The Best Adventure Photography of 2017

Jesse Selwyn isn’t a professional photographer, but he and his wife, Keri, always bring a camera along on their weekend adventures. Last fall, the Grand Junction, Colorado, couple took a break from their hospital jobs and went to Pine Creek Canyon, in Utah’s Zion National Park, shortly after a late-summer monsoon had flooded it. Donning drysuits to protect against the cold, the Selwyns spent the morning rappelling down walls and swimming through chilly blue pools. Right before the canyon’s exit, Jesse leaned out from his anchor and snapped this photo of Keri on her final rappel. “It’s one of the most beautiful places we’ve been,” he says. 

The Tools: Sony A6000, 16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 2,000, f/4, 1/200 second

One morning last January, Donica Shouse and her husband, Abraham, swam into the water off the west coast of the Big Island of Hawaii with a hydrofoil board and a camera. The couple, who own an adventure production company on the island, employed an old trick to attract marine life: placing Hawaiian ti leaves, which are used to make hula skirts, on the board’s strut. Minutes later, a pod of spinner dolphins appeared to investigate. Shouse captured Abraham on the board as they approached and began to play with the leaves. “The dolphins were very curious,” Abraham says. “I’d never seen them surround us like that before.”

The Tools: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 15mm lens, ISO 800, f/11, 1/1,250 second

Jasper Gibson and a few friends stopped at Kolob Canyon in Zion National Park last year during a fall road trip through the Southwest. They headed to the 150-foot Namaste Wall, “one of the most aesthetic climbing areas there is,” Gibson says. While climber Wade Watts prepared to send the 5.12c Huecos Rancheros route, the 24-year-old photographer positioned himself on the other side of the 200-foot-wide canyon, then captured Watts about 30 feet up the rock. “I was trying to bring in the colorsofthearea,” he says. “They’re so gorgeous.”

The Tools: Sony A6000, 16–50mm f/3.5–5.6 lens, ISO 1,000, f/5

Shane Grace showed up at Pipeline, on Oahu’s North Shore, early one morning in January to shoot some of the best waves of the season. But he wasn’t satisfied staying on the beach. During a lunch break, he decided to rent a helicopter, which arrived a couple of hours before sunset. “The light was really good,” says the 23-year-old Oahu photographer. “There are often clouds on the horizon in the afternoon at Pipeline, so you don’t always get that golden light.” Right before he ran out of time, Grace spotted Hawaiian surfer Randall Paulson threading his way through a wave. Fighting the helicopter’s vibrations, he set up the shot and hoped for the best. “You can see the water blowing up behind him,” says Grace. “He negotiated that and made it look so effortless.”

The Tools: Nikon D810, 200–500mm f/5.6 lens, ISO 800, f/10, 1/2,000 second

Daniel Stewart and friends Christian Foster and Sam Butler spent 12 chilly days last winter kayaking the length of the Grand Canyon. On the second day of the 280-mile journey, the group reached a section of the Colorado River called the Roaring Twenties—ten miles of quick-fire rapids. The British Columbia photographer noticed the light on the river and pulled ashore to take a photo of Foster and Butler navigating the white­water. “It captures that feeling of being really small in this huge world,” Stewart says.

The Tools: Nikon D810, 50mm f/1.4 lens, IS0 400, f/8, 1/1,250 second

Last December, Micky Wiswedel and free-soloist Matt Bush traveled 45 minutes east of their homes in Cape Town, South Africa, to Paarl Mountain, a huge granite rock that’s popular with local climbers. The 39-year-old photographer rappelled down to Bush, who was nearly 300 feet in the air but still had one last pitch to go. “It was important to capture the height of the move and the distance to the ground,” Wiswedel says. “I wanted to show the perspective of being alone and vulnerable on the wall.”

The Tools: Sony a7R II, Canon L Series 16–35mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 320, f/3.5, 1/640 second

D. Scott Clark has photographed skiers, mountain bikers, and ice climbers—but BASE jumpers have proved to be among the most difficult to capture. “You have so little time to compose your shot,” he says. “They are gone in an instant.” To set up this photograph of Sarah Watson, the pair arrived at the I. B. Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, before sunrise. While Watson prepared to launch into Snake River Canyon, the Colorado photographer rappelled 15 feet off the bridge to position himself directly underneath her jump. “A lot of people shoot from the bridge with the jumper below,” he says. But Clark wanted the image to be more immediate. “I love the natural energy and grace,” he says.

The Tools: Canon EOS 5D Mark III, 16–35mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 400, f/5.6, 1/800 second

Jason Hummel grew up 30 miles from Washington’s Mount Rainier and has spent decades exploring the state’s peaks. One of his favorite alpine treks is the Ptarmigan Traverse, in the North Cascades, which spans 35 miles over glaciers at elevations above 7,000 feet. Last August, Hummel and four friends embarked on the traverse, summiting five mountains in five days. On the fourth day, they topped out on 8,920-foot Dome Peak. Looking down, Hummel saw his friends walking past the mountain’s north shoulder. “I loved the lines and curves, and the climbers themselves were perfectly spaced,” says the 38-year-old photographer. “When you’re in such a gorgeous place on such a beautiful day, all you need to do is pull your camera out, line everything up, and take the shot.”

The Tools: Nikon D810, 24mm f/1.4 lens, ISO 320, f/16, 1/500 second

In January 2017, the largest winter storm in 22 years blanketed southern Washington. For kayakers Will Pruett, Rush Sturges, and Fred Norquist, that meant it was an ideal time to go paddling. They headed to the Little White Salmon River, a world-renowned Class V run that flows into the Columbia. Charlie Munsey, who lives ten miles away in White Salmon, followed the group, postholing 1,000 feet down to the river in waist-deep snow to position himself. He captured Pruett moments after he descended 30-foot Spirit Falls. “I just hoped one shot would come out that wasn’t blurry,” he says.

The Tools: Nikon D700, 28–80mm f/3.5–5.6 lens, ISO 100, f/22, 1/6 second

Carson Meyer and skier Sam Schwartz had spent many winters exploring the Jackson, Wyoming, backcountry together, but neither noticed this cave until a sunny day in February 2016. The 20-year-old photographer was rappelling down Gothic Couloir, a 200-foot-long chute in No Name Canyon, when he discovered the opening just below the lip. Realizing that it was the perfect vantage point, Meyer wriggled in to catch Schwartz, 21, as he cleared the 30-foot drop. “In that canyon, you don’t really have the option to circle around and try again,” says Meyer. “It was our one-shot wonder.”

The Tools: Canon EOS 7D Mark II, 11–16mm lens, ISO 1,000, f/9, 1/1,600 second

When it comes to action shots, Ismael Ibanez Ruiz has a passion for the unexpected. “I’m always browsing the Internet and Google Earth to find treasures,” the Spanish photographer says. That’s how he discovered this building in a Basque Country office park, some three hours from his home in Burgos. Ruiz came up with a plan: he’d have a friend, cyclist David Cachon, bunny-hop along the edge of the roof. “The challenge was finding a time when nobody would be there,” says Ruiz, 38. “The area is full of people from Monday through Saturday.” So early one Sunday last fall, Cachon took a tentative first run, then perfected his form while Ruiz captured the moment.

The Tools: Nikon D810, 70–200mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 1,000, f/5.6, 1/800 second

Last spring, after traveling 30 hours from Whistler, British Columbia, Andrew Strain landed in Akureyri, in northern Iceland, and immediately boarded a helicopter bound for the mountains of the Hidden Land Peninsula. Strain was exhausted, but when you get a chance to heli-ski in Iceland with Olympic snowboarders, “you do what you can to stay awake,” says the 32-year-old photographer. Strain watched Scotty Lago and Greg Bretz shred a line down a long ridge, and when they stopped to wait for the helicopter near the shadow of the peak they’d just descended, he knew he had a good shot. “I didn’t direct them, they just ended up there,” he says. “It’s such a simple composition.”

The Tools: Nikon D810, 70–200mm f/4 lens, ISO 200, f/8, 1/1,000 second

Michael Neumann first saw Iceland’s Godafoss (which means “waterfall of the gods”), on the Skálfandafljót River, during a 2013 trip and dreamed of returning to shoot it. “All I was missing was a red kayak and a skilled pilot,” says the German photographer. In February 2016, he got his wish in the form of German paddler Matze Brustmann. Approaching the waterfall, the river was almost completely frozen—except for one eddy, around 60 yards from the 35-foot drop, where Brustmann put in. He cleared the falls, then fought a strong current that was pushing him toward a cave. Brustmann’s timing proved crucial—two hours later water levels rose, causing chunks of ice hanging over the cave’s mouth to crumble. “Running this line was good for the picture but not easy for the paddler,” Neumann says.

The Tools: Nikon D4, 80–400mm f/4.5–5.6 lens, ISO 100, f/6.3, 1/800 second

Jeremy Koreski was on a late-summer job at the Nimmo Bay Resort in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest when he ran into Adrien Mullin, one of the resort’s guides. Mullin had just spotted a pristine alpine lake during a helicopter tour and wanted to go back and explore it. When the two arrived, freediving gear in tow, they found clear blue water that was more than 100 feet deep. Shortly after jumping in, Koreski, who lives on Vancouver Island, captured this split-level shot of Mullin. “The water looked tropical, and then above you saw snow-covered mountains,” Koreski says. “It was surreal.”

The Tools: Canon EOS-1D X, 15mm fish-eye lens, ISO 400, f/7.1, 1/500 second