Exploration & Survival
Archive
Zip lines, paddling circuits, flow tracks, and a ski-resort style business model are coming to a city near you
This spring, Virginia-based photographers Chet Strange and Parker Michels-Boyce set up a photo booth at Mile 806 of the Appalachian Trail. Using a classic studio backdrop, they captured dozens of northbound thru-hikers as they made their way toward Cold Mountain in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. Strange and Michels-Boyce aimed to capture the variety of folks and personalities tackling one of America’s great trails. Here are 13 of our favorites.
He was kidnapped, survived an assassination attempt, and joined the hunt for the most deadly terrorist. Meet the most interesting man alive.
The incredible story behind a journalist's terrifying journey through high-conflict jungle
On July 30 at approximately 5:45 p.m. local time, Hollywood stuntman and skydiving luminary Luke Aikins jumped out of a Cessna Grand Caravan airplane 25,000 feet above Simi Valley, California. It was the first time in his 18,000-plus skydives that Aikins, 42, with a wife and young son, did not wear a parachute.
Welcome to the ninth annual Firefly Gathering, a four-day survival camp packed with pine-needle baskets, tomahawk throws, sinew glue, mycology crawls, and ecstatic drumming.
Pilot Fedor Konyukhov touched down in Bonnie Rock, Australia, having circumnavigated the globe in record time
A Hollywood stuntman who’s leapt out of planes for “Godzilla” and “Iron Man 3” will attempt his greatest, craziest feat yet—on live TV
Magnetoreception could be a latent human sense, silent for millennia but accessible with training. Is it worth developing—or even possible?
The Darién Gap is a lawless wilderness on the border of Colombia and Panama, teeming with everything from deadly snakes to antigovernment guerrillas. The region also sees a flow of migrants from Cuba, Africa, and Asia, whose desperation sends them on perilous journeys to the U.S. Jason Motlagh plunged in, risking robbery, kidnapping, and death to document one of the world’s most harrowing treks.
A quarter century of digging under ice sees winners, losers, and an Irish billionaire teaming up with De Beers
Expert wingsuit flyer and pilot Rex Pemberton’s latest trick: turning himself into a human rocket
Jacques Cousteau’s grandson, who stars in an upcoming “Shark Week” special, talks about ocean exploration in the 21st century, carrying on his grandfather’s legacy, and what we can learn from nuclear sharks
Bears in backyard pools, bears on TV, and now a bear attack
My journey from an average animal lover, to an active participant in conservation
Tracking the millions of tropical fish caught and sold in the global aquarium trade is our best chance for understanding the impact of Disney’s new movie on the world’s oceans
The park's main attractions are also its most dangerous features
Hotshots take on exceptional risk. Could unionizing give them the voice they need to avoid deadly situations like Yarnell Hill?
The primitive bushcraft expert wants to turn your nickels into arrowheads
They face unique challenges, longer odds, and sometimes outright hostility
We caught up with filmmaker Anson Fogel at 5Point Adventure Film Festival to talk about his powerful short film, When We Were Knights.
When a group of canyoneering beginners were swept away in a flash flood last September, it was the worst disaster in Zion's 97-year history. And it illustrates a growing question: How far should national parks go to keep their visitors safe?
The discovery of human remains in Costa Rica complicates theories on his mysterious 2014 disappearance
The United Arab Emirates wants to build an artificial peak to make it rain in the desert-bound cities. Let's just say the experts are skeptical.
At just 6,288 feet, this would be considered a hill anywhere else
When a group of immigrants set out across the desert, the results helped researcher create the Death Index, a new model for dehydration.
Do you want to see lightning? NASA just crunched the numbers and came up with the destinations where you’re most likely to see a bolt.
Jon Krakauer’s obsession with what killed the star of ‘Into the Wild’ has persisted for nearly 24 years. Whether it was ignorance or arrogance, do the details still make a difference?
With the San Andreas “locked, loaded, and ready to go," now's the time to assemble your quake kit
We asked Jim Delgado, NOAA’s director of maritime heritage, to help us compile this list of the 10 most iconic missing ships waiting to be discovered.
Pablo Valencia spent six days wandering the 110-degree desert before stumbling into McGee's camp. He shouldn't have been alive, but he was.
An amusing albeit brief look at the basics of adventuring outdoors.
Who says compound bows and bikes don't mix? (But seriously, this is fun.)
What it's like to call for help on the open ocean
It might be bougie, but it may be better than having more people on the mountain
American cavers were first to descend the 1,200-foot deep Sotano De Las Golondrinas, better known as the Cave of Swallows, in 1966. It’s one of the world’s largest cave shafts in the world and one of Mexico’s 13 natural wonders.
Or one Outside editor’s commitment to stop feeding you nonsense
The only thing we love more than our own dogs? Seeing all of our readers’ prized adventure companions. So all summer, we’ll be featuring a running gallery of our favorite pups. Use #OutsideDogs2016, we'll pick the best shots, and continue adding them to this collection. Here, a few hand-picked, photogenic creatures to get the ball rolling.
Take flight with paraglider Théo de Blic in the French Alps.
Young, tech-savvy adventurers are taking sponsors and funding away from grizzled, old-school explorers who aren’t strong on Facebook and Twitter. But they don’t always pull off the awesome feats they say they will.
The bizarre science behind Phil Broscovak's lightning strike, and his incredible journey of recovery
For 28 years, Kay Grayson lived side-by-side with wild black bears in North Carolina's swampy coastal forests, hand-feeding them, defending them against poachers, and letting them in her home. When she went missing last year, the only thing the investigators could find were her clean-picked bones. And that's just the start of the mystery.
At age 13, Martin Kristensen jumped out of a plane and realized there was no going back. Now a skydiving world champion, Kristensen learned to turn falling into flying, gracefully using his body like wings to dance with gravity. Through freediving, Kristensen is able to channel his energy into another form…
To The Explorers is a short film by Alex Goetz and Justin Grubb that serves as an ode to all the adventurers, explorers, and environmentalists that have dedicated their life's work to conservation and wildlife. The film won the Nat Geo WILD's 2016 Wild to Inspire short film competition. As a…
Win one of four trips led by an outdoors pro
When a cougar is trapped by mistake, the Division of Wildlife Resources steps in to set it free.
This 1,000-mile race across the frozen wilderness of Alaska necessitates some very specialized kit
A remote car accident, a broken ski, a tumble in the snow, and a slow descent into hypothermia before (spoiler alert!) a dramatic rescue
When a person goes missing outdoors, there’s a specific protocol for finding them within the first 24 hours. After that first day, it becomes much tougher.
Adventure filmmakers Taylor Rees and Renan Ozturk thought it would be a mellow working vacation: they’d capture footage of four young Brits as they traversed 250 miles of Iceland’s fissured terrain, starting in December.
In Search of a Moment is a short film from photographer David Fontneau about his journey to become a photographer. Fontneau says he was drawn to photography because he found himself constantly searching for the “purity of the moment,” which took him to quite a few wild places. …
Mauls six people and takes 10 hours to capture
Our best travel and adventure photography of the year.
Authorities have called off the official search for Randy Bilyeu, but treasure hunters continue to comb the area for leads
Is it legal to auction off an unclaimed 17th-century cannon on the Internet? Or does that make you a pirate?
One of the world's great polar explorers died on January 24 after traveling alone across Antarctica for 71 days
Who wouldn’t want to surf in the clouds? An aviation engineer in Alabama is on a mission to find out.
Knowing how to survive in the wild isn't the same thing as knowing how to survive in the big city when an earthquake or tsunami strikes. Wherever you live, Japan's new survival manual may save your life.
Some of the best medicine for kids with attention-deficit disorders may be extreme sports and outdoor learning. That's good news, because not only do they need exploration, but exploration desperately needs them.
German explorer Martin Szwed claims to have shattered the speed record for a solo ski to the South Pole last year. He has revealed no GPS data, no photos—no proof whatsoever that he even attempted the journey. Since his return from the icy continent, he has lost his house, job, and sponsors and is the subject of two investigations by the German government. Should anyone believe him?
A man wakes up on a muddy logging road in the middle of the mountains. His truck is dead. His phone is out of range. He’s got no food. How did he make it out?
People coming back to life after being frozen stiff. Frogs that cryopreserve for winter and then reanimate. The emerging frontier of extreme cold is offering revolutionary new insights and therapies for everything from deadly exposure to peak athletic performance.
Remembering a leader whose talents were hard to match and whose enthusiasm was contagious
Our favorite adventures of land, sea, and air from 2015
An American mountain biker narrowly avoided drowning when he took a spill trying to cross a rushing river. Here’s what he did right.
The North Face co-founder left an indelible mark on outdoors recreation and environmentalism here and abroad
The year ahead will be filled with goggles that guide us down the ski hill, stoves that could save humanity, and Kubrickian pods that will carry us to the edge of space
Charged is the true story of Eduardo Garcia, who survived a horrific accident while hiking in the Montana backcountry in 2011.
The Macnab is the Scottish equivalent of the Triple Crown for hunters: competitors must catch a salmon on the fly, shoot a brace of grouse, and take a stag all between dawn and dusk. Most participants will fail. But, as we learn in Haste Ye Back, from Selena and Simon K Barr of…
It’s simple enough: put your butt on a piece of plywood and skid down the 1,600-foot slope. But it’s had profound economic effects on a Central American city.
Bear Hunter is a film by Caroline Santinelli that profiles 13-year-old Kerigan Disorda. Disorda went bear hunting with her father for the first time when she was 11, and the activity quickly became her biggest passion. She now wants to be a bear biologist and spends the majority of her time in Vermont's Green Mountains doing…
A user's list for all the travel, fun, and affiliated delights you can cram into a year
It was the biggest set ever built for a Hollywood film in the 1920s, and then it was buried in the sands of the California Coast. The real story begins when a young filmmaker embarks on a decades-long attempt to excavate it.
Being open-minded and answering in the affirmative have taken Berty Mandagie from Java to Seattle to the top of Machu Picchu, where the word “yes” sparked the next chapter of his life’s adventures
Expedition kayaker Erik Boomer on man-eating walruses, making friends with fear, and the impact of his last name
The quest for ever bigger and more dangerous televised wingsuit stunts is going to boost the sport's already high body count
As the team attempting the first ski descent of Makalu prepares to ascend, they first perform an ancient ritual