The 5 Best Trips of 2012
1. Best Outfitted Trips: Anywhere with Wilderness Travel
This 37-year-old team in Berkeley, California, dreams up more than 30 unique trips across 75 countries every year and is known for pioneering adventures that other outfitters copy later—kayaking tours through remote stretches of Tierra del Fuego, the world’s highest trek (at 23,000 feet) across Tibet—and doing it all with an eye toward supporting locals and minimizing environmental impact. But what makes Wilderness Travel truly exceptional are the company’s trip developers and guides. Take Barbara Banks, a polyglot who’s spent 23 years with the company traveling hundreds of thousands of miles setting up local connections. (Norwegian ferry captains know her so well, they’ll make unscheduled stops to allow Wilderness Travel groups to disembark directly at their waterside hotel after a day of hiking fjords.) Some recent new trips: sea-kayaking and camping on isolated beaches in Palau, visiting little-seen pyramids in Sudan, and tracking desert lions in Namibia with Flip Stander, a Ph.D. who has spent decades living among the big cats.
2. Best Domestic Adventure Hub: North Carolina
Take California, make the mountains greener and the beaches and restaurants less crowded, and replace all the digital millionaires with hospitable southerners, and you get North Carolina. On the coast, you’ll find some of the East’s best breaks on the Outer Banks, and stand-up paddleboarders cruise through the 160,000-acre Croatan National Forest, filled with salt estuaries and flooded pines. In the west, there’s world-class singletrack and road riding in the Blue Ridge mountains (pros like local Matthew Busche of Trek Factory Racing train for the Tour de France here), 96 miles of Appalachian Trail, and some of the country’s best whitewater at the Nantahala Outdoor Center. That’s to say nothing of cities like Asheville, Wilmington, and Chapel Hill, which are full of farm-to-table restaurants, local breweries, and great music venues. Where to start your trip? Get a room at the two-year-old Aloft hotel in Asheville (from $159) and mountain-bike the Big Avery Loop, a challenging 13-mile romp through rhododendron tunnels and way-off-the-back rock steps. Or rent a house on the Outer Banks in the spring or fall and learn to surf with the folks at Real Watersports (from $100).
3. Best Base Camp: Hoanib Skeleton Coast Camp, Namibia
Yes, getting to Namibia involves at least a full day of travel, but the payoff is worth it: no other landscape is like the surreal Skeleton Coast, which was carved out of lava rock 130 million years ago. One excellent way to see it is via Hoanib Skeleton Coast Camp, a fly-in oasis that opened last August on the banks of the Hoanib River in one of Africa’s most extraordinary wildlife-viewing regions. Desert-adapted rhinos, elephants, and other charismatic megafauna like springbok (a gazelle) linger near the camp’s spacious, fire-warmed common area and eight luxury safari tents (think pitched canvas roofs, big decks, and twin-bed interiors). A small plane can drop you off near the shipwrecks and seal colonies at Mowe Bay. From $500.
4. Best Road Biking: California
The Golden State has 800 miles of coastline and half a dozen mountain ranges—and you can ride practically all of it year-round. From coastal tours like the supported eight-day, 525-mileCalifornia Coast Classic from San Francisco to Los Angeles, to foodie-friendly tours along the back roads of Sonoma (visit sonomacounty.com for routes, rentals, and outfitters), to epic climbs like the five passes and 15,000 feet of elevation gain through the Sierra Nevada during the annual Death Ride ($135), California has greater variety than just about anywhere. Get route maps online at the California Bicycle Coalition, or sign up with an outfitter like Pure Adventures. Its supported, self-directed six-day tours from Yosemite to San Francisco or through Death Valley National Park let you decide where to ride, sleep, and eat, but a leader in a van sets up snack stops and water refills and hauls your gear. It’s like an egoless, six-cylinder domestique ($1,495 for six days).
5. Best Place for a Meal in Ski Boots: Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico
After a morning spent charging Taos’s famously steep West Basin chutes, there’s no better place to refuel than the Bavarian Lodge’s festive outdoor deck. With its waitstaff in dirndls and lederhosen, German fare, and view of Kachina Peak, this ski-in, ski-out chalet is about as close to the Alps as you can get in the southern Rockies. I start with the soft-doughed pretzels and house-made sweet grain mustard. They’re the perfect warm-up for the goulash, bratwurst, or spaetzle (a German version of mac and cheese) and an Asam Bock, a beer on tap from Germany’s Weltenburg Monastery. On powder days, I often don’t end up at the Bavarian until dinner, which is served inside the log-built lodge, where you can still dunk bread in cheese on fondue Tuesdays during the winter. If I’m sleeping in one of the Bavarian’s four luxe suites, waking up to easy access to Taos’s new Kachina lift, which expands the mountain’s lift-served advanced terrain by 50 percent, is heaven. During summer, trails to Williams Lake and New Mexico’s highest peak—13,159-foot Wheeler—are right out your door.—Mary Turner
The 5 Best Trips of 2012
![The 5 Best Trips of 2012]()
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