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It's rare for a product to stand the test of time, but these seven items are as good as they ever were
While the word may be out about Tofino, on Canada’s Vancouver Island, the incredible setting and eclectic locals still make it one of the best surf towns in North America
August’s full solar eclipse is the first visible from the United States since 1979. Traveling over 14 states on its way east, from Oregon to South Carolina, the eclipse passes over the southern end of the Appalachian Trail - a 2,200-mile wilderness hike that winds from Georgia to Maine.
The Ptarmigan Traverse in Washington State’s North Cascades has had the word “classic” pinned to it nearly from the time it was pioneered in 1938. You don’t get much more high-n-wild in the Lower 48 than on this 35-mile-plus mountaineering trip, which starts in North Cascades National Park and immediately dives south into the Glacier Peak Wilderness.
When my friend asked me if I wanted to attempt to Everest on my bike—climb the equivalent height of the 29,029-foot mountain in a single ride—I gave my answer little thought. “I’m in,” read my little blue text message. That was it.
Colorado's inaugural Velorama was a colorful combination of bike racing, music, and fan-friendly spectacle aimed at giving road racing in the US a shot in the arm.
I returned to this windswept corner of Patagonia with news that mountain bike access to Torres del Paine’s hallowed trails had been negotiated by local Punta Arenas based guide Javier Aguilar.
This spring, Kat Cannell, MJ Wright, and Katelyn Spradley set out on horseback to follow a salmon's upstream battle from the mouth of the Columbia River to its farthest inland home in Idaho's Redfish Lake.
How to pedal (and eat) your way through Chianti country.
Jornet won for the fourth year in a row, despite falling and dislocating his shoulder at mile 14, popping it back into place himself, and running the remaining 86 miles with his left arm in a makeshift sling.
Due to the cold, altitude, and wicked weather, only half of those who attempt Mount Logan make it to the summit. We were fortunate enough to reach the top via the standard King's Trench route after 15 days on the mountain.
This winter, paddlers Mike Dawson, Aniol Serrasolses, and Ciarán Heurteau set off for a ten-day trip to add their names to the history books of Pakistan’s largest river.
On June 14 at 3 a.m., Katie Bono crawled into basecamp on Alaska’s Mount Denali, frostbitten and exhausted. Bono had left the same camp, located at 7,200 feet, at 6 a.m. the previous morning, summited the 20,310-foot peak (North America’s highest) in minus 40 degree temperatures at 8:46 p.m., then headed back down.
Beginning at the 630-foot high Maletsunyane Waterfall in the middle of the country, we found top-notch mountain biking between 10,000-foot peaks, along wild valleys, and through countless remote towns.
Far beyond the glorified surf spots, volcano hikes, and coffee plantation tours is a 26-hour-long bus ride to Nicaragua’s Mosquito Coast, a Caribbean region that’s rarely visited. For my wife, Claire Cripps, and me, the idea to explore this region began in 2015 after we completed a packrafting journey down the Rio Coco, which is the longest river in Central America and flows through the heart of mosquito country in Honduras and Nicaragua.
Professional skier Kalen Thorien has been living out of her 1993 Bigfoot trailer and 60-series Land Cruiser for two years.
A 10,000-square-foot facility not far from the Hells Angels’ Ventura, California, headquarters—a former food canning operation, the address of which I am not to reveal—houses the Patagonia Archives, a project recently launched by the clothing company to chronicle its storied past.
Cycling is in my blood, and to me it always meant two wheels—until now.
Part Burning Man, part Camino de Santiago, part Fringe Festival thrown in for good measure, Trail Days is 72 hours of hiking mayhem.
For a week in March, photographer Ben Kraushaar shadowed the WMI folks as they captured and collared 35 Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and 220 mule deer throughout Wyoming. From the Red Desert to eastern Greater Yellowstone, Kraushaar documented the steps involved in WMI’s efforts to better understand the migrations and health of these animals.
Atlantic bluefin tuna are among the most hunted species on the planet and one of the best ways to see the effects of an increasingly industrialized food chain. But for a few short weeks during early summer on Spain’s southern coast, an ancient ritual known as the almadraba still plays out—an intense, intimate, and violent tradition that strives to harvest some of the world's most valuable seafood in a sustainable manner.
A crew of our editors recently attended the Flagstaff event to check out the latest overlanding gear and the thousands of vehicles that drove in from around the world. Here are 11 of our favorites.
This January, in the heart of the Middle East, a crew of rock climbers set out to establish an 1,800-foot, 14-pitch, 5.13+ route up Jordan’s Jebel Rum.
Aaron Smith has been a member of the storied Yosemite Search and Rescue team for over 15 years. He’s also on the park’s elite helicopter rescue squad. Here’s a list of the gear he relies on most during his missions.
On March 30, the five kayakers launched their boats at the village of La Tunia, attempting to make the first descent of the Rio Apaporis over 30 days. Twenty-one days and 500 miles later, FARC rebels ended it.
This year’s race was fraught with frigid temperatures that frequently dropped to minus 40. Of the 25 racers intending to race the 1,000 miles to Nome, only six would finish.
Paragliding high above a beautiful landscape is already a bucket list item, but doing it alongside an Egyptian vulture might bump it up to the top of the list. Pioneered by Scott Mason, who has been training birds since he was ten, parahawking consists of a trained vulture or hawk guiding a paraglider through thermals or air pockets in the sky for long, bird-like flights.
For the past five years, I’ve been working on a personal project to ski all 90 lines listed in Andrew McLean’s The Chuting Gallery, a skiing-climbing guidebook for Utah’s Wasatch Range. To my knowledge, I am the fourth person and first woman to complete the project.
Traveling across the Arctic isn’t easy no matter how you do it, but Palmer, Alaska-based photographer Fredrik Norrsell and his wife, Nancy Pfeiffer, thought the winter landscape of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, north of the Brooks Range, would make for a nice ride. In April 2014, the couple covered about 75 miles using the wind and skis near the village of Kaktovik on the northern coast of Alaska.
After a cancellation in 2015 due to drug violence, nearly 1,000 Tarahumara gathered in Copper Canyon this March to run the brutal, unrelenting 50-miler
When you think San Francisco, you think tech companies. But the city is also chock-full of outdoor brands building high-end gear right next to the bay. From bikes to bags to boards, here are six of our favorites.
In 1972, the father of four-time world champion mountain biker Rebecca Rusch died when his plane was shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War. She was three years old at the time. More than 40 years later, Rusch decided to set out on the 1,200-mile Ho Chi Minh Trail in search of her father’s crash site.
Exploration of these mountains isn’t new, but it wasn’t until five years ago that the first traverse of the entire range was completed, by Chase Norton, then a PhD student at the University of Hawai’i.
For the last 30 years, American Rivers, a nonprofit advocacy group out of Washington, D.C., has been calling attention the plight of the country’s rivers. Today, the group released its annual Most Endangered Rivers report, a catalogue of the ten rivers in America most threatened in 2017.
Guatemala isn’t known for its mountain biking. And that’s a good thing. This yet-to-be-overrun spot is littered with great riding on everything from mountainous Mayan footpaths to carefully placed flow trails that run through lush jungles. Last month, photographer Max Whittaker followed Diamondback rider Eric Porter and a couple of guests as they sampled the goods.
Bikepacking Cuba coast to coast
In this predominantly Muslim country, women are shredding waves—and the patriarchy
Ranchlands is a Colorado-based ranching and land management company that stewards more than 300,000 acres of rangelands across the American West in partnership with landowners. While meat is often considered the primary product of ranchers, conservation is the product for Ranchlands. Since 2000, the organization’s management style, which focuses on restoring vegetation and wildlife—primarily cattle and bison—in addition to community engagement and education, has been celebrated as a model in conservation circles.
Last weekend, the North Face’s Chile brand put on Latin America’s biggest—and loudest, and rad-est, and rowdiest—bouldering competition.
Each March, Outside and Backcountry team up to test next season’s backcountry skis, boots, and bindings, the best of which end up in each magazine’s winter Buyer’s Guide
Most people these days ride name-brand bikes that are mass-produced in factories. But the tradition of the handmade, small-batch bicycle is still very much alive and well.
Obama was supposed to safeguard Oregon’s Owyhee Canyonlands with a National Monument designation, but when that didn’t happen, its supporters were left wondering. What’s next?
Leaving behind one of the best Rocky Mountain winters in recent history, we traded ski boots for fat bikes in February and headed south. Twelve days, 283 miles, and more than a few beach beers later, we completed a section of the Baja Divide called the Cape Loop, which we started at San José del Cabo. Here are some highlights from our trip.
It’s easy to forget the work that goes on behind the scenes to prepare, maintain, and repair our ski hills. This winter, Salt Lake City–based photographer Will Saunders embedded with Park City’s night shift ski-cat crew, who are responsible for making the corduroy on one of the largest collections of groomed runs in the country.
Almost 50 years ago, Richard Nixon commissioned a photography project called Documerica to illustrate miles and miles of environmental degradation, advocating for the need for the agency. The following are some of the most striking images from that project.
Pro mountain biker Chris Baddick lives and trains in Boulder, Colorado. His gear room— equipped with a full bike-repair setup, nearly a dozen road and mountain rigs, and endless spare tires—is a dirt lover’s dream.
Mike Olbinski is a photographer with an obsession—chasing storms throughout the southwest. It sounds crazy, but when you see his photos you'll understand.
Every year, the Smithsonian holds a photo contest highlighting some of the best photographs from around the world. Here are our favorite finalists.
Hayes made history by becoming the first woman to climb a 15.5a—the 131-foot La Rambla line up El Pati wall in Siurana, Spain. These photos follow her journey from the bottom of the crag to the anchors.
24 Hours in the Old Pueblo, one of the country’s great 24-hour races, went off this President’s Day weekend, complete with thundering rain, a rowdy party, and four former members of the U.S. Postal Service Pro Cycling Team.
In 1979, 11 years old and armed with a Kodak Instamatic 110, photographer Andrew Phelps took his first image in the Grand Canyon on a trip with his father, Brent. Phelps shot four rolls of film that trip, but the square prints he developed upon his return didn’t do his memories justice. Ever since, and with a life dedicated to photography, he’s been trying to successfully capture the canyon. Thousands of frames later, and after nine trips over 34 years with his father, Phelps took to sorting through his work. The result is a 108-page book called Cubic Feet/Sec.
Jason Hummel hopes to ski and photograph all 213 named glaciers before they vanish—he's more than halfway there.
If you looked under the table at one of Outside’s morning news meetings, you’d notice a lot of leather boots on the feet of our male editors.
Benjaim Grant's new book displays breathtaking satellite imagery of life on Earth from above.
The fiberglass menagerie before you is made up of 34 animatronic beasts, created for Spy in the Wild, a Nature miniseries on PBS in which cameras disguised as animals embed with the real beasts for an immersive take on the nature documentary.
A regular day of skiing requires a lot of gear, so you can imagine how much ski patrollers have to carry while they’re out keeping us safe on the slopes. To find out exactly what they pack, we caught up with Robin McElroy, an 11-year veteran of the Squaw Valley Ski Patrol, Alaskan heli-ski guide, and former big-mountain ski competitor.
Vests are the Swiss Army knives of layering. They work in summer and winter, in town and on the mountain, for early morning dawn patrols and out for dinner. Here are six of our favorites.
When an international crew of whitewater aficionados loaded eight featherlight carbon freestyle kayaks onto rafts and paddled into the Canadian wilderness in September, they took the hunt for fresh waves to a new level.
Sure, the Great Lakes have a lot to offer when it comes to recreation, but the region still doesn’t make many surfing or fishing bucket lists. But for those willing to fight the weather, there’s plenty of feisty winter steelhead and freshwater waves to be chased, all in the same weekend.
Welcome to professional climber Cedar Wright’s Boulder gear shed, or, as he calls it, his “discombobulated junk show.” It’s also an adventure athlete’s paradise packed into a one-car garage that’s bursting with ice climbing, paragliding, big-wall climbing, and biking equipment stacked in neat—and not so neat—piles.
Tony Krupicka is one of the world’s foremost ultra runners. The 33-year-old Nebraska native is a two-time winner of the Leadville 100 and the 50-Mile Trail National Championships, and he’s placed second in the county’s original ultra—Western States 100. Last month, he let us into his Boulder, Colorado, home, which is strewn with training tools, from road bikes and ski-mo skis to running shoes and cams.
Last December, 15 testers gathered for the annual Outside Magazine Bike Test, in which we select the rising crop of the coming year’s bikes and ride the bejeezus out of them to determine which are the most promising.
Whether in Texas or Uruguay, the core of a cowboy is the same: a connection between man, animals, and the land. Brooklyn-based photographer Luis Fabini, who was born in Uruguay, spent the last decade photographing these men across North and South America and has narrowed down thousands of images into a new book called Cowboys of the Americas.
Fleece is part of the de facto uniform in mountain towns, making everything from mid-layers to beanies cozier, warmer, and better looking. Here are six reasons to love the stuff even more.
Photographer Seth Langbauer’s favorite moments from the 20th annual Bozeman Ice Festival
Presenting 11 tested (and totally excessive) parts for the dream ride
Nature writer and Explorers Club fellow Barry Lopez once wrote that Antarctica’s landscape “retained Earth’s primitive link, however tenuous, with space, with the void that stretched out to Jupiter and Uranus.” It is a place so alien and removed from civilization that, as Lopez put it, “the light itself is aloof.”
This past March, I flew to the island of Senja, Norway, to take part in one of the many self-powered backcountry programs offered by Pure Ski Touring. The island is part of a 612-square-mile archipelago that sits in one of the northernmost, least-populated counties in Norway.
Big change may be coming to Africa’s fourth-largest river. While commercial outfitters have been running trips on the Zambezi since 1982, the river may soon be impassable, as the governments of Zambia and Zimbabwe continue to discuss a proposed dam construction below Victoria Falls. Last October, I joined Brian McCutcheon and raft guide “Hippo” Moses Ngoma to see the river firsthand.
In 2007, Doug Walker found three dusty boxes at a flea market in Los Angeles. Inside were more than 30,000 negative film strips discarded by Surfing Magazine, all of them from the 1970s.
Nashville, Tennessee, is the heart of the country music scene, but it has also become a city of makers. From gorgeous longboards to some of the country’s best beer, here’s a roundup of our favorite products from this Southern destination.
On November 11, a 30-foot swell rolled across the Pacific, setting in motion the first-ever all-women big-wave surfing contest in the World Surf League. It was one for the record books.
Enter the wild mustangs. For more than a decade, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has worked with inmates in the Nevada Department of Corrections to train these horses for adoption. This spring, managers of Hells Canyon and Eagle Cap Wilderness areas approached the BLM about using the mustangs on their trail crew. (The Wild Horse and Burro Act allows for exchange of horses between federal agencies.) Last spring, 11 mustangs joined the Eagle Cap Ranger District herd.
In Guadalajara, mariachi echoes through the streets, tacos are a staple provision, and barrels of tequila are made at the nearby Patrón Hacienda.
Photographer Max Whittaker got to peek inside the new digs late last month while Honnold was climbing in Yosemite.