Beneath the surface of some of the world’s most Instagram-worthy destinations—centuries-old cities, lush tropical rainforests, and tiny European towns, just to name a few—lay an eerie antithesis t ...

If you wanted to spend your away weekend feeling hungry, uncomfortable, and exhausted, you’d go backpacking. While that might be what you’re looking for from time to time, there’s no denying that ...

Weekend backpacking trips are one of the greatest gifts of the summer. You can get so much in just two to three days: a breathtaking vista, a serene mountain lake, a secluded old-growth forest. Th ...

For as many adventures that go exactly as planned, there are some that end with you feeling like there was never a plan in the first place. Uncharted Supply Co.’s SEVENTY2® Pro Survival ...

Size isn’t everything in a mountain. Neither is topographic prominence, or isolation, or vertical rise, or geologic age, or symmetry, or wildness. The best mountains, of course, are thos ...

The national parks of the United States account for some of the world’s most glorious landscapes: ice-whittled peaks, abyssal gorges, primeval seashores, towering forests, kaleidoscopic deserts—wel ...

When you think of “wilderness,” what image pops into your brain? I’d wager a lot of you first thought of snowcapped peaks—or maybe a convoluted canyonland, a lake-pocked boreal forest, or some wi ...

I’m a West Virginian at heart. I’ve had a love affair with the verdant and rugged topography of the Appalachian Mountains my entire life. I’m a firm believer that, with the bullet-hard sandstone o ...

Are the difficulties of taking a toddler on a 200-mile hike worth the rewards?It’s 8 a.m. on an August morning, and I’m standing at the Mono/Parker Pass Trailhead in Yosemite with 40 pounds in my b ...

Johnny and I are prowling a glorified goat track near the Galiuro Mountains in southeast Arizona, ensconced in a fully loaded and air-conditioned Toyota FJ Cruiser. Burdened as we are by a trunk f ...

Before applying paint, Peter Parsons traced the letters on the back of his canvas rucksack. He wanted the 3-inch-high text to be perfect—no botched lines made by an excited hand. Parsons painted ne ...

Ten trails. Ten unmatched miles each. Get maximum bang for each boot step on hikes that our most-traveled contributors call their all-time favorites.The Lost Coast, Sinkyone Wilderness SP Find your ...