Adventure
ArchiveOutside 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…
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
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…
 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,…
 Outside Magazine, November 1994 Bill Stone in the Abyss His life’s obsession has been to get to the bottom of the world’s deepest cave. Two team members have already died. How much farther is he prepared to go? By Craig Vetter…
Outside magazine, June 1999 Don’t Get Used to It. Get Good at It. Falling happens, but it doesn’t have to hurt Good balance is essential, sure, but as spectacularly demonstrated by the…
Dispatches, August 1998 Cuisine How ‘Bout We Just Nibble on Them a Bit? In Vietnam a scourge of rats puts the crimp on fine feline dining By Jonathan Birchall Ok, it’s now official: by formal government…
Outside magazine, April 1995 Cowboy Nation: King of the Yee-Hah He knows everything there is to know about life in the saddle. Catch him at a 100-mph gallop, and he’ll tell you all about it. By Tim Cahill Four or five…
Outside magazine, July 1994 Not As Bad, But Still Not Nice Seven other places where you can expect the unexpected By Debra Shore Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina and Tennessee This is a drive-through park, so it’s not surprising that…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Are you Ready for the Bubbalympics? With a skybox rife with sponsors and a slate of flashy new events–plus 10,000 supremely gifted athletes–the pinnacle of sports breaks from its past. By Paul Kvinta There’s a reason they…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Will Work for…Several Million Bucks With Lance Armstrong dominating the Tour DuPont last May, many wondered why his team’s sponsor, Motorola, chose the occasion to declare that it wouldn’t be backing the squad in ’97. Actually, the timing for the announcement…
Outside magazine, October 1994 Essentials: Dry-Land Precautions By John L Stein It’s not the wear that usually ruins dive gear–it’s the care, or rather the lack thereof. Some precautionary tips to keep things in good working order above the surface, so you’ll encounter no surprises below:…
Outside magazine, November 1995 Books: War of the Green Soothsayers By Miles Harvey In a Dark Wood: The Fight over Forests and the Rising Tyranny of Ecology, by Alston Chase (Houghton Mifflin Co., $29.95); The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless…
Review: Hardware and Software, November 1996 Audubon CD-ROM Bird Guide By Gregory McNamee Identifying the avian cackling in your campsite or the little brown jobs swarming around the feeder on your deck–often a befuddling endeavor–just got easier. The tower of ratty field guides…
Outside magazine, December 1995 Expeditions: These Sneaks Were Made for Atoll-hoppin’ An encompassing chat with the World’s Most Traveled Man By Michael Finkel Seventy-year-old John D. Clouse, who holds the Guinness Book of Records title of the World’s Most Traveled Man,…
Women Outside, Fall 1998 Strategies Teglamaniacal The secret of the world’s top marathoner: It’s not how far; it’s how fast By John Brant GEAR | TRAVEL | FITNESS |…
January 1992 Dispatches: For the Record Triathlon: An Iron Grip Destinations Windsurfing: Going Off to Boarding School…
Outside magazine, April 1995 Cowboy Nation: The Eternal Sidekick: God Bless the Horse Take Old Paint out of the picture and all you’ve got is a man who chases cattle By Jim Fergus Sure, you can drive a candy-apple-red Chevy pickup…
Dispatches, May 1998 BOUQUETS Mulch Madness Seattle takes a deep breath — and braces for another putrid spring By Lolly Merrell Stepping onto the porch of his home one morning last spring, State Representative Brian Thomas leaned back…
Outside magazine, May 1999 The Art of the Upgrade Whether you need the whole or just a few of the parts, here’s how to make sure your steed is up to speed Bikes | Pedals |…
Outside magazine, July 1995 Marathon: Threepeat and Repeat By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard and Alison Osius) Cosmas Ndeti got a foothold in the record books last April when he became one of three runners in history to win the Boston Marathon, the country’s…
 Outside magazine, August 1997 No Surrender In the summer of 1876, Custer and Sitting Bull squared off at the bloodbath known as Little Bighorn. For the descendents of those who died or walked away scarred — and for those who squabble over…
Dispatches, August 1998 Controversy But Captain, I Played the Seal Last Time! The late great Jacques Cousteau takes another posthumous hit By Dirk Olin “We always said that we would be looking at the man, warts and all,”…
Outside magazine, November 1997 My Dizzying Depths In the turbulent waters of the Pacific Northwest, a seaman confronts old demons By Jonathan Raban In 1990 I moved from England, where I kept a boat on the Blackwater estuary, to…
Out Front, Fall 1998 Expeditions Race Boat Around Planet Alone. Set Record. Lose Boat. Almost Die. Repeat. Think the life of a top solo sailor is a little crazy? Right you are. By Francine Prose Isabelle Autissier seems…
Women Outside, Fall 1998 Technology Artifical Ingredients Added A stronger, faster better you is as close as the nearest lab By Cristina Opdahl GEAR | TRAVEL | FITNESS |…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: Don’t Wake Us When It’s Over Psyched for a presidential election year in which the centrist incumbent battles the right with a passionate defense of the environment? Well, send us a postcard from wherever that happens. Here in the…
The Outside Prognosticator: Come Spawn With Me You feel a tad slimy, but mostly smooth and sleek in the water. Your pink-bellied brethren are beside you, deftly slicing upstream through the current. You are salmon. Actually, you are a paying customer, and you’re on Vancouver Island with…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Honoring the Day of Active Rest Go ahead and exercise in your downtime, but thou shalt keep it easy. That’s a command. By Ken McAlpine Spring beckons, and with it the temptation to hack out a new you:…
Outside magazine, December 1995 The Board Report: Outta My Flight Path, Peewee! Bend those knees, square those shoulders, and kiss your ghost date good-bye. The 48-hour path to postadolescent snowboarding. By Hampton Sides I was unaware that they made ibuprofen bottles this…
Outside magazine, April 1996 Ruling the Cs By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta Sure it’s overshadowed by its more famous sibling, but what the Little America’s Cup sailing race lacks in hoopla it makes up for in flat-out speed. That much was obvious in…
Outside magazine, May 1998 Access & Resources Montserrat, minus the lava By Katie Arnold Another Day Under the Black Volcano Once you get over the fact that two-thirds of Montserrat is now buried under a thick…
Outside magazine, July 1996 Cycling: Will the Next Tour de France Champ Please Rise Up? Indurian goes for his sixth, but it won’t be a gimme. A bettor’s guide to the Big One Yawning observers insist the 1996 Tour de France is no race…
Outside magazine, August 1999 THE PRESERVATIONIST Guranteed to Last The distinguished professor of worn-out boots is hell bent for leather The doctor is in: cobbler Dave Page Describing the loyalty of Dave…
Winter Travel Guide 1996 Planet of the Apes Have Banana, Will Travel By Laura Billings For opportunities to rub elbows with very, very distant relatives, sign on for the Orangutan Foundation International Research/ Study Tour in Borneo’s Tanjung Puting National Park. Each…
Winter Olympics Preview, February 1998 THE UP-AND-COMERS Hold the Ice Now that America’s top lugers have proven they can match the Europeans drink for drink, they have something to prove on the track By Julian Rubinstein THE DOPE ON…
Outside magazine, January 1996 Monkey See, Monkey Shoot? By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta (with Brooke DeNisco, Martin Forstenzer, and Eileen Hansen) “You can’t go shooting someone’s monkey, just like you can’t shoot someone’s cow,” argues Robert Trimble, attorney for the South Texas Primate…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Ride With Pride: Road Bike Skills: Take It From Mr. Persistence Steve Bauer’s tips from a lifetime on the road By Scott Sutherland In a tip of the helmet to cycling Darwinism, Motorola Cycling Team’s Steve Bauer, 35,…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Ride With Pride: Shop Talk: A Phrase Book for the Bike Bazaar By Scott Sutherland CNC: Computer numerical control, as applied to hunks of raw aluminum, is the hot way to machine weight from components — and to put…
Outside magazine, April 1997 The Horse-Eater, I Presume? In the blue holes of the Bahamas, a hungry leviathan lurks. Our man aimed to find it. By Randy Wayne White Having lived most of his life on Cat Island in the…
Outside magazine, September 1995 Mountaineering: Get Thee Back to Thy Sloop By Todd Balf (with Martin Dugard) In mountaineering’s answer to professional golf’s seniors tour, legendary American climbers John Roskelley, Jim Wickwire, and Charlie Porter, ages hovering around 50, joined last spring to attempt…
Destinations, October 1996 Smart Traveler: Where to Sweat Like an Olympian A guide to gold-medal workouts in Atlanta Paul Kvinta The good news about post-Olympics Atlanta is that you, Joe Public, can actually work out at some of those sparkling facilities you…
Outside magazine, April 1996 Can’t We All Just Shred Along By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta At the first world snowboarding championships–or at least the first to be recognized by the International Olympic Committee–last January, it was clear the sport had come a long…
Outside magazine, January 1997 Alone Again, Naturally Bingeing on butter and propelled by acid rock, B°rge Ousland nears the end of his second (and hopefully more successful) attempt to cross Antarctica By Jack Barth A year…