Visiting a national park in winter��is like going to Disneyland in the middle of the night. All of the fantastic��features and sights are still there but without any of the crowds. Some��national parks��even look more spectacular come winter, thanks to a fresh coating of snow and free-roaming wildlife. But staying inside the park boundary during this season can be tricky—most park-operated hotels are limiting capacity, and many campgrounds are closed. So we rounded up some of our favorite Airbnbs located close to the gates of these popular NPS sites.

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Yosemite National Park, California

Called the�� (from $480 per night), this three-bedroom house in the coveted neighborhood of Yosemite West, near the El Portal entrance of Yosemite and only a 30-minute drive from the main sights of Yosemite Valley. Features include an open floor plan, a kitchen stocked with high-end appliances, a Ping-Pong table, a record player, and an electric-vehicle charging station. Many of the park trails are covered in snow this time of year, but those in the Valley��are usually walkable. Try the five-mile loop around�� or the flat 11-mile��, which passes by landmarks like El Capitan and Bridalveil Fall.

Acadia National Park, Maine

If quiet and solitude are what you’re after, you’ll find that aplenty in this one-bedroom, lofted�� (from $181 per night) in the Northeast Harbor neighborhood of Maine’s Mount Desert Island. From here you’re just a ten-minute drive from Acadia and well enough removed from the more touristy vibe of Bar Harbor, 20 minutes away. The best thing to do in this national park in the winter? Cross-country ski the many miles of groomed carriage roads throughout the grounds. Cadillac Mountain Sports rents cross-country gear.

Zion National Park, Utah

This�� (from $213) is rustic, remote, and convertible—one wall lifts open to give you the feeling of sleeping under the stars. The best part? The location, right on the edge of Zion��and within walking��distance to the East Rim Trailhead. To get here, you’ll have to ditch your car and hike 150 feet along a ravine and over a bridge. The kitchen is simple and all outdoors, with a cooler, propane grill, battery-operated margarita maker, and s’mores fixings. This pad also��has��a telescope for viewing constellations and a guidebook to the most popular��hikes in the area.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee

You’re not traveling in big groups these days, so who needs a ton of square footage? The�� (from $233 per night)—located about 30 minutes from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, outside the town of Maryville, Tennessee—is a perfect getaway spot for a couple or a small family. It sleeps up to four between a lofted bed and a pull-out couch. You may never want to leave the rooftop deck overlooking the Smokies or the riverside fire pit in the backyard, but if you do, the view from the top of��Andrews Bald, reached via a 1.8-mile hike on the 5.6-mile Forney Ridge Trail, within the national park, is well worth it.

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado

If you’re venturing into��Rocky Mountain, you cannot beat the convenience��of the two-bedroom�� (from $163 per night) outside Estes Park, Colorado.��Hike into the park from the recently remodeled cabin or drive five minutes to the Beaver Meadows entrance. Experienced backcountry skiers will find plenty of good��ski terrain within the park’s Hidden Valley, and Colorado Mountain School leads guided outings (from $269 for a day trip). Hardy winter trail runners or trekkers can tackle a snowy��five-mile out-and-back run on the Gem Lake Trail from the Lumpy Ridge Trailhead. Estes Park has loads of��take-out options, like��,��, and.

Olympic National Park, Washington

Built by an award-winning tiny-house designer, this�� (from $131 per night) has two lofted bedrooms and is located outside the town of Sequim, Washington, a good launching-off point for exploring the beaches and snowcapped mountains of Olympic National Park. The cedar-sided cabin is just 269 square feet, but you won’t sacrifice much: you still get a queen bed, a full-size fridge, and a not too cramped bathroom. There’s cell service but no Wi-Fi, so enjoy unplugging. You’ll need four-wheel drive to get here in the winter. Hurricane Ridge, the low-key ski area located within the park, will be open and operating in December (day tickets from $45).

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As of press time, some trails, campsites, and businesses are closed due to Covid-19 precautions. To check for safety protocols and potential closures, check individual websites before you go.

I wasn’t expecting to see the moose, which is a ridiculous thing to say considering I was running through an area known for attracting them: Kawuneeche Valley, on the western side of Rocky Mountain National Park. I had just started my run and was only about��200 yards from the car, so I wasn’t in a wildlife-encounter headspace. But there it was, standing on the opposite��side of the Colorado River, as tall as me��and��a thousand��pounds heavier, with a massive rack.

That’s the thing about the park:��awe-inspiring sights��come easy here. Elk gather in herds on the east side, while��moose patrol the other. In between are bighorn sheep, mountain lions, and black bears. And that’s just the wildlife. The 265,807-acre park, located in northern Colorado, offers some of the best��access to high-alpine terrain in the country, thanks to —the highest paved highway in America—which tops out at a 12,183-foot peak, one of more than a��hundred��in the park��taller��than 11,000 feet.

The lower elevations,��below 9,000 feet and referred to as��the montane,��are dominated by broad, grassy meadows filled with more than 350��miles of trails. The subalpine environment, from 9,000 and��11,000 feet, is comprised of natural lakes, boulders, and evergreen forests, and��the majority of trails meander through these breathtaking��landscapes. And at 11,000 feet, the alpine ecosystem��begins:��trees give way to windswept tundra, craggy peaks, and cirque glaciers,��and the crowds dissipate, leaving you with the “roof” of the park mostly to yourself.

I spent three years living in Denver, exploring the park as often as possible, sliding down its glaciers��and wooing my soon-to-be wife in primitive campsites deep in the backcountry. Later, after moving away from Colorado, my wife and I would geek out on showing the park to our kids during��long family road trips. They would earn their first Junior Ranger badges��here. Eventually, we’d hold a memorial service for my wife’s grandfather on the edge of his favorite backcountry lake. There’s something personal to be found by anyone��in this landscape, a standout even in a park system that only protects the most awesome swaths of land in the country.

What You Need to Know Before Visiting��

Altitude sickness is real. It can be as mild as a light headache or as severe as vomiting and disorientation. If you’re coming from sea level, try to take it easy when you first arrive, and��schedule��tougher hikes later in your visit. Drink lots of water throughout the day, and eat regularly.

Pay attention to road closures. The park can get snowstorms into June, and some years snow will linger into July, affecting which roads are open. The park offers real-time road updates on its��, so check the information regularly.

Expect unpredictable weather.��The temperature can vary by 20��to��30 degrees between high elevations and the lower valleys, and summer thunderstorms come on fast. If you’re hiking above the tree line, keep your eye on the horizon for sketchy clouds forming,��and always have an escape route in mind. Midsummer snowstorms aren’t unheard of either. All of this to say: be prepared for any sort of weather in this��park, regardless of how warm it is when the day begins. Bring extra layers, and always carry��a rain shell in your pack.

Plan for crowds. Rocky Mountain National Park is the third most visited park in the country, and it’s only getting more popular—visitation��hit record numbers in 2019, pulling in nearly 4.7��million��people. Parking lots in scenic��areas like Bear Lake fill up before breakfast, and Trail Ridge Road��is packed with minivans and RVs by 10 A.M. If you have your heart set on seeing some of the park’s signature features, accept that crowds are part of the experience.��If you want to minimize interaction with those crowds, get started as early as you can—essentially before dawn—and head to Grand Lake, on the western side; roughly 80 percent��of all visitors enter through Estes Park, on the eastern side. If parking lots are full, don’t fret; the park has a good shuttle system that will take you to popular trailheads. Use it.

How to Get There��

Rocky Mountain National Park acts��as a sort of gateway to the mountains beyond Denver��and Boulder. Most folks fly into Denver, 80 miles southeast, and either rent a car or hop��the ��that brings visitors from the airport to the town of Estes Park and the main entrance, Beaver Meadows.��The other three entrances, Fall River and Wild Basic on the eastern side��and Grand Lake on the western side,��receive��far fewer visitors. The park runs a from the to popular trailheads like Glacier Basin and Bear Lake, but there’s no public transportation into the western side of the park.

The Best Time of Year to Visit

Most people frequent��the park in the summer, which has as much to do with the weather as the public-school schedule. Given its location and high elevation, the park has a limited summer season, and most roads are snow-packed during the winter months.

Winter

If you really want to escape the crowds��and don’t mind temperatures in the teens, is your jam. Trail Ridge Road, the only road that crosses the park, is typically closed from the end of October to May due to snow, while avalanches are a concern and snow depth affects trail access. But many of the park’s byways, like ��and even portions of Trail Ridge Road, become cross-country��skiing and snowshoeing playgrounds during the winter. There’s even an abandoned ski resort, Hidden Valley, located on the east side of the park, that attracts sledders and��backcountry skiers. Grand Lake, the��town on the western side of the park, has a bona fide ��with 22 miles��of groomed trails.

Spring��

Snow lingers well into May in these alpine environs, so spring tends to be a��warmer continuation of winter, with temperatures hovering between 30 and 50 degrees. But wildlife starts to get more active in this period, particularly the bighorn sheep, which are lambing in the spring. If you want to avoid the snow, stick to the Estes Park side, which gets significantly less in April and May than the Grand Lake side. Some years, lower elevations see temperatures hitting the sixties��in late April.

Summer��

Trail Ridge Road is typically open by Memorial Day, and things really get hopping in June. You’ll still find drifts of snow at higher elevations (we drove through in July one year, and the snowbanks on the sides of Trail Ridge Road were higher than my van), but you’ll also find wildflowers popping up throughout the high-elevation tundra and lower-elevation��meadows from June to August (head to the East Inlet Trail or Cub Lake for guaranteed sightings). Temperatures can reach the mid-eighties, but you could also encounter��a freak snowstorm at the highest elevations. Afternoon thunderstorms are common.

Fall��

You could argue that the months of September and October are the best time to visit the park, especially if you can swing a midweek trip when the majority of potential visitors��are working or in school. While fall might bring the occasional snowstorm, the roads and trails remain open into October most years. Temperatures are mild during the day, reaching the high fifties, and the aspens��begin changing in the middle of September. That magical show is only matched by the elk rut—when��large males start fighting and bugling for the affection of females—which commences in September and carries on into October��and can be witnessed at the Horseshoe Park area at dawn and dusk.

Where to Stay in and Around Rocky Mountain National Park��

This is one of the few national parks without an overnight lodge, but there are five front-country campgrounds (from $30). , , and����fill up well in advance (make reservations up to six months prior to your date), while the����and Campgrounds are first-come, first-served. Moraine Park, near the eastern edge of park, is the only campground open during the winter, and it’s available on a first-come,��first-served basis��during that season.

The best front-country camping is at Aspenglen, located��near the eastern Fall River entrance, a short jaunt off Trail Ridge Road. The 52 sites are surrounded by Douglas firs and��lodgepole��and ponderosa pines. Snag one of the five secluded walk-in tent sites on the loop. For a more primitive experience, show up early for one of the 26 tent-only sites at Longs Peak, which sits on the��southeastern border of park at an elevation of 9,500 feet and puts you within day-hike distance of Chasm Lake and the park’s signature Longs��Peak, reached by a 15-mile round-trip trek via the Keyhole Route (discussed��below). Plan on bringing all your food with you as��the Trail Ridge Store, next to the , is the only restaurant inside the park.

The park has 120 designated backpacking sites scattered from the relatively low elevations of Big Meadows, near Grand Lake,��to the Boulder Field campsites that sit above 12,000 feet en route to the Longs Peak summit. Get a wilderness permit ($30) at the ��next to the����(near the Estes Park entry point) or at the����(near the Grand Lake entrance).

Beyond the Park��

If you need a bed and electricity (no shame in that), you’ll need to look outside the park. You can find any level of accommodations in both Grand Lake and Estes Park. On the Grand Lake side of the park, has a handful of log lodgings��on the North Fork of the Colorado River (from $160). In Estes Park, there are of standalone cabins and cottages for rent, including Solitude Cabins, a collection of 30 properties scattered��across nine acres that are abiding by ��(from $275).

What to Do While You’re There��

Hiking��

Yes, is going to be crowded, but you can’t beat the bang for your buck on this 3.5-mile round-trip, which��skirts the edge of some of the park’s prettiest alpine lakes and has views of dramatic peaks, including Longs and Hallett. The prize is��reaching Emerald Lake, which is framed by the 12,000-foot mountains of the Continental Divide. Keep an eye out for elk at the edges��of the lakes and pikas and marmots in the rock outcroppings along the trail.

Colorado has 14 named glaciers, six of which lie within the park’s borders. might be the most spectacular and most fun to explore. It’s a popular practice ground for beginner mountaineers looking to test their ice-ax��and crampon skills, and the mellow slope (less than��30 degrees) means you don’t have to worry about avalanche danger. Reaching the glacier requires a tough��ten-mile round-trip hike that begins at the Glacier Gorge Trailhead on east side of park, then passes�� and����on its way to Andrews Tarn, a small lake that gathers glacier water at the bottom of Andrews Glacier.��Most days��all you need are a good pair of winter hiking boots and some trekking poles to get to the bottom of the glacier.��If you decide to explore the glacier properly and climb to the top with technical equipment, keep an eye out for crevasses, which have been known to form here.

Sample the park’s high-elevation��tundra along the 4.8-mile point-to-point Ute Trail, which begins just west of the Alpine Visitor Center at the high point along Trail Ridge Road. The entire route��is above tree line and tops out��at 11,660 feet along Tombstone Ridge, affording��views of Forest Canyon, the Continental Divide, and Longs Peak. In the summer, this trail��a perfect place to admire wildflowers, with species like the snowlover, alpine sunflower, and white alpine phlox popping up after the snow has melted.

Peak Bagging��

At 14,259 feet, Longs Peak is Rocky Mountain National Park’s highest mountain and its��only fourteener. Depending on your experience level, it’s possible to��knock this summit out in a long day, or camp at the base of Longs and turn it into a two-day adventure. While this is often the first fourteener for more advanced climbers, the route is a series of sheer vertical cliffs, narrow ledges, and year-round winter conditions,��and the��amount of exposure on the final mile of the ascent is severe enough to turn many would-be summiters away. The 15-mile round-trip , which starts at the Longs Peak Trailhead in the east side of the park, is the most common approach. Follow the East Longs Peak Trail for six miles to the aforementioned Boulder Field campsite ($30 a night; make a reservation six months in advance), where dry-stack rock walls help protect the nine established tent sites from the wicked winds at 12,740 feet. The sites sit just before the home stretch of the summit,��giving��you the chance to turn this expedition into an overnight adventure.��From this point on, things get real as you ditch the established trail and follow a series of cairns and painted bull’s-eyes through the Keyhole itself, a rocky notch between Longs and Storm Peaks, and onto the steep��southern slope of Longs. The crux is crossing the Narrows, an exposed ledge with fatal consequences if things go awry. Be sure to attempt this when there’s no ice on the route and at less crowded times.

Rock Climbing

Hiking might be the number-one pastime in Rocky Mountain National Park, but you could argue that this is really a climber’s park, thanks to massive cliffs that dominate its��high-altitude peaks. There are nearly 500 established climbs, most of which are alpine affairs that require big days with long approaches. The bulk��of the climbing is traditional, and much of it requires several pitches and descents that are way sketchier than the ascents. There are plenty of routes in the 5.9 to 5.10 range, though there are big lines for beginners, too, including , an alpine route that combines Class 4��scrambling with 5.4-rated traditional climbing on 13,514-foot Ypsilon Mountain in the northern section of the park. Longs Peak has the most established routes, ranging from 5.4 to 5.12. You can even find destination-worthy bouldering in the park’s central , which sits��near Emerald Lake at 10,000 feet and has at least 100 problems, with something for everyone. But for a solid intro to what rock climbing is like in the park, head to the Glacier Gorge area, seven miles south of the Beaver Meadows entrance on Bear Lake Road, and climb the north ridge of the Spearhead, a seven-pitch adventure with a six-mile approach that requires some route finding. Once you’re roped up, expect a 5.6 climb with a little of everything—jugs, cracks, corners, and a short scramble to the peak, where a grand view of the gorge lies below.

Wildlife Viewing��

While many of the large animals, like grizzly bears and gray wolves, were extirpated from the park in the early 20th century, there are plenty of charismatic megafauna living within its borders. The park estimates its elk population to be between 600 and 800, while the bighorn sheep have reached a population of 350. Moose were reintroduced to the park in the 1970s and are thriving, especially in the meadows on the west side of the��Continental Divide. If you’re lucky, you’ll see plenty of wildlife from your car, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun to spy animals (from a safe distance) while on foot. The 10.6-mile out-and-back East Inlet Trail to Lone Pine Lake, on the west side of the park, offers a good opportunity to see moose, and the hike passes Adams Falls and ends at Spirit Lake, so it’s a win even if there are no moose in sight. Bighorn sheep are active throughout the day and can often be seen posing on cliffs at higher elevations. They also like the salt deposits in the meadow around . You’ll see so many elk that you’ll stop counting, especially on the east side, which is home to massive herds—you’ll even see them in the town of Estes Park. If you’re hiking in the subalpine areas of the park’s central Bear Lake, keep an eye out for pikas and marmots, which scuttle around outcroppings throughout the forest. Black bears make a point of avoiding humans, so they’re not often seen.

Road Cycling��

Trail Ridge Road cuts through the heart of the park,��connecting Estes Park with Grand Lake via 48 miles of pavement. Yes, it’s the main thoroughfare into the park for vehicles, but it’s also a road cyclist’s dream, climbing 4,000 feet from Estes Park to the summit, with a solid 11 miles��cutting above the tree line. An out-and-back on Trail Ridge might be one of the most spectacular centuries you can do in the U.S. If you’re not interested in climbing, there are shuttle companies that will drive you to the top of Trail Ridge Road so you can cruise down. If you’re looking for gravel, check out , near Estes Park, which was the original road up and over the Continental Divide. It’s a little over nine miles from point to point, climbing 3,180 feet, with an average 7 percent grade and stretches of hill that max out at 20 percent. You can do a killer sub-50-mile loop that has you climbing Old Fall River Road and bombing the pavement of Trail Ridge��back into Estes Park. Bonus: both of these roads are typically open to pedestrians and cyclists a month before rangers permit access to cars. If it was a mild winter, you can enjoy��the entire month of April on Trail Ridge��without any traffic.

The Best Places to Eat and Drink Around the Park��

Estes Park is definitely the unofficial gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park, so it can feel a little bit touristy, but you can’t argue with the location: surrounded on three sides by the park��and a little more hipster sophisticated than Grand Lake, which leans more toward��old-school rustic. Order online a��wild-game meatloaf and a smoked old-fashioned to-go from��. , in the heart of downtown, has organic fair-trade drip coffee for about $2��as well as a mean vegetarian burrito. Drive 45 minutes from the eastern edge of the park and you can make a pilgrimage to in the town of Lyons to pick up a six-pack.��If you’re coming through Grand Lake, is currently doing takeout orders.��Down the street, ��offers��a good selection of Colorado beer.

If You Have Time for a Detour��

Bring your mountain bike and head west from the park into Grand County, where ��operates Trestle, one of the best lift-served��mountain-bike parks in the country, now featuring��a new gondola to whisk you to the top of the mountain. Twenty miles north, ��has a lift that serves gnarly downhill and flowy cross-country trails alike. Spend an afternoon recovering in the pools at the , or search for the primitive Radium Hot Springs, which are carved out of the Colorado River south of the town of Kremmling.

North of the park, raft the Class III–IV , the only designated��National Wild and Scenic River in the state, which passes through . It’s an ideal way to spot��bighorn sheep on the Poudre Canyon cliffs. On the east side of the park, drive through��the 25-mile-long Big Thompson Canyon from Estes Park to Loveland. The granite walls host rock climbers while sporadic roadside pullouts offer premier fly-fishing.

How to Be a Conscious Visitor

The park’s original conservation group, the Estes Park Protective and Improvement Association, made this declaration back in the day: “Those who pull flowers up by their roots will be condemned by all worthy people.” We couldn’t agree more, but being a good steward goes beyond not picking the flowers. Whenever hiking above the tree line, stay on the trail. Exploring��the park’s high-alpine tundra is a treat, but keep in mind that plants and ground cover growing at such��elevations are especially sensitive. Use the bear boxes at the campsites to store your food, and don’t bring firewood into the park (mountain beetles have devastated the pine forest surrounding Grand Lake).��If you’re visiting the park in the winter and exploring the backcountry, follow avalanche-safety protocols and wear an avy��beacon at all times. Better yet, go with a guide if you’re unsure of how to handle that sort of terrain; ��has full-day tours starting at $210.

The post The Ultimate Rocky Mountain National Park Travel Guide appeared first on �����ԹϺ��� Online.

Here’s one thing we always say about weddings: “It’s the biggest day of your life.”��

Here’s one thing we almost never say about weddings: “You can do whatever the hell you want.”��

Hilary and I have been together six and a half years, and when we started talking about getting married, we talked about all the things people usually do: this tradition, that tradition. Listing off things, one of us would eventually say, “I don’t know if I want to do that.” Then the other person would say, “We don’t have to do that.” Eventually: “There are no rules.” We’d ask each other what the point of the whole thing was, and although we never wrote down a theme, or thesis, or mission statement, I would say that we wanted to make something that was half-party, half-creative expression, that communicated how much we loved our lives, each other, and our friends and family. Something that came from us, not from the past or from tradition.

My friend Justin Roth, shortly after his own wedding in 2012, wrote something on his now-gone blog that’s always stuck with me. I’d long paraphrased what he wrote as, “A��wedding should, above all else, be true”—but it turns out his actual words were, “If I were to pick a word to describe my ideal wedding, it would be ‘honest.’”

I think we just wanted to create a wedding that was true, or honest, like Justin wrote. Not an extravagant ceremony and reception that pretended we both come from crazy wealthy families, or a ceremony where someone else told us what to say or do, but something that was true to us. We didn’t want to have a wedding simply happen to us; we wanted to make a wedding.��

We managed to pick the last fall weekend of good weather in Estes Park, Colorado, sunny but a little chilly in the afternoon. We wrote our own vows but called them The Declarations of Interdependence in the program, had one of our best friends officiate, had readings from Mary Oliver and Kurt Vonnegut, and ended the ceremony with The Lifting of the Bride, because every time I have lifted Hilary off the ground in the past six and a half years, she has burst into laughter.

Hilary started her Declarations of Interdependence with a story from a Grand Canyon raft trip, and I started mine with a story from our first time rock climbing together. We mentioned heavy backpacks, numb toes, windburn, cold hands, and alpine starts, in front of a group of friends and family, a majority of whom we had shared some of those things with in the mountains.

Weddings have meant a lot of things in the few thousand years that we’ve been doing them, and like everything else, I think that meaning is evolving. You don’t have to be married to live together or to have a family at this point, and you don’t have to have a ceremony to be lawfully married. I think a wedding is a party celebrating a relationship, and that’s a wonderful thing. You get all your friends and family together, say deeply heartfelt things about why your favorite person in the world is your favorite person in the world, make promises to that person to be the best version of yourself possible and to do everything you can to help them be happy for a very long time, and then everyone eats cake. If the marriage itself lives up to the joy and aspirations of the wedding, you’re in pretty good shape, I think.

Everyone has different reasons for getting married or not getting married. In the past few years, we’ve seen a few friends and acquaintances die too soon, often in the mountains. While we were standing at a young friend’s memorial a year ago, Hilary felt the urgency to have a wedding, to get everyone together and celebrate a good thing while we all could. Which is as good a reason as any, I think. I struggle with telling people what I feel when I’m with them, and stepping back and acknowledging when things make me happy. Getting married to my favorite person with a few dozen of my favorite people was a macro effort to do just that, for me: to say how I feel and tell someone why they make me happy.��

The very brief selection I asked my brother to read during the ceremony was a paragraph from Kurt Vonnegut’s , and it went:��

I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”��

So, I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”��

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Vacationing with children can be the best and the hardest thing in the world. The upside? Experiencing new wonders through their eyes. But then there are the meltdowns, the exhaustion, the endless stream of “Are we there yet?” With little ones in tow, a delayed flight, a lost bag, or a too-small hotel room can feel disastrous. Which is why you need destinations that are convenient, offer heaps of activities for kids, and, most of all, won’t break the bank.

White Mountains, New Hampshire

The Appalachian Mountain Club operates more than a dozen huts and lodges throughout the Northeast. At the (from $105 per adult per night), accessed by a mellow 1.6-mile hike into New Hampshire’s White Mountains, you’ll get views of Franconia Ridge and a hot breakfast and dinner included each day. Go during spring or fall and you can save money by packing in your own food. You can take guided hikes with an AMC naturalist or play board games in the hut. Not sure if your kids can handle the approach yet? Check out New Hampshire’s (from $91), reachable by car and just two hours from Boston, which has a swimming pond, nature trail, nearby beaches, private family bunk rooms. Breakfast, bag lunch, and dinner come included with your stay. Get this: At both Lonesome and Cardigan, kids stay and eat free from June 15 to August 23.

North Cascades, Washington

The North Cascades Institute’s , located on the shores of Diablo Lake in the center of North Cascades National Park, is not only a place to learn about conservation and stewardship but also a great getaway to relax and have fun. There are several multiday family weekends each summer (from $280 for adults; $180 for children older than two) that feature guided hikes, arts and crafts, campfire storytelling, and orienteering in the old-growth forest. You’ll stay in one of three bunkhouses, eat organic communal meals in the lakeside dining hall, and spend your days exploring the park or paddling out to islands in a Salish-style 18-person canoe.

Estes Park, Colorado

rents out private cabins (from $109 a night) on a sprawling 860-acre property in Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. The cabins range from two to four bedrooms, with optional fireplaces and loaner travel cribs. While you don’t have to be a YMCA member to rent, book early because these spots fill up quickly for summer. Kid-friendly activities include a swimming pool, game and craft rooms, horseback riding, outdoor climbing, mini golf, and more. Parents can indulge with a post-hike massage or yoga session.

Blue Ridge Mountains, South Carolina

At 3,000-acre , you’ll find two lakes, bluegrass jam sessions, and an extensive trail network that connects to the Foothills Trail, a 77-mile jaunt through the neighboring Blue Ridge Mountains. Pitch a tent or book one of 14 recently renovated cabins (from $95 a night), which feature fire pits, stocked kitchens, and enough beds for the whole family. There’s on-site dining in the park’s historic lodge, bass fishing, kayak rentals, and a playground to keep the kids busy. Thirty minutes away, in Greenville, you can visit the local children’s museum and grab a bite at Seedlings, the museum’s kid-focused farm-to-table restaurant.

Lava Hot Springs, Idaho

Thanks to the , the floatable Portneuf River, and an outdoor water park, a visit to the town of Lava Hot Springs can be done entirely in your swimsuit. But there are plenty of other attractions worth putting on a shirt. In summer, mountain bike or hike miles of local trails or fish for rainbow trout in the Blackfoot River and nearby reservoirs. Come in the winter and you can ski Pebble Creek Ski Area—which has only three lifts but boasts 2,200 vertical feet of terrain—for just $47 a day for adults and $5 for kids five and under. Book a hut (from $85 a night) at and breakfast and a communal kitchen come included, or sleep in a vintage camper at (from $15).

Mendocino, California

Most visit this sleepy coastal town for a quick escape—it’s just three hours north of San Francisco but feels light-years away. At , a 37-acre property that opened in 2016, you’ll sleep in deluxe canvas tents (from $120 a night) on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. Each shelter comes with a redwood deck, picnic table, and fire pit; family tents have queen beds for you and bunks for the grommets. You’re just a short drive to downtown’s charming shops and restaurants, hiking trails through the redwoods, and the Big River Estuary, where you can paddle or bike along its banks before it flows into Mendocino Bay. Rentals and guided tours can be booked at , located in the Stanford Inn by the Sea eco-resort.

Kennebunkport, Maine

Maine is nicknamed Vacationland for a reason: The state just makes you want to throw on flip-flops and crack open a book. , which opened in Kennebunkport in 2017, is just a short walk from the three-mile-long Goose Rocks Beach. It has a pool, kid’s craft tent, bicycle and paddleboard rentals, general store stacked with s’mores fixings, and steamed lobster dinners. This summer, Sandy Pines is debuting tiny A-frame cabins and old-fashioned wagons turned into overnight campers in addition to its glamping tents and standard camping sites. Better yet, the family tents come with a smaller children’s tent equipped with two twin beds so you can get a little peace and privacy.

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You’ve just scaled Half Dome, hiked deep into Grand Canyon, or climbed Grand Teton. You deserve a beer. Here’s where to get a pint of local brew after visiting some of America’s finest national parks.

South Gate Brewing Company

Oakhurst, California

, which opened in the Sierra foothills town of Oakhurst in 2013, is less than two hours on scenic roads from Yosemite Valley. If you leave Yosemite National Park via the south entrance on Highway 41, you’ll pass right through here. After climbing big walls or hiking to waterfalls, stop in for a pint of South Gate IPA or a Deadwood porter, named after the peak you can see from your table. Pair it with a brick-oven pizza or a plate of blonde ale beer-battered fish and chips.

Rock Cut Brewing Company

Estes Park, Colorado

There are 12 beers on tap at , which opened in 2015 at the foot of Prospect Mountain in the high-altitude town of Estes Park, the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. After summiting the 14,258-foot Longs Peak, try the East Portal IPA or the Altruism amber, for which $1 per pint is donated to a local charitable organization. Water for the brewing process comes from glacier-fed rivers that flow through Rocky Mountain National Park. You can bring food in from elsewhere or order chicken wings from the food truck parked out front.

Atlantic Brewing Company

Bar Harbor, Maine

has two locations in the sleepy coastal town of Bar Harbor, ten minutes from Acadia National Park. After biking the park’s Carriage Roads or catching the views atop Cadillac Mountain, the park’s high point, you can take a tour of the brewing facility, buy a growler of New Guy IPA to go, or dig into a platter of barbecued ribs at Mainely Meat at the Town Hill headquarters. At the new Midtown tasting room, which opened this summer, you can sample experimental small-batch beers and order a burger with goat cheese and kimchi from the new Midtown Burger.

Grand Teton Brewing

Victor, Idaho

, in Victor, Idaho, on the other side of Teton Pass from the town of Jackson, Wyoming, is less than 30 miles from Grand Teton National Park and about two hours from Yellowstone. Try the crisp, golden Old Faithful Ale, or order a pint of Bitch Creek for a sturdy brown ale. The tasting room and pub are part of an 11,000-square-foot facility that makes and ships beers to more than a dozen states. They don’t serve food on site, but the food truck that’s usually parked outside has good beer brats and fried pickles.

Nantahala Brewing Company

Bryson City, North Carolina

Four outdoor-loving friends opened in 2010, located just outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the town of Bryson City, North Carolina. You can tour the facility or listen to live music while drinking a pint of Noon Day IPA, the brewery’s flagship ale, in the taproom. Water for the beer comes straight from the untouched watersheds in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There’s no food on site, so order a takeout pizza from next door and bring it over.

Mother Road Brewing Company

Flagstaff, Arizona

It’s an 80-minute drive from the rim of Grand Canyon to , but you’re probably driving through Flagstaff on the way back from your Grand Canyon adventure anyway, so you might as well stop in for a Tower Station IPA. The taproom, which opened in 2011, has board games and a rotating cast of about nine beers on tap. Order a banh mi, delivered from nearby . (There’s also excellent pizza from Pizzicletta, two doors down.) This winter, Mother Road is opening another 8,000-square-foot production facility and tasting room a mile away.

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A Festival Built for You: The 10 Best Summer Destinations

Whether you like to mountain bike, sail, meditate, or just eat, there’s a festival somewhere in North America that’s calling your name. There, you’ll be able to relax, get away, and meet others who share similar outdoor passions, no matter how obscure they might be. (Who knew so many people were interested in learning how to logroll?) Pick one, make a weekend of it with our picks for the best nearby hotels and lodges, and let your summer officially begin.

June 1-24: Victoria International Cycling Festival
June 21-24: Wanderlust Festival
July 9-15: Crested Butte Wildflower Festival
July 13-15: International Folk Art Market
July 19-23: Tall Ships Nova Scotia
July 27-29: Lumberjack World Championships
August 1-5: Maine Lobster Festival
August 10-19: Crankworx Whistler
August 22-26: Wake Up Festival
September 7-9: Wooden Boat Festival

The Best Summer Festivals: Victoria International Cycling Festival

Victoria, British Columbia; June 1-24

A three-week with races, rollerjams, bike art, and, of course, thumping outdoor bass and good beer. Road cyclists sign up now for the , a 268- kilometer full-day ride around Southern Vancouver Island, following the that’s limited to 85 participants. Tricksters can compete in Jumpship, a free-ride competition set up on a floating barge surrounded by beer gardens in Victoria’s Inner Harbor.

Where to Stay: Splurge at the , a sleek and glassy oceanfront resort 20 minutes north of Victoria. Doubles from $249.

The Best Summer Festivals: Wanderlust Festival

Stratton Mountain Ski Resort, Vermont; June 21-24

Keep it sane and healthy. That’s what , which kicks off in Vermont, is all about. Visualize this: Morning meditation hikes, yoga with stars like and , music by and , and inspirational talks by activists like founder Eli Pariser. All of this fueled by delicious and organic farm-to-table meals. If you didn’t arrive sane, you might be by the time you leave.

Where to Stay: Camp at the , a full-service campground just a mile from the main festival site. Sign up with and a Eureka tent with cots will be set up by the time you’re ready to crash.

The Best Summer Festivals: Crested Butte Wildflower Festival

Crested Butte, Colorado; July 9-15

The flora will be going off in the Rocky Mountain peaks surrounding Crested Butte during . Scout the best blooms along more than 80 miles of easy to technical hiking trails, sign up for a wildflower or landscape photography workshop, take a yoga class in a Lupine-filled alpine meadow, or get schooled in how to make the perfect picnic. When class is over, head to town for a Teocalli rum martini at the . For a more adrenaline-packed week, bring your mountain bike.

Where to Stay: The dog-friendly offers complimentary wine every evening, hand-picked by a local sommelier. Doubles from $185 per night (with 12 percent off for CBWF participants).

The Best Summer Festivals: International Folk Art Market

Santa Fe, New Mexico; July 13-15

This pop-up global village in Santa Fe is the next best thing to buying a round-the-world airline ticket. For three days, more than 150 master artists from every corner of the globe show off and sell their intricately handmade beadwork, pottery, paintings, baskets, scarves, jewelry, and textiles. Sales from the radically improve most artists’ lives—many of them earn less than $3 per day back home. Watch for the hand-strung beaded jewelry of . From Northern Kenya, Lolosoli founded an entire village for abused and homeless women. Bring your plastic and be prepared to spend.

Where to Stay: The enclosed garden courtyard of the , which sits on a quiet residential street near the Plaza, is the best secret spot to eat breakfast in Santa Fe. Rooms from $189.

The Best Summer Festivals: Tall Ships Nova Scotia 2012

Halifax, Nova Scotia; July 19-23

Since May 7 a fleet of tall ships have been sailing north from Savannah, Georgia, to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in the . The fleet, which includes an 84-year-old British naval minesweeper and the HMS Bounty, which starred in , are scheduled to arrive in the Halifax harbor, a gorgeous international seaport with green space and a public beach, on July 19. Spectators can board the ships and meet the crews and feast harbor-side on Nova Scotia delicacies . On July 23 the entire fleet, with bells ringing and sails unfurled, heads back out to sea in the Parade of Sail.

Where to Stay: Drive north to Cape Breton Island and , a 55-acre island sanctuary with 2,000 feet of shoreline and accommodations ranging from a luxury chalet to a tipi (tipis from $90).

The Best Summer Festivals: Lumberjack World Championships

Hayward, Wisconsin; July 27-29

Lumberjacks have the most dangerous job in the world. That’s why this 52-year-old, three-day event is so much fun to watch. The best timber kings on the planet descend on in this lake-addled Wisconsin town to scale 90-foot cedar poles; chop through a vertical standing aspen 12 inches thick; and compete in Jack and Jill Sawing, where a one man, one woman team speed-saws through a 20-inch white pine log.

Understandably, amateurs are not allowed to participate in any of the serious competitions, but they are allowed to try their hand (or, rather, feet) at logrolling, set up in a special tank by the local , the training ground of world champions. Warning: It’s harder than it looks.

Where to Stay: has four North Woods-style cottages nestled in a pine forest on the bank of the Namekagon River, within walking distance from Hayward. Doubles from $97 per night.

The Best Summer Festivals: Maine Lobster Festival

Rockland, Maine; August 1-5

This 65-year-old serves up 20,000 pounds of steaming hot lobster, most of it dripping with butter. There are also clams, crab cakes, mussels, shrimp, haddock, and calamari, served in every variation imaginable. Whip up a better lobster étouffée or seared scallop and possibly win the $200 first prize in the cooking contest.

To burn off the food, run the 10k foot race on Sunday morning or try the oddly popular lobster crate race: The person who runs back and forth over a string of 50 partially submerged lobster crates before falling into the Atlantic, wins. The record: 4,000 crates crossed.

Where to Stay: The sits on seven acres and looks like a rich uncle’s oceanside getaway, complete with infinity pool and Adirondack chairs on green grass overlooking the ocean. Doubles from $295.

The Best Summer Festivals: Crankworx Whistler 2012

Whistler, British Columbia; August 10-19

Leave your daredevil eight-year-old at home. Whistler’s annual 10-day free-ride is a testament to just how free-spirited (and crazy) this crowd can be. With one of the most progressive free-ride competition lineups in the world and the largest cash purse prize—$30,000—for the , Crankworx lures the world’s best mountain biking greats. But amateurs are welcome too.

The festival starts off with the “running of the bulls,” an 800-meter that circles Whistler village, moves into the , where participants execute gravity-bending tricks, and winds down with the , a competition that fuses slopestyle, dirt jump, and North Shore mountain biking into one race.

Where to Stay: is 60 seconds from the best mountain biking in North America and has lofted suits with kitchens and en-suite dry saunas; from $109 per night.

The Best Summer Festivals: Wake Up Festival

Estes Park, Colorado; August 22-26

Looking for radical renewal? Look no further than the first-ever . This supercharged lineup of dancers, musicians, yogis, poets, energy healers, neuroscientists, and spiritual teachers, from Buddhist teacher to yoga goddess , will give participants the boost they need to get out of a rut, rejuvenate, and really start to live. Practice Qigong purification or mindfulness meditation, take a workshop on topics like “Harnessing Energy As We Age,” or dance under the stars to “Groove Sessions” with . It’s all good.

Where to Stay: The lodge rooms or cabins of the are affordable and offer close-ups to bighorn sheep or whatever wildlife wanders in. Cabins from $159 per night.

The Best Summer Festivals: 36th Annual Wooden Boat Festival

Port Townsend, Washington; September 7-9

It’s been written that there is “nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.” Kenneth Grahame said it best, but those who agree need to be at this late-summer that takes place in a historic Victorian village 40 miles northwest of Seattle. The eye candy here is endless: More than 300 wooden kayaks, native canoes, tall ships, sailboats, and powerboats will be on display or in use. Watch a boat-building demonstration, sign your boat up, or, if you don’t have one, sign on to crew during the , or network with the countless other passionate wooden boat fanatics.

Where to Stay: Fort Worden State Park is on the beach a mile from the festival, with 30 forested tent sites adjacent to hiking trails. .

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Camp Manito-wish YMCA, Boulder Junction, Wisconsin:
Every kid starts out canoeing. But as you get older, the options become longer—up to 50 days—and the destinations more exotic, including places like Nunavut (canoeing), Ontario (sea kayaking), and Alas­ka (backpacking). Ages 10–19; one-, two-, and four-week sessions;

KieveWavus, Nobleboro, Maine:
The structure is very similar to Manito-wish’s (above). Daily programs include the usual fun stuff—tennis, sailing, riflery, etc.—but every camper must also go on canoeing, sea-kayaking, or backpacking trips of increasing length. Ages 8–15; ten- and 26-day sessions;

Shaffer’s High Sierra Camp, Sattley, California:
Kids can either choose to do a little bit of everything or sign up for “program tracks” that specialize in mountain biking, backpacking, riding horses, or rock climbing. Ages 8–17; one-to-eight-week sessions;

Camp Cheley, Estes Park, Colorado:
Cheley is a big commitment—it only offers four-week sessions—but kids get the full Colorado experience, including raft trips down Poudre Canyon, top-roping at on-site rock faces, and, for the older kids, a shot at summiting a fourteener like Longs Peak. Ages 9–17;

Camp Mondamin, Tuxedo, North Carolina:
While backpacking and canoeing trips remain a focus at this 88-year-old institution, it’s expanded its repertoire over the years to include things like tubing, rock climbing, and mountain biking. Boys only; sister camp is Camp Green Cove (). Ages 6–17; five-day and three- and five-week sessions;

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Earlier this year, while thinking about various fun ways to spend the spring climbing season in California, Tommy Caldwell settled on a doozy: First, he and a partner would try the most continuously difficult big-wall free climb they could find, a 28-pitch route up Yosemite's El Capitan, called Magic Mushroom, which looked to rate a 5.14. Then, if all went well, Caldwell would return to lead every rope length himself, during a 24-hour supported speed run.

The origins of the project went back much further than that, though, and it's fitting that Caldwell's grand notion came to him when he was collapsed inside a tent, completely wasted after 24 hours of climbing few others could have even attempted, much less pulled off.

It was October 2005, on a warm, dry day in Yosemite, and Caldwell had just stacked up a pair of 3,000-foot free climbs on El Cap, making all his vertical progress using nothing but the strength of his body and limbs, the gear there only to protect him in case of a fall. His wife, renowned climber Beth Rodden, along with a pack of friends and climbing media, had met Caldwell up top, where his arms were so flushed with blood and lactic acid that they'd gone numb. Three weeks later he developed cluster headaches, and for more than a month his left elbow refused to straighten.

Caldwell had set out at just past 1 A.M. on October 30, starting on the Nose, a 2,900-foot 5.14a and the first line ever climbed on El Cap, back in 1958. (See “Number Crunching,” page 108, for a guide to climbing's rating system.) It was originally done by a cantankerous road surveyor named Warren Harding as a direct-aid climb, in which the climber puts weight on his protection hardware as he ascends, standing in stirrups called etriers to place each subsequent piece. Harding and various partners had needed 45 days over two climbing seasons. Caldwell, with belaying assistance from Rodden, did it in 11 hours. While he spidered up the wall, she managed the ropes rapid-fire in his wake, using self-ratcheting ascending devices called jumars as she pulled out the protection he left behind hand-placed metal widgets called nuts and cams. After jumaring the length of the rope, she'd stop to belay his line at each new anchor as he led off onto the next rope-length pitch.

At 1:36 P.M., Caldwell went back down to El Cap's base and swapped partners, moving on to the 5.12d Freerider with Chris McNamara, a California-based climbing-guidebook publisher. Around 9 P.M., 28 pitches up Freerider, Caldwell came to a final obstacle on a smooth, 5.12 dihedral a 90-degree, open-book-shaped convergence of two vertical faces. McNamara watched as Caldwell, after two falls, began to “stem” his way up the smoothest part of the dihedral, placing his legs in a splits-style bridge position, crab-walking as he applied force on the opposing walls. He made it through on his third try, going on to summit at 12:26 A.M. on Halloween.

The physical toll of this twofer was clear: Up in the summit tent, Rodden stood watch for two hours, waking Caldwell periodically to make him eat, so he'd have energy for the treacherous scramble and rappel down the East Ledges.

Even in his exhausted daze, Caldwell realized something: He could have pushed harder. Seventy percent of the climbing had been “only” 5.10 or 5.11 no-brainer stuff for an elite climber. What he really craved was an El Cap climb so relentless, pitch by pitch, that to do it in less than 24 hours would demand not only his best physical efforts but also a complicated mental and logistical game.

It would take him another three years to find the right target, and the project he settled on Magic Mushroom was a challenge for the ages. I'd heard about Caldwell's ambitions, and I wrote him to propose that he let me watch him plan and train from start to finish. He agreed, and I got a backstage pass while he rehearsed the climb of his life.

Caldwell was born on August 11, 1978, in Loveland, Colorado, the younger of two children. Lean at five foot nine and 150 pounds, he has the “climber V” highly developed latissimus dorsi muscles and much of his upper-body strength is concentrated in his shoulders. Watch him on rock and you see a whippety, swaybacked technician, his feet sticking to the stone as surely as if he were kicking steps in snow. (Contrary to popular belief, climbing isn't only about upper-body strength the best climbers rely mainly on savvy movement, propelled by the feet, legs, and core.)

Caldwell came to the sport through his father, Mike, who lured him at age three up his first multi-pitch route, above Estes Park, Colorado, with the promise that they'd fly a kite when they topped out. A senior guide at the Colorado Mountain School, Mike moved his family to the windy, spartan town and set out to raise an all-star. Tommy earned “credits” for training push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups applying these toward candy bars and, later, rock shoes. He was only 12 when he first climbed the Diamond, a sinister 1,000-foot wall on nearby Longs Peak.

Throughout the nineties and into the new century, Caldwell left his mark all over Colorado. But he's best known for his unique rapport with El Capitan, a granite wall so intimidating that it sends many accomplished climbers scurrying back to earth. El Cap 100 million years old, two miles wide, scoured to near perfection by glaciers is home to 90-odd aid climbs and 17 free climbs. Over the years, roughly two dozen people have died there in rappelling mishaps, jumar accidents, and falls, or as a result of massive Sierra storms that can turn the cracks into cataracts or freeze ropes into unusable cable.

Caldwell first caught the El Cap bug in 1997, at 19, during a spectacular failure of a trip with his father, when he attempted to free the Salathé Wall, a 30-plus-pitch climb on the southwest face. The Salathé is hardest on the headwall, a golden shield of rock slashed by a 200-foot crack that consistently overhangs five degrees past vertical, 2,500 feet off the ground.

“I didn't have the stamina, and we didn't have the logistics,” Caldwell says. “I'd be climbing with a 30-pound rack, a triple set of cams on one side and four sets of nuts and Tricams on the other.” The pair topped out after seven days, with the younger Caldwell having been, he said, “completely bouted” on the hardest free pitches, despite his 5.14 sport-climbing background.

Caldwell had tried the Salathé “on sight,” starting from the ground and attempting each pitch with no prior knowledge of how to do it. What he didn't know is that big-wall free climbers often spend time studying a route in advance, rehearsing it and setting up gear stashes. It's not uncommon to aid-climb or rappel the hardest pitches first, placing top ropes to make move-by-move rehearsal easier as the preparations continue. Climbers write down each gear placement and pocket these lists to consult on the fly; store food, water, and sleeping bags to obviate the muscle-crushing drudgery of hauling it all up from the ground; and tote or stash multiple pairs of rock shoes, some sized amply for easier pitches and others toe-crunchingly tight for the hardest leads.

Armed with this newfound knowledge, Caldwell returned in early 1998, humped 80 pounds of gear up the East Ledges, and rapped into the Salathé Headwall to rehearse the crux crack. He returned that April with Mike Cassidy, a climber he'd met in Yosemite Valley, and free-climbed the Salathé in a three-day push.

Since then, Caldwell has spent upwards of 500 days on El Cap, freeing 12 of its routes five of those being first free ascents. In 2007, to be closer to what he calls his “obsession,” he and Rodden took eight months off from climbing to build an airy, three-story, peaked-roof home in Yosemite West, only 12 miles from their theater of operations.

In early 2008, Caldwell set his sights on Magic Mushroom, which was first done as an aid climb in 1972 by Canadians Steven Sutton and Hugh Burton. The route follows thin but direct cracks and flared dihedrals up a steel-gray swath of rock that rises to the left of the Shield Headwall, a mammoth, gold-streaked swell on El Cap's southwest face. Caldwell's friend Adam Stack had tried and failed to free the line in 2004 and 2005, after El Cap veterans Alex and Thomas Huber, brothers from Germany, had inspected it on rappel and declared it impossible as a free climb. Caldwell had been working on a free version of Mescalito, a line near the Nose, but it had so many upper-5.13 and 5.14 pitches in a row that he couldn't see doing it quickly. Magic Mushroom seemed feasible by comparison.

Most of El Cap's free routes follow the more obvious natural crack systems. To free-climb them, you have to be adept on all crack sizes, from “sickly tips” (pinky locks) to “off-width” (wider than the fist but not big enough to shimmy up inside) to narrow chimneys that require full-body squeezing and groveling. Many of the hardest free cracks in Yosemite feature “pin scars” boxy, finger-size holes left behind by the original aid climbers, who repeatedly hammered pitons into the rock.

To protect against the sharp crystals in the cracks, free climbers often wrap their mitts with athletic tape. Where the cracks pinch down, they need to be strong on the glacier-polished grooves, slabs, and dihedrals, sections so glassy and holdless that climbers talk about “oozing” upward. El Capitan, with its notorious glacier polish and diamond-hard granite, has many such sections.

Big-wall climbers, free and aid alike, use well-refined tools to make wall life more tolerable: portable ledges for sleeping; ballistic-nylon haul bags filled with food, clothing, and water; lead lines and haul lines; hauling pulleys and jumars; hanging stoves; headlamps; and wall gloves. Even so, wall climbing is miserable and scary. The wind howls, you're dive-bombed by swallows, and, from just 500 feet up, giant trees on the valley floor look like matchsticks. To succeed, it's essential to have a solid, motivated partner.

For his first attempt on Magic Mushroom, Caldwell drafted Justen Sjong, 35, a professional climber based in Boulder, Colorado, who, like him, would try to free-climb every pitch. Prior to this year, Sjong had freed three El Cap routes, including one 5.13d first ascent, the preMuir Wall. All told, he estimates he's spent 300 days on the cliff.

Originally from Washington State, Sjong strayed into climbing at 19, transforming himself from redneck boulder scrambler to hardcore purist. Back in his Washington days, he kept a three-by-two poster on his bedroom wall that listed his climbing goals and read, in big, red letters, WAKE UP, DUMBASS YOU CAN'T GET GOOD BY SLEEPING. He apprenticed at the rain-soaked Index Town Wall, a granite bluff 50 miles northeast of Seattle. He'd drive there to aid-solo at night, by headlamp. He'd climb in the ubiquitous rain, with his jacket sleeves duct-taped to his gloves and wearing green rubber overalls, kneepads, and a fur hat with earflaps. In Colorado, to prepare for the cold mornings on Magic Mushroom, Sjong awoke early on winter days to self-belay on 300 feet of meat-locker-cold rock in Eldorado Canyon.

Magic Mushroom would be his and Caldwell's first major wall together, and they decided to go “team free”: They'd swap the lead position, but each would have to free-climb all the pitches. If one climber stalled, the other would have to wait, patiently belaying. In other words, one partner's failure could derail the whole effort, and Sjong told me his main worry was slowing Caldwell down.

To understand what it takes to free a big wall in a day and why anybody would want to it helps to look deeper into El Capitan's climbing history, which has involved endless experimentation, the occasional quantum leap, and a basic human need to go faster.

Until Warren Harding came along, climbers essentially ignored El Cap, because its sheer size outstripped their knowledge and tools. But his '58 ascent opened the door, and over the past 50 years, every climbable square foot has been picked over. Another major advance climbing the Nose in a day was made by a team of three top climbers moving together up the wall, in 1975. In 1988 came the first free ascent of the Salathé Wall. Another big year was 1993, when Lynn Hill freed all 33 pitches on the Nose.

Caldwell wanted a route that would push him to the limit while pitting him against the clock. “The whole idea of doing something like this in a day seems arbitrary,” he admits, but he says there's a sense of history to it, along with a tangible rush that comes from climbing such a big rock so quickly. “There's this buildup of adrenaline, emotion, fear, and excitement,” he says. “It's the most intense experience I've found in climbing.”

To do Magic Mushroom in less than 24 hours, Caldwell would have to marry his free-climbing skills with speed, organization, and superhuman fitness. To get into peak shape, he returned to a model he'd self-prescribed for the 2005 double day. That year, living in Estes Park, he'd first spent three weeks building a power base, to give himself the muscular “snap” needed to whip through the hardest sequences. He did this by bouldering, either on the overhanging gneiss of Rocky Mountain National Park or on a climbing wall at his parents' house.

Next, he spent a week working on stamina the ability to pull off hard moves even when pumped. Caldwell then added weight lifting, campusing arms-only motion up a special dowel board designed to build the upper-body strength needed to nail dynamic precision moves on the rock and a three-hour, 20-mile, 4,000-vertical-foot bike ride to 12,000 feet. By the end, a full-bore training day involved two hours of bouldering; a drive to a Colorado wall called the Monastery, where Caldwell would hammer out half a dozen climbs between 5.12b and 5.14b; a session in Estes Park's fitness gym; and that evening bike ride.

In California during the winter of 2007 2008, Caldwell flung himself at Yosemite's hardest boulder problems, toughening his skin and strengthening his grip on the blocks' sharp holds. He threw in endurance work at a rhyolite cliff near Sonora, pumping out five or six pitches of 5.13c to 5.14b per day. He used the home gym to perform laps on artificial holds, sling iron, campus, and do pull-ups. He also cycled on the steep, two-lane roads near Yosemite West.

When Sjong came out, in April, Caldwell was almost too ready for a climb that would require slowing down to make a team push. But Caldwell knew that if the team effort worked out, he might just be ready to climb the whole thing in a day.

It's April 15 a good six weeks before hot summer weather slams shut the El Cap free-climbing window and Caldwell and Sjong are in Caldwell's garage, sorting gear after their first two days of exploratory climbing on Magic Mushroom. It's early in the season, and hardly anyone else is on the wall; there's no competition for this climb. Nonetheless, Caldwell and Sjong keep their heads down, avoiding any preemptive announcements of their plans to anyone but wives and close friends. Their strategy during the month they'll spend learning the route is simple: Hike to the top of El Cap, spend the night, and then, at first light, rappel in and rehearse the upper 1,500 feet, where overhanging headwalls rear above the apron of less-than-vertical slabs below.

High on the wall, they'll evaluate the free possibilities, learn the moves, and plan the placement of hardware. They'll start early every afternoon at around two o'clock, the sun smacks this part of El Cap, heating the stone and causing the climbers' hands to sweat, reducing friction. They'll climb in two-day blocks and then descend to rest at Caldwell's house, refueling on Rodden's home-baked chocolate-chip cookies.

So far, moving individually, self-belayed by hauling pulleys called Mini Traxions, the pair has assessed a 1,000-foot section of obtuse, flaring chimneys (“bombays”) that begins two-thirds up the wall. Organization and studious ropework have been key to rigging the worker lines. Sjong says you can't just drop a 1,000-foot rope it can hang up on ledges or in cracks, and it might have to be cut. Instead, the climbers tie their static lines (non-stretching rope) into a belay station every 150-odd feet, using a knot Caldwell calls a super 8. This is a figure-eight-shaped knot tied on a doubled-over length of rope, with loops big enough to clip in to each anchor point separately, equalizing the load.

Down in the garage, Caldwell and Sjong discuss the protection they'll use on the near-crackless chimneys. They want to have adequate free protection that won't significantly alter Magic Mushroom.

Adequate usually means placing a piece every body length or so, given that any fall will involve plummeting twice the distance from the piece below you. The chimneys are an airy place, where the climbers are enclosed in a granite fold that opens into the void. As they're learning on the wall, the “runouts” the distance between each piece of protection will sometimes require them to climb 15-foot stretches between tiny cams.

The chimneys are subtle features requiring a contortionist's grab bag of nightmare tricks: blind, behind-the-head, straight-armed presses that morph into wide stems; painful knee bars, in which the lower quadriceps is cammed against the rock; heel-palm opposition, in which both feet are kept, toes down, on one wall while the palms are extended as if in supplication. Sjong says he'll wear only cotton on the climb, since it snags well on the granite, providing extra friction.

“What are we missing?” Caldwell asks. He's pillaged the gear reservoirs behind the garage wall, emerging with highly specialized pitons that they'll hammer into the chimneys. On the floor sit ten Peckers of various sizes wafer-thin, beak-shaped pins that fit into hairline seams. Caldwell has also pulled out a dozen-odd Bugaboos and Knifeblades (flat-bladed pitons with forged, offset eyes, also for use in tiny cracks); seven angles (traditional, spear-shaped pitons, for slightly wider cracks); two Realized Ultimate Reality Pitons (square mini-hatchets, half the size of a credit card); a debolting tool essentially a re-milled piton resembling a tuning fork, for removing unreliable old bolts; a hand drill, two bits, and a blow tube for clearing rock dust from the bolt holes; and six bolts and hangers, to use in place of removed hardware.

They look over the spread. Caldwell jokes that it would be much easier to aid-climb the thing. “To be fit to free-climb takes a lot of work,” he says. “I mean, you could drink a gallon of wine every night and still aid up El Cap.”

“You're not supposed to do that?” counters Sjong. They both laugh, knowing that the aid climbers' road map is what has allowed them to make these explorations in the first place.

“Those chimneys are going to be scary,” Caldwell continues. Once they hammer a few pitons in the chimneys, the guys figure they can lead the rest of the route on traditional gear the nuts and cams that the leader places and the second removes.

Atop El Cap, the climbers found a partially damaged portaledge, which they put in place below the chimneys, 18 pitches up. They'll spend the next three weeks or so on the wall, eventually trying the hardest pitches on top rope and then on lead. While they're in this worker-bee phase, they'll also ferry supplies down from the summit.

Through a spotting scope, I watch the boys try the route that first week, then head home to Colorado in late April. On May 5, one week before Caldwell and Sjong are to attempt their final push, Caldwell sends me an update.

“Since I last e-mailed, we spent four more days on the route,” he writes. “We figured out the gear, hammering in the required pins, and led most of the hard pitches. It is coming together nicely. I feel like our stamina is increasing and our bodies are adapting to the vertical world. We end the days with more energy, and even our hands are swelling less.” Still, Caldwell says he's worn down his fingernails until they bleed, and Sjong has bruised his coccyx and buttocks shuffling up the bombays.

Caldwell continues: “I was thinking about how the article is about the science of climbing and how we have had to analyze every ripple, every spot of texture. This climb really seems to be about finding the places on the faces that tilt one degree in the right direction and therefore are more solid to stand on. Deciding on the exact position to switch from chimneying to stemming to laybacking .” He winds up by writing that he feels lucky to be climbing at a time when so many El Cap routes remain to be freed.

The next day, Sjong e-mails the gear list. It's three pages, detailing the rack for each block of leads and then giving a pitch-by-pitch breakdown all in all, hundreds of placements. The climbers will head up with this rack, one 9.2-millimeter lead line, and a 5mm “tag” line a thinner auxiliary cord used to pull up a heavier worker line, for any heavy hauling. They've cached food, water, and provisions in a few key spots.

From May 12 through May 16, Sjong and Caldwell live on the wall. On day one, the climbers move smoothly through the first 13 pitches nearly half the route stalling slightly six pitches up, on a 5.13b/c traverse that they haven't practiced enough. They spend the night on Grey Ledges, a small, two-tiered, sleeping-pad-width platform roughly 1,500 feet up. The second day starts with a harsh warm-up: a pitch of 5.13b, where both climbers fall. But they sort it out and make it to the fixed portaledge at pitch 18, below the yawning chimneys. Here they pick up three days' worth of fresh supplies a gallon of water per climber per day, food, Neosporin, sleeping equipment, and warm clothes.

On day three, their pace slows they do only three pitches. Sjong falls four times on his hardest lead, a 5.13d chimney to a rounded layback, before succeeding, and Caldwell falls once on the hardest pitch, a 5.14a, before he makes it. Sjong tries this one for two solid hours, to no avail. (He'll call the pitch his “asterisk,” since he never climbed it continuously without falling, doing it instead in two sections.) He says he and Caldwell didn't get emotional about the hold­up it was simply a case of what Sjong calls “the strong getting stronger and the weak getting weaker.”

That afternoon, the climbers set up their sleeping bags as sunscreens over their portaledge, using Sjong's iPod Shuffle to listen to what Caldwell, who's naive about such things, calls “death metal” (Guns N' Roses, Led Zeppelin, Metallica). The next day, they rest, a boring proposition with only the Shuffle for entertainment.

On the fifth day, May 16, the climbers top out, moving surprisingly quickly through the final crux, a 120-foot, 5.13d finger crack called the Seven Seas, which cuts through a double-overhanging apex to a slightly overhanging headwall crack.

And with that they've completed the hardest overall big-wall free climb in the world, tougher even than Dihedral Wall, an El Cap 5.14a a few hundred feet left of Magic Mushroom that Caldwell freed in 2004.

Back at the Caldwells' house later the next day, Sjong jumps into his EuroVan, bound for Boulder. The moment he's gone, Caldwell heads downstairs to train. The two-person climb left him feeling exhilarated, wanting more. It's an energy surge partially explained by what Caldwell calls “the flywheel effect.”

“As you start to really learn El Cap's friction,” he says, “you can climb knowing exactly how much weight to put on your feet without tiring your arms.” Now he knows he can free the entire route in under 24 hours. Magic Mushroom has fresh chalk marks to help point the way, and he knows all the sequences and gear. Still, the line has 11 pitches of 5.12 and 10 of 5.13 to 5.14. Failure is a real possibility.

On May 31 at 5 P.M., Caldwell and Rodden uncoil their rope in the oaks below Magic Mushroom. Rodden stops Caldwell to daub on sunscreen and ask if his knot is good. Caldwell has timed their departure to coincide with three important windows: having enough daylight to complete the 5.13 traverse on pitch six; beginning the stacked pitches of 5.13/14 in the chimneys at first light; and arriving above those, poised for the 5.13d Seven Seas pitch, in concert with El Cap's cooling midday updraft.

The plan is this: Caldwell will lead on a 60-meter, 9.8mm dynamic (stretchy) rope. Atop each pitch, he'll clip the super-8 knot into the anchor; Rodden will then speed-jumar. Once at the anchor, she'll stay tethered to her jumars five feet down, a dynamic setup that keeps her from being yanked abruptly skyward if Caldwell falls while she's belaying.

Caldwell is going superlight. He will rack the gear in order of placement and bring only what he needs; use one-ounce carabiners; and carry Spectra slings, made of featherweight climbing-spec nylon. He'll harness-rack the gear until the chimneys, at which point he'll clip it in to a Spectra sling over his shoulder, to prevent it from rubbing the rock. Rodden will carry a stripped-down backpack stuffed with jackets, top layers, a sausage-and-cheese sandwich, and spare headlamp batteries. The pack also holds Caldwell's “ninja shirt,” a black hoodie that grips the rock well and has brought luck in the past.

Along the route, Caldwell has left four caches in place. The first, at one-third height, contains energy bars, sports-drink mix, a 1.5-liter bottle of water, and supplemental protection. The second, halfway up, holds a gallon of water. The third is at the fixed portaledge, 18 pitches up, where the pair will nap below the chimneys. Here, Caldwell has crammed into a haul bag two sleeping bags and pads, more bars, Power Gel, a Red Bull, a stove, oatmeal, recovery-drink mix, cashews, long underwear, a puffy jacket, a 100-gram bag of climbing chalk, and another gallon of water. He's also stashed a pair of La Sportiva Miura rock shoes, new but slightly broken in. The final cache sits below the 25th pitch: another gallon of water and a Red Bull.

Caldwell estimates that the legwork in the chimneys puts 250 pounds of force on his feet, quickly rendering the shoes soft and imprecise; he wants to start the hardest leads with a fresh pair. He knows he'll have to be bold, climbing quickly and decisively so as not to bog down. But he's a veteran as long as he stays on top of the protection and ropework, even when tired, he won't face any falls longer than 40 or 50 feet.

Rodden is key to the ascent. “She's really good up there she's fast, she knows the systems really well,” Caldwell says. “But, probably more important, she understands what I'm going through physically and emotionally.” Rodden, for her part, knows Caldwell won't buckle or freak. With only one rope between them and no easy retreat, this matters.

“I've never seen Tommy scared on El Cap, nope,” says Rodden, who recalls him once leading two 5.12 pitches in a snowstorm to get them off the wall. “Up there, he's in his element. Ever since he could walk, he's been in the mountains.”

Caldwell will move through the night, headlamp-climbing through one 5.13b crux, the Bird Beak pitch. There, he'll lead the opening 30 feet (the hardest) with only the three pieces he needs, and then, tethered to a small cam, he'll drop a loop of rope to haul up protection for the remainder. Failure has crossed his mind: “I've never done something like this that has this many hard pitches,” he says. “I could just run out of power.”

Which is precisely what happens.

On June 1, 20 hours after starting, Caldwell and Rodden reach the Seven Seas pitch. Caldwell has freed everything thus far, but here, 110 feet off the belay (and 2,600 feet above the ground), he falls three times on the route's last really hard move, a long, technically precise reach to a flake. Rodden spends four cold, cramped hours belaying on this pitch alone. Hanging off his harness back at the belay, Caldwell takes 30-minute naps between attempts. Rodden massages his blasted forearms, which have started seizing after only two moves, forcing his hands open.

Caldwell drinks a Red Bull. Nothing. The climber is exhausted, and the sun's come around, too, blinding him, heating his shoes so they roll unhelpfully, and making his hands sweat. He decides to give up, and the pair jumars to the top, summiting 23 hours and 45 minutes after starting.

Up on the summit, Caldwell doesn't moan or blame the gods. His big toes have gone numb (they'll remain so for weeks), and his hands and feet are so swollen that the small climbing wounds in the flesh (“gobies”) have countersunk. But he's ready for another go.

Six days later, on June 7, Caldwell and Rodden return. Caldwell has gone back midweek, relearning the pitches and reprovisioning. This time, the pair tops out in 20:02. This time, Caldwell leads every pitch free, taking only five falls total, having to redo two 5.13 pitches but not the Seven Seas. No climber anywhere has achieved anything like this.

“From my perspective, Tommy Caldwell's ascent of Magic Mushroom all-free in a day is state of the art, an unimaginable perfor­mance of passion, overpowering will, and Olympian talent,” says John Harlin III, editor of The American Alpine Journal. “For 50 years, El Cap has been the granite crucible the world knows what happens here and who does it, because this is the gold standard. And right now the standard-setter is Tommy Caldwell.”

Caldwell says he entered a “super-relaxed” state during the climb, which allowed him to move more quickly and precisely, reaching the pitch-18 portaledge with time enough for a three-hour nap. And he wasn't, he adds, especially pumped on the Seven Seas. Up there, within earshot of Rodden's shouted encouragement, Caldwell snagged the flake to finish the pitch, then raced through a final, 5.13a rope length to the summit slabs.

After crashing out back home, Caldwell had enough energy to return the next day, hike the East Ledges, and take down fixed lines and gear caches. “Which leads me to believe,” he says, “there must be room for more.”

Number Crunching

The A-B-C's (and D's) of rock-climbing.

To rate the difficulty of rock routes, North American climbers use a numerical scale called the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS), refined at California's Tahquitz Rock in the 1950s. Roped, technical rock climbing is considered “fifth class” and was originally a closed scale broken down into 5.0 through 5.9. (Steep hiking is second class; highly exposed scrambling that might require a rope is fourth.) When climbs harder than 5.9 emerged circa 1960, the system expanded to include 5.10, and then 5.11 and up through today's 5.15. In addition, 5.10-and-beyond climbs take one of four a, b, c, or d sub-ratings, with d the hardest. Other ratings might be appended for the length of the route and the reliability and spacing of protection.

As you move higher in the YDS, the rock invariably steepens, the holds shrink and grow farther apart, and there are fewer rests. In Yosemite, known for its sheerness, the ratings can also reflect a pitch's overall physicality, if not its hardest move. Here are some seminal Yosemite climbs at each of the higher grades:

5.10 Wheat Thin (5.10c): This 60-foot climb involves continuously laybacking along the edge of a flake, the climber shuffling his hands and walking his feet up, often at waist height with no hand-free rest ledges.

5.11 Butterballs (5.11c): Eighty feet long, this route is dead vertical, with a finger-width (0.75 1.25 inches) fissure splitting a blank face, and some relief in the form of small foot edges. The climber ascends by finger locking: inserting his fingertips, thumb either up or down, and then twisting to complete the grip.

5.12 Tales of Power (5.12b): This thin, 60-foot crack overhangs for 20 feet. It requires a sustained section of butterfly jamming, in which the climber must contrive a hold by making a modified “A-OK” sign, stacking the middle and ring fingers atop the tip of the thumb and inserting this digital wedge. Your feet go in the crack, too, camming with a twist of the ankle.

5.13 Phoenix (5.13a): A past-vertical, 140-foot crack that's conquered via tight hand jams hand inserted into the crack and then flexed, to oppose the fingers and the back of the hand.

5.14 Houdini Pitch, the Nose (5.14a): On this dihedral, you have to press your body against its walls and engage in a 180-degree contortionist's turn, scootching inch-by-inch like you would up the inside corner of a building.

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So much to do, only three sun-drenched months to do it. Let us help. We start by pinpointing the and , then lay out the , , , , , a dizzying slew of summer essentials, and over a dozen more ways to make the season sizzle.

Brandy Armstrong

HELLO, SUMMER: Brandy Armstrong, a runner from Ogallala, Nebraska, hits Cocoa Beach, Florida, in a vintage bikini from MELET MERCANTILE; shorts () from ROXY BY QUIKSILVER.

PLUS: ; ; ;



HEAVY WATER
for Robert Maxwell’s Exposure Photo Gallery of surfing’s invincible underground.

Swellsville, USA

Bare feet on hot sand. Surfboard on the waves. Lobster in the pot. A long, hot season to stay wet and never go back inside. summer starts here—don’t let the screen door hit you on the way out.

Tori Praver

Surfer Tori Praver at Cocoa Beach, Florida

Cocoa Beach, Fl While the waves are more mellow than menacing, Kelly Slater’s hometown boasts some serious surf cred. Gear up at one-acre Ron Jon Surf Shop (4151 N. Atlantic Ave., 321-799-8888) and head south toward Patrick Air Force Base, where, if you don’t mind the occasional sonic boom, you can score at breaks like Picnic Tables and Second Light. Refuel seven miles farther south at Da Kine Diego’s Insane Burritos, in Satellite Beach (1360 Hwy. A1A, 321-779-8226). The joint’s outdoor Bamboo Theater screens the latest surf flicks. Montauk, NY It’s just three hours by train from Penn Station to the peaceful right-hand break at Turtle Cove and the smooth lefts at Ditch Plains. Make camp at the Atlantic Terrace hotel ($85–$385; 21 Surfside Pl., 631-668-2050), which overlooks an eponymous beach break fueled by hurricane swells spinning off the Carolinas. Work up an appetite for Harvest on Fort Pond (11 S. Emery St., 631-668-5574), nose-riding wizard Joel Tudor’s favorite spot for monster helpings of seafood and sunset views. Santa Cruz, CA Power up on coffee and croissants at Kelly’s French Bakery (402 Ingalls St., 831-423-9059) and pop next door for a custom foam-grinding session with shaper Ward Coffey. Warm up on the mellow rights at Cowell Beach before risking life and limb in the barrels at Natural Bridges State Beach. Then flop down on the bluffs at Lighthouse Point, where pros boost airs so close to the cliff, you’ll flinch as they pass. Après, fish tacos and cervezas go down smooth at El Palomar (1336 Pacific Ave., 831-425-7575). Coos Bay, OR Frontier town meets surf scene in Oregon’s biggest logging port. Check out Ocean Soul Surf Shop (91122 Cape Arago Hwy., 888-626-7685), where local firefighters and fishermen pick up their surf wax. Co-owner Donnie Conn will steer you to “wherever it’s going off.” For beginners, that might be the cold-water waves at Sunset Bay or, if you like more juice, Bastendorff Beach for intimidating peaks like Shitters. Rogers Zoo and Bizzaratorium, in North Bend (2037 Sherman Ave., 541-756-2550) offers live music. Yakutat, AK Lower 48 just too crowded? Hop the twice-a-month ferry from Juneau and head to Icy Waves Surf Shop (635 Haida St., 907-784-3226). It shouldn’t be hard to find: Yakutat has only two paved roads. Beg directions to the peelers at Cannon Beach; then, after overnighting at Glacier Bear Lodge ($110; 812 Glacier Bear Rd., 907-784-3202), have bush pilot Les Hartley (Alsek Air, 907-784-3231) drop you and your gear on one of countless unknown, unnamed, and potentially perfect point breaks along the rugged coast.

Perfect Pickup Games

A Guide to Summer

TOUCH FOOTBALL: From left, Blake Pearson, a San Diego surf-store owner, wears jeans ($165) from POLO BY RALPH LAUREN and a hooded sweatshirt ($301) from R BY 45 RPM. On Nick Fairman, a short-boarder from Winter Park, Florida: boardshorts ($45) by PATAGONIA; cargo shorts ($85) from POLO BY RALPH LAUREN; vintage button-up shirt by MELET MERCANTILE. On Ryan Heavyside, a Palm Beach, Florida, competitive surfer: boardshorts ($120) by TRACY FEITH; boardshorts ($60) by RLX RALPH LAUREN.

Soccer While the Beltway crowd cheers D.C. United’s 15-year-old �ڳܳٲ�ó�� phenom Freddy Adu at RFK Stadium, slide-tackle a lobbyist or knock in a header under the gaze of Lincoln’s statue. Impromptu scrimmages are held most evenings on the National Mall’s soccer-perfect turf. Beach Volleyball As the birthplace of the sport, Manhattan Beach, California, takes its volleyball seriously. Its nearly 100 first-come, first-served courts, spread along a two-mile strand, are tractor-groomed weekly and fill up nightly. Bring a net and ball and you’ve got game. Ultimate Frisbee If you can’t find a game of disk in Madison, you’re just not looking. The University of Wisconsin is home to one of the country’s top college programs, and Madison offers a city league for every season. Walk-ons are welcome nightly at Vilas Park and Olbrich Field, all summer long.

The Swinging Life

Gold Cup 2 Eye

It was just an old rope swing, tied to a pecan tree on the banks of a lake in the Ozarks. But when I stumbled upon it, and grabbed the knot and swung out over the water, what came back to me with a whoosh was my seventh summer, probably forgotten or pushed away because that was the year my mother died.

My old man had nearly brained himself trying to install the heavy rope on the limb of an old box elder. Unwilling to climb up, he’d elected to weight one end of the rope with a claw hammer, which he heaved heavenward in the hope it would sail over the limb. Finally, to my amazement, it worked. He tied a spent Firestone to the rope with a double square knot, installed me inside, walked the boy-bearing tire to the apex of the slope, and pushed.

“What should I do?” I screamed as I soared out toward the water.

He yelled back in his East Texas cracker twang, rich with mules and chiggers. “Y’all figure it out.”

The thing that came to addict me wasn’t just the wild ride and the plunge into the creek; it was that you could apply an infinite amount of torque to the rope by winding up the tire before liftoff, coiling it like a spring. Then, standing on the tire, spinning like a dervish, the test was this: Could I marshal the timing it took to dismount at a point that would deposit me in the water instead of the brush?

In another game, my best pal and I would swallow a Fizzie-kind of like prehistoric Pop Rocks-then wind up the tire, working it like a posthole digger. As the carbonated confection began bubbling in our bellies, I’d climb into the tire while my pal climbed on top. Once airborne and spinning, it was mano a mano until the loser barfed.

But what I liked best was simply the compulsive, solitary act of swinging, pumping my legs for hours to keep the tire in motion. It was the best way to take myself somewhere else.

SUMMER ESSENTIALS
Deck Shoe Revival
Remember these babies? Sperry Top-Sider plates the eyelets on its handmade Gold Cup 2 Eye deck shoe with 18-karat gold, which won’t corrode or rust. Meanwhile, memory foam molds itself to the shape of your sole, while padded deerskin uppers softly cradle the rest. $150;

Rubber Soul

The Pacific stretching westward, rolling hills, empty beaches inhabited only by sea lions—there’s no getting around it: The West Coast’s Highway 1/101 is the classic summer drive. Head out on the 734-mile stretch winding from San Francisco to Astoria, Oregon, for spectacular scenery, crowd-free adventures, and the wind-in-the-hair perma-grin you can only get on the open road. Our weekend guide:

Mile 44: Fuel up on Pacific oysters ordered live from the seawater tanks at the Tomales Bay Oyster Company, a working farm in Marshall. 415-663-1242

Mile 196: Plunge into a swimming hole along the highway as it follows the South Fork of the Eel River through Richardson Grove State Park. 707-247-3318,

Mile 319: Hike beneath 2,000-year-old, 300-foot redwoods at Redwood National Park and Redwood State Park. 707-464-6101,

Mile 513: Boogie-board the 500-foot sand dunes of Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, then bed down in a deluxe yurt at Umpqua Lighthouse State Park. $65 for up to seven people; 800-452-5687,

Mile 640: Sea-kayak, hang- glide, or surf at Cape Kiwanda State Natural Area. 800-551-6949,

Mile 695: Grab a table at the Sea Shack (503-368-7897), on Nehalem Bay in Wheeler, for a bucket of Cajun shrimp and an icy beer. At Wheeler Marina (503- 368-5780), rent a boat and traps to go crabbing off Nehalem Bay State Park.

New American Chopper

Katie Zirnfus

PEDAL PUSHER: Katie Zirnfus, a surfer from Titusville, Florida, heads to the break in Cocoa Beach. Sweatshirt ($52) and bikini ($72) by RIP CURL; vintage bucket hat by ROGAN.

Trade in those riding leathers for a pair of surf trunks and flip-flops and cruise your local boardwalk atop the chopper-inspired Electra Straight 8. With a Shimano Nexus three-speed hub, old-school coaster brake, and red powder-coated spokes, these wheels are Peter Fonda cool. $570;

Who Needs Cristo?

Missed out on the saffron Gates? Head to Amarillo, Texas, where the public art is as large as the 72-ounce steaks dished up at I-40’s Big Texan Steak Ranch. Natural-gas tycoon Stanley Marsh 3 started funding big art back in 1974 with Cadillac Ranch, ten vintage Caddies buried nose first in the Panhandle. Over the years he’s painted a mesa blue; built Giant Phantom Soft Pool Table, a 180-by-90-foot patch of dyed-green grass with 42-inch canvas balls; and commissioned a pair of gigantic sawed-off legs in a field south of town. “Art is a legalized form of insanity,” Marsh has said. “And I do it very well.” Go crazy yourself scoping out Amarillo’s thousands of Marsh-funded street signs, with slogans like I’LL BE RIGHT OUT MA! FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! and LUBBOCK IS A GREASY SPOON! Summer here is frying-pan hot, so when yer bod heats up faster than a Texas cheerleader, dive into 6,251-acre Lake Meredith, 38 miles north of town on Texas 136. Lake Meredith National Recreation Area, 806-857-3151,

Fuel Up on Fresh Air

Blue on Blue

Poolside at Blue on Blue

Two Lights Lobster Shack, Cape Elizabeth, Maine
Just south of Portland, on the tip of Cape Elizabeth, this landmark New England seafood stop sits on the rocky shoreline below one of the most photographed lighthouses in the world. Park yourself at a table on the deck and try the fresh clam chowder, boiled lobster, or fried clams and scallops. $1.50–$22; 207-799-1677


Coyote Cafe Rooftop Cantina, Santa Fe
Pull a stool to the edge of this downtown café and settle in with a prickly pear margarita and the Coyote’s famous salsa and guacamole. But save room for chef Mark Miller’s classic southwestern dinner menu—including the mango-avocado chicken sandwich and seared salmon tacos. $4–$14; 505-983-1615


Sports Corner, Chicago
This wildly popular pre- and postgame pub, directly across from Wrigley Field, is one of the few outdoor grills where you can hold a chicken wing in one hand and catch a home run in the other. Cheering—for the unfussy American fare and the Cubs—is mandatory. $5–$12; 773-929-1441


Ted Drewe’s Frozen Custard, St. Louis
Any summer road trip through the heartland deserves a stop at this circa-1941 walk-up window, along old Route 66. Don’t be intimidated by the lines that snake around the side of the building: Their vanilla custard flavored 23 ways—like praline and abocho mocha—is worth the wait. $.50–$4.50; 314-481-2652


The Water Club, New York
Head straight for the Crow’s Nest, the seasonal upper-deck café at this stylish East River eatery. With its colorful umbrellas, palatable prices, and stellar views of the Empire State Building and the 59th Street Bridge, it’s a must for piña coladas and shrimp cocktail from the raw bar. $9–$26; 212-683-3333


Blue on Blue, Beverly Hills
Everything about this poolside café in the courtyard of the Avalon Hotel screams hip: from its inventive American menu (can you say Muscovy duck breast and a side of peach quinoa?) to the cushioned chaise lounges and bamboo-shaded private cabanas. And did we mention the pool? $10–$30; 310-407-7791

Ribs, Sugar?

We say the Memphis way is the only way when it comes to applying smoke and slow heat to the ribs of our oinking friends, so we asked Desiree Robinson, pit mistress of legendary rib shack COZY CORNER, for the skinny on backyard ‘cue in the classic dry-rub style. “Make sure you’ve got nice medium-size racks, not baby backs, with enough fat to make that meat tender,” she says, “plus a good fire so they can sizzle down.” Yes, ma’am. HERE’S THE RUB: 3 tbsp paprika; 1 tbsp chili powder; 2 tsp seasoned salt; 2 tsp black pepper; 2 tsp brown sugar; 2 tsp garlic powder; 1 tsp cayenne; 1 tsp oregano; 1 tsp mustard seed; 1 tsp thyme; 1 tsp coriander; 2 tsp dried green peppercorns, ground; 1 tsp allspice. HERE’S THE DRILL: Rub mixture into ribs at least eight hours before cooking. (Yank the membrane off the bones, too.) Place a fireproof bowl full of water and flat beer in the grill pan. Snug charcoal around the bowl, fire up, and let burn until white but still hot. Lay a foil “envelope” of wet wood chips on the coals, then smoke ribs bone side up for two to four hours, and keep that lid on. Paint with sauce when done, if you like—but, says Robinson, “I usually don’t.”—Chris Davis

SUMMER ESSENTIALS
Lone Star Grill »
Transcend the charcoal-versus-gas debate with the Traeger Texas Style Grill—a cooker powered by pencil-eraser-size wood pellets. A continually rotating auger feeds the fire, allowing you to grill, slow-roast, or smoke your dino-steaks just so. $999;

Swing Shift »
The Byer of Maine Santiago XXL double hammock is a generous eight-foot-long cotton cocoon with a carrying capacity of 400 pounds, so there’s room in there for you and at least one other close personal friend—no matter how many ribs the pair of you just polished off. $80;

Longboard Tech »
Hobie’s Epoxy 9’2 Performer by Surftech looks like a vintage balsa longboard, but wait—that’s an advanced sandwich of PVC sheet foam and Tuflite epoxy resin. Upshot: The Performer is nearly six pounds lighter, yet 30 percent stronger, than a traditional foam-and-glass board. $900;

Hot Rocks

If there’s a deal breaker to a climber’s summer dream scene, it’s rock that’s scalding to the touch. Fortunately, Estes Park, Colorado—a town of 6,000 at 7,522 feet in the Rockies—offers something that desert crags don’t: alpine air conditioning and hundreds of routes just outside of town in Rocky Mountain National Park. “The park is best known for 14,255-foot Longs Peak, but the smaller mountains offer equally challenging multi-pitch routes,” says 24-year-old phenom Katie Brown, a Patagonia-sponsored climber who lives in Moab but spends a month or two in Estes Park each summer. “Lumpy Ridge, a series of granite domes, is my favorite. One dome, the Book, has an awesome 5.9 called J. Crack and a 5.10c called Fat City. I also like to hike the four-mile trail around Lumpy Ridge for the views of Longs Peak.” When Brown craves quesadillas, she heads to Ed’s Cantina & Grill, in town, a favorite hangout of resident climbers like Beth Rodden, 25, and her 26-year-old rock-star husband, Tommy Caldwell. “Estes is about escape,” says Rodden. “You can just run into the mountains and play your heart out.” Rocky Mountain National Park, 970-586-1206; Estes Park visitor information, 800-443-7837.

Pony Express

a guide to summer

HALFWAY TO CAPE CANAVERAL: From left, Ryan rides shotgun in boardshorts ($56) by O’NEILL and OAKLEY MONSTER DOGGLE sunglasses ($145), while Blake sits at the helm in PATAGONIA boardshorts ($45).

This year, an icon of American cruising revs back into action in a major way. We’re talking about the FORD MUSTANG CONVERTIBLE GT, a retro-styled muscle car that feels like freedom even when it’s just sitting in the garage. Drop the top with the push of a button, slap on some SPF 30, and turn the ignition. The 300-horsepower V-8 doesn’t simply roll over; it rumbles, and its giddyup will fairly launch you out on the summer highway. That much is to be expected. What’s new is the tight handling: Just think about changing lanes or charging into a tight corner and the Mustang seems to do it for you. The easy maneuvering’s a nice feature for the curves of California’s Highway 1, but keep your eyes on the road when you pass a congregation of head-turning bodies at the beach or you might tug yourself off course. Better to save your people watching for a stoplight—all the better, of course, for people to watch you. Models with V-8 engines from $29,995;

You Can Dig It

For prime seafood with a stellar view, skip the restaurant lines and shovel up a surfside clambake. We tapped Bill Hart, executive chef of the legendary Black Dog Tavern, on Martha’s Vineyard, for info on how to do it up right. First, make sure fires are legal on your beach—chances are you’ll have to get a permit. Then dig a square pit in the sand, two and a half feet deep and three to four feet wide. Line the bottom with fist-size rocks and toss in some firewood. (If you’re looking for a tinge of sweet in your bake, try cherry or apple wood.) Let your fire burn for about two hours—until the wood is gone and the rocks sizzle when sprinkled with water—before adding a layer of store-bought fresh seaweed. Now lob in your grub: For ten hungry beachgoers, that’d be 20 whole red bliss potatoes, eight to ten Spanish onions (halved), ten ears of corn (husks and all), ten links of linguica sausage, ten lobsters, and three to four pounds of mussels and clams—Hart recommends steamers and littlenecks. Cover it all up with more seaweed and a board laid across the top to lock in the steam. The rest is easy: Shoot the breeze for the next two hours until the clams have opened up (any that haven’t are bad). Slip on your oven mitts, pull out the goods, and serve ’em up with lemon wedges and melted butter.

Cheap Date

Three thousand dollars might seem a little steep for one night in sleepy little Rhinebeck, New York, but I managed to spend it. The reason for the exorbitant fee: I had paid for half of a three-bedroom cottage from Memorial Day to Labor Day (or MD–LD, in classified-ad parlance) and slept at the house exactly one time.


I should have known in March, when my friend Ben and I drove around with Hairsprayed Realtor Lady, that my vacation venture was doomed. The house we rented was sweet-a gray-shingled Cape on three acres of gently rolling hills-but the interior was littered with ladybug exoskeletons. If shiny, rosy ladybugs are cheery good-luck symbols of summer, shouldn’t their postmortem husks be considered bad juju?


I opted to overlook the omen and signed the lease. We signed partly because the realtor’s M.O. was to make us believe that this house was the only good one left. We also signed because each of us had recently been dumped, and renting a summer house was a way of getting on with our lives in a screw-all-y’all kind of way.


We drove back to the city, and in the ensuing months I would imagine scenes from my coming summer in mellow, low-key Dutchess County: I’d be strolling down the sun-dappled dirt driveway, stopping to eat wild blackberries right off the bush, clearly recovered from my breakup.


As it happened, when “MD” rolled around, I was still lonely and sad, and Ben had gotten all hot for a woman whose friends were also coupled up and on the docket for Hudson River Valley fun. A few Saturdays, I drove up to Rhinebeck but, feeling like the seventh-person sourpuss along on a triple date, drove back to the city before bedtime.


Right around the time I watched Ben and his girlfriend drive off to a sunset wine tasting, I realized that my sun-dappled summer was not to be. And so, near the very end of August, I forced myself to actually sleep there, to get my alleged $3,000 worth. It didn’t even come close.

Lazy River

It’s no secret that Boulder, Colorado, offers the best urban inner-tubing in the States, possibly the universe, as locals cool down and bruise themselves “floating” more than a dozen drops of Boulder Creek between Eben G. Fine Park and the take-out of choice, beside the downtown library. These rapids range from tame sluiceways to a shoulder-high waterfall, where teens chill out watching sorority girls lose their bikini tops. Here’s how to tube it right. 1) Get your puncture-resistant, Barcalounger-size radial inner tubes for $12.50 at the streamside Conoco on Broadway and Arapahoe. 2) Sneakers, everyone! If sandals sufficed, you could grab any number washed up on shore. 3) Hide a six-pack of something frosty near the take-out’s sunny south steps. Beer is illegal in Boulder’s parks. Never, ever hide beer. 4) Launch! Feet first, butt up, valve stem down. 5) Warning: That guy over there is probably urinating in his surf trunks right now. Don’t swallow the water. 6) Butt up! 7) After a big drop, plunge your ankles in to catch the downstream current and get dragged away from the froth. 8) Steer clear of the man snorkeling for sunglasses, the bamboo-flute-playing hippie standing midstream, and the marauding gang of boys on boogie boards. Those practicing tai chi under the maples are generally nonthreatening, but you can’t be too careful. 9) Relax your butt. The second half is a mellow drift through a tunnel of cottonwood trees. Can you taste the ice-cold Fanta?

Summer Essentials

summer style

DRIFT ON IN: The photographs on these pages were shot surfside at Cocoa Beach’s landmark 1912 Driftwood House. Owner Rob Sullivan, a local board shaper, runs his surfboard and clothing company, Driftwood, out of the vintage structure.

HOUSE PARTY: From left, on Blake, vintage shirt by MELET MERCANTILE; jeans ($108) by LUCKY BRAND JEANS. On Brandy, camisole top ($198) and leather pants ($1,198) by RALPH LAUREN BLUE LABEL. On Ryan, vintage T-shirt by MELET MERCANTILE; button-up shirt ($50) by WRANGLER JEANS; suede pants ($695) from POLO BY RALPH LAUREN; flip-flops ($15) by HAVAIANAS. On Victoria, crochet top ($98) and jeans ($165) by RALPH LAUREN BLUE LABEL. On Mike, sweater ($150) and cargo shorts ($85) from POLO BY RALPH LAUREN; boots ($110) by NIKE. On Nick, vintage jeans jacket by LEVI’S; vintage T-shirt by MELET MERCANTILE; cargo shorts ($85) from POLO BY RALPH LAUREN; flip-flops ($12) by HAVAIANAS. On Katie, vintage poncho and necklace from POLO BY RALPH LAUREN; jeans ($92) by LUCKY BRAND JEANS.


Essential Summer: Liquid Refreshment

Forget the apple martinis. Parallel-park your sloop between the million-dollar yachts at the wharf at Sam’s Anchor Café, in Tiburon, on the sunny north side of San Francisco Bay, or mix up your own tangy glass of SAM’S PINK LEMONADE:
1 1/4 oz citrus vodka
1 1/4 oz 7Up
1/4 oz fresh lemon juice
1/2 oz sweet-and-sour mix
1 oz cranberry juice
Serve on the rocks in a 12-oz glass with a twist of lemon.

—H. Thayer Walker

Wheels Up

With enough vertical feet and hundred-mile views to keep your blood pumping for a week, the Telluride-to-Moab mountain-bike route stands handlebars and stem above your usual summer ride. Operated by privately owned San Juan Hut Systems, this 215-mile route lets you and up to seven pals pedal from the San Juans’ 14,000-foot peaks and spruce-carpeted slopes down to the twisting canyons of Utah’s red-rock country. No need to pack heavy—each night you’ll stay in a one-room wooden hut stocked with sleeping pads and bags (just bring your own liner) and enough bacon, eggs, pasta, and beer to keep everyone in the group satisfied. The seven-day, six-night route—which follows mostly doubletrack fire roads—is open every summer from June 1 to October 1 and costs $553 per person. Go between mid-June and early July, when storms are less likely, and you can catch the lupines and Indian paintbrush in bloom. On the final descent into Moab, opt for the more challenging Porcupine Rim Trail, then stash your bike and head over to the Moab Brewery for a patio pint of Dead Horse Ale and a view of the La Sal Mountains, which cradle the last of the hard miles you just rode. 970-626-3033,

Sweet Freedom

Boston, MA
Boston calls itself “headquarters for America’s biggest Independence Day party,” and we have to agree. The free, all-day extravaganza draws upwards of 700,000 to the banks of the Charles River. The Boston Pops performs, fighter jets buzz overhead, and—for the finale—17,500 pounds of pyrotechnics are launched into the sky from barges. Best seat in the house? Why, the bow of your boat, of course.

Galena, IL
Birthplace of Ulysses S. Grant, this hilly river town of 3,500 kicks off the celebration with a morning parade, just like any small town should, followed by rooftop parties, wine-and-cheese tastings, live music, art exhibits—sponsored by local merchants—and, at dusk, a patriotic sound-off in the midwestern sky.

Telluride, CO
Declare your independence at Telluride’s fiercely funky parade, in which locals and visitors march, ride, skate, gallop, and dance down Colorado Avenue in homemade costumes (picture risqué cowgirls and dancing superheroes). After the local firefighters’ ribs-and-roast barbecue, enter the pie-eating contest, then burn it off during the sack races. At sunset, lie back on the lawn—there’s nothing like fireworks against all the purple mountains’ majesty.

The Beach Rx

While camping on what is now my favorite beach, I once stepped on a scorpion.


I was alone in Cayo Costa State Park, a barrier island of sand and palms about 100 miles south of Tampa, Florida. I rushed to my boat, then to a neighboring island restaurant, where I called the only doctor I knew. It was a Sunday, near midnight.


“Is there much pain?” he asked.


Nope, the slight burning sensation had faded.


“Any dizziness? Uncontrollable salivation?”


It was a scorpion, I reminded him. Not a werewolf.


His indifference changed to irritation. “Did the scorpion sting you on the tallywhacker?”


Was the man drunk? “No!” I snapped. “Didn’t I just tell you I stepped on it?”


“Yes, but I’m a urologist. So why the hell are you bothering me at this hour?”


Return to my camp, the doctor advised, and administer alcohol and ice.


It is a wonderful thing to sit alone on a beach, on a starry night, with nothing to do but drink a thermos of margaritas as prescribed by a pissed-off physician.


Filtered through tequila, a beach becomes more than a percussion skin for waves. This particular beach is many miles long and shaped like a new moon, a convex curve extending into the Gulf of Mexico. My camp spot was at the island’s narrowest point. It was an isolated place with no docks and no homes, centered on a fragile land break bordered by sea, and thus more intimately connected to a wider world. But this small section of beach was now linked to my own small history.


The scorpion was not my last intimate encounter on this beach. My wife and I returned often to that camping spot. Our sons learned to snorkel there. They learned to throw a cast net and how to build a fire that’s good for frying fish.


Both sons-out of college now-still camp there. It remains my favorite place to go for a solitary jog or swim.


Cayo Costa State Park offers primitive cabins ($30 per person per night) and tent camping ($18 per site per night); rental information, 941-964-0375

Rapid Transit

Flush with western Montana’s signature sapphire runoff, the upper Middle Fork of the Flathead is the best float trip you’ve never heard of. Geography is the Flathead’s own permit system—the put-in is tucked away in the Great Bear Wilderness, south of Glacier National Park—so traffic is limited to those willing to fly a Cessna 206 into Schafer Meadows’ backcountry airstrip from Kalispell or horsepack their gear six miles along Granite Creek to the put-in. The river is narrow and steep, meaning you’ll want a slim sports car of a raft and heads-up guiding to make a clean run through four days of Class IV rapids to the take-out at Bear Creek. You’ll camp in Douglas fir and lodgepole pine forests surrounded by the jagged peaks of the Flathead Range, pick rising 20-inch cutthroat out of the herd with a dry fly, and hike to Castle Lake and the cirque-born waterfall that feeds it. The best whitewater is before July, but the fishing peaks later that month during the caddis-and-stone-fly hatch. Four days, $1,095 ($100 extra for horse-packed trips); Glacier Raft Company, 406-888-5454,

The Last Picture Show

a guide to summer

Watch movies under the stars with HP’s ep9010 Instant Cinema Digital Projector. The unit combines a DVD player, a DLP front projector, and a booming sound system and throws a nine-foot image onto any handy garage door or brick wall. $2,000;

WHERE TO FIND IT: DRIFTWOOD, ; HAVAIANAS, ; JET, 323-651-4129; LEVI’S, ; LUCKY BRAND JEANS, ; MELET MERCANTILE, 212-925-8353; NIKE, ; OAKLEY, ; O’NEILL, ; PATAGONIA, ; POLO, RLX BY RALPH LAUREN, and RALPH LAUREN BLUE LABEL, ; POLO JEANS CO. RALPH LAUREN, ; R BY 45 RPM, ; RH VINTAGE, ; RIP CURL, ; ROGAN, ; ROXY BY QUIKSILVER, ; TRACY FEITH, 323-655-1444; WRANGLER JEANS, CREDITS: Stylist: Deborah Watson; Prop Stylist: Forest Watson; Hair: Moiz Alladina for Stephen Knoll Salon; Makeup: Teresa Pemberton/Judy Casey; Production:

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Maine:

national parks, state parks

American Splendor: Canyonlands National Park

Utah:





Michigan/Minnesota:





Tennessee/North Carolina:





Colorado:





Washington:





California:





PLUS:

Acadia National Park, Cutler Coast Public Reserve Land

national parks, state parks

The coastal calm of Acadia National Park

ACADIA
THE NORTHEAST’S ONLY NATIONAL PARK, Acadia manages to shoehorn some 2.8 million annual visits into its compact landscape, mostly on Mount Desert Island (with smaller tracts on Isle au Haut and nearby Schoodic Peninsula). The finest way to lose the crowds and take in the park’s cymbal-crash surf, craggy stone-shored islets, and requisite clifftop lighthouses is to venture out of bounds by SEA-KAYAKING. Put in at the public boat ramp in Manset, located on the southern end of Mount Desert Island, and mosey up Somes Sound, the only bona fide fjord in the lower 48, for a five-hour voyage through the Maine that sets watercolorists’ hearts aflutter. Watch for porpoises, seals, and the mountains, which rise more than 400 feet in elevation from the shore. (And do yourself a favor, Cap’n: Time it so that you’re paddling in and out of Somes Sound with the tides.) Another day’s ocean ramble begins at Seal Harbor beach and aims south for the Cranberry Isles; Little Cranberry, with the Islesford Historical Museum and classic seafood served at the Islesford Dock restaurant, makes a fine spot to stretch your sea legs. The most reliable marine-mammal ogling goes down in Frenchman Bay, off Bar Harbor, where you can paddle around Bar Island and the magnificent and uninhabited Porcupine Islands. Keep a polite distance from the seal ledges, please. Hazardous conditions in these parts can include 55-degree water, 12-foot tides, persistent fog, and currents; unless your kayak schooling includes a master’s in wet exits, hire a guide. For group trips and boat rentals, contact an outfitter: Try Acadia Bike and Coastal Kayaking (800-526-8615, www.acadiafun.com) or Aquaterra �����ԹϺ���s (207-288-0007, ). Post-adventure, the Inn at Bay Ledge (doubles, $160–$375; 207-288-4204, ), perched atop an 80-foot cliff overlooking Frenchman Bay, makes a most civilized base camp.

CUTLER COAST PUBLIC RESERVE LAND
Acadia’s watery splendors are a mere warm-up for the astounding sea views you’ll encounter on the Bold Coast, two hours north of the park on routes 3, 1, and 191. Spend two days BACKPACKING one of the East Coast’s longest seaside trails, the ten-mile Fairy Head Loop, opened seven years ago. Few people take in the raw beauty of this unpolished coast. See for yourself on a figure-eight loop that combines the Coastal Trail with the Inland Trail. The path meanders through blueberry heaths and boardwalked swamplands before opening up atop 70-foot cliffs jagging out over Cobscook Bay. You’ll hike through fog-nourished spruce woods, in and out of seal coves, and to Black Point Beach, littered with sea urchins, a good spot for a 50-degree cold plunge (beware of currents). Watch for eagles overhead and sprays on the horizon from the whales that cruise past from May to October. At Fairy Head, the farthest point of the loop, you’ll find three designated campsites tucked into the woods atop the cliffs. From here, Canada’s Grand Manan Island looks otherworldly in the orange blush of sunrise. Maps are at the trailhead, and you can pick up supplies in Machias.

Canyonlands National Park, Goblin Valley State Park

national parks, state parks

Utah’s Labyrinth: Canyonlands National Park

CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK RENAISSANCE FUNHOGS, BRACE YOURSELVES: This trip, combining three days of MOUNTAIN BIKING with five days of WHITEWATER RAFTING on the Colorado River, may be the tastiest pairing since chocolate and cabernet. It takes you straight into the heart of Canyonlands’ high-desert rock garden, defined by the goosenecking canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers and an almost hallucinogenic symphony of spires, buttes, mesas, hoodoos, fins, arches, and slickrock. Phase one: a two-wheeled thrill ride on most of the 100-mile White Rim Trail, a celebrated track that requires a four-wheel-drive support vehicle to tote food and gear. Aim counterclockwise, along the Green River in the Island in the Sky district, and take a side trail at Lathrop Canyon or Potash to your prearranged meeting with your rafting guides. Here you embark on phase two: epic Southwest whitewater. A few miles below the confluence of the Green and the Colorado roars Cataract Canyon, a chain of about 25 Class III–V rapids that some claim trump those in the Grand Canyon, at least in the high-water months of May and June. O.A.R.S. Moab guides raft trips ($1,227, return flight from Lake Powell included; 800-342-5938, ).

GOBLIN VALLEY STATE PARK
Now for the soft side of your adventure: NARROWS HIKING. While you might feel hoodooed out, you’ll be awestruck anew by the whimsical sandstone gargoyles and skull-shaped gremlins of this state park. Goblin Valley, less than two hours from Canyonlands via U.S. 191, I-70, and U.S. 24, noses up to the southern end of the San Rafael Swell—an oval-shaped 3,000-foot fold of sandstone and shale wedged onto the northern edge of the Colorado Plateau. The land is so fantastic that it’s siphoning Moab loyalists—fast. These are the salient geological features: a 75-mile-long by 30-mile-wide rock dome, riddled with red-wall canyons, which meets a reef, a ring of nearly vertical eroded strata studded with slot canyons. Your hike into this alien land: the seven-mile Ding and Dang Loop, which in some sections carves through the reef via a slot that’s only as wide as a person. There’s plenty of scenic camping to be had all along the swell—if you travel light and can squeeze your backpack through the narrows. A more comfortable alternative is to do the route as a day hike and then set up your tent at the park’s 24-site campground (for reservations, call 800-322-3770).

Isle Royale National Park, Superior National Forest

national parks, state parks

Floating Kingdoms: Isle Royale National Park

ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK
Kayakers come to this roadless, carless Lake Superior island for its rocky shoreline; fishermen and canoeists, for its 47 inland lakes; and backpackers, for its wooded basaltic ridges populated by moose and timber wolves. A savvy and intrepid handful of park visitors know how to really get lost here: Venture below the lake’s forbidding surface for SHIPWRECK DIVING. Ten major vessels have come to rest in park waters in the last 127 years, and the same frigid 40-degree water that forces divers to don drysuits has drastically slowed the wrecks’ decomposition. Visibility is often so good you can survey a ship’s exterior 40 feet down without a light. The shallower remains are most popular, such as the America, a package freighter that sank in 1928 and whose bow lies just a few feet below the surface. Others sit deeper; the Kamloops, a Canadian freighter not located until 50 years after it succumbed to a blizzard in 1927, lies between 175 and 260 feet under. Join an outfitter—Superior Trips (763-785-9516, www.superiortrips.com) or RLT Divers Inc. (507-238-4671, www.rltdivers.com)—and spend a week diving and living off a boat. Isle Royale is open mid-April through October; the ferry from Grand Portage, Minnesota, takes three hours.

SUPERIOR NATIONAL FOREST
Just as Isle Royale island fever sets in, the ferry hops you back to Grand Portage, on the doorstep of the wet wonderland of Superior National Forest. This vast two-million-acre area is home to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and its 1,500 miles of routes on silvery lakes and streams choked with northern pike and walleye. But here’s the surprise: Superior also hosts some fine MOUNTAIN BIKING, particularly in the rolling, moose-trodden highlands above Tofte and Lutsen. Minnesota’s Cook County is composed almost entirely of public lands, which translates to more than 500 miles of rideable forest gravel roads, two-track logging roads, and ski trails. (You may want to carry an inflatable pool toy to float your bike across deep water.) Start by driving an hour from Grand Portage on Highway 61 south to Grand Marais, your base for fat-tire fun; the Pincushion Bed & Breakfast (doubles, $95–$120; 800-922-5000, ) is a piney retreat overlooking Lake Superior. Try the 25-mile Devil’s Track Lake Loop, which starts out from the nearby campground on County Road 8. Superior North Outdoor Center (218-387-2186) has rentals and maps, and outfits inn-to-inn rides.

Great Smoky Mountains, Nantahala National Forest

Appalachian Adrenaline: Great Smoky Mountains National Park

GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK
IN THE SMOKIES, THE NUMBERS TELL good news and bad: 800 miles of trails, almost 700 miles of fishable streams, hazy blue ridges topping out above 6,000 feet (some of the highest east of the Rockies), 5,600 species of plants, more than 60 of native mammals … and upwards of nine million humans every year. So head where the masses aren’t—the Greenbrier area, on the Tennessee side—for three sweet and soothing days of HIKING and FLY-FISHING. Start hoofing it at the Porters Creek trailhead, reached by entering the park off U.S. 321 east of Gatlinburg. Follow the wide creek for 3.6 miles until you reach Campsite 31, gaining about 1,500 feet of elevation in the process—good reason to stop and wet a line along the way. Casting is easier here than in many of the park’s cramped, brush-banked streams, and you can catch rainbow trout. Next morning, backtrack 2.7 miles from your campsite to the Brushy Mountain Trail. You’ll cross trout streams and roam through tulip trees, hemlocks, rhododendrons, and mountain laurels. Bunk that night at the Mount LeConte shelter, a three-sided stone structure at 6,440 feet (free; reserve through the backcountry office at 865-436-1297). Or book a slot at the LeConte Lodge, a rustic haven reachable only by trail and lit by kerosene lamps (cabins and group lodges start at $83.50 per adult per night; 865-429-5704, ). On the third day, march six more miles on the Boulevard Trail, encountering many a heart-stopping mountain vista, to another shelter, at Icewater Springs near the Appalachian Trail (70 miles of which traverse the park). Finally, a 2.7-mile taste of the AT takes you to Newfound Gap Road, where you thoughtfully arranged for a shuttle to pick you up ($32 for up to five people; A Walk in the Woods, 865-436-8283).

NANTAHALA NATIONAL FOREST
Shake off the quiet of the past few days with high-intensity WHITEWATER RAFTING on the Chattooga near Nantahala National Forest. South of the national park, off highways 441 and 76, there’s easy access to the river’s sections three and four, a rumble strip of phenomenal Class III-V rapids. You’ll see nary a trace of man except your paddle mates, and it’s easy to get Deliverance-spooked while navigating rapids that ribbon through hemlock forest and echoing gorges, and dipping into holes ringed with eerie rock formations. After taming the first ten miles, set up camp at Woodall Shoals, where diversions include rope-swing acrobatics. Day two gets burlier, with 4.5 romping miles graciously followed by two calming miles of lake waters. Old Creek Lodge (cabins for two, $89–$229; 800-895-6343, ), in the artsy town of Highlands, is your post- paddle roost. Spin out your rafting legs by MOUNTAIN-BIKING the 6.6-mile, rhododendron-choked Blue Valley Loop Trail; from Highlands, access the trailhead via Clear Creek Road and Forest Road 367. Squeeze in a two-mile hike to the gray-cliff summit of 4,986-foot Whiteside Mountain, off Highway 64 between Highlands and Cashiers, for views of the rolling hills of North Carolina and Georgia. The Nantahala Outdoor Center (800-232-7238, ) leads overnight trips on the Chattooga and rents mountain bikes.

Rocky Mountain National Park, Routt National Forest

national parks, state parks

Colorado Sick-Track: Rocky Mountain National Park

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK
JUST AN HOUR AND A HALF’S DRIVE from Denver and less than an hour from Boulder, Rocky Mountain National Park draws legions of Front Range residents with its elk meadows, hikes to chilly alpine lakes, and Trail Ridge Road, the Divide-straddling highway. Less appreciated is that when it comes to CLIMBING, the park’s got something for every subculture: alpine routes, sport climbs, bouldering, and ice climbs. At 14,255 feet, Longs Peak is “the granddaddy of the fourteeners,” says Jim Detterline, a ranger who’s summited Longs 220 times and counting. Thousands of other people also reach the top each year, most of them by the Keyhole Route (the most popular path), and most in July or August. Very few brave the Stettner’s Ledges route on the mountain’s east face. Their loss. Rich with alpine history, the climb, rated a Grade III, 5.7-5.8, was first ascended in 1927 by a pair of German-American brothers from Illinois; at the time, it was among the country’s toughest routes, and it’s still no gimme, even for those acclimatized to high altitude. Stettner’s entails a pre-climb backcountry bivouac, a glacier crossing, and six pitches over fractured granite, chimneys, cracks, and ledges, all capped by another 600-foot scramble to the top. Typically, this means six to eight hours of heroics after a 4 a.m. start to avoid afternoon lightning. But you’ll still want to pause to catch your breath and take in your surroundings, which include a close-up view of the Diamond, an 800-foot-tall face. Contact the Colorado Mountain School in Estes Park (970-586-5758) for lessons and guided climbs.

ROUTT NATIONAL FOREST
ONE OF Colorado’s greatest untrampled MOUNTAIN-BIKING play spots is tucked away in the northernmost reaches of high-elevation Routt National Forest, two hours from Rocky Mountain National Park. For three days of wheeled heaven, head west from the park on Highway 40 (you’ll hit the Continental Divide at Rabbit Ears Pass) and continue north of Steamboat Springs to Routt, named for the state’s first governor. The formidable Nipple Peak/Lopez Creek Loop, accessed via Forest Road 487, near Hahn’s Lake will humble even hardcore riders. This 16-mile burner follows nappy Trail 1156 through dense conifers and lupine-sprinkled meadows before a four-mile grind to the saddle near 10,324-foot Nipple Peak. Then it’s up over a divide, down along Willow Creek, and onto Trail 1147. Call it a day at the Hinman Park Campground, next to the Elk River, east of the town of Clark. It’s a delightful, lodgepole-pine-dappled camp, somewhat less used than its neighbor sites in the area. The following day, your riding agenda focuses on the Big Red Park/Manzanares Trail, which wraps along Big Red Park, a large mountain meadow, and has stellar views of the Mount Zirkel Wilderness Area next door. If you’ve got juice left, there’s still the Hinman Trail, also known as Trail 1177, near your campsite, which unleashes seven miles of aspen-fringed, rolling singletrack studded with roots, rocks, downed trees, and—just for extra credit—a couple of stream crossings. In Steamboat Springs, Sore Saddle Cyclery (970-879-1675, ) has bikes and maps.

Olympic National Park, Rose Lake National Recreation Area

national parks, state parks

Washington’s Never-Never Land: Olympic National Park

OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK
FEW NATIONAL PARKS MAKE PICKING your poison so gut-wrenching as Olympic does: Should you light out for the 7,000-foot-and-higher peaks and sparkling lakes of the Olympic Peninsula’s interior? The rugged headlands and tide pools of the 65-mile Coastal section, a lengthy ribbon of primitive coastline? Or the moist air and brooding old growth of the temperate rainforest? Tough call, but this should help: For a gratifying combo of remoteness, adventure, and greenery so lush you’d swear you can hear the plants breathing, set aside three or four days to BACKPACK part of the 15-mile out-and-back Queets River Trail, in the park’s southwestern area. To reach the trailhead, drive 45 minutes from Highway 101 along a one-lane gravel washboard, and then ford two rivers, the shallow Sams and the trickier Queets. (Use caution on the Queets; the riverbed is rocky, uneven, slimy in spots, and unpassable at times in spring and early summer.) The trail wanders among Sitka spruces and red cedars, with riverside sandbars inviting quick dunks in the martini-cold Queets and well-situated tent sites. Elk herds have been known to make a cameo. Pick up your wilderness permit ($5, plus a camping fee of $2 per person per night) at any ranger station or information center.

ROSS LAKE NATIONAL RECREATION AREA
Shortcut across Puget Sound to your second destination: Ross Lake National Recreation Area, hard by the Canadian border. Drive north on Highway 101 along the coast to Port Townsend, where it’s a 30-minute ferry ride to Whidbey Island and the cozy Captain Whidbey Inn (doubles, $150–$295; 800-366-4097, ). Next day, drive three hours on State Route 20 to 24-mile-long Ross Lake and the captivating Ross Lake Resort (doubles, $92–$197; 206-386-4437, ). First, there’s one more transportation leg: Ditch your car at milepost 134 on State Route 20 and hike a mile to the water, where a resort boat will ferry you to one of 15 floating cabins. Mellow Ross Lake, home to beavers and beatniks, has premier LAKE PADDLING, with 20 designated boat-in campsites if you want to sleep out (pick up a free backcountry permit at the Wilderness Information Center on State Route 20 on your way in; 360-873-4590; the resort rents canoes and kayaks). Afternoon winds tend to blow strongly uplake, so move in the morning. Your warm-up: Paddle the four miles up and down the Ruby Arm inlet. Or ride a motorboat to the trailhead for 6,100-foot Desolation Peak. It’s a 4.7-mile, 4,300-foot billy-goat hoof up to the lookout, where Jack Kerouac is rumored to have camped for 63 days. The views—of glacier-capped peaks and glistening Ross Lake—are nothing short of majestic.

Olympic National Park, Rose Lake National Recreation Area

national parks, state parks

Oh Capitan, My Capitan: Yosemite National Park

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK
QUICK—TRY TO THINK OF A NATIONAL PARK whose icons are more familiar than Yosemite’s masterpieces of rock and water: Half Dome, El Capitan, Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite Falls. No park comes close to this one’s abundant glacier-polished granite, a veritable shrine of ROCK CLIMBING. For those with aid-climbing skills, the tip of Lost Arrow Spire is an electrifying place to rise above the fray, quite literally, with outrageous views of Half Dome and Yosemite Valley. The spire is a tapering finger of rock that parallels the main Yosemite Falls wall, with an adrenalinizing twist: Although you climb only 200 feet on the spire, there’s some 2,500 feet between you and the valley floor below, more than enough to get you mumbling incoherently about your own mortality. By the numbers the climb is Grade III, 5.7, C.2; if any of that sounds like quantum physics, you’re not ready for Lost Arrow. (Instead, scamper up classic but less serious climbs like two-pitch Bishops Terrace, a 5.8.) There are two ways to approach the spire; we suggest making it a weekend trip either way, camping off-trail the nights before and after the climb. If you have ample sweat to spill, hike the four steep miles from the Valley on Yosemite Falls Trail via Yosemite Point. (Payoff: At about 6,500 feet, upper Yosemite Falls makes spectacular trail company.) For details of Yosemite routes and great climbing history, check out climber Chris McNamara’s Web site at . For lessons or guided climbs, contact Yosemite Mountaineering School (209-372-8435, ).

STANISLAUS NATIONAL FOREST
Hugging Yosemite’s northwest shoulder is the strikingly similar terrain of the Stanislaus National Forest, with more than 800 miles of rivers and streams, 1,470 designated campsites, and plenty of wilderness access points for sublime RAFTING and MOUNTAIN BIKING. Allow two hours to drive from Yosemite to a choice stretch of unpopulated whitewater, the North Fork of the Stanislaus, a steep, narrow canyon best run in May and June. Here await six miles of relentless whitewater, California’s longest continuous Class IV stretch. En route to this trove, spend a night at Murphys Historic Hotel in Murphys, a charismatic Gold Rush town off Highway 4 (doubles, $65–$100; 800-532-7684). Then start the wild ride at Sourgrass Crossing, about 20 miles from Murphys, navigating massive drops, boulder slaloms, and stair-step waterfalls, into Calaveras Big Trees State Park. O.A.R.S. offers daylong rafting adventures ($117–$143 per person; 800-346-6277, ). Next up: Continue on Highway 4 to Bear Valley, trade your paddle for knobbies, and tackle the Bear Valley/Lake Alpine route, ten miles of rock-hopping singletrack. Bear Valley �����ԹϺ��� Company (209-753-2834) has maps, guides, and rentals. With a sunset-facing deck and knotty timbered cabins, Lake Alpine Lodge (one-bedroom cabins from $120; 209-753-6358, ) is your serene base camp. Don’t dawdle: Highway 4 could be the state’s next scenic byway.

Ramp It Up

BMX: Lake Ferris, California

Brandon Nicholls, now 14 years old, got his first for-real BMX bike on his seventh Christmas. “I just started riding from there,” he says in a voice so newly dropped to baritone that he uses it slowly and carefully. Where he rode to was BMX glory. Last December, Brandon became the number-one–ranked amateur rider in the American Bicycle Association, BMX’s leading sanctioning body.

At five-foot-nine and 170 pounds, Brandon is fast growing into his voice. On a Sunday after lunch in Moreno Valley, California, 70 miles east of L.A., he wheels his $1,900 aluminum-frame GT Speed Series UltraBox, provided as part of his sponsorship deal with the GT/Panasonic Shock Wave BMX Team, to the family minivan. Brandon, his parents, and his brother Kyle are about to decamp to the nearby Lake Perris BMX course, as it has on nearly every Sunday afternoon for the last seven years. Brandon’s parents, Bill and Marci, will help officiate while their boy cranks out lap after lap in a local-level race, hurdling dirt-packed jumps and 25-foot-long stretches of dirt lined with 15 one- to two-foot bumps.

Once rolling, the Nicholls van takes on the glow shared by all family vehicles on the way to uplift and togetherness. “I think it’s important to do things with them, not just drop them off and pick them up later,” says Marci, a zaftig motherly sunbeam who works as a state truck inspector. (In lieu of a nametag, she’s wearing a T-shirt that proclaims her to be Brandon’s Mom.) Bill, a contractor who grew up in nearby Huntington Beach, brags about the preeminence of BMX here in the suburbifying drylands of Riverside County, the sport’s Fertile Crescent. In fact, BMX was born in these parts in the early 1970s as bicycle motocross, a nonmotorized version of motocross that pits eight torso-armored racers against one another in one-lap heats, or “motos,” on the 1,100 to 1,300-foot-long tracks.

Bill’s own recreational background—he used to race Baja buggies and motorcycles—says a lot about why this is BMX country. Daddies here share a predilection for things that burn gas and go like hell. Motorless kiddie motorsport, then, is a natural. Some dads turn to BMX when their kids get hooked, and the 60,000-member-strong ABA is more than accommodating: Age groups range from five-and-under to 56-and-over, with the 13-and-14-year-old division the biggest. Yet despite its competitive bent, BMX boasts a thriving recreational side, too: Nonracers flock to homemade dirt courses—outfitted with short, swooping downhills and steep jumps—in parks all across the United States.

Today at Lake Perris, Brandon Nicholls is in his element. He rockets down the starting hill, looking like a steelhead swimming with catfish. “Check this moto right here,” machine-guns the announcer, somebody’s dad being unhinged. “Check out Brandon Nicholls!” Kids who hope for BMX fame can see it in their midst, while parental hope is spelled out on the side of the Chevy pickup that belongs to the guy who runs the track: Keeping kids clean in the dirt.

The Dirt: More than a dozen L.A. suburbs have BMX tracks. Armoring up for your first moto requires ABA membership ($35 per year). At the Lake Perris track, practice times and races are scheduled throughout the week; call 909-657-4917 for details.

SPECIALIZED FATBOY HEMI

VITALS: $600; 800-245-3462;
WEIGHT: 4 pounds frame, 24.7 pounds complete
FRAME: No tubes, just an aluminum monocoque
FORK: Stout, chrome-moly unicrown
COMPONENT HIGHLIGHTS: A smattering of Specialized’s own parts (cranks, tires, handlebars) built to handle the high-flying rigors of the BMX track
THE RIDE: Whether you’re perfecting a gate-start at the track or simply hamming it up on the local trails, at $600 the Fatboy Hemi is cheap enough that you and Junior can think about getting matching bikes to work on your double-jumps together. (Sure beats hucking fastballs at each other.) The Hemi’s trademark monocoque construction makes it stiffer than most BMX frames, and it comes adorned with nice touches like a built-in pad on top of the frame—which, when you come up short on that double-jump, means Junior won’t necessarily be an only child.

S&M KRIS BENNETT

VITALS: $915; 714-835-3400;
WEIGHT: 6.95 pounds frame; 25.7 pounds complete
FRAME: Chrome-moly steel
FRAME: Stout, chrome-moly unicrown
COMPONENT HIGHLIGHTS: Pricey Profile three-piece cranks are worth every penny for their balance of durability and light weight
THE RIDE: Show up at any BMX street scene or dirt-lot jump astride the Bennett—named after the famed racer—and the local competition will immediately classify you as one of two breeds: dark horse threat or witless poser. You are, after all, riding the signature bike of one of the best “dirt-jumpers” in the country. Haven’t heard of Bennett or his niche MTV-style sport? You’re obviously not a threat. But that’s OK because the Bennett, with construction and componentry designed to handle the impact of the occasional flat landing on hardpacked dirt, is tough enough to be ridden away from all but the worst rookie-beaters. —ANDREW JUSKAITIS

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