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What started as a glorious powder day ended in a desperate fight for survival after three skiers were buried by a killer avalanche in the backcountry of Stevens Pass, in Washington's Cascades. Megan Michelson lived to tell about it, but she can't shake off a haunting question: How did a group of expert skiers make such a deadly mistake?
David Walsh/Twitter. Photo: Screenshot When journalist David Walsh, the chief sports writer for the Sunday Times and the author of From Lance to Landis and…
Mountains test your resilience. Cliffs and cold and striving for the summit push your physical and mental limits. Gravity and fear pull you down, while passion and determination push you higher. It is for these moments, these experiences, that the climber/mountaineer founders of American Mountain Co.
Seaside Heights. Photo: Google/NOAA After Hurricane Gloria damaged the New Jersey coast in 1985, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asked the state’s Department of…
Four years ago, blind adventurer Erik Weihenmayer began paddling a kayak. Weihenmayer, the first blind person to summit Everest, plans to become the first blind person to kayak the Grand Canyon. He's training now for a 2013 expedition.
I want to support my local charity by participating in their marquee event this winter, but fear that diving into ice-cold water could be dangerous. What do the experts say?
“I'm on the edge of the largest sand desert on the planet, where every night, it snows.” So begins the narration in the second episode of filmmaker Jordan Manley's series “A Skier's Journey.” Skiers Chad Sayers and…
A total eclipse in 1999. Photo: Wikimedia Commons The first total solar eclipse since July 2010 will begin around 3:35 p.m. ET today and last for about two minutes. If you miss it, you won't be able to experience another until March 2015. According to tourism…
The good news: Some surfboard foams are recyclable. The bad news: Most of it's not.
With three non-profits, two for-profits, a 75-acre farm, and a professional skiing career, Alison Gannett has a lot on her plate. Although, as a warrior for climate change, there is not much Gannett sees as impossible.
Jason Diamond looks back at Courtney Letts: style inspiration, socialite, and outdoorswoman extraordinaire
It's one of the most dangerous outdoor sports for pets, but if you invest the time and discipline in proper obedience, it can be fun for everyone
Photo: Lance Armstrong on Mobli Lance Armstrong grabbed headlines for two reasons this past weekend. News broke that he resigned from the board of the Livestrong Foundation.
Photo: Manuel|MC “Leave only footprints” may be the outdoor industry ethos, but Greenpeace says a study it recently conducted revealed troubling indications that the apparel made for outdoor recreation contains persistent chemicals, some of which are…
Water levels at record high for the fourth time since 2000
On Thursday, November 8, at 9:53 a.m., Dylan Grenier took a camera down to Collins Cove in Santa Cruz, California, and recorded discarded drug paraphenalia, a stash of supplies, trash, and a number of people hanging out and sleeping near that scene. Later in…
Three Outside readers tell us how the magazine led them to do something different
The preeminent female ski mountaineer of our time discusses recovering from the tragedies of last winter, breaking into the backcountry, and schussing on an erupting volcano
Not pretty, but powerful. Part of the Elk Creek methane-to-energy system. Photo: Vessels Coal Gas Before it was at the vanguard of North American luxury ski resorts, Aspen, Colorado, was a mining town. Now, Aspen Skiing Company has made a $5.4 million…
In this weekly roundup, we scour the Web for our favorite long-form articles, collecting them here and on Longreads and Twitter. This installment focuses on the Ebola virus, the Saints, and John Muir.
Practicing. Photo: Eric Larsen In the spring of 2002, when Eric Larsen was living in Grand Marais, Minnesota, on the shore of Lake Superior and near the Boundary Waters Canoe area, he started watching the lake ice very carefully. He was waiting for some incredibly…
Last week, the Earth Island Institute feted six young activists at its annual Brower Youth Awards ceremony in San Francisco. Each year, the organization, founded by climber and firebrand David Brower, honors the country’s next generation of environmental leaders who are using creativity…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=NbI4vEiPmxo There are two reasons I want to see the new film Crossing The Ice, a 44-minute-long documentary that chronicles the 89-day, 1,400-mile journey of James Castrission and Justin Jones from Antarctica's Hercules Inlet to the South Pole and back. Number one, the movie…
Reality show to pit contestants against each other in the wilds
Sandy passing west of Hispaniola. Photo: NASA Goddard Hurricane Sandy did not hit Haiti directly. It passed to the west, crossing over Cuba. Even so, it dropped roughly 20 inches of rain on…
Hurricane Sandy after landfall. Photo: NASA Goddard A couple of weeks ago, Andrew Revkin celebrated the fifth birthday of his…
Yesterday, Vimeo selected a video called Rockaway Needs Us as a staff pick. It's just the latest video that shows the effects of Sandy, from the recreational to devastation. The shorts range from a…
As an athlete, is my skin more susceptible to damage during the winter? What can I do to protect it?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/RhQktHY9aZgA video showing Sandy’s life from October 23 to October 31. It was as a nine-year-old kid in Reading, Pennsylvania, that University of Miami scientist Brian McNoldy developed a fascination with hurricanes. “I think most of us have a storm,” he…
In a time of corruption and coercion, courage was not in short supply. A hidden cadre of men resisted doping, and they paid a heavy price. Here are their stories.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Kate Rawles on her Mexico-to-Canada tour. Photo: Chris Loynes Kate Rawles is an outdoor philosopher. That is a title she coined herself, and it is accurate in more than one way. She spends her professional life thinking about, talking about,…
Condit Dam demolition complete after nearly 100 years
“Alaska Marshals,” the newest show from the Discovery Channel, takes viewers inside the barren Alaska wilderness where law enforcement successfully tracks down hundreds of fugitives each year.
In this weekly roundup, we scour the Web for our favorite long-form articles, collecting them here and on Longreads and Twitter. This installment focuses on climate science, Vikings, and the 1992 Olympic Dream Team.
The 29-year-old Swedish ski-mountaineer with an elegant outlook on life discusses fear, risk, and that one time he broke his neck in an avalanche that swept him 400 meters down ice, rock, and snow
Two years ago Klymit launched its Variable Warmth Technology in a vest with sealed air/gas chambers that the wearer could inflate with his own breath, or Argon (the gas used to insulate between glass layers in your home's windows). Its premise: bodies change…
Photo: PublicDomainPictures I saw my first polar bear of the trip before I even boarded my flight from Chicago to Winnipeg. Submerged in water up to its snout, it stared at me from a World Wildlife Fund poster hanging by the men's bathroom in Concourse F. …
There were no shortage of heroes as Hurricane Sandy made its way from the Caribbean, up along the coast of the southeastern United States, into New Jersey, and then across Pennsylvania. Hospital personnel evacuated patients from at least one facility that lost power. Firemen…
This year's Red Bull Rampage may have been overshadowed by Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking free fall, but the fact that it takes a 128,098-foot sky dive to upstage this event should tell you just how severe downhill mountain biking has…
World's youngest ski patroller? Taylor Justice on the job at Aspen. Photo: Taylor Justice There are overachievers, and then there is Taylor Justice. The 12-year-old skier/climber/straight-A student started shredding double-black diamond chutes when she was eight. Three years later, she joined the…
A German Shepherd is found at 13,000 feet, and rescued after surviving seven nights in the cold. How did she get there, and what happened to her owner?
State-of-the-art prosthetic will be tested at Chicago's Willis Tower
A composite image of Sandy making landfall at night. Photo: NASA/Goddard The death toll from Sandy in the United States has risen to 75, according to the Associated Press.
Here is a view of Sandy's life from above. It was recorded by NASA's GOES-13 Satellite. It begins on October 23, when Tropical Depression 18 morphed into Tropical Storm Sandy. Before that, on October 22, at roughly 11:00 a.m., about 320 miles southwest of Kingston, Jamaica, a hot towering…
Waiting out the storm. Photo: Lonnie Dupre Lonnie Dupre has attempted to climb Denali in January each of the last two years. Both times he hit bad weather. So he huddled inside…
A rough map of Linsdau's route Photo: AaronLinsdau.com In a Monday blog post, American skier Aaron Linsdau reported from South America on the gear he was packing into Antarctica. One picture stands out. It shows two of his five duffel bags…
NYC, Avenue C at East 6th Street, Oct. 29, 2012. Photo: David Shankbone/Flickr The loss of life and property damage from Superstorm Sandy is still being tallied, but the catastrophe is pointing a spotlight on the need for cities to adapt…