Adventure
ArchiveOutside magazine, March 1997 OK, Now Where Are the Pedals? Having swapped his bike for an Indy Car, would-be speed racer Greg Lemond considers the road ahead from a very new vantage point By Ned Zeman…
Family Vacations, Summer 1997 The Adventures The Tenderfoot’s Almanac Tents and trails, guides and grub, and everything else you’ll need for the finest family backpacking trips Family Adventure Camps From sailing school to digging for artifacts, eight learning…
Outside magazine, June 1999 Et Tu, Kitty? Stalking a scratching, slinking army of feral cats through the ruins of ancient Rome By James Hamilton-Paterson On a recent visit to rome i had the initial…
Outside magazine, August 1995 Climbing: Black Diamond SuperGenius By Rod Willard Good thing Mr. Spock wasn’t much for scaling rock faces: Packs designed for climbing are generally…well, illogical. They’re either too big to take to the top or too small for stowing the hardware…
Outside magazine, September 1997 Look Ma, No Shame With their exploits comes a plaintive cry for attention. Who are we to argue? By Elizabeth Royte To be heard above the din of like-minded expeditioners and gain the attention of a…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: For You, I Get It Wholesale Want to buy a chunck of Jackson Hole, Taos, or 38 other Forest Service-owned mountain tracts that are now leased to ski-resort operations? If Republicans in Congress have their way, you may get…
 Outside Magazine, November 1994 The Happy, Wholesome, Hip-Hop Life of the MammothTeenage Death Dwarfs High on the mountaintops, the kids are winning By Bucky McMahon If Tommy Czeschin, star freestyler of the Mammoth Mountain Junior Snowboard Team, were to ride down…
 Outside magazine, May 1996 I Hear America Slogging Who are these rough, smelly pilgrims, fueled by ibuprofen and Snickers, shuffling toward Katahdin? Appalachian Trail through-hikers, of course–wayfarers on a classic holy road that’s big enough to embrace rattled urban refugees, Walden-toting aesthetes,…
Outside magazine, November 1997 Assuming That the Calibration of My Heart Rate and Recovery Times Has Been Optimally Linked to My Individualized Nutritional Needs, I Will Kick Your Ass A bit of in-your-face conversation with triathlon’s controversial heir apparent By John…
Ben Johnson always ran in front. First in Seoul, first in scandal, first in exile. But now the pack, increasingly drug-ridden and morally indistinguishable from the fallen sprinter, has caught up to him. Which is exactly why Johnson thinks he can be out front once more.
Dispatches, September 1998 Politics A Paler Shade of Brown Republican hard-liners say they care — no, really — about the environment By Jonathan Miles It wasn’t particularly surprising — or even unusual — that more than 100 stalwart…
Outside magazine, September 1999 Good, Clean, Dangerous Places Wilderness is where we find our deepest imagery, our purest freedom, our truest selves. We’d be lost without it, and we’ve never needed it more than we do now.
Outside magazine, November 1995 Climbing: Dad, Am I Over the Hill? By Todd Balf (with Joe Glickman) As a 98-pound 12-year-old, Tommy Caldwell of Colorado climbed the Diamond on Rocky Mountain National Park’s Longs Peak, one of the premier big-wall routes in the country.
Survivor II, Episode 2 People who eat people are the luckiest people in the world By Bill Vaughn Courtesy of CBS Before the bloodthirsty lords of England turned Australia into a very large prison island stocked with…
Outside Magazine, October 1998 Frustration All the Bad Breaks Then the world’s many problems were suddenly solved By Bryan Di Salvatore Summer 1978. My friend Bill and I had fetched up on Tavarua, an uninhabited sand tonsure ringing…
Outside magazine, February 1996 Science: Out with the Old, In with the Snooze The new, improved Biosphere 2 might make for better science, but we sure miss Johnny Dolphin By Stephanie Pearson Remember Biosphere 2? A futuristic 1991 experIment, it placed eight…
 Cycling Special, March 1999 With the Wind At His Heels A gusty adventure in the wilds of Patagonia, both on bike and very suddenly off By Mark Levine Be the Sag Wagon How to…
 Outside magazine, May 1997 The Killing of Wolf Number Ten When Chad McKittrick murdered the pride of the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction project, he became the prey By Thomas McNamee A man in a blue 1988 Ford pickup truck turns…
Family Vacations, Summer 1996 Be Amphibious If Sea kayakers were any closer to the water, they’d have gills. By Bill Heavey Our Favorite Places | Inside Skinny | Hysterical Parent |…
Dispatches, July 1998 Trends If It’s 100 Years Old, It Must Be Good! Cycling’s slightly baffling (and very bumpy) infatuation with retro-chic By Paul Andersen ‘It’s the purest sense of the bicycle there is,” says Wes Williams as he…
Dispatches, August 1998 Animal Rights Put That Bunny Down, or I’ll Kick Your Butt Steve Hindi pioneers a new brand of brass-knuckled activism By Jonathan Eig Yes, it’s true that Steve Hindi is both an animal-rights activist and…
Outside magazine, May 1997 Toward Thee I Lurch, Thou All-Destroying but Uninterested Grizzly Bear Like Ahab before him, Troy Hurtubise obsessively stalks the Great Other, donning 147 pounds of homemade armor, suffering countless test-pummelings, and sliding into bankruptcy as he awaits the ultimate…
Outside magazine, August 1996 A Hip New Twist to Swimming Technique The secret to the perfect workout, say Olympic coaches, is all in the midsection By Laura Hilgers To become a more powerful and efficient swimmer, practice this simple dry-land exercise:…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Welcome to the Power Vortex Way up in the wilds of northern California, a harmonic convergence of high peaks, spires, whitewater, and singletrack By Andrew Rice When seemingly all of urban California is heading for Sierra Nevada retreats…
Outside magazine, October 1994 Bobsledding: What a Great Idea for a Movie By Todd Balf (with Greg Child and Dan Dickison) The U.S. bobsled team can’t seem to buy a win. First, they bombed at the Olympics in Lillehammer. Then, on a novel summer tour, they…
Outside magazine, October 1995 Conditions: Where the Air Is Unfair By Mark Jannot Ventura, home of lemon groves, California surf, and Patagonia Inc. headquarters, is also on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s air-quality hit list. Ever since amendments to the Clean Air Act were…
Destinations: News for Adventurous Travelers, November 1996 The Animals March, Two by Ten Thousand A winter’s worth of the continent’s most spectacular migrations As season’s change, many animals have to move, and when they move en masse, it can be spectacular. Here’s’ a…
According to legend, New Zealand’s South Island was formed when the dawn froze 150 shipwrecked gods into mountains. There are worse places to spend eternity. By Patrick Symmes Geoff Spearpoint/Hedgehog House Escapism 101: Mount Aspiring, Mount Aspiring National Park…
Dispatches, November 1998 Exhibitions It’s 900 Miles Long. It’s 20 Feet Tall. It’s … Art! On the Snake River, one man’s ode to the beleagured sockeye By Rob Nixon “I‘ll have to start a factory to make these things,”…
Outside magazine, January 1999 Books: Lives and Times By James Zug Crazy Horse, by Larry McMurtry (Penguin, $20). With doorstop-size biographies the rage, a compact alternative is arriving in the form of the new Penguin Life…
News for Adventurous Travelers, February 1997 Horns of Plenty Bull stats on the great King Ranch By Paul Kvinta Nothing is so quintessentially Texas as King Ranch. It’s big. It’s swaggering. It’s full of red meat. And, for those traveling to…
 Outside magazine, April 1995 After Rwanda From the shadows thrown by Dian Fossey, Jose Kalpers emerged as the mountain gorillas’ next great hope. Then came a civil war that decimated a country, put the primates further at risk, and left the exiled savior…
Destinations, May 1998 A Few Sage Comments on the Benefits of Higher — and Wetter, and Muddier, and Snowier — Education The simple secret to getting good at something — climbing, for instance, and sailing, mountain biking, snowboarding, and more — is to…
Outside Magazine, May 1999 INNS & LODGES Rainbow Ranch A deft-enough cast from the deck adjacent to your room in Rainbow Ranch’s south wing might well plop a Madame X into a riffle of the plentiful…
Outside magazine, July 1995 Triathlon: The Waning of Tinley? By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard and Alison Osius) Scott Tinley, hoping to rub out the memory of a subpar performance at last year’s Hawaii Ironman, didn’t do himself any favors when he chose to…
Dispatches, August 1997 Y A C H T I N G Like the Vikings, Except for that Nasty Pillaging An adventuresome author tries to recreate a dicey 1,000-year-old voyage By Paul Scott It was like the crack you hear…
Destinations, August 1998 A Brief and Shining Season Summer is short in Colorado’s highest wilderness. Better hurry. By Stephanie Gregory Geographically, the north park region of Colorado couldn’t be much closer to the state’s megaresorts. Steamboat Springs lies just 65…
Outside magazine, November 1997 Because There’s Lots of Them A chat with John Swanson, molehill-bagger extraordinaire By Katie Arnold It used to be that to really wow your friends and neighbors, all you had to do was scale a…
Out Front, Fall 1998 Competition What Are Friends For? An Ironman up-and-comer looks to dethrone her mentor By Lolly Merrell When Heather Fuhr (pictured) closed on the heels of Paula Newby-Fraser at last year’s Ironman Triathlon World Championship…
Winter Travel Guide Our Journey, Our Selves By Lorien Warner Some 300 outfitters now offer thousands of female-only trips worldwide. “Women today are finding that it can be more fun to hang with the ‘girls’ than compete with the boys,” says Yvonne Lusetti of…
Outside magazine, January 1996 A Two-Elk Pileup’s Causing Big Delays… By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta (with Brooke DeNisco, Martin Forstenzer, and Eileen Hansen) In what could be shaping up as a battle of the homespun heavyweights, Charles Kuralt has procured a radio station…
Outside magazine, February 1998 Field Notes: Diorama Obscura Shuffling among history’s spoils, with animate bones, 18 million bugs, and trickster memories By Mark Levine Not long ago, I returned home from a trip to Asia, where I had climbed a…
Destinations, February 1999 First Tracks Catching a Break (or Three) The endless-summer set has yet to find Raglan’s world-class waves. Lucky for you. Surfing N.Z. Getting Around: For getting…
Outside magazine, December 1995 My Little Serrated Security Blanket The blacksmith of horror rejoices in the potentialities of an ice ax By Stephen King This is not the sort of gadget to inspire nursery rhymes. I look at the DMM Predator ice…
Outside magazine, July 1995 Cycling: The VistaLite VL530 By Hal Walter Most bike lights are sentenced to life on your handlebars. That’s OK when you’re staring straight ahead at single-track, but beyond the periphery of your bar-ends your prospects remain dim. A permanently mounted…
Outside magazine, August 1999 HOW-TO In Case of Tsunami, See Page 54 Gearing up for your worst nightmare? Buy this book. Brie: Don’t Leave Home Without It Do you ever lie awake at night wondering…
Outside magazine, August 1999 THE MAINE GUIDES Custom of the Country They make their own paddles. Their own pemmican. Their own packs. They make you happy. Welcome, tenderfoot: the Conovers on Sebec Lake, Maine…
Outside magazine, December 1995 Schizophrenic? Start a Compost Heap. By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta “Let yourself be absorbed by the creek or the cloud formation,” psychologist William Cahalan urges his clients. “Feel its healing power.” For Cahalan and a growing fringe of therapists…
Outside magazine, January 1998 Wildlife: For Me? You Shouldn’t Have. A Republican from Idaho says he has a gift for our endangered species. Which raises the question, What’s the catch? By Allan Freedman Drop and Give Me…
Destinations, February 1999 Long Weekends You’re Carving Where? Top-notch cat-skiing in an unlikely spot I‘d come a long way to see Charlie’s Bottom, and I wasn’t going to be denied. After a two-hour flight from…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: Germanimo! Why is this tribal clan looking so…Teutonic? Because they’re Indianers, part of a 100,000-strong German subculture whose members play-act the lifestyle of North American Indians. Inspired by the nineteenth-century pulp novels of Karl May (whose fictional German hero,…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Ride With Pride: Rid Yourself of Pain Shock absorbers: the next generation By Alan Cote Suspension technology isn’t going to stop bouncing rapidly forward, so you’ll need to invest in it with a certain mindset: Worry less…
Outside magazine, April 1999 Letters: Uncorked As a former commercial salmon fisherman now fighting to preserve the fish that once filled my nets, I appreciated your effort to reexamine the role of our nation’s dams (“Blow-Up,” February). As…
Outside magazine, June 1995 Milestones: Fabien Mazuer, 1976-1995 By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard and Alison Osius) French sport climber Fabien Mazuer was an athlete you could love: smart, playful with the press, and immensely talented. While still a teenager, he pulled off some…
Outside magazine, September 1995 Environment: Operation Snuff Smokey A slew of bombings casts the U.S. Forest Service in a new role: victim By Jonathan Franklin Guy Pence is sleeping better these days, though it’s still hard to escape the recurring thought, What…
Outside magazine, October 1996 Bless You, Sir, May I Jog Another? By Devon Jackson The path to enlightenment and lasting world peace is an arduous journey. But for the long-shuffling disciples of Sri Chinmoy, spiritual visionary and proponent of ultra-endurance athletics, their 2,700-mile,…
Outside magazine, April 1999 Drop and Give Me a Month’s Worth Why modern calisthenics can bridge the gap between gym and field By Kevin Foley You may be approaching the warm months with enough…
News from the Field, January 1997 Enterprise: Seeing the Forest for the Fish One man’s subaquatic quest to clean up on history By Carl Hoffman Scott Mitchen insists he’s not trying to rub our noses in his good fortune. It’s just…
 Outside magazine, April 1999 The Report Card Want to know which groups are making the grade? So did we. By Florence Williams Ecotrust Founded: 1991 Members: None Staff: 25 Executive Director: Ian Gill,…
Outside magazine, June 1996 Film: The Big Whoosh Jan De Bont find star power in Mother Nature’s wrath By Johnny Dodd His last movie dealt with a psychotic who threatened to blow up a bus. Now director Jan De Bont (…
Gone Summering, July 1998 Heaven Can Wait The timeless terrain of the Smokies all but screams eternity. But first there’s a lot more fishing to do. By Donovan Webster The West Prong and Beyond…
Outside magazine, July 1998 Out There: Lord of the Flies And the bees and the wasps and all the other biting bastards that walk upon the earth By Tim Cahill The bug scream is a distinctive human sound. It…
Out Front, October 1997 Present at the Creation By Paul Kvinta The Nike Swoosh “Thirty-five dollars,” Carolyn Davidson says. That’s how much Nike paid her in 1971 to create one of the most recognizable logos in history. But the fledgling shoe…
Outside magazine, October 1998 Is Time Running Out for the Mythic Man Fish? The greatest breath-hold diver the sport has ever seen By Paul Kvinta Looking back on it, I should have suspected trouble right…
News from the Field, December 1996 Environment: Pssst, Mr. President, Have I Got a Parcel for You With wilderness to be saved and the coffers closed, the feds start swapping By John Brinkley After country-rock crooner Bonnie Raitt and more than…
Outside magazine, June 1996 Please Don’t Eat the Shrubbery In what amounts to the most revolutionary breakthrough in waste disposal since indoor plumbing, Americans in the dusty Southwest and elsewhere are flooding their backyards, stocking them with snails, hibiscuses, and bamboo, and letting these “wetlands” decompose…
Outside Magazine, February 1995 Boardsailing: Dunking Robby By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard) Robby Naish, sailing in the long shadow of perennial world champion Björn Dunkerbeck, appeared to have his rival’s number during the wave-performance competition in last November’s season-ending Aloha Classic at Maui’s…
Outside magazine, March 1996 Use a Shovel, Go to Prison By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta (with Brian Alexander and Steve Law) It was, the prosecution said, a message to those who feel it is their “special right to destroy, loot, and plunder this…
Outside magazine, May 1995 Big Bass and the Men Who Love Them By hook, crook, and crawdad–live from the hunt for the world’s tubbiest largemouth By Brad Wetzler Shortly after Los Angeles cracked open during last year’s earthquake, Castaic Lake, a man-made…
Outside magazine, July 1999 The Rock-a-Copter The Diving Dig | The Cartwheel | The Figure Four | Take the Stairs | The Crossover Dribble |…
Outside magazine, September 1996 Peter Bird, 1947-1996 In the last message he sent to the world after leaving Russia, expedition rower Peter Bird exclaimed, “Hooray! Hooray!” After weeks of struggle in the Sea of Japan, the easterlies he’d been praying for had finally kicked in, setting…
Outside magazine, July 1996 Culture: Yo, Dog Breath! You Call That a Charge ? Is your living room ready for Craig Bone’s in-your-muzzle wildlife art? By Todd Wilkinson Wildlife painter craig bone, 40, has been called “the craziest white man in…
Outside Magazine, February 1995 Marathon: A Course of His Own By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard) Visitors get lost in New York every day. On November 6 it was German Silva’s turn. Unfortunately, the 26-year-old runner from Mexico was leading the New York Marathon…
Destinations, March 1997 Paradise Leased Borrow a million-dollar boat. Cruise the Caribbean. Grin. A beginner’s guide to sailboat charters. By Dan Dickison The Eel Ate My Homework Sailing schools teach navigation, confidence, and a good fish story or…
Outside magazine, May 1996 On Second Thought The most overrated The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man’s Recreation, by Izaak Walton. “Walton: Sage benign!” wrote poet William Wordsworth, who penned an entire sonnet in praise of Izaak Walton’s famous fishing guide. Hundreds of…
Outside magazine, June 1998 Field Notes: Strange Bedfellows Quiz: The Carolina hills are (a) an outdoor mecca, (b) a bizarro magnet, (c) both By Alex Heard You sure don’t seem like evil anti-environmental extremists,” I told Ralph and Sandra…
 Outside magazine, June 1999 I Am Elena. You Will Fly Now. There, up there in the Arizona sky! It’s the cream of the once-mighty Soviet machine! Now pulling g’s at an airport near you. By Peter…
Outside magazine, August 1995 Parachuting: Why Is This Man Smiling? A near-fatal leap by BASE jumping’s biggest star rekindles an old debate about the right to risk your own life By Eric Perlman Last May, Will Oxx stood at the lip of…