[BenFranklin100]

“I’m pretty content to say that North America absolutely mogs the rest of the world in national parks. “

This is exactly what a European friend remarked to me years ago. He thought us Americans were a bit unaware of just how good we had it compared to the rest of the world.

[ekr____]

I mostly agree with this, but... if you're a hiker or a trail runner the alps really are amazing, and the infrastructure is far better than in the States. Once you get outside of really built up places like Yosemite Valley, the trails in the US basically are out in the middle of nowhere and so you're carrying all your stuff. For example, if you do John Muir Trail, there's basically nothing between Muir Trail Ranch and Whitney Portal, so you're looking at 100+ miles of carrying your own stuff.

By contrast, many European trails have huts/refugios every 10 or so miles, so you can stop and get a coffee or a meal, or even stay the night. This means that not only do you not need to carry a lot of food you may not even need to carry your own shelter, which lowers the weight considerably. There is some stuff like this in the US, for instance the High Sierra Camps [0], but it's not the norm and it's not cheap (~200 USD/night).

[0] https://www.travelyosemite.com/lodging/high-sierra-camps

[bombcar]

Alps is probably the only real "mogging" of the US (and things like the Himalayas, etc) - we have "one" real impressive mountain range and it has an entirely different feel, being relatively isolated from humans.

Europe and Asia have had tens of thousands of years to make alpine mountains inhabitable, and it shows.

But outside of that, the US has amazing diversity partially because it's basically an entire continent, but also because of an accident of settlement and weather patterns that large swaths of the west were available to preserve.

There was an article recently about how in the UK it's all about restoration because everything is or was inhabited, but in the US it's about preservation because so much was simply never developed at all.

[jjulius]

For many of us who backpack in the US for long distances and many days at the time, the remoteness is exactly the point. The lack of those huts/refugios is one of the primary drivers for why OP's friend said what they said.

[paradox460]

Well, we kind of started them. Easy to be the best with a head start