Adventure
ArchivePracticing. 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…
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…
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…
Reality show to pit contestants against each other in the wilds
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…
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…
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.
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…
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.
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,…
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…
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.
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?
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…
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…
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…
Surfers along the East Coast, from Florida to New England, used the conditions generated by Sandy to catch bigger waves than they'd normally see. Florida did not suffer the damage from Sandy that states further north…
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…
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…
Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy as seen from space Photo: NOAA GOES-13 When Hurricane Sandy made landfall near Atlantic City, New Jersey, around 8 p.m. last night, it lived up to the deadly reputation forecasters feared, and the death toll from the storm has continued to rise…
A pair of polar bears walks across the ice near Churchill. Photo: FloridaStock/Shutterstock The first European to encounter the polar bears of what is now Churchill, Manitoba, was Jens Munk, a Norwegian explorer who wintered on the southern…
On March 11, 2011, an underwater earthquake that measured 9.0 on the Richter scale caused a tsunami that may have killed an estimated 20,000 people in Japan, flattened tens of thousands of homes and businesses, and led to a disaster at…
*UPDATE: I heard from kiteboarder Damien LeRoy via Facebook on Tuesday at 11 Eastern. He included more details about the video, which features kiteboarder Rob Douglas, and the safety precautions taken by his team. I have included those details below. You can also click to watch this…
Patagonia National Park, under construction. Photo: Eli Steltenpohl “Buying the land was the easy part,” Kristine Tompkins told a packed house during a presentation at the San Francisco Patagonia retail store last week. She was referring to the 2.2 million acres that she and…
Photo: NASA Goddard Photo and Video/Flickr New York, New Jersey, and Maryland are already flooded. Sandy is coming and doesn't look like it'll be another over-hyped New York-centric storm. Record storm surge is expected. Emergency declarations have been signed. Presidential…
Hurricane Sandy expands, taken Sunday, October 28, at 9:00 a.m. Photo: NOAA GOES-13 Satellite As scientists feared late last week, Hurricane Sandy has morphed into…
Most flip-flops aren’t very high-tech. That's just the nature of this kind of footwear. Unless they’re being made by Olukai. That company's Kia'i II flip was researched and developed with the Hawaiian Lifeguard Association. A hand-picked group of elite guards—from Oahu, Maui,…
Residents of British Columbia told to seek higher ground
Will further examiner relationship with the cyclist
Says federal researchers not responsible for mauling
Even at 75, Ray Ives still has the pluck to don a dive suit made in 1900 to plumb the depths around England for treasure. The Brit, who began work as a commercial diver in 1965, is retired now, but still a dab hand at fishing up old weapons, ship…
Jacob Beck-Jaffurs. Photo: Professional Pathways On Friday, March 11, 2011, 24-year-old freediver Jacob Beck-Jaffurs was found unconscious on the ocean floor by a dive partner off the coast of Kawera Island, New Zealand. He had been spearfishing when he…
When it comes to producing climbers, there's one college that stands above all the rest
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 furry pests, the dangers of hitchhiking, and the power of geography.
Deal with hurt pets like you would deal with a human emergency: use common sense. And if you’re heading into the woods for a day or longer, bring a first aid kit that will work for man and beast alike.
At the Tour de France route presentation in Paris yesterday, reigning champ Bradley Wiggins surprised the pundits when he said he would likely forgo his title defense at the Grand Boucle next year and instead aim…
Urban bike commuters might want to study this graphic. It’s taken from a recent paper published in the American Journal of Public Health and it shows injury risk based on the type of urban bike route taken by commuters. The further to…