Adventure
ArchiveOutside 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…
Cycling Special, March 1997 Happier Trails to You Put in a few minutes of practice, get back hours of carefree mountain biking. Not a bad investment. By James Rodewald Your Tutor: Susan DeMattei, 34, won a bronze medal…
Outside magazine, May 1996 Politics: Let the Rivers Run. Let the Arms Be Twisted Doesn’t everybody want to save America’s fabled river of grass? On the eve of campaign ’96, President Clinton dares the GOP to say no. By Tom Kizzia When…
 Outside magazine, June 1998 Lord of All He Surveys What do you do with $150 million and an overpowering desire to save the earth? You buy your own Yosemite. And hope the natives go along with the…
Outside magazine, June 1999 I Brake for Spelunkers On Florida’s Suwannee River, giving new meaning to the phrase “way down” My Delta, Myself | A Little Good, Clean Lust in…
 Outside magazine, August 1995 By Jury-Rigged Mainsail and the Grace of God To make it through the world’s longest, most unforgiving sailing race, you need to be plenty brave, plenty foolish, and pretty handy with a wrench By Craig Vetter A…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Prescriptions: Keeping Your Cool Under Fire By Katie Arnold Exercising in scorching heat isn’t just uncomfortable–it can be downright dangerous. When the air is warmer than your skin–around 95 degrees–your body’s climate control mechanisms go postal. Convection and radiation,…
Outside magazine, March 1996 Skating: The Way We Swerved An Oregon pair finds love–and pain–in the time of urethane By Bill Donahue The relationship blossomed just over two and a half years ago on the shoulder of Interstate 5…
 Outside magazine, February 1998 Winter Olympics Preview: Nagano? Naga-Yes! Sure, this year’s Winter Olympics will have its foibles, including a gaggle of over-hyped personal stories, suspense-killing tape-delays, and TV talking heads nattering on about “adorable” pixies on skates. But that doesn’t mean…
Outside magazine, January 1998 Sport: That’s Gunther to You, Pal How we can all live out our Olympic fringe-event fantasies By Bill Donahue James Owen Merion Roberts, 1916-1997 “Sherpas give trekking agents in Nepal a most unfair…
Outside magazine, May 1995 Books: The Archdruid’s Happy Screed By Andrea Barrett Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run: A Call to Those Who Would Save the Earth, by David Brower with Steve Chapple (HarperCollins West, $20). With the 25th anniversary of…
The Outside Seer closes out the millennium, bringing us early news from the worlds of politics, exploration, and a saucy Ukrainian minx
Outside Magazine, September 1999 Beyond the Zone As the United States prepares to hand over the canal, Panama’s wild wonders are ripe for discovery. By Alex Markels The easy way to spot quetzals: Lounge on…
Outside magazine, November 1995 Climbing: The Last Ascent of Alison Hargreaves Why did the world’s finest woman alpinist never come off K2? By Greg Child On what seemed to be a perfect August day in the Karakoram range of Pakistan, Alison Hargreaves…
1999 Family Vacation Guide, Unsung Heroes I Want to be Alone! How to find solitude in America’s most crowded national parks They’re the blockbusters: Great Smoky Mountain, Grand Canyon, Banff, Yellowstone, and Yosemite, the five most…
Outside magazine, October 1994 Environment: Guess Who’s Loping in for Dinner? Under fire from every direction, the feds are finally set to put the gray wolf back in the West By Amy Linn Ask Rénee Askins what her enemies have been saying about government…
Dispatches: News from the Field, November 1996 Sport: Could This Be the World’s Greatest Athlete? Meet Chris Waddell, Paralympic skiing legend cum sprinting hopeful By Katie Arnold At his home in western Massachusetts, 28-year-old Chris Waddell is mulling a decision…
Dispatches, March 1998 SCIENCE Is This the Audition for Stupid Pet Tricks? In the name of research, a dubious idea is born “People ask me if David Letterman knows about this,” muses neurobiologist Robert Barlow, “but I can’t imagine Mr. Letterman…
Outside magazine, April 1995 Art: The Celestial Obsession of James Turrell With vision, chisels, and bulldozers, a sculptor makes a megastatement By Tim Vanderpool From afar, James Turrell’s big dream looks like your average volcanic heap. A massive brown pile that rises…
Outside Magazine, November 1994 Running: A Tarahumara Storm By Todd Balf (with Jim Hage) Last August’s leadville trail 100, the grueling ultra-marathon waged mostly above 10,000 feet, wasn’t your typical media-free, footpath-less-traveled ultra. Scott Tinley was there, with microphone in hand, filming a CBS…
Outside magazine, July 1996 Law Enforcement: Drop that Rack, or I’ll Vaporize You Yellowstone’s infamous Antler Wars enter a new phase By Todd Wilkinson “It’s fine with us if they believe there’s a camera lurking behind every tree,” says Brian O’Dea, criminal…
Outside magazine, August 1996 The Wannabes: It’s Been Fun, Modern Pentathlon… …But don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Presenting the winner and losers in the made-for-tv future of the Games Beach Volleyball |…
Outside magazine, April 1995 Oceanography: R2DTuna By Mark Wheeler “Tuna are the fighter planes of the fish world,” says Dave Barrett, a 35-year-old ocean engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hoping to put that power in a can, Barrett and his colleagues are…
Outside magazine, July 1994 Cycling: The LeMond Boomerang By Alan Cote In the quest to build the lightest frame, some bike designers have chucked rigidity along with weight. That’s the reason many cutting-edge bikes flex considerably under pedaling forces, resulting in a mushy ride that soaks…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Whitewater: Odds That… Americans will sweep the solo events……..10-1 The dam will burst during David Hearn’s run…..20-1 Scott Shipley will fail to win the gold medal……..100-1…
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…
Outside magazine, June 1996 Paradise Fouled Year after year, it was a perfect, unchanging place. And then it wasn’t By Randy Wayne White On my return to what was once the best place in the world, I was reminded of an…
Outside magazine, July 1997 Come On, Baby, Light My Gerb It’s bang-up time again at the firework freaks’ annual whiz-pop powderfest By Mike Steere Ekaterina V. Korneeva — a PH.D.-level laser scientist known as Kathy to her new American friends…