Adventure
ArchiveOutside 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 Is This Any Way to Travel, the Sequel How, you may wonder, could self-proclaimed Father of Freefalling Dan Osman (“Is This Any Way to Travel,” January) one-up his earlier stunts of falling–deliberately–from 600-plus-foot cliffs and arresting himself with only climbing rope? “I…
Outside magazine, October 1994 Speed: Step Aside, Carl Lewis By Todd Balf (with Greg Child and Dan Dickison) If Leroy Burrell had business cards inscribed with the words “World’s Fastest Man,” would anyone argue? Burrell, who briefly held the world record for the 100-meter sprint four…
Outside magazine, November 1995 The Wayward West: It Came from the Outback And then the best growled, snacked, and was sent to bed for being bad. But Congressman Don Young and his minions, eager to gobble up the nation’s environmental laws, aren’t sated yet.
Outside magazine, November 1996 Cross-Country Nation A report from the tracks in Oslo, capital of the land where to be Nordic is to ski nordic By Bill McKibben Warning! as you read this article, remember that Norway is not the…
Dispatches, November 1998 Sport I’m Going Big. Anyone Care to Follow? Layne Beachley looks to make her mark at surfing’s Triple Crown By Laura Hilgers Gale-force winds were whipping the peaks off six- to eight-foot waves last December when…
Winter Travel Guide 1996 Party Like It’s 1997 Jeff Williams If you want to be among the first in the world to ring in 1997, you’ll have to go far out of your way to do it-to the Chatham Islands, some 475 miles east…
Outside magazine, April 1995 Cowboy Nation: The Aerobic Cowboy: The Tush-Push Frontier A line-dancing odyssey to the land of the rhinestone-chapped and ready By Ed Zuckerman It was 7:30 on a Friday night, and the cavernous dance hall at In Cahoots, a…
Dispatches, May 1998 AFTERMATHS Nuclear Weapons Waste? Right This Way. While protesters cry foul, the U.S. government prepares to throw open the gates of the nation’s first permanent plutonium graveyard By Michael Dolan A small cluster of white…
 Outside magazine, May 1999 Eat My Backwash, Se±or! Sixteen hours in the foul Argentine drink, at a pair of the world’s longest (and strangest) swim races By Ken Kalfus Photographs by Rob Howard After…
Outside magazine, July 1995 Cinema: Check Out Those Lifelike Blowholes Hollywood unveils its kinder, gentler, bad-press-proof killer whales By John Alderman “These are not illusions,” says Walt Conti, owner of Edge Innovation, a movie special-effects boutique in Mountain View, California, explaining his…
Outside magazine, August 1997 Cheeky Bit of Ocean There, What? Exactly why are two young Brits pedaling, pedal-boating, and cross-dressing their way around the globe? Splendid question. They’re still trying to come up with a logical answer.
Fitness special, August 1998 Welcome to Your Future, Sissy Boy You fancy yourself an athlete? Well, so did the NBA All-Star, and the American League Rookie of the Year. But hard-guy trainer Mark Verstegen broke them down.
Outside magazine, November 1997 And 856,000 Choruses of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” Later … An armada of fearless oarsmen sets out on a 3,000-mile transatlantic free-for-all By Bill Donahue November is shaping up to be an unpleasant month for…
Outside magazine, November 1998 How Hard Is Hard? To firm up the nebulous, get cozy with your lactate threshold At what pace should you be working? Good question — and one you should be constantly…
Women Outside, Fall 1998 Longevity My, You’re a Pretty Young Thing Our octogenarian correspondent meets the septuagenarian of his dreams — with predictable results GEAR | TRAVEL | FITNESS |…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: Haven’t Been There. Ain’t Done That. It’s not easy being a world-beating adventurer these days. On a planet teeming with energetic busybodies, you have to find something to be first at. But fear not. In 1996, there will be…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: Bikini A-Go-Go Move over, Belau. The Marshall Islands’ Bikini Atoll, nuked repeatedly in U.S. surface tests in the forties and fifties, is about to become the South Pacific’s new must-dive local. “No question,” says Daniel J. Lenihan, chief of…
Destinations, February 1999 Chuck Darwin, Eat Your Heart Out The Chiricahua Mountains are as rugged and diverse as the Galápagos but have one big advantage: They’re right here at home. By Jonathan Hanson Up at…
Outside magazine, December 1995 A Landscape of Possibility To lose the wilderness, author Rick Bass argues, is to lose our ability to imagine By Rick Bass When the 104th congress reconvenes next month, its unfinished business is likely to include 22 million…
Outside magazine, May 1996 He’s Bad. He’s Windy. He’s a Tourist with an Attitude. Meet Robert Young Pelton, guerrilla guide to the world’s most dangerous places By Jack Hitt Robert Young Pelton is a tough guy. Just ask him. By his own…
Outside magazine, July 1996 A Five-Ring Tune-Up At least reigning C1 world champion David Hearn can joke about Michal Martikan, the Slovakian whiz kid who won the final Olympic-preview race last April on Tennessee’s Ocoee River. “You mean he’s still 16?” asked the incredulous fourth-place finisher,…
Outside magazine, September 1994 Hang Gliding: Holier Than Thou By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard and John Alderman) Over the years, top-ranked American pilot Tony Barton has collided with mountains, tangled in trees, and splatted on hardpan, but until the second day of last June’s Sandia…
Travel Guide, Winter 1995-1996 Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Part II A test to pair you with your sultry better half By Paul Kvinta The cliché-filled travelogues that lump all islands together in a wad of sand, cocoa butter, and umbrella-festooned drinks are intrinsically flawed.
Sifting through the ashes—and questions—amid one of one of the worst fire seasons ever Michael Darter Unfriendly fire: one of 235 homes incinerated by the Cerro Grande blaze in Los Alamos in May CHRIS KIRBY IS a large…
Outside magazine, March 1998 Field Notes: Fool’s Gold In the diaphanous mists of the Ecuadoran Andes, a king’s ransom lies buried. Or does it? By Melik Kaylan You want to hear about the treasure’s secrets?” said Andrës Fernžndez-Salvador the day…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: With No Giant Soda Cans, Can It Truly Be Called Freestyle? They plunged hundreds of feet while “riding” snowboards and kayaks, and crowds loved “freestyle bungee jumping” at last year’s inaugural Extreme Games. As Chris Stiepock, the event’s PR…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Ride With Pride: Progressive Machines: Mountain Bikes By Bob Howells and Gordon Black Performance in reserve — that’s the theme for this year’s mountain bikes, and you don’t have to deplete your finances to get it. Examples: Stiff, lightweight aluminum…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Big Weather: Tornadoes Greenness, hail, air pressure flattening your skull. Hide the children, save the banjo. By Jane Smiley By the time I was 25 and living in Iowa City, my fear of tornadoes was a significant fact…
Outside magazine, April 1999 Go West, and Preferably at Race Pace The training secrets of the athletes on the Old Frontier? Play often, work seldom, and always remember that the good guys wear white. Fashion by…
Outside 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…
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…
Outside magazine, July 1998 Field Notes: Today Boulder, Tomorrow the World They’re making noises about reviving U.S. distance running. Is anyone listening? By Bruce Schoenfeld The front range of the Rocky Mountains rises with little warning off a prairie…
Outside magazine, October 1997 The Soloists Why? Not even they can tell us. By Robert Stone Isabelle Autissier, a 38-year-old French marine biologist and marathon sailor, rides her dismasted, jury-rigged 60-foot racing yacht through the…
The Downhill Report, December 1996 One Giant Leap for Grommetkind Snowboarding’s new step-in bindings make getting on a snap. By Susanna Levin It was the last bastion of skier superiority, the ability to smugly glide from chair to slope while the…
Outside magazine, May 1999 He’s Big, He’s Bad, He’s…Japanese? Running wild with C. W. Nicol, proud citizen, silly celebrity, and stubborn environmentalist By Jeffrey Bartholet We’re in basho territory, yet nothing seems quite right. It’s not…
Outside magazine, January 1998 Due Process: Or Maybe We Get a Gigantic Shop-Vac… How to drain Lake Powell? Punticilious minds want to know. By Bruce McCall Though you won’t find mention of it in your local papers, Congress recently…
Outside magazine, March 1996 Hey, Vous, Get Offa Our Boats By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta (with Brian Alexander and Steve Law) Now that France is winding down its nuclear chest-thumping in the South Pacific, Greenpeace has retreated to take stock and plan its…
Outside magazine, June 1996 Ah, to Be Young, in Love, and Freakishly Huge “He’s a mistake of nature,” Robert DeLong states plainly, like a seasoned district attorney. “He’s been so destructive. I feel this is the best way.” The accused in this case is a 1,600-pound…
Outside magazine, June 1999 A Lethal Dose of Salvation Plutonium was born to kill at the Hanford Site, but its birthplace gave life to a perfect stretch of river By Tim Cahill It was the greatest…
Outside magazine, September 1996 Niagara, Eat Your Heart Out In yet another example of a Montana town’s unusual tourist attraction (see “As the Snake Did Away with the Geese,”), the 3,000 citizens of Columbia Falls this month will unveil a 40-foot-tall answer…
Attempting Mount Fuji, where nature, religion, sport, and schlock form the most holy of alliances
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…
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…