The Escapist

By Abe Streep

Outside fan Joe Sacaridiz, an ad-agency art director who lives in Hell’s Kitchen, spends spring and fall weekends climbing upstate and winters snowboarding in Vermont. Here’s how he breaks out of the Big Apple.

Macro Machine

By Peter Vigneron

Behold the ultimate recreational vehicle.

School of Rock

By Nat Worden

Sitting at the foot of Pike’s Peak in Colorado Springs, Colorado College is a veritable feeder school for professional climbing.

Love Shack

By Peter Vigneron

Here’s Shipman’s blueprint for building the ultimate gear shrine.

You Half-Baked Plans

By Scott Yorko

Outside readers respond with their weirdest outdoor weekend plans.

Pros Next Door

We asked three hard-charging Outside readers how they manage to stay supremely fit while balancing work and family. The secrets to their success are easier than you think.

Give and Go

By Gordy Megroz

The Global BrightLight Foundation provides solar-powered combination lanterns and cell-phone chargers in off-grid areas.

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

By Madison Kahn

We’ve all got that buddy—the one who executes an epic ski or raft mission every year. Reader Keith Pearen is one of those guys. For the past 10 years, the 32-year-old Boulder, Colorado, aerospace engineer has been organizing trips for groups of up to 20 friends. Here’s the formula he applies.

Take a Number

By Grayson Schaffer

In the 16 years since Into Thin Air, Mount Everest has become safer in many ways, with better storm forecasting and amazing high-altitude rescue helicopters. So why did 10 people die in 2012?

Hot Mess

By Brad Wieners

Burning Man, the annual super-rave in Nevada, has become Independence Week for a worldwide tribe of inventors, artists, and desert freaks. Brad Wieners talks to founders and fans about how the party got started—and the death, mayhem, and power struggles that almost shut it down.

Boilover

By Rowan Jacobsen

After years of sounding the climate-change alarm, writer Bill McKibben realized that gentle persuasion wasn’t cutting it. So he got mad. Then he got busy: tweeting, organizing, protesting, getting arrested, and becoming Big Oil’s biggest threat.

Best Towns 2012

To help select America's most progressive, adventurous, and livable river towns, we turned to a trusted source: More than 20,000 readers in 10 finalist towns engaged in a mostly friendly and always opinionated competition to determine the cities that are the most serious about recreation and environmental stewardship.

Best Towns Write-Ins

While these towns didn't make the final cut in our first-ever crowdsourced guide to the best places to live in America, they are your favorite write-in candidates. We turned to you, the readers, to find out what makes places like La Crosse, Wisconsin, and Cle Elum, Washington, so perfect for adventure-seekers.