For connoisseurs of rugged, alpine landscapes, the Sawtooth Mountains of central Idaho are unquestionably the crown jewel of the Gem State. Michael Lanza, a regular contributor to Backpacker, astutely observes that the region’s numerous “10,000-foot peaks, [which] form a Sierra-quality skyline, [and] an eastern escarpment...
The first time I heard an elk bugle, I was a greenhorn teenager sitting on a mountainside in southern British Columbia’s Selkirk Mountains, miles from the nearest road. My father had kindly brought me along on a wilderness horseback hunt, with elk as the primary...
In the rural 1.5-million-acre Blackfoot watershed, Montana’s characteristic working lands are on full display. Generational ranches are replete with grazing cattle and haystacks; rolling grass and strings of timber are seldom interrupted by the intermittent farmhouse or cabin; deer and elk graze, while waterfowl and...