Adventure
ArchiveNews 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, January 2001 Â A Hard Place I WAS BRIEFLY A “guest” of the Turkish secret police in the Kurdish area near Iraq, have stood guard over sleeping friends along fluid borders of war-torn nations, and…
Outside 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 Preassembled Salve for All Good Adventuresses Homemaking’s high priestess sifts through the medicine chest for first-aid kits By Martha Stewart I have a saying, “The right tool for the right job,” and when I look at a single…
Outside magazine, October 1995 Jamaica By Jonathan Runge From the 7,402-foot Blue Mountain Peak, one of the Caribbean’s loftiest vantage points, you can survey all of Jamaica’s undulating coast. And on a clear day, you’d swear you can just make out…
Outside magazine, July 1995 Approach Shoes Backcountry footwear that’s part hiker, part running shoe, part Reinhold Messner By Bob Howells The indefatigable mountaineer is certainly familiar with the term “approach shoe”: It’s what he wears over trail and talus slope to the…
Outside magazine, July 1996 The Dotted Yellow Line to Happiness The best of the big-group rides By Stephanie Pearson The freewheeling days of summer are at hand, and there’s no better way to celebrate than taking a freewheeling ride on America’s scenic…
Outside magazine, August 1999 MOTHER NATURE Letting It Be She moved hearts, minds, and mountains THE REBEL The Importance of Being Ornery Living the life, monkeywrenching…
Outside magazine, December 1995 A Tale of Winning Ugly By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta You think no good can come of a paddler waxing Dickensian? Then don’t ask David Hearn about Gate 24. “It was the best and worst of slalom moves all…
News from the Field, February 1997 Business: What’s in a Name? New Wise Use tactics have enviros in the throes of an identity crisis By Todd Woody It’s a strategy that Suntzu and Machiavelli would have appreciated. Environmental groups forget…
Outside magazine, March 1998 Review: And While You’re At It … A few worthy extras for the discerning pedal-pusher By Alan Coté BICYCLES BUILT FOR ONE | AND WHILE YOU’RE AT IT ……
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: Montanabahn I’ve been getting lots of calls from out-of-state folk who want to know if they really will be able to drive as fast as they want here,” says Major Bert Obert, a field forces commander for the Montana…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Ride With Pride: Careful, Buster Urban attitude advice from an honest cop By Sara Corbett City cyclists have an attitude problem,” says Sergeant Richard Green, a bicycle patrol officer in Santa Barbara, California. “They think, ‘Look at us,…
Camping Special, April 1997 Play Wiffle Ball! Discuss Descartes! Swim Buck Naked! Because there are no boring camping trips, only boring campers By Brad Wetzler There’s always one in the crowd, the neophyte camper who, in a panic over leaving…
Outside magazine, June 1995 What Are You Whining About? Enough with the war stories about your scrapes and tweaks. Meet the people who really give it all to their sport–again and again and again. By Paul Kvinta So, you’ve taken a bad…
Outside magazine, July 1996 Spirituality: The 86-Proof Campfire After you’ve cut superfluous inches off your toothbrush handle, ripped the covers off your paperback, and generally waged war on expendable ounces, it’s important to declare amnesty. Make room for a little self-indulgence–something precious to your soul.
Outside magazine, October 1996 Water Sports: OK, But Do They Have Guys Named Corky? At the World Surfing Games, winter-addled nations look to join the tribe By Jon Cohen “Usually we just sit around and watch surf videos and think about waves.”…
Camping Special, April 1997 Two Strikes and You’re Out Screwing up in the woods is unavoidable–but repeating your mistakes is something else entirely By Brad Wetzler To err is human. but according to NOLS’s Tom Reed, it’s not always excusable.
News from the Field, January 1997 Forestry: No Plaid, No Poulan, No Problem Stuck in the doldrums, American loggers take a lesson from the Swedes By Daniel D’Ambrosio Training loggers used to be a simple affair: Here’s a chainsaw; there’s a…
Outside magazine, May 1995 Foreign Travel: Narrowboat to Nowhere A slow poke along England’s canals By Mark Kramer The 2,000 miles of narrow canals that weave through England were built a few centuries ago to ferry coal from rural mines to mills…
Dispatches, July 1997 E X P L O R A T I O N One Giant Maybe for Robotkind As NASA heads for Mars, its remote-control rovers spin their wheels By Eric Scigliano…
Outside magazine, July 1997 The Mild One In which the author confronts the one obstacle between his throaty bike and the call of the open road: himself By Nicholas Dawidoff The author considers the road ahead I took my…
Outside magazine, October 1996 Wondering Where the Lions Are The Goal: Encountering Zimbabwe’s legendary wildlife. The Method: Authentic safariing, on battered foot through prickly bush. The Result: Well, now that you ask… Gavin Ford, one of Zimbabwe’s legendary…
Outside Magazine, October 1998 Destruction The Fire Inside Trees burn, as do young men. And therein lies the lesson By David Guterson All day we stood on the fire line, bored, wetting down the trees. Occasionally we wedged…
Dispatches, October 1998 Events Men Who Run with the Bulls A bunch of guys in the desert try to get in touch with the Inner Bovine By Matt Purdue “I‘ve watched this in Spain on television and thought, ‘What…
Outside magazine, December 1997 Field Notes: Boneheads A tale of big money, prison, Disney World, and the world’s foremost dinosaur-hunting twins By John Tayman On the morning when the fair-market value for the world’s finest unassembled real-bone Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton was…
Outside magazine, June 1996 They’re Back Twelve gold medals, 21 world titles. But for four of this century’s finest athletes, the road to Atlanta begins in Atlanta with this month’s U.S. Olympic Trials. Where, as at least one of them knows, anything can happen.
Outside magazine, March 1996 The Technician: Practice, Patience, and a Few Swabs of the Hanky The basics of on-trail repair from D. Scott Daubert, grease monkey to the elite By Kiki Yablon Scott Daubert has one last item he’d…
Outside Magazine, February 1995 Environment: War of the Worldviews Yes, Wise Users hate greens. But have they really inspired a wave of anti-green hate crimes? By Paul Koberstein Last Fall, in the northeastern Oregon town of Joseph, angry loggers and ranchers on…