL, with tall and short sizes backcountry.com Skiing in Utah’s Wasatch mountains virtually every single time it snows exposes me to a wide range of inclement weather conditions: from subzero... -
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The 10 Best Backpacking Tents of 2025
By Michael Lanza A good backpacking tent not only makes your trips more comfortable by keeping you warm and dry in foul weather—it’s critical safety gear and one of the heaviest and most expensive items you’ll carry. Those facts alone are motivation enough to find the right tent for your style... -
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Bear Essentials: How to Store Food When Backcountry Camping
By Michael Lanza On our first night in the backcountry of Yosemite National Park on one of my earliest backpacking trips, two friends and I—all complete novices—hung our food from a tree branch near our camp. Unfortunately, the conifer trees around us all had short branches: Our food stuff... -
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10 Great, Big Dayhikes in the Tetons
By Michael Lanza The Tetons stand out for many reasons, most of all that iconic skyline of jagged peaks and spires that invites comparisons to cathedrals—although these cathedrals reach over 12,000 and 13,000 feet high. But while backpackers flock to the Teton Range for multi-day hikes and... -
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The Hardest Dayhike in the East: The 32-Mile Pemi Loop
By Michael Lanza Our long day of hiking began at 6 a.m., shortly after first light, under a gray overcast that would rain intermittent light showers on us over the next several hours and, at times, envelop us in pea-soup fog. When our day ended 15 hours and 59 minutes later—we could officially... -
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Review: Deuter Aircontact Ultra 50+5 and 45+5 SL Backpacks
Ultralight Backpacks Deuter Aircontact Ultra 50+5 $250, 55L/3,356 c.i., 2 lbs. 15 oz./1.33kg Deuter Aircontact Ultra 45+5 SL $250, 50L/3,051 c.i., 2 lbs. 11 oz./1.21kg One adjustable size in both models Aircontact Ultra 50+5: rei.com Aircontact Ultra 45+5 SL: rei.com To put Deuter’s... -
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How to Plan Food for a Backpacking Trip
By Michael Lanza You’re planning food for a backpacking trip—maybe for yourself or perhaps for your family or a small group of friends—and you have questions about how to do it. How much food do you need? What food should you bring? How complicated or simple do you want to make it? How do your... -
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The First 5 Things I Do in Camp When Backpacking
By Michael Lanza I doubt that I had any typical routine when arriving at a campsite on my earliest backpacking trips; like many backpackers, I probably just dropped my pack, shucked off my boots, and kicked back until motivated to move by the urge to eat, drink, get warm, or go to the bathroom... -
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Mountain Lakes of the Wind River Range—A Photo Gallery
By Michael Lanza We followed the Doubletop Mountain Trail as it rolled over open plateau country above 10,000 feet in the Wind River Range, crossing one gorgeous lake basin after another where wildflowers still carpeted the ground in the week before Labor Day. In the distance, peaks along the...