Adventure
ArchiveOutside magazine, July 1996 Geography: Dick Clark, Please Report to the Date Line Where will you be when it’s time to party like it’s 1999? By John Galvin The year 2000 may be four sweeps through the calendar away, but the race…
Outside magazine, September 1995 Racks That Take to Any Body How to carry all of your gear, on Subaru or Suburban, while feeling no strain By John Lehrer For years, sport racks have done job one–securely clamping gear to vehicle–with utter competence.
Outside magazine, November 2000 Chips on the Old Block I recently spent eight days on Mount Shasta, and I guess I fit your definition of a techreationalist (“The Everest of Silicon Valley,” Dispatches, September):…
Review: Hardware and Software, January 1997 Carving Tools New proof that gear makes the athlete: skis and snowboards that practically turn for you By Craig Dostie Whether you cruise on one plank or two, the technique everyone wants to master is…
Outside magazine, March 1996 Anthropology: Tiptoe Through the Turmoil Is scientific colonialism alive and well in Tanzania? By Kiki Yablon About 3.6 million years ago, three human-like creatures stood up and walked across the muddied volcanic ash near what is now Tanzania’s…
Outside magazine, May 1995 Cycling: And No French Aftertaste By Alan Cote Funny how the Tour DuPont sneaks up on you. On the seventh of this month, 126 of the world’s finest cyclists will finish wending their way through Appalachia in the seventh running…
Gone Summering, July 1998 Need a Little More? Sporting diversions to keep you hopping from now till Labor Day By Kimberly Lisagor July 4 Mount Marathon Race, Seward, AK Don’t be fooled by the distance —…
Gone Summering, July 1998 Where Earth and Water Mix It Up On Cape Cod, “landscape” is a word that defies definition By Paul Theroux The Cape You Don’t Know To paraphrase Heracleitus, it’s not…
Outside magazine, October 1997 Chico Mendes After he was cut down, his ideas took root By Kate Wheeler Had the Brazilian ranchers who murdered Chico Mendes known what was coming, they might never have shot…
 Outside magazine, October 1997 Uno … Dos … Tres … Urrrrnggghhh! Six thousand years of triumphant Basque sport have come down to this moment, when the toughest mother from the world’s toughest race attempts the near impossible.
The Downhill Report, December 1996 Flash! Bumps Are Actually Good For You! Not sure it’s time to return to moguls? Remember, you used to hate broccoli, too. By Michael Finkel Jonny Moseley can empathize. Although he’s a two-time World Cup overall…
 Outside magazine, December 1997 Mourning in the Land of Magic Rampant in the island nation of Indonesia is the idea that everyday life is governed by forces unseen, administered by the true leaders of the country, sorcerers known as dukuns. Among the…
Outside magazine, January 1998 Review Essentials Strength Through Simplicity By Patrick Leyland THE STREAMLINED HOME GYM | ESSENTIALS | THE OTHER STUFF | BOOKS…
Outside magazine, March 1996 1-800-SNOWJOB By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta (with Brian Alexander and Steve Law) Organizers of the embattled Iditarod International Sled Dog Race say they expect a near-record 73 mushers at the starting line this month. Among the entrants will be…
Outside magazine, June 1996 Fallout Kudos to Outside and Alex Shoumatoff for taking on the Los Alamos National Laboratory (“Bomb City, USA,” April). The nuclear weapons money machine keeps rolling along while cleanup programs are being cut. One LANL document states that the lab’s continuing…
Outside magazine, July 1999 EXPLORATION Deep Blues Forty fathoms down, divers have been dying on the wreck of the Andrea Doria. Will this be the worst summer ever? A Mystery Endures Not long after…
Outside magazine, August 1995 Expeditions: Crampons and Spokes By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard) This month, mountain guides Peter Bogardus and Shepard Kopp say, they’ll bring exploratory mountain biking to new extremes by pedaling to remote peaks in western China. They’re calling the expedition…
And other divinations from Tom Brown's Tracking, Nature, and Wilderness Survival School. As told by David Rakoff—Acolyte of the Standard Class, Master Bowdriller, Sweat Lodge Scaredy-Cat, and Friend to the Vole
Dispatches, February 1998 EXPEDITIONS Gramps Is Doing What? Vaughan, 92-year-old spring chicken, mushes through another Alaskan winter By Bill Donahue It’s not exactly the remark you expect to hear from a guy who’s about to hop on a dogsled…
Dispatches, March 1997 Activism: Bovine Trespassers Beware An Oregon environmentalist makes his point–with a hail of gunfire By Bill Donahue “My god!” cries Robert Sproul, an 82-year-old Oregon cattle rancher. “They were just innocent cows.” Innocent or not, 11 of Sproul’s…
Outside magazine, May 1996 Adventure: On 3,456 Kit Kat Bars and a Prayer Samantha Brewster’s backward tacking into sailing history By John Tayman It’s been done before, so it isn’t unimaginable. Still, sailing nonstop around the world, alone and in the wrong…
With what? Dire expectation, for one: Of snail-like progress through the soul of RV Nation. Of Truckers Use Low Gear, High Wind Warning, Slippery When Wet. A few days on the road as the highest-impact camper, and yes, please check the oil.
Outside magazine, June 1999 MY DELTA, MYSELF You can go home again–so long as home is the blacktop along the mighty Mississippi My Delta, Myself | A Little Good, Clean…
Outside magazine, August 1995 Aquaculture: Scales of Justice By Karen Wright “Fishermen think we can track these bass out of aircraft,” says Bob Lunsford, a Maryland state biologist, “and frankly, we don’t tell them any different.” Lunsford is talking about 3,000 wild black bass…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Intake: Souped-Up Smoothies By Rita Dimmick Increase your brain power, detoxify your digestive tract, even improve your sexual performance. These are the promises being proffered by the latest twist in short-attention-span health food making its way east: souped-up smoothies.
Dispatches, December 1998 Expeditions Everest? No Problem. Except for This Damn Full-Body Cast. An avalanche-battered snowboarder resumes his climb-and-carve assault on the world’s highest peaks. By Tim Zimmermann “I remember this sudden rush…
Travel Guide, Winter 1995-1996 How to Carve Out Some Savings By Ron C. Judd Deep in the heart of every skier lurk two great fears: unsettlingly steep slopes and unreasonably steep ski-trip prices. To survive the first, sideslip. To avoid the second, consider a…
Two men, a continent, and the mother of all polar duels
 Outside magazine, October 1997 And Old Views Shall Be Replaced By New It’s just a matter of days now, when this stoppering of China’s signature river, the largest works project of the millennium, will begin. The ambition is tremendous, the environment transformable,…
Outside magazine, September 2000 Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 Baring All The Wildest Dream: The Biography of George Mallory, by Peter and…
Beneath the skin of the Australian landscape known as Kakadu, a huge wealth of uranium awaits. Above that same skin lies wealth of a more intimate sort: paradisiacal scenery, the first touch of human history, and 50 millennia of artistic achievement, rendered on soft, glowing sandstone. Can you see the dilemma here?
Outside magazine, September 1999 BOOKS Rough Going Buy this book! Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam,…
Outside magazine, November 1995 Jurisprudence: Presumed Gullible By Ken Olsen It almost seemed cruel. After tracing fugitive animal-rights activist Rod Coronado to a house on an Arizona Indian reservation, police spun a tale about an injured bird down at the local fire station. The…
Outside magazine, June 2000 Whale Watching: Q&A with Peter Bray By David Friedland Despite the modern trend toward the efficiency and ease of airplane travel, one brave Cornish man is about to attempt a crossing of the…
Outside magazine, October 1995 Entertainment: John Muir, You’re Going to Disney World! From the marriage of wilderness education and entrepreneurial scheming, a brainchild is born By Debra Shore Were you really satisfied with your last visit to a national park? Think about…
Features: Election Preview ’96, November 1996 He’s Back And He’s Tanned, Rested, and Ready Forget Colin, Pat, and Jesse. The big-time endorsement every politician covets this year is that of television commercial icon Iron Eyes Cody, beloved symbol of the environmental movement. So…
For the preternaturally talented Alex Lowe, world's best climber, the path to every summit passes directly through his family room. Which, he's discovering, is a tricky route to take.
Outside magazine, May 1997 Diabolique It’s not the fact that Jeannie Longo crushes her cycling rivals so effortlessly that bothers them. It’s that she’s so unpleasant in victory. By Dana Thomas It should have been,…
Dispatches, December 1998 Environment Pipe Dreaming The oil industry covets yet another Alaskan paradise. And this time it looks like no one can stop them. By Dirk Olin The vast, treeless expanse of arctic coastal plain that lies along…
Outside magazine, June 1999 Expedition If the Approach Doesn’t Kill You, Try Out the Ascent Deep in the Karakoram, three American climbers attempt the biggest wall of them all…
Outside magazine, August 1999 Jocko’s Rocket Will the car of the future come screaming out of the Mojave desert? By Brad Wetzler Ninety miles east of Los Angeles, the San Bernardino Mountains give way…
Outside magazine, April 1995 Cowboy Nation: Clothes Make the Cowpoke From the homespun to the highflautin, the best in buckaroo gear By Sara Corbett In a marketplace choked with faux western wear, it’s important to keep in mind that cowboys, real cowboys,…
Outside magazine, July 1994 Tour Preview: Meanwhile, Among the Grown-ups… A bookie’s-eye view of the big race By Eric Hagerman Months before this year’s Tour de France, and already the rumors were voyant. The course, some claimed, was designed to expose the weakness…
Outside magazine, August 1996 The Book On: Swimming A skeptical world can’t help but ask: will the Chinese women come clean? By Gretchen Reynolds In the history of competitive aquatics, no team has ever been so reviled as China’s female swimmers. Arriving…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Presumed Redundant Concluding a chain of events that resembles something out of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, U.S. marshals have finally located fugitive river guide William Stoner in Sydney, Australia, and are now pressing for his extradition. Stoner, you may recall,…
Outside magazine, October 1994 Classics: The Dutch Oven By Donovan Webster These days, camp fashion demands equipment that glitters like NASA nuggets and weighs less than helium. Which is important if you’re making a very classy through-hike of the Appalachian Trail, but not so for lesser…
Outside magazine, November 1995 Embraced by the Strangler Fig Cut loose with the world’s most maddeningly optimistic adventurer By Randy Wayne White After surviving a hideous car crash in 1980, my friend Tucker Comstock experienced a spiritual refurbishment that helped her shed…
Review: Hardware and Software, November 1996 Books: Postcards from the front By Miles Harvey Aftermath: The Remnants of War, by Donovan Webster (Pantheon Books, $23). “All around us, human bones poke from the ground,” writes Webster. He is looking out over…
Outside magazine, November 1997 Books: Season’s Gleanings Ready for the annual fall book blitz? You are now. By Miles Harvey The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier, by Bruce Barcott (Sasquatch Books, $24). Barcott grew…
Women Outside, Fall 1998 Regimens Armed and Dangerous? America’s freestyle diva can help with the first part. The rest is your business. By Gretchen Reynolds (with Lea Aschkenas) GEAR | TRAVEL |…
Outside magazine, January 1992 Triathlon: An Iron Grip By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard) The Ironman World Championship didn’t appear to have much going for it. Mike Pigg, the short-course maestro, decided to skip the October 19 race and a confrontation with defending…
Outside magazine, April 1995 The Big Showdowns By Sara Corbett The Calgary Stampede: July 7-16, Calgary, Alberta. Chuck wagon races, street dancing, and full-throttle carousing make this something of a cowboy Mardi Gras. A hefty cash purse lures top riders. Call 800-661-1260.
Dispatches, May 1998 LOST CAUSES Take My Monuments, Please! An Antarctic obsessive desperately tries to give his treasures away By Michael McRae ‘I guess it’s kind of a white elephant,” Warren Pearson admits, gazing at the hand-tooled copper…
Outside magazine, May 1999 Lowe and Behold With most media attention on mainstream athletes like Michael Jordan, Mark McGwire, and John Elway, it was so refreshing to read your profile of climber Alex Lowe (“The Mutant and…
Outside magazine, July 1995 Sport: The Next Best Thing to Arena Football John Vande Velde says your town needs his portable cycling league By Dan Gindling “We’re Americanizing the sport of cycling,” says John Vande Velde, the 46-year-old creator of the Vandedrome,…
Dispatches, August 1997 B U S I N E S S Come Spew on Us How best to lure industry to New York State? With a license to pollute, of course. By Bill Donahue…
Dispatches, August 1998 Sport Same Ball, Little Different Spin Beach volleyball’s emerging phenom wants his sport to look more like America By Sarah Freidman When Dain Blanton explodes from the sand and smashes a scorching spike over…
Outside magazine, November 1997 Croco%#@! Dundee All across Australia, hapless wild beasts cry out: oh no, not him again! By Randy Wayne White Steve Irwin, the khaki-wearing bloke known to millions of television viewers around the world as…
Women Outside, Fall 1998 Recovery Yo, Mommy, Drop and Give me 50 Postpartum drills for mother and Chumley By Gretchen Reynolds GEAR | TRAVEL | FITNESS | HEALTH…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: Be All That You Can’t Be It lets you move freely and enjoy the sights,” says Michael Sneath, an underwater trainer for Belaqua, which manufactures the Breathing Observation Bubble, a $10,000 submersible motor scooter fitted with a Jetsons-style breathing…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: Heeere, Cujo! “They realize, after their couch has been destroyed and their neighbor's dog mauled, that they really don't want it anymore,” says Deborah Warlock, a Los Angeleno who operates a shelter for pet wolves abandoned by their owners. Sadly, the wolf-as-Fido…
Outside magazine, March 1994 My Malaria Adventures in delirium. Or, why I’m on a steak and gin-and-tonic diet, for my health By Tim Cahill I was eating breakfast on the terrace of a small restaurant near Santa Fe, New Mexico, when…
Outside magazine, December 1995 Confessions of a Cosmic Resonator Fie on sunspots! Damn those katabatic winds! I’m weather sensitive, and I’m just sick about it. By Sallie Tisdale “Plaguey twelvepenny weather,” said Jonathan Swift, and I know just what he meant. We…
Outside magazine, April 1996 U.S.Å., U.S.Å. By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta In what may spur twin national crises in Norway and Sweden, two American nordic skiers upstaged the Scandinavians at their national championships. Nina Kemppel of Anchorage, Alaska, who trains and races with…
Outside Magazine, August 1999 The Big Sweep Beyond L.A.’s tangle of freeways, you can pedal, snorkel, and kayak your way to a truly great outdoors weekend. Honest. By Mike Steere Everybody’s going surfing: A…
Outside magazine, September 1994 The Gargantua File By Byron Ricks Every region has oddities that befuddle even the locals. In the Pacific Northwest, the flora and fauna follow the example of the region’s geologic features, often growing to eccentric proportions. We asked Ann Saling, author of…
Outside magazine, December 1995 Operation Forest Storm By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta With bar-code scanners blazing, biologist Dan Janzen and a band of about 200 taxonomists will fan out across Costa Rica’s 463-square-mile Guanacaste Conservation Area next month to conduct what may be…
Outside magazine, September 2000 Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 THE OTHER STUFF All Aboard A LONGBOARD REVOLUTION swept the surfing world in the…
Outside magazine, April 1995 Keeping America’s Trees Safe From Small-Curd Bubble Wrap Down the postflood Mississippi, beating the bushes for the mother lode of trash By Ian Frazier In New York City, where I live, plastic bags get stuck in trees. Especially…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: Psychic Swein: Yes! I See It! Prognostications ’96 Last year was a mixed bag for Swein Macdonald, Scotland’s most famous psychic. In this space, he accurately predicted that Florida would be hit by a June hurricane and…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Ride With Pride: …And Manage the Pressure By Alan Cote The easiest yet most profound way to change a bike’s performance involves nothing more than a pump and a valve. A difference of as little as ten pounds per square…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Big Weather: Lightening No place to escape the white sizzle, coming in at 200,000 amps per bolt By E. Annie Proulx What a fiery summer, no rain, the well gone dry. I was trying to finish the house.
Dispatches, April 1999 Environment Sprawl? Smog? The New California Says No. Only in la-la land could the same By Melba Newsome Only in La-La Land could the same society that embraced bumper-to-bumper traffic and…
Outside magazine, July 1996 Reuse, Recycle, Repeat Refrain It could only happen in the land that spawned grunge. The Garbage Gurus, a trio from Portland, Oregon, have pioneered a new rock genre, “garbage music,” created by banging on old kitchen sinks and plucking stringed instruments fashioned…
 Outside magazine, September 1995 Death in the Ruins They come to Cambodia for the cheap living, the cheap grass, the chance to flirt with a dangerous part of the world. But these days, young Western travelers have been paying the price for straying…
Outside magazine, April 1996 Science: It’s Matter, but it’s Not. Antimatter. Get It? A thimbleful of nothing sets the physics world atwitter By Bill Donahue After four years of trying, a team of physicists in Geneva has produced a thimbleful of…
Outside magazine, January 1997 Adventure Travel Special Professor Cahill’s Travel 101 He’s been trotting the globe for more than two decades, and yes, along the way he’s picked up a thing or 20. Tips to happier trails…
Outside magazine, April 1999 Books: Eyewitnesses By James Zug KAYAKS | BUYING RIGHT | THE OTHER STUFF | BOOKS Tigers…