15 Adventures on Earth That Will Change Your Life – GWC Mag

By Michael Lanza

Can travel “change your life?” How many experiences have such an enormous impact? I can name several that shifted my perspective on adventure or expanded how I view the world and other people. Exploring the surreal landscapes of Iceland and Patagonia. Walking among Earth’s highest mountains in Nepal, through remote villages where we experienced cultures far different from our own. Immersing myself in the mountain lifestyle on hut treks in the Alps like the Tour du Mont Blanc (photo above). And seeing unforgettable places like Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park, Italy’s Dolomites, and Alaska’s Glacier Bay through the unclouded eyes of my kids.

Our earliest and sometimes most inspirational experiences usually happen within our own national borders, and often close to where we grew up or live. (That was the case for me on a bicycle tour with two buddies in our home state when we were 19.) And without question, several U.S. national parks deserve a spot on any list of the world’s must-see destinations, among them the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Glacier, Zion, and the Everglades—not to mention several parks in Alaska, where you can see the breadth of wildlife that once existed all over the planet.

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-guides to classic backpacking trips. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.

But there’s something about traveling abroad that puts everything you see, hear, and touch under a magnifying glass. Everything is exotic. People talk and think differently. Culture is alien, history a refreshingly new collection of stories.

Blend those elements into a hike through mountains you’ve never seen before, or paddling through a pristine landscape, and you have the formula for an experience that does alter our perception of the world and our place in it. Take a child on a trip like that and you may reroute the trajectory of a young person’s life—very much for the better.

This article describes 15 adventures I’ve taken in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Asia, and New Zealand—all of them trips worth adding to your list. These short descriptions provide links to feature-length stories about each trip at The Big Outside that include many images and tips for planning those trips yourself. (Those stories are partially free for anyone to read but require a paid subscription to The Big Outside to read in full, including my planning tips.)

Please share your thoughts on any of these trips, or suggest others that have changed your life, in the comments section at the bottom of this story. I try to respond to all comments.

Setting off on a life-changing experience demands self-motivation and the journey begins with the planning. Get started now.

Bon voyage.

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Hiking in Iceland

Steam from hot springs and fumaroles rises from scores of points stretching to a distant horizon. The landscape is a kaleidoscope of color—paint-can spills of ochre, pink, gold, plum, brown, rust, and honey against a backdrop of electric-lime moss and July snowfields smeared across the highlands. An old, hardened lava flow pours down one mountainside in a jumbled train wreck of black rhyolite. And that’s just day one on the Laugavegur Trail. A typically four-day, hut-to-hut trek in Iceland’s remote Central Highlands, it belongs on any list of the world’s most beautiful paths—as does the Fimmvörðuháls Trail, a two-day addition to the Laugavegur that’s arguably even more stunning. Cap the adventure of a lifetime taking dayhikes along the Ring Road.

Read my blog story about my family’s hut trek on these two trails, “A Family Hikes Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls Trails.” See also “9 Great Hikes and Walks Along Iceland’s Ring Road,” and “Earth, Wind, and Fire: A Journey to the Planet’s Beginnings in Iceland.”

Ready to hike one of the world’s great treks? Click here now for my e-guide
“The Complete Guide to Trekking Iceland’s Laugavegur and Fimmvörðuháls Trails.”

Trekking the Tour du Mont Blanc

Look at any list of the world’s greatest hiking trails, and the Tour du Mont Blanc almost invariably occupies a spot at or near the top of it. The first reason is the sheer majesty of this roughly 105-mile (170k) walking path around the “Monarch of the Alps:” Crossing several mountain passes reaching nearly 9,000 feet, it delivers views of glaciers, pointy peaks and “aiguilles,” and the snowy dome of Mont Blanc. But there’s also the rich cultural experience of passing through three nations—France, Italy, and Switzerland—as well as some of the best food I’ve eaten on any international trip. Plus, the abundance of scenic mountain towns and villages and availability of public transportation allows hikers to customize their trek, choosing which sections to hike depending on difficulty, weather, and how they feel.

See “Hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc at an 80-Year-Old Snail’s Pace” at The Big Outside.

Get my e-guide “The Perfect Plan for Hiking the Tour du Mont Blanc.”

Hiking Spain’s Picos de Europa

What if I told you there’s a stunning mountain range in Europe that’s just a few hours’ drive from a major airport, has mountain huts and charming mountain towns, is surprisingly inexpensive to trek through—and you’ve probably never heard of it? Well, I’ve gotten around a fair bit, but I had never heard of northern Spain’s Picos de Europa until just months before my family’s five-day, 52-mile hike through them. Amid jagged limestone peaks rising to over 8,500 feet, we hiked over passes above 7,000 feet and across mind-boggling alpine terrain that conveys a sense of much bigger peaks.

My strong recommendation: Hire local guide Alberto Mediavilla Serrano, the best guide in the Picos; alberto.mediavilla@gmail.com. While following trails there isn’t terribly difficult in good weather, when we got a surprise snowstorm in June that reduced visibility and covered all trail markings, Alberto knew the mountains well enough to find the way in those conditions, advise us to change our plans to take a safer alternate route, and where we could find very reasonably priced rooms and good food in a village that night.

Read my feature story about my family’s trek, “The Best 5-Day Hike in Spain’s Picos de Europa Mountains.”

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Trekking Patagonia’s Torres del Paine

Undoubtedly one of the most prized trekking destinations in the world, Torres del Paine National Park is Chile’s Yosemite. In the vast region known as Patagonia, it is a place of severely vertical stone monoliths thousands of feet tall: Imagine looking at Yosemite Valley stacked atop one of the deep valleys of Glacier National Park. Cracked glaciers stretch many miles long and wide, calving into emerald lakes, and the wind will occasionally knock you off your feet. Hiking hut-to-hut or camping on the roughly 31-mile (50k) “W” trek, on the south side of the mountains—where the weather is often better than the north side—takes in some of the park’s finest scenery.

See my story “Patagonian Classic: Trekking Torres del Paine.”

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Trekking Through Italy’s Dolomite Mountains

On a weeklong, hut-to-hut trek through one of the world’s most spectacular and storied mountain ranges, Italy’s Dolomites, my family hiked a 39-mile (62k) section of the roughly 112-mile (180k) Alta Via 2, or “The Way of the Legends.” An alpine footpath famous for scenery that puts it in legitimate contention for the title of the most beautiful trail in the world, the AV 2 is also known for comfortable mountain huts with excellent food—and a reputation for being the most remote and difficult of the several multi-day alte vie, or “high paths,” that crisscross the Dolomites. On one of my family’s biggest adventures, we discovered that it was all of those things and more.

See my story “The World’s Most Beautiful Trail: Trekking the Alta Via 2 in Italy’s Dolomites.”

Make your kids want to go again. See “The 10 Best Family Outdoor Adventure Trips.”

Hiking New Zealand’s Tongariro National Park

Tongariro National Park looks like a place devastated by a very big bomb—which is actually sort of what happened. On a 12.1-mile dayhike over three of the main craters of Tongariro, you’ll summit one mountain that erupted 45 times in the 20th century and stand at the edge of another that last erupted little more than a century ago—an eye blink in geologic time. A third, just a few miles to the south, ranks among the world’s most active. But beyond its prolific volcanism, Tongariro is known for its strikingly stark, Technicolor moonscape painted in vivid shades of burnt red, orange, brilliant white, gray, deep black, yellow, and brown.

See my story “Super Volcanoes: Hiking the Steaming Peaks of New Zealand’s Tongariro National Park.”

Get the right pack for you. See my picks for “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs”
and “The 10 Best Hiking Daypacks.”

Trekking Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park

Jotunheimen—which means “Home of the Giants”—contains the highest European mountains north of the Alps, starkly barren peaks rising to more than 8,000 feet. In this rugged, Arctic-looking landscape, vibrantly colorful with shrubs, mosses, and wildflowers, cliffs and mountains look like they were chopped from the earth with an axe, braided rivers meander down mostly treeless valleys, and reindeer roam wild. My family’s 60-mile (96.6k), hut-to-hut trek across Jotunheimen combined pristine wilderness with the most luxurious huts I’ve ever stayed in, a trail network that allows for flexibility in route options, and side hikes to summits with mind-blowing views of mountains buried in snow and ice, including the highest peak in Norway.

See my story “Walking Among Giants: A Three-Generation Hut Trek in Norway’s Jotunheimen National Park.”

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Sea Kayaking Alaska’s Glacier Bay

On a five-day, guided sea kayaking trip in Southeast Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park, my family probed deep into one of the most pristine and largest wildernesses left on Earth. Surrounded by snowy peaks smothered in more than 50 glaciers, some of which explosively calve icebergs into the sea, Glacier Bay is a 65-mile-long fjord that opens a window onto what North America looked like when the last Ice Age drew to a close 10,000 years ago. A short list of the many critters you may see includes humpback whales, orcas, brown bears, Steller sea lions, and birds like black-legged kittiwake, pigeon guillemot, bald eagles, two kinds of puffin. Few trips in America are this wild.

See my story “Back to the Ice Age: Sea Kayaking Glacier Bay.”

Find the right synthetic or down puffy for you. See “The 10 Best Down Jackets.”

Backpacking in the Canadian Rockies

Within the first few hours of our four-day family backpacking trip on the 34-mile (55k) Rockwall Trail in Kootenay National Park, we stared up at what looked like a pair of El Capitans standing shoulder to shoulder, then saw one of the tallest waterfalls in the Rocky Mountains, Helmet Falls, which drops 1,154 feet (352m). But that was a mere sampler of what was to follow. Backpackers on the Rockwall follow the base of a nearly unbroken, 18-mile-long (30k) limestone escarpment in Kootenay’s Vermilion Range, plastered with glaciers and towering as much as 3,000 feet (900m) above the trail. It’s no exaggeration to liken it to dozens of the tallest cliff in Yosemite Valley, El Capitan, lined up in a row stretching for miles.

See my story “Best of the Canadian Rockies: Backpacking the Rockwall Trail.”

Stay dry, warm, and safe. See “The Best Rain Jackets For Hiking and Backpacking.”

Sea Kayaking New Zealand’s Milford Sound

The Milford Track in Fiordland National Park has earned a reputation as one of the great multi-day hikes on the planet in part for its views of Milford Sound. It’s also one of the hardest treks in the world to book hut reservations on. Instead—or in addition to trekking the Milford Track—spend a day paddling sea kayaks in Milford Sound, soaking up views of cliffs wearing a thick fur of rainforest rising to over 5,000 feet straight out of the sea, and waterfalls plunging hundreds of feet into the ocean. You may spot bottlenose dolphins and Fiordland crested penguins. Plan it for a day of clear weather—which can be a rarity in Fiordland—and it will be a highlight of any New Zealand vacation.

See my “Photo Gallery: Sea Kayaking New Zealand’s Milford Sound.”

I’ve learned a lot traveling the world. See my “10 Tips For Doing Adventure Travel Right.”

Backpacking Unknown Patagonia: The Dientes Circuit

Billed as the southernmost trek in the world, the 22.7-mile (36.5k) Dientes Circuit around the jagged, rocky peaks of the Dientes de Navarino, or “Teeth of Navarino,” certainly qualifies as one of the most remote: At 55 degrees south latitude, the Dientes, which reach almost 4,000 feet in elevation, lie just 60 miles from the tip of South America and a short flight from the Antarctic Peninsula. While renowned treks in Patagonia, like those in Torres del Paine (see above), attract thousands of international trekkers every year, you may not see anyone else in four days on the Dientes Circuit—giving you a sense of what Patagonia was like before it became a darling of the international trekkers’ set. That’s not only because of its remoteness: This is a very strenuous hike that demands expert backcountry skills—all part of the challenge and reward of this unique backpacking trip.

See my story “Unknown Patagonia: Backpacking the Dientes Circuit.”

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Trekking New Zealand’s Kepler Track

One of New Zealand’s Great Walks, the three- to four-day, approximately 37-mile (60k) Kepler Track delivers a grand tour of Fiordland National Park’s diverse landscapes, from moss-blanketed beech forest to the tussock-carpeted high country. It ranks among the most scenic and varied hut treks in a country blessed with a crazy wealth of gorgeous trails. More than that, though, the Kepler presents a relatively mud-, flood-, and hassle-free, hut-to-hut hiking experience. Its hiker-friendly construction, and the relative ease of securing hut reservations compared with hugely popular tracks like the Milford and Routeburn, make it one of the most accessible hut treks in a land where everything from weather to logistics can mess with your adventure plans.

See my story “New Zealand’s Best, Uncomplicated Hut Trek: The Kepler Track.”

No time for a big trip this year? You need to read my “10 Tips For Getting Outside More.”

Trekking Nepal’s Annapurna Circuit

The tiny mountain kingdom of Nepal has long held an exalted status in the minds of international trekkers, and the Annapurna Circuit stands beside the trek to Everest base camp as Nepal’s most popular and accessible. Over roughly three weeks, you’ll walk about 150 miles from village to village, below some of the world’s tallest peaks, glaciated giants so unfathomably big that, at times, they can seem drift farther away even as you approach them. You eat and sleep in teahouses while following an ancient trade route over the Thorung La, a mountain pass at 17,769 feet. After three decades of adventures all over the world, this remains one of the most culturally fascinating and beautiful trips I’ve ever taken.

See my story “Himalayan Shangri-La: Trekking Nepal’s Annapurna Circuit.”

Taking on New Zealand’s Hardest Hut Trek: The Dusky Track

When a friend and I set out to hike a four-day, 23-mile section of Fiordland’s 53-mile Dusky Track, we were primarily motivated and intrigued by its reputation as the hardest hut trek in New Zealand. But we saw beyond that superficial description to the promise implicit in it: the chance to see New Zealand’s biggest wilderness the way it must have looked centuries ago. Compared to popular tracks, the Dusky can feel all but deserted—which means having its glacier-carved valleys and mountain passes with panoramas of rainforest-shrouded mountains almost all to ourselves. It also turned into quite possibly the hardest hike, step for step, that either of us has ever done.

See my story “Hiking New Zealand’s Hardest Hut Trek, the Dusky Track.”

Rafting Idaho’s Middle Fork Salmon River

Three times now, my family and about 20 good friends have taken one of the classic multi-day, wilderness river trips in America—and arguably, the greatest: a six-day, whitewater rafting and kayaking trip down the Middle Fork Salmon River with a team of top guides from Middle Fork Rapid Transit. Deep in the largest federal wilderness area in the Lower 48, central Idaho’s 2.4-million-acre Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness, the Middle Fork has some 100 ratable rapids, many of them class III and IV, not to mention beautiful campsites and side hikes, hot springs, and world-class trout fishing. It’s also one of the prettiest rivers to ever carve a twisting canyon through mountains.

See my stories “Big Water, Big Wilderness: Rafting Idaho’s Middle Fork Salmon River” and “Reunions of the Heart on Idaho’s Middle Fork Salmon River” at The Big Outside.

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