THE ART OF GETTING LOST

MANY OF THE HALF-DAY ADVENTURES ON OUR LIST TAKE ONLY A FEW HOURS but leave a lasting impression: from BASE jumping off a bridge, to climbing above the breath-taking exposure of Angels Landing in Zion National Park, to rafting the nearly nonstop whitewater of the Middle Ocoee River or riding the train through the tunnel in the Eiger. The half-day trips that made the cut are a diverse set of outings that will blow your hair back, but all for completely different reasons. And then, of course, you’ll still have the rest of your day to kick back, have a burger and/or a beer, and think about what a great day it was.

#43 Hike Angels Landing, Utah

DESCRIPTION: Probably no trail in the United States offers more adventure per mile than Angels Landing, an exposed traverse 1,200 feet above the floor of Zion Canyon, with chains for handholds. It’s not for the faint of heart, but those who venture out to the end of the “trail” are rewarded with a one-of-a-kind view of the canyon from a sandstone pedestal towering over the Virgin River.

The entire hike to the top of Angels Landing is only 2.4 miles one way, but the approach is a relentless climb up a path, gaining 1,500 feet in elevation, almost all of it before the chained section that leads to the viewpoint at the end. If you’re not sure about heights, don’t worry: You’ll have a chance to change your mind before starting the exposed section and a good place to rest and wait if some of your party chooses to continue. It is easy to turn around in the first part of the chains section if you start and decide it’s not for you.

Angels Landing is one of the most popular hikes in Zion National Park, so go early to avoid traffic on the chains. Only one person at a time can cross each chained section safely. The route is open year-round but can be snow and ice covered in winter and very warm in the summer. Spring and fall will provide the best temperatures and less company on the route.

#44 Tandem BASE Jump from the Perrine Bridge, Idaho

DESCRIPTION: If you want to do a tandem skydive, where you jump out of a plane while attached to an experienced, qualified instructor who will pull the rip cord and ensure you have a safe landing thousands of feet below, you probably don’t have to drive too far in the contiguous United States. If you want to do a tandem BASE jump, there’s only one place in the United States to do it: Twin Falls, Idaho.

A tandem BASE jump is different from skydiving in a number of ways: You’re not jumping out of a plane; you’re jumping off a structure or cliff (BASE stands for Building, Antenna, Span, Earth). Span means bridge in many cases, and that’s the only place in America where you can do a tandem BASE jump: the 486-foot-high Perrine Bridge over the Snake River, just north of Twin Falls.

Like skydiving, you’ll be strapped to an experienced, qualified instructor whose primary mission is to keep both of you alive (which is good for business), and you’ll jump into a free fall. Unlike skydiving, you won’t have airplane noise; it’ll be a peaceful if adrenaline-charged moment. The free fall will be a lot shorter because, instead of being thousands of feet in the air in a plane, you’ll be 486 feet above the Snake River, which, when you’re standing looking down at it, seems plenty high. After the chute opens, you’ll float down to river level and either hike out of the canyon or get picked up by a boat.

Great Places Are Crowded But Only in a Few Spots

MAYBE YOU’VE HEARD OF UTAH’S FAMOUS DELICATE ARCH or even shared the view of it with 200 other people at sunset in high season. Maybe you’ve heard of the Grand Canyon or been on the South Rim when another tour bus unloads and you suddenly find yourself looking into the chasm with hundreds of new friends from all over the world. It might be easy to think to yourself, “This place is so crowded,” and then, “Let’s get out of here.”

But here’s a not-very-well-kept secret: Lots of these places are only crowded in certain areas, and most of those areas are the ones that are the easiest to get to. Think about it: If you were planning your dream vacation, wouldn’t you want to have all the best stuff and prefer it to come with minimal to no effort? Well, so would everyone else, so we gravitate to those places that are easy: the roadside viewpoints where we can take photos without having to walk miles upon miles (actually a few hundred feet or less would be great, thanks). If we’re hiking, especially with small children or family members who aren’t in condition to do a 10-mile hike, we’ll flock to waterfalls or rock formations less than a mile from the parking lot or popular short hikes. It’s human nature.

So if you want to escape the crowds, it’s pretty simple: Pick objectives far away from parking lots. If there’s cool stuff close to the parking lot, there’s cool stuff far from the parking lot, too. It just might not be as famous because fewer people have been there. If you’re willing to put on a pair of hiking shoes, pack a lunch, and walk a few miles into the backcountry for the day, you’ll see fewer people the farther you go. Even better, if you’re willing to pack a backpack with a couple days’ worth of food and hike even farther from the road, you might feel as though you have the whole place to yourselves, and you might not see anyone at all.

Like anything else worth having, solitude is something you have to put in a little extra effort to get sometimes—especially in beautiful places. It’s not that those popular—or crowded—places aren’t great. Everyone should take the time to see the Grand Canyon from the South Rim and Delicate Arch, even if you have to share it with a couple hundred other people. But after that, find something far away from those popular places, and go have your own experience, without the crowds.

#45 Hike to Ski Highland Bowl, Aspen Highlands Ski Resort, Colorado

DESCRIPTION: If you want to ski backcountry terrain from the top of a 12,000-foot peak but don’t have the avalanche training and equipment, Aspen Highlands’ Highland Bowl will deliver that experience for a small cardiovascular price: an 800-vertical-foot hike to the top of Highland Peak before you can ski down double-black-diamond terrain.

Highland Bowl’s relatively safe snowpack isn’t some lucky weather or terrain miracle. The snow in Highland Bowl is packed by a force of local volunteers who plod down the bowl in ski boots for 15 eight-hour days each winter in order to earn a ski pass. Their sweat and toil make your magical experience possible.

You’ll take a ski lift to the top of lift-served terrain, put your boots in walk mode, and start hiking the 782 feet to the 12,392-foot summit. Locals and fit skiers can hike it in 30 minutes or less, but most folks take closer to an hour to get to the top. From the summit, you’ll have your choice of steep classic lines to descend. But first, enjoy the view of snowy peaks in every direction.

#46 Raft the Middle Ocoee River, Tennessee

DESCRIPTION: If you’ve never been whitewater rafting, you might be surprised to find out that it’s not one continuous period of bouncing through rapids with your heart in your throat. There are actually flat stretches where you can catch your breath and adjust your helmet. That’s true for most whitewater raft trips, anyway, but quite a bit less so on Tennessee’s Middle Ocoee River, which is advertised as “90 percent whitewater” and “5 miles of almost continuous Class 3 and 4 rapids.”

Factually, yes, there are 20 Class 3 and Class 4 rapids in a 5-mile stretch, so no one’s really exaggerating. Guided trips on the Middle Ocoee are beginner-friendly and family-friendly affairs (for kids over 12 years old): a 1½- to 2-hour trip on the river (3½ hours total including shuttles to and from), with an experienced guide to direct your boat and ensure safety.

The Middle Ocoee is America’s most popular raft trip, with more than 200,000 paddlers experiencing it each year, but it’s not really open for business every day. The river is controlled by dam release, meaning the dam upriver from the whitewater sections releases water on specific days, only on weekends during some of the spring and fall months, and almost every day during the summer. Rafting companies schedule their trips around those big waves of whitewater coming out of the dam.

Commit to Plans Early and Often

EVER WONDER HOW “CERTAIN PEOPLE” MANAGE to do all sorts of cool stuff every year? Do you find yourself commenting, online or just to yourself, “How do they have time for all that?” Here’s a simple math concept: No one has more time than anyone else. We just choose to use it differently.

Obviously, there are some exceptions here; for example, if you’re doing your medical residency, you probably don’t have many hours outside of work to devote to, say, making pottery or learning to play the didgeridoo. But for the most part, we’re all working 40–50 hours a week, have 2 days off every week, and have a couple weeks of vacation time every year. Some people use all that time to climb mountains and travel, some people use it to spend time with their kids, and some people use it to watch television. How you spend your leisure time is up to you, and if you need to use all of it to “relax,” this probably isn’t the book for you.

The reason those “certain people” do all that cool stuff is they commit. They make plans, stick with them, and see them through. They don’t sit around in a bar talking about “someday I’d really like to see the Matterhorn” and then procrastinate it. They’re at home, searching for plane tickets to Zurich, trains to Zermatt, hotels, and then checking their bank account balance and work schedule to see when they can make it happen. If they want to go mountain biking with a friend on Saturday, they nail down a time to meet on Saturday morning: 8 a.m. at the trailhead. They don’t half-ass a plan with their friend and say, “Give me a call when you wake up on Saturday, and we’ll play it by ear.” Those half-ass plans are usually better at accomplishing hangover brunch than they are at setting up a mountain bike ride with a friend.

Here’s one thing that’s always worked for me: Take care of the most expensive part of the trip first. This is usually the plane tickets. Do your research of where you’re going, buy the tickets a few months in advance, and then sort out the rest of the plan later. You’ve bought your $600–800 plane ticket, which also happens to be a pain to reschedule—most airline change fees are more than $200, which is one-fourth to one-third the price of your ticket. See, it’s pretty hard to change it now, isn’t it? This is commitment.

Don’t make plans with people who flake on plans. Find someone who’s just as excited as you are to go backpacking in the Grand Canyon, and pick a date that works for both of you. Four months in advance, get the permit, buy the flights to Las Vegas, and reserve the rental car to drive to the South Rim. Boom. Now you have 4 months of paychecks with which to pay for those costs, and 4 months to sit around and look at maps and photos of the Grand Canyon in anticipation of your trip. And let me tell you, anticipation is way more gratifying than sitting around waffling about whether or not you should go, or have time for the trip, or have enough money, or whatever. You have to go now. That question is answered. You’ve committed, and now nobody’s barbecue, golf outing, or home improvement project can get in the way of that weekend because you’ve marked it off on your calendar as “Grand Canyon Trip,” and you won’t even be in town to do anything else. You’ll be too busy enjoying the views—because you made a plan and stuck with it.

#47 Climb the Third Flatiron, Colorado

DESCRIPTION: Climber and Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard legendarily called the Third Flatiron “the best beginner rock climb in the universe,” and if you do it once, it’s easy to see why. It’s easily accessible—only a half-hour hike from the parking lot at Chautauqua Park in Boulder, Colorado. It doesn’t require a high level of climbing experience. As you climb, you’ll almost always have your hands wrapping around two good handholds, and the angle isn’t steep. The climb is 800 feet long, leading to a summit about the size of a van, which feels like an eagle’s nest.

Climbing guides will require some multipitch rock climbing experience before taking you up the Third Flatiron (to make sure you know to belay and are comfortable on the three rappels off the back of the formation). If you don’t have multipitch experience, they’ll lead you through a 2-hour intro course the evening before your climb.

The next day, it’s on to the grippy sandstone for the time of your life. You’ll spend hours climbing 8 to 10 pitches to the summit and only have birds and other climbers for company as you enjoy the views of Boulder far below.

#48 Hike the Tall Trees Trail, Redwood National Park, California

DESCRIPTION: Somewhere in the Tall Trees Grove in Redwood National Park is a tree that is 379 feet tall, but you won’t know which one when you’re there. You probably won’t much care because you’ll be craning your neck and oohing and ahhing at several enormous trees when you’re standing at the base of them. The identities of tall trees are kept secret to safeguard them, and in the Tall Trees Grove, you will realize the futility of trying to compare the height of 35-story-tall trees while standing at the bottom.

Unlike a lot of adventures, this hike doesn’t have lots of expansive views. The appeal is experiencing the awe of standing next to Very Big Nature and enjoying the quiet of the grove of trees. The park limits access to the Tall Trees Grove to 50 visitors per day, and you’ll pick up a first-come, first-served code to a locked gate at the park visitor center, 45 minutes away, before starting your hike. It’s a 1.3-mile walk down to the grove and 3.7 miles total.

Rain or shine (and of course 35-story trees require lots of rain to grow that tall), the Tall Trees Trail is a one-of-a-kind day hike for all ability levels.

The Dawn Patrol

WHILE WORKING AT THE GEAR COMPANY Black Diamond in the 1980s and 1990s, a climber and mountaineer named Alex Lowe popularized an idea called “the Dawn Patrol,” which is still practiced by hundreds of people in the Salt Lake City climbing and skiing communities.

The Dawn Patrol idea was this: You work from 9 to 5. But from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m., you have 16 hours to do anything you want. So Lowe and other Black Diamond employees would get out of bed at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. during the winter months and ski tour in the Wasatch Mountains just a few miles from the company headquarters. They’d ski as much as they could for 5 or 6 hours and then head into work just in time. By going to bed early the night before and being willing to wake up at an hour that seems ridiculous to most people, they were able to create almost a half day of skiing right in the middle of the week.

Nowadays, plenty of people in the Salt Lake Valley do Dawn Patrols, skiing, rock climbing, and even ice climbing. And it’s not just Black Diamond employees. If you have some ambition, you can do your own Dawn Patrols. You don’t have to ski or climb—it’s just as fun to do an early morning mission mountain biking, trail running, or hiking, and if you do the math, you’ll find plenty of things you can get done before work.

Do you have time? Everyone’s schedule is different, but I’ve seen plenty of people who have time for weekday trail runs or bike rides after work. All you’re doing with the Dawn Patrol idea is shifting that same activity to before work and maybe missing a few hours of sleep. If you can swing it, you won’t regret it. Early morning, no crowds, home for dinner after work, and you might find you have the feeling that you snuck one in on the universe when you’re sitting in your office smugly (or not so smugly, whatever your style) at 9 a.m. with the knowledge that you spent an hour or two on your favorite trail before coming in.

You’re not “making time” where there once wasn’t any—you’re just shifting priorities. You’re trading a good night’s sleep for a good morning’s run, ride, or hike and seeing what it feels like. My guess is you won’t regret it. Give it a shot some morning in the late spring, summer, or early fall, and see what you think. You don’t have to call it a “Dawn Patrol” if you don’t want to—you just have to be up early.

#49 Ride the Jungfraubahn, Switzerland

DESCRIPTION: Sitting at an outdoor café table in the Swiss mountain town of Grindelwald and staring at the intimidating 6,000-foot north face of the Eiger is enough to scare anyone away from the daunting idea of ever climbing it. But from Grindelwald it is possible to climb almost 8,000 feet into a world of snowy peaks and massive glaciers without so much as breaking a sweat and to look out from inside the north face of the Eiger while you do it.

From the train station in Grindelwald, it’s an 80-minute train ride on the Jungfraubahn, stopping three times at scenic overlooks (including the windows looking out the Eiger north face) to the “Top of Europe,” the 11,332-foot Jungfraujoch, where you’ll look down on the 14-mile-long Aletsch Glacier, the largest glacier in the Alps.

And you won’t even have to carry a mountaineering axe, crampons, or a helmet: There are three restaurants, a hall of ice sculptures, shops, and an observation deck. It’s not wilderness, but it’s one of the most rewarding train rides you can take—anywhere.

SEASON: Year-round (but keep in mind how cold it gets at 11,000 feet in the winter)

#50 Climb the Krogerata, Telluride, Colorado

DESCRIPTION: Via ferratas are popular in European mountain ranges, but routes built on ladder rungs and steel cables attached to rock faces for the most part have not caught on in the United States, save in a handful of places. One of the most famous is Telluride’s Krogerata, the via ferrata built by and named for the late Chuck Kroger, a local mountaineer.

Kroger started building the via ferrata that traverses a cliff band above town in the years before his death in 2007, and since then, it’s been a bit of a local secret, mostly because of its questionable legality. But now, thanks to access easements obtained by the local Telluride Mountain Club, the 2-mile route with sheer drops beneath it is totally legal and open to everyone. It’s perfect for those who want the experience of rock climbing without the gear and experience necessary and great for anyone who doesn’t have a debilitating fear of heights and exposure.

The round-trip via ferrata traverse takes 4 hours from the parking lot, including the hike up to the traverse, the traverse itself, and the hike down the descent trail. Climbers will need harnesses, via ferrata leashes, and helmets, which are included with a guided trip on the Krogerata.

This Book Is Just a Start

THIS BOOK CONTAINS ALL SORTS OF ADVENTURES of varying lengths and has enough ideas to keep you busy adventuring around the world for more than a year if you do every single one of the trips here.

You probably won’t do all the trips in this book, and believe it or not, that’s a good thing. Even if you do just a few of them, my hope is that you’ll gain some experience and skills and use these trips to start planning your own unique adventures. As we’ve covered, the popular places are popular for a reason, but there are thousands of more exciting places outside of the popular ones. See some of the best stuff, get your feet under you, and start researching your own plans.

I wrote about climbing a Colorado 14er in Full-Day Adventures chapter. That’s one hike. There are 58 14,000-foot mountains in Colorado, and there are 636 13,000-foot mountains. And that’s just in Colorado. We included adventures all across the United States and some in other parts of the world, but this book merely scratches the surface of what’s out there. You can take a train across America (page 49), but you can also take trains across Russia, Vietnam, India, and plenty of other countries.

Don’t get hung up on what you see other people doing on Instagram or what you read in magazines. Get your feet underneath you with a few of the ideas in this book, and then start to figure out your own adventures. Get some maps, read some old travel books, and start dreaming. Or just spin a globe, point your finger somewhere, and figure out something to do wherever your finger lands. Then convince a friend to join you, put down some dates, and buy some plane tickets.

No matter what you’re doing, whether it’s rock climbing, mountain biking, skiing, mountaineering, kayaking, hiking, backpacking, or riding trains, it’s all just travel. You might be traveling halfway around the world or traveling 500 feet up a rock face somewhere (or traveling halfway around the world to travel 500 feet up a rock face). It’s all folly, it’s all adventure, and it can all be the time of your life. Have a great time out there.