Hotshots take on exceptional risk. Could unionizing give them the voice they need to avoid deadly situations like Yarnell Hill?

Surprisingly, it’s not bears

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.

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.

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.

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

Tough terrain requires a tough device.

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

After a long and wet week, the team attempting to ski the world’s fifth-highest peak has made it to the base of Makalu

As each week brings fresh reports of African and Middle Eastern migrants and refugees dying on the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats, a self-made Louisiana millionaire and his Italian wife have taken to the sea to save them.

There is an Arctic glimmer in the eyes of many nations around the world right now. There is no turning back—the Arctic is about to get a lot busier and a lot warmer. And it’s nearly untouched beauty is at risk of being lost forever.

From survival strategies to kindling tricks to impress your friends, we’ll cover it all so you can make sure you’re warm and well s’mores-ed

In 2010, a renowned art dealer from New Mexico named Forrest Fenn reportedly hid a treasure worth more than a million dollars somewhere in the mountains north of Santa Fe. He then published a book called The Thrill of the Chase that contains clues regarding the treasure's…

Millionaire Forrest Fenn launched a thousand trips when he filled a chest with gold, rubies, and diamonds, and hid it somewhere north of Santa Fe. If one man is going to find it, by god, it’s an ex-cop from Seattle named Darrell Seyler.

The jack-of-all-trades swaps the pigskin for an ice axe (and the tent for a real bed)

Suspension BASE Jump: Piercing Gravity is a short film from The Extremity Project in which Josh Miramant becomes the 11th person in the world to complete a Suspension BASE Jump. In Suspension BASE Jumping, the parachute is attached to piercings on the jumper’s back. The jump took place on May 13, 2015 from…

A new and physically gruesome form of BASE jumping involves affixing a parachute directly into the jumper’s back—with metal hooks

Jed Mildon became the first person ever to land a quadruple backflip on a BMX bike on Sunday, July 12, 2015.

For two members of the New Horizons mission to Pluto, aeronautics and planetary science are only part of their overarching fascination with the natural world. We spoke to them about the unlikely intersection of skydiving, cave diving, and space exploration.

The Man Who Flew to Earth is a documentary feature film that follows the lives of Gary Connery and his wingman Mark Sutton, as they plan, prepare and undertake a feat deemed to be impossible: to fly and land a wingsuit without using a parachute. You can…

A deadly collapse at a popular cavern near Seattle has raised the question of whether signs and warnings are enough to stop visitors from venturing where they shouldn’t

Beginning this June 16, six dancers and a nine-person support crew headed into Yosemite’s wilderness for ten days of hiking and pirouetting.

For more than 25 years, the Bandaloop dance troupe has performed on high-altitude sideways stages, from Seattle’s Space Needle to skyscrapers in South Korea. This June, they took their act to the granite walls of the Yosemite backcountry. Here, a quartet rehearses on the flanks of 8,500-foot Mount Watkins.

The risks are worth it to show my kids one of the wildest places on the planet

Every year, an elite group of racers gathers in the small Northern California town of Arcata. They’re not runners. They’re not cyclists. They’re not drivers. They’re much stranger than that. Their competition: the Kinetic Grand Championship, a grueling three-day, 42-mile schlep over sand, water, mud, and pavement. Their steeds: bizarre amphibious human-powered vehicles. So sit back, buckle up, and enjoy the wild, crazy ride.