Your dream backpacking trips are waiting for you. Find and explore new hiking trails and backpacking routes across the country with advice, adventure travel stories, topo maps, photography, and more from the experts at Backpacker.
Your dream backpacking trips are waiting for you. Find and explore new hiking trails and backpacking routes across the country with advice, adventure travel stories, topo maps, photography, and more from the experts at Backpacker.
Five troubled teens and three well-meaning volunteers head into the Colorado mountains, hoping the wilds will help heal the youngsters. But in the end, it's hard to tell whose lives were forever shaped by the experience, the youths or the adults.
Catch rainbows -- trout, that is -- in Rockhouse Basin's rivers, where you're more likely to see a wildcat than another human.
If you're a fan of eskers, moraines, kettles, and kames, Wisconsin's Kettle Moraine State Forest is the right place for you.
Sometimes walking "backward" is the only way to go in New Hampshire's White Mountains.
If you run into the big white bears, should you be scared?
If you plan on hiking the European Alps, get ready for some differences across the pond.
The bawling in the black night is the spring chorus of hooting barred owls.
With the fervor of a pulpit-pounding evangelist, Ron Strickland has wandered the land, preaching the gospel of the Pacific Northwest Trail he hoped to create.
Vast meadows of wildflowers sprawl across the ridgetops and valley bottoms of the Three Sisters.
The best bird window coincides with the best hiking season in the Chihuahuan Desert.
All along the 23-mile Shenandoah Mountain trail and in the forested areas throughout the Appalachian Mountains, vernal pools are rich aquatic breeding grounds.
Guy Waterman died near the summit of Mount Lafayette, a peak in the White Mountains in northern New Hampshire, on February 6.
In the European high-country Alps you can wander through the most stunning mountains in the world. Vive la difference!
In mountains most hikers don't even know exist, the 150-mile Cohos Trail just waiting to carry you far from the crowds and on to Canada.
Combine white sand beaches and gin-clear water with snow-free highland hiking, and you've got Baja, the perfect midwinter escape.
Appalachian Trail (AT) advocate Edward Garvey, 84, recently died of congestive heart failure at Arlington Hospital in Virginia.
Jim Lockart of Pughtown, Pennsylvania is part of a unique group who have scaled all 50 states' highest peaks.
What happens when you go from sea level to altitude too fast? One brave editor found out the hard way, and offers her blow-by-blow findings in hopes that you don't suffer a similar fate.
Like your first love, you never forget your initial visit to the Arctic.
Hike this gorgeous, mountainous section of Virginia's Appalachian Trail.
With all of the trail options in Pennsylvania's Michaux State Forest, it's hard to pick just one.
Imagine that your well-coiffed, country club mother calls and says, "I want to go backpacking." Would it be your worst nightmare or a family dream come true?
Last time you went looking for a new place to hike, you probably consulted a guidebook. We all do. So why is author Michael Kelsey getting lambasted for giving us what we want?
A once-in-a-lifetime solo hike through Lake Clark National Park, where the midnight sun shines like candlelight on the mountains.
Journey to Alaska's far northern edge, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where the midnight sun shines like candlelight on the mountains.
Looking for a really wild time? Grab your passport and head to Canada, where the mountains are big, the views stretch beyond your imagination, and you can't fling a moose pellet without hitting some kind of wildlife.
Who says the Appalachian Trail has to stop in Maine? Certainly not some plucky Canadians, who're extending the long-trail concept 600 more miles into their homeland.
The Middle Fork of the Salmon River Trail is a 100-mile-long backpacker's dream that comes complete with muscle-soothing waters and the occasional glass of wine with your four-course dinner.
Sometimes a place is so magnificent that it burns itself into your soul and overrides all sensation-even the urge to heave up your guts.
If you like stunning mountains, challenging trails, breathtaking scenery and warm temperatures in winter, New Zealand is your ticket to paradise. Just watch out for the thieving parrots.
Two trails, same river, two different worlds.
We travel to New Mexico's Aldo Leopold Wilderness to understand the roots of the preservation movement and see just how far we've come.
The 10 once-in-a-lifetime adventures any backwoods fanatic should have under his hipbelt before hanging up the ol' pack.
The 50-mile-long Massanutten range in Virginia may be D.C.'s top-secret hiking getaway.
Grab your passport and follow these 25 hikes where wild winds Blow, strange animals roam, and even the alpenglow adds to the adventure.
Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante is huge, remote, controversial, and one of the finest destinations for backpackers in the Lower 48.
Some say Goat Rocks Wilderness has the best scenery along the 2,600-mile Pacific Crest Trail. Decide for yourself.
The bison are relics from the past, and the wolves know no fear. Welcome to Wood Buffalo National Park, where time stands still and the land shrugs off man's attempts to alter its primitive spirit.
At the edge of the world, Canada's Algonquin Provincial Park offers a window to the past.
Get lost on Georgia's Duncan Ridge Trail.
The host of BACKPACKER's television show gives us a peek inside.
When it came to continent crossing, the noted U.S. explorers were a step behind Canada's Alexander Mackenzie. And until you hike his namesake trail, you can't truly appreciate the toughness of his journey or the magnitude of his accomplishment.
A classic story from the winter 1975 issue of Backpacker.