For more than two decades, Jeff Caldwell has lured in hikers, couchsurfers, and other women (and they're almost always women), enthralling them with his tales of adventure. Then he manufactures personal crises and exploits their sympathy to rip them off. Our writer corresponded with Caldwell while he was still on the run, and came away with an intimate look at the life of a serial scammer who's found his easy marks in the outdoor community.
Lance Armstrong has a new narrative about his incredible rise and fall. Should we believe him this time?
After a legendary career in adventure writing, Tim Cahill thought his story was over. Thrown from a raft in the Grand Canyon’s Lava Falls, he was trapped underwater and out of air. When he finally reached land, his heart stopped for several minutes. Then he came back—and decided to risk Lava again.
If you’re lucky, you encountered nature for the first time by running out the back door. During our writer's boyhood, a suburban forest was a gateway to learning, exploration, and natural splendors that shaped his life and career.
There were many stories that were more fun to cook up and publish, but nothing quite compares with the force and moral clarity of Jon Krakauer’s account of the 1996 tragedies on Mount Everest
Memorable lives combine tough choices, an adventurous spirit, hard work, and luck—and who knows where any of it comes from? For our writer, the wellspring was a Colorado spread that she was barely able to buy in 1993. It became her escape from a violent childhood and the magical ground that changed her life.
Change comes for everybody, including a group of adventurous friends who’ve convened for years to climb, swap stories, and hoist a few. These days, their founder is grappling with incurable cancer. On a happier note, their decision to open the doors a little wider has given the gathering a fresh, life-affirming spirit.
No one knew if it could be done. But when Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler climbed Mount Everest without oxygen in 1978, they smashed one of the last barriers of human performance. Almost 40 years later, both legends talk about their first ascent by “fair means”—and the long-running feud that followed.
To travel the Pony Express, riders had to brave apocalyptic storms, raging rivers, snow-choked mountain passes, and some of the most desolate, beautiful country on earth. To honor the sun-dried memory of those foolhardy horsemen, we dispatched Will Grant and a 16-year-old cowboy prodigy to ride 350 miles in a hurry.
