Top 11 Wilderness Experiences
From luxury tent-camping to glacier hiking, here are the best ways to have fun in the Western wilderness.
Get a massage in the wilderness
Who it's for: CEOs, celebs, you on a splurge.
The essence: Camping for people who love nature and indoor plumbing.
The vibe: Old West meets Old Money.
Don't worry about: Pitching a tent.
The Resort at Paws Up is as glampy as glamping gets: Each of its palatial canvas-walled tent camps comes with butler service and furnishings worthy of the Ritz. At suppertime, you'll gather with fellow campers in a sweeping dining pavilion to savor gourmet creations like sautéed quail with summer black truffles. Paws Up has its rugged side too: It sits on 37,000 acres of Montana wilderness and boasts 10 miles of the Blackfoot River (of A River Runs Through It fame). Guests sign up for everything from world-class fly-fishing to hot-air ballooning. Then, when they're done adventuring, they retreat to Spa Town, a tranquil outpost of treatment tents ringing the edge of a meadow. Ah, wilderness. From $820, including meals; opens most years around May 20; pawsup.com.
Luxury camping
At Rockwater Secret Cove Resort, "tenthouse" suites--with king-size beds and tubs for two--perch on B.C.'s Sunshine Coast. The resort spa takes advantage of the scenery too--you get your massage on a platform overlooking the Pacific. From $341 U.S.; rockwatersecretcoveresort.com.
Go on a cattle drive
Who it's for: Fans of City Slickers and City Slickers II.
Experience needed: Beginner riders welcome.
What to bring: Seriously sturdy clothing.
Who shouldn't go: Vegans.
Maybe you've mastered Angry Birds. But slingshotting a sparrow through the air is nothing compared with herding 500 head of cattle up a California mountainside.
If you're ready to take the challenge, sign on for a spring or fall cattle drive at the V6 Ranch, in Monterey County's Diablo Range. The four-day drive puts you up on a quarter horse, helping wranglers urge cows and calves and steers across the V6's 20,000 acres. Each drive can handle 25 guests, and beginning riders are welcome (as are the kind of experts who bring their own horses). Food is from the V6 chuckwagon; there's ample opportunity to hone riding and roping and campfire-ghost-storytelling skills. But maybe the biggest draw is the V6 itself. This little-known corner of California is spectacular--especially the drives' base camp atop 3,600-foot Mustang Peak, with views east to the Sierra and west to the Santa Lucia Range. $750 for 3 nights, including meals; v6ranch.com.
Wrangling adventures
Montana's Lazy E-L Ranch is 12,000 acres of heaven just outside Yellowstone--where you get the chance to help wranglers move 2,300 yearlings through the Beartooth Mountains. Cabins from $1,500 per week, including meals; lazyel.com.
Walk a legendary trail
Who it's for: Fans of lovely campgrounds; people who dress up as Meriwether Lewis.
What to bring: Historically accurate snacks 'n' drinks: jerky, corn whiskey.
Pony Express Trail. In 2011, this 1,800-mile trail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to San Francisco may look like a failed start-up: The Pony Express lasted only 18 months. But that was enough to enshrine its riders as the epitome of American cool. The trail parallels U.S. Highway 50 through the Sierra Nevada, and a great place to hunker down while you explore it is Fallen Leaf Campground (from $28; 1.usa.gov/ft7fT3), just below Lake Tahoe in California. nps.gov/poex/index.htm.
Find solitude in secret places
Who it's for: Serious car campers, e.g., outdoorsy families.
Be sure to bring: Well, everything, often including potable water, and always a good map.
You're on your own: Check BLM websites or offices for directions and weather conditions.
Shhh! The Bureau of Land Management is the country's biggest camping secret. It oversees 245 million acres of fresh-air opportunities, or a whopping 40 percent of all U.S. public property--an astounding array of beauty, from tumbling waters to Mars-like deserts, skyscraping summits, and mysterious canyons. In most of those, campsites are primitive, free, and readily available--just roll up and pop the tent. Camping doesn't get any easier, cheaper, or less crowded. In fact, you could argue that BLM should stand for "Beautiful Lands for Moi."
It's only 17 miles from Sin City, but you'd never know Las Vegas exists: The warm sandstone cliffs of Red Rock Canyon (on.doi.gov/3AjpQ8) are a world unto themselves, with seriously beautiful desert day hikes, secret troves of rock art, and more climbing routes than you could scale in a lifetime. Camping $15; campground closes May 31 for the summer; call 702/515-5350 for fall reopening.
More of our favorite underrated Western spots
Remote camps
Hot days on the river lead inevitably to golden evenings with a fly rod on the water's edge. When you cast along Idaho's East Fork Salmon River (bit.ly/ik8P0g), you're tying into timeless Hemingway country. East Fork Campground, $10; on.doi.gov/eSJCiE.
Favorite Western campgrounds
Trek backcountry by horse
Who it's for: People who don't like lugging backpacks up a mountain.
Pros: Backcountry adventure the easy way.
Cons: You feel guilty when you look at your horse.
I don't get it. The horse is the one who's been sweating--why am I so tuckered out? Then I realize I'm just really, really relaxed. By the time orange-purple twilight settles over canyon country around Hell's Backbone Ranch and Trail in southern Utah, all I desire is a slab of steak, dutch-oven taters, strawberry shortcake, and maybe a shooting star as I settle into a sleeping bag. Then I relive the journey: the view from the saddle of my quarter horse into the labyrinthine canyons of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, or up onto Dixie National Forest's Boulder Mountain, or to the 11,000-foot Aquarius Plateau. The air, which might be the cleanest in the Lower 48. The lessons from owners Breck and Becky Crystal, who taught primitive outdoor skills for years at the prestigious Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS) and lead every pack trip. By the time I polish off something sweet from Becky's garden and tumble into the sack, I've had the fullest of days under the sun for both mind and body--and I can't wait to wake up, saddle up, and do it again. From $550 for 3 days, including meals; intermediate riders and up; bouldermountaintrails.com.
Connect with the elements
Who it's for: Druids, bucket-listers.
Be sure to bring: Tent, sleeping bag.
Bring this too: Camera with extra-large memory card. (See some of our readers' best travel photos.)
Why should polar bears have all the fun? Strap ice-gripping crampons to your feet with MICA Guides and tiptoe on Alaska's pristine Matanuska Glacier, where you'll come to know a serac from a crevasse from a bergschrund on one of the West's most exotic hikes. From $45; micaguides.com. Matanuska Glacier State Recreation Site; $15 tent sites; 1.usa.gov/hTngiO.
Soak up nature
See the Milky Way. The blackest night reveals the brightest stars, and no place is better for reconnecting to your ancestral awe of the heavens than Natural Bridges National Monument ($6 per vehicle; bit.ly/gMWSiJ), in southeastern Utah. It's the world's first dark-sky park--so great summer stargazing is almost guaranteed. Camping $10.
More on the West's best national monuments
Experience Burning Man
Who it's for: The kind of people who go to Burning Man.
Biggest problem: Portable toilets with long lines.
The solution: Bring your own RV.
Where's the money? Not here--it's a "gift economy" except for the coffee at Center Camp Café.
Not the weather, not the hiking, not the job opportunities. No, this is why you, and everyone before you, came West: freedom. You want to be able to get naked, do drugs, play human foosball, set up a booth where you can smell other people's armpits. Or at least see other people do that stuff. At Burning Man, you see what happens when 50,000 people set up a city in the remote, barren, lifeless, cell-phone-service-free, windstorm-ridden playa of Nevada's Black Rock Desert over Labor Day week and then take it completely down. You want to walk lost down apparitional streets of people in camps, pushing your way through 90° windstorms with a towel turbaned around your head, looking for the girl with the body paint and bird wings who called herself Octodaughter and somehow gave you a warm cookie at 4 a.m. the night before, the one who said she worked at Twitter or Foursquare or maybe it was a coffee shop. You want to see what a lawless culture built by forty-niners and Deadheads and cyberpunks leads to. You want to see a place so free that there's no money, though there is still a post office, diner, coffee shop, dating service, airstrip, transportation, bars, nightclubs, and giant installation art. You want to see freaks. And if you don't, then maybe you belong back in New England, thrilling to the surprise of discovering what people brought to your church potluck. Labor Day Weekend; advance tickets and extensive preparation required; burningman.com.
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