Adventure
ArchiveDispatches, February 1998 TRAGEDY A Pole Too Far Three skydivers die in Antarctica, leaving the world to ask, “Why?” By Susan Enfield ‘There’s no rhyme or reason for doing something like this,” Ray Miller, a 43-year-old Ohio marketing…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Symptoms: Seven Reasons to Stop, Period By Ken McAlpine Active rest may satisfy your compulsions, but there are still times when complete rest is best. “Injury and breakdown are right around the corner from success,” warns trainer Diane Buchta. “Fortunately,…
Outside magazine, October 1995 St. Lucia By Trish Reynales Sure, St. Lucia’s twin peaks make for great postcards. “Pitons soar a half-mile into the sky. Mist dripping from the vines. Parrots mocking me from the palms. Mud up to my knees.
Outside magazine, April 1996 Redemption on Wheels By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta While the sight of a longhaired man carrying a cross at Eastertime may be a little disconcerting, don’t worry: The fellow tromping around Madagascar this month with a 12-foot-tall rolling crucifix…
Outside magazine, July 1996 Surviving the Drive Through By Lisa Twyman Bessone Ever notice how a long road trip brings out the James Dean in us all? We act rebellious, even a little dangerous-driving fast, howling along with the tunes blaring, wolfing Big…
Outside magazine, July 1996 Calculations Sports by Calories By Katie Arnold Counting calories, we admit, is really Jenny Craig’s gig. But outdoor athletes might take note–to make sure they’re getting enough fuel for their pursuits. “You shouldn’t get hung up on numbers,”…
Outside magazine, December 1992 Triathlon: Ask Mr. Ironman By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard and Alison Osius and Terry Rutlin) If you placed bets on last year’s triathlon season, Andy Carlson was the ultimate preseason gamble. In 1990 he was Triathlete magazine’s Rookie of the…
Outside magazine, December 1995 In This Corner… By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta Score one for the mighty green and golden bell frog. Since 1993, Australian officials have tried to relocate the endangered thimble-size creatures from a trash-filled brick quarry that’s slated to become…
 Outside magazine, February 1998 Yes, it is a Lovely Morning. Now Why Don’t You Just Go to Hell. Drop 28 virtual strangers at the South Pole. Blend in eight months of mind-numbing darkness. Fold into extremely close quarters. Add a pinch of…
Outside magazine, April 1996 Environment: Lock and Load! Industry Goon at 12 o’clock! Meet Rick Valois, commander-in-chief of the first eco-militia By Bill Donahue He’s probably the only environmentalist in the United States with camo-clad, gun-toting foot soldiers at his command, and…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Ride With Pride: Practice Rolling Acts of Kindness Harmonious trail riding in five friendly steps By Sara Corbett As anyone with a set of knobbies knows, there can be trouble out in the hills, as mountain bikers are…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Running: Hey! You! Get offa my singlet! By Todd Balf (with Jim Kelly, Martin Dugard, and Alison Osius) As the unusually large five-man pack jockeyed for the final sprint at the 10,000-meter U.S. cross-country national championships last December in Portland,…
Outside magazine, April 1997 Another Herbal Wrap, O Immortal One? Should fortune, fame, and flabby acolytes be your heart’s desire, the first American sumo champion suggests thinking really, really big By Brad Wetzler When he…
Outside magazine, July 1996 Paddling: Mission Uncomfortable Mark Robbin’s lonely quest for the other side of the continent By Bill Donahue The setting is bleak–a Motel 6 in the middle of nowhere–and Mark Robbins is weary. “This isn’t fun,” he laments, sprawled…
Outside magazine, October 1996 Sport: From Wurst to First Propelled by Eastern Bloc training methods and a zest for junk food, a trio of Germans looks to sweep the Ironman By Lolly Merrell It’s midnight in Worms, Germany, and European Ironman champion…
Outside magazine, May 1995 Little Rascal A harmless pleasure cruise this was not By Randy Wayne White When my friend G.M. asked me to crew from Colombia to Panama and through the canal aboard his 35-foot Morgan sloop, I grudgingly consented–though I…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Movies: Legends of the Fall By Michael Paterniti As a minor literary movement unto himself, writer Jim Harrison has invented a cult of brazen heroes who live for the roar of fanged animals in wild places. To date, film versions…
Outside magazine, May 1995 Ballooning: The Legend of Steve the Adventurer By Todd Balf On the surrealness scale, it was off the charts: a 50-year-old Chicago securities dealer in the gondola of a hot-air balloon that he’d flown only once before, readying for takeoff…
Outside magazine, June 1996 Politics: Do Unto Endangered Species… With the environment up for grabs, God send in a green army By Bill Donahue And on the eighth day, after he had created Gingrich, Dole, and other democratically elected foes of the…
Dispatches, July 1997 S P O R T Where No One Has Gone Before? Mehgan Heaney-Grier’s precocious quest to become the world’s deepest free diver By Paul Kvinta The most peaceful part of Mehgan Heaney-Grier’s life begins at 40…
Dyn-O-Mite!, October 1997 The Illustrated History of Hat Head By Andrew Tilin and Mike Grudowski Who could have guessed, way back at that family reunion when your cousin Larry snuffled down one Schlitz too many and ended up with a Styrofoam cooler…
Outside Magazine, October 1998 Inspriation Enlighten My Load Sometimes you find yourself in the most predictable places By Pico Iyer I am sitting on a high hill above the dusty passageways of Ganden Monastery in Tibet. The sky…
News from the Field, December 1996 Sport: Why Is This Kid Grinning? Because 15-year-old Chris Sharma is the future of American sport climbing By Todd Balf “I think most people are past the age thing,” says Chris Sharma, 15, after another…
Outside magazine, December 1997 Enterprise: Eureka? Above the din of doubters, a prospector swears a filthy Canadian river will make him filthy rich By Trevor Curwin ‘Oh, it’s down there, all right. that gold is definitely there, as we speak,”…
Outside magazine, June 1996 Wildlife: Marty Stouffer’s Apocryphal America After a raft of allegations, his peers ask: Has the popular PBS filmmaker gone too far? By John Tayman When 50 filmmakers settled into missoula, Montana, last March for the 19th annual International…
Outside magazine, March 1996 Communications: Talk Alien to Me An Everyman’s plan to mingle with the stars By Paul Kvinta “If that call comes and you don’t answer, you’ll regret it,” trumpets astronomer Paul Shuch, in a wobbly impression of Humphrey Bogart…
Outside magazine, May 1995 Night Calls It was the last of its kind. When the red-crested heron vanished deep in Africa’s outback, a girl and her father traced the lonely rise and fall of their lives by its fading song. By Lisa…
Dispatches, June 1997 Jurisprudence: Hey, Get Your Ropes Off My Cathedral! A Wyoming judge is left to answer a thorny question: To whom does Devils Tower belong? By Bill Donahue For The Record…
Outside magazine, July 1999 BUSINESS Wall-to-Walls Climbing gyms go high-tech, top-dollar, and mainstream I’ll Stick with the Miso Soup It sounds like a Zen riddle: When is a sumo wrestler too fat? Recently, sumotori who…
Outside magazine, September 1996 Books: A Lyrical Turn to the Epic By Miles Harvey Accordion Crimes, by E. Annie Proulx (Scribner, $25). From Homer’s Odyssey to Dante’s Divine Comedy, perhaps the purest genre of literature is the travel…
October 1999 F E A T U R E S Adventure at the End of the Century The sight of George Leigh Mallory’s well-preserved body on Everest confirms that adventure, like life, is not always pretty. It means risking all on a mountain—as…
Outside magazine, April 2000 Snows of Yesteryear Mckay Jenkins’s article about the avalanche tragedy that struck Mount Cleveland 30 years ago (“And None Came Back,” February) was spare, elegant, and riveting—so much so that I told my…
Cycling Special, March 1997 That Old Black Top Magic If you’re racing, touring, or just toning up, a few road-ready tricks can help you do it better By Andrew Rice Your Tutor: Fred Rodriguez, 23,…
Outside magazine, March 1998 Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Down. And Then, By Golly, Up Again. Why fuss with this “Climb Every Mountain” crap when you can simply climb one mountain, every day, 2,000-plus days straight, almost six years, rain and…
Outside magazine, May 1996 Earth to Jenny: Come in, Jenny “Not to be rude,” said third-place finisher Anne Marie Lauck after she and the rest of a strong field were trounced by a mysterious number 61 at the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials in Columbia, South…
Outside magazine, June 1999 Birch Bark in Excelsis! Looking for someplace a little out of touch with the times? Hang a left at the Adirondacks. My Delta, Myself | A…
Outside magazine, August 1995 The Marvelous, Manic Drive of Juli Furtado What fuels the world’s most dominant mountain-bike racer? Doom and gloom and a steady flow of French roast. By Sara Corbett “Oh my god,” Juli Furtado…
Outside magazine, August 1996 The Book On: Beach Volleyball Can McPeak and Reno bury the hatchet for gold’s sake? By Mark Jannot Until April, the olympic debut of women’s beach volleyball seemed fairly easy to handicap: A few top international teams,…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Big Weather: The Ice Storm Trees crash through your windows like dead uncles, whole forests go into an exploding collapse. You’ve got your comeuppance. By Barry Hannah Here in Oxford, Mississippi, most of the leaves are fallen and…
Outside magazine, November 1995 Matches Made in the Heavens No matter what your alpine aptitude, a guide to finding that resort of your dreams By Ron C. Judd Fellow skiers, it’s time to take stock. Park yourself in a chair, rub that…
Out Front, October 1997 Attention: the Editors Have Left the Building Celebrating two decades of accuracy, prescience, and gentility. Or something like that. By Adam Horowitz If only we could attribute it to a newborn keeping us up all night.
 Outside magazine, August 1998 The First Law of Gravity Namely, that that which rises must eventually fall. A law that even the king of the Alaskan bush pilots probably can’t ignore forever. By Daniel Coyle Early morning at Ultima…
Deep beneath Moscow a crew of urban spelunkers frolics, hunting Stalin's secret hideaway, Ivan the Terrible's torture chamber, bootleg nuclear weapons, and a little fame and fortune
Outside magazine, September 1999 SPORT Out of This World Can a daring French rider called “the Alien” keep pace with downhill mountain biking’s wild, wild ride? “This is what I like,” says French downhill mountain-bike racing phenom Nicolas Vouilloz,…
Outside magazine, September 1999 POLITICS The New Wilderness Land Grab Armed with serious money, a young cadre of green activists is about to put naked nature back on the national agenda By Elizabeth Arnold…
Horse Sense I Wanna Be a Cowboy The Hysterical Parent The horse will buck or run off Wranglers look for horses to put in their lines that are “bomb-proof” (their description, not ours) because they don’t underestimate their clients’…
Outside magazine, October 1994 Books: Cactus Ed’s Apotheosis By Miles Harvey Earth Apples: The Poetry of Edward Abbey, edited by David Petersen (St. Martin’s Press, $14.95); Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, edited by David Petersen (Little, Brown and…
Outside magazine, November 1996 Election Preview ’96 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…
Outside magazine, February 1996 No Comprendo! Yo Soy un Gringo Estupido! For the linguistically impaired, a south-of-the-border survival guide By Randy Wayne White Recently, I attended a two-week Spanish course at Conversa, an intensive language school located a few miles outside San…
Outside magazine, March 1999 Books: The Real Deal By James Zug ELECTRONICS | BUYING RIGHT | THE OTHER STUFF | BOOKS…
Outside Magazine, November 1994 Cycling: The Curse Strikes Again By Todd Balf (with Jim Hage) Before the start of the season, Motorola star Lance Armstrong reasoned that the world champion’s curse, a malady coined by the European tabloids after a succession of recent winners…
Outside magazine, July 1994 You Know How I Don’t Like Pesticides Sure, it’s a kinder crop. But is organic food really better for your body? By Ken McAlpine There are people who can resist strawberries. In fact, they bristle at eating strawberries–plain, or on…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Men’s Sprints: Odds That Michael Johnson will win both the 200 and 400…….1-1 Donovan Baileywill win gold in the 100………10-1 Carl Lewiswill medal in the 100……….15-1…
 Outside magazine, Family Vacation Guide Unsung Heroes Ten top-ranking parks you might not have heard of — but then, no one else has either TODDLERS…
Dispatches, May 1997 Treasure Hunting: Thank You, Fidel, May I Have Another Gold Ingot By Miro Cernetig “There could be billions in gold down there,” says Glenn Costello, practically chuckling as he thumbs through slides of sparkling silver coins and other booty…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Mountain Biking: Odds That… Alison Sydor will capture the gold medal……3-2 Tinker Juarez will medal……..3-1 Thomas Frischknecht will break something…….8-1…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Field Notes: The Last Wilderness Few places are left like British Columbia’s rainforest. But for how long? By Doug Peacock Early July on the central coast of British Columbia was cold and wet. Clouds hovered over indistinct shorelines.
Outside magazine, October 1994 Sailing: Incoming! By Todd Balf (with Greg Child and Dan Dickison) Last July, 24 hours after a surprise opening-day drubbing by millionaire skipper and fellow trash-talker Bill Koch, Dennis Conner did what he does best: He got even. When officials at the…
Outside magazine, November 1995 My Gelding, Myself How passion crosses the line into not-quite-respectable obsession: The complicated joys of horse ownership By Jane Smiley THE WORK Last weekend, when I went away for a two-night horse trials with my elderly…
Features: Election Preview ’96, November 1996 The Nature of the Beast In defense of the dandelion-pickin’, tree-lovin’ side of that environmental bogeyman, Bob Dole By Brad Wetzler Little-known fact: Bob Dole was once a demon on roller skates –the steel-wheeled, strap-on,…
 Outside magazine, November 1997 The Victim’s Wake When the body of a local man surfaced in the Grenadines, the wave of accusations that followed not only swept up the wealthy American couple suspected of his murder — it also exposed anew the uneasy symbiosis…
T H E H O L I D A Y G I F T G U I D E Shop for THE JOCK Shop for THE WANDERER Shop for…
 Outside magazine, April 1998 You Gotta Have Friends. Which is Damned Unfortunate. Tackling the Appalachian Trail on a whim would require a few essentials. I realized, foremost among them a boon companion. What I got was Katz. By Bill Bryson…
In the evolution of the species known as hockey players, those indoor patches of brine-cooled, milky-white, Zambonied ice have spawned some very good athletes. But the truly great ones arise from the dense, black freeze of the neighborhood skating pond, where weekend duffers and future stars happily collide.
Outside magazine, May 1998 A Lovely Sort of Lower Purpose In praise of doing nothing. To wit: No racing, no exceeding, no catch-and-releasing. Just time-tested fooling around. By Ian Frazier As kids, my friends and I spent a lot…
Outside magazine, May 1999 Expeditions Sledgepuller, P.I. Toting 300 pounds and a love of the arcane, a Canadian explorer attempts to unravel an Arctic mystery When Hans Kr’ger set out to explore a desolate stretch…
Outside magazine, June 1994 Mountain Biking: 150-kph Dreaming By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard and Eric Hagerman) Funny things happen when you try to ride a mountain bike at 150 kph. Ask the new downhill speed record holder, Frenchman Christian Taillefer, who on…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Books: Time and Tide Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast, by Daniel Duane (North Point Press/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $21). Thoreau did it from the door of his cabin; Darwin, from the deck of the H.M.S. Beagle;…
Vacation Special, August 1997 F L Y – F I S H I N G T H E R O G U E Time Off the Grid In blissful isolation along the Rogue River, where it’s easier to find…
Outside magazine, October 1995 Books: Vengeance and Cactus By Miles Harvey Painted Desert, by Frederick Barthelme (Viking, $22.95). This vibrant novel has fascinating parallels with nature essayist Bill McKibben’s acclaimed 1992 nonfiction work, The Age of Missing Information. In that book, McKibben…
Destinations, November 1998 Ace is the Place A prime-season meander down South Carolina’s Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto Rivers By Parke Puterbaugh If your mental image of coastal South Carolina consists mainly of Myrtle Beach’s six-lane…
Out Front, Fall 1998 Anthropology O.J., B.C. New and disheartening evidence that domestic abuse is prehistory By Cristina Opdahl It wasn’t So Fred Flintstone flirted with waitresses in Rockapulco. And frittered away too much time at the lodge.
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: Don’t Condo Me In Sheep rancher Randy Campbell says he’s been backed against a wall. “All the spring range is being subdivided for golf courses,” sighs Campbell, who works land near Vail, Colorado. Such growth has forced him to…
Outside magazine, January 1996 A Bimonthly Bath, Penguin Porn, and Thou New Year’s greetings from Don and Margie McIntyre, wrapping up 365 long days of Antarctic togetherness By Jack Barth Last January, adventurers Don and Margie McIntyre left the warmth of Sydney,…
Outside magazine, February 1998 W I N T E R O L Y M P I C S P R E V I E W Nagano? Naga-Yes! Sure, this year’s Winter Olympics will have its foibles, including…
Outside magazine, September 1994 When the Whammy Strikes It’s 3 a.m. in a big, foreign city. Do you know where your running shoes are? By Randy Wayne White Maybe through influence, but probably through curse, the Temple of the Giant Jaguar was the shaper…
Travel Guide, Winter 1995-1996 St. Vincent/Grenadines By Jonathan Runge If the British Virgin Islands are the junior college of Caribbean sailing, the Grenadines are graduate school: Relatively long stretches of open water between the 30-odd islands south of St. Vincent make…
Outside magazine, April 1996 26.2 Legendary Miles Of Foot-Pounding, Heartbreaking, Endorphin-Inducing Huff America’s oldest, greatest marathon transformed distance running from lonely obsession to the mass promenade of a fitness nation. On the centennial of the grueling Yankee race that helped launch a revolution, a boisterous salute.
Outside magazine, August 1999 THE MOUNTAINEERS Line of Ascent On a breeding ground for greatness, wisdom comes one humble step at a time It only takes a few minutes to learn how to strap on…