Adventure
ArchiveOutside magazine, May 1995 Running: Never Mind the Skull Tattoos Ben Hian says he’ll whip everyone at this year’s Western States 100 By Martin Dugard From a distance, ultramarathoner Ben Hian looks something like an ancient Celtic manuscript with skinny legs, his…
Outside magazine, June 1996 The Great White Philharmonic Amidst the thundering crescendos of calving ice, a beer-ad guy can find symphonic enightenment By Tim Cahill You know how guys in beer ads are always pictured doing stuff you wouldn’t do–or shouldn’t do–when…
Outside magazine, July 1998 Review: A Little Bright Out? Think Polarized. By Bob Howells SAILBOATS | SUNGLASSES | THE OTHER STUFF | BOOKS Those who work…
Outside magazine, September 1996 Up Next, Orange Vests Just when you thought TV home shopping had reached its saturation point–with channels hustling everything from Pete Rose autographed baseballs to plum-size cubic zircon–the Sportsmans’ Outdoor Network crackled to life this spring, hoping to capitalize on the untapped…
Outside Magazine, November 1994 Final Exits: Ready, Aim, Rest in Peace By Hannah Holmes “Everybody thinks that you get cremated, then you get left in a shoe box, spilled, swept up, spilled, swept up. But you have many choices!” So says Jay W. “Canuck”…
Review: Hardware and Software, January 1997 Classics: The Wool Ski Sweater By Scott Sutherland Chemicals do make our lives better. Hexamethyldisilazane, chlorinated phenyl methyl polysiloxane, polypropylene–wonderful stuff all. But sometimes you want to snuggle up against something other than abandoned plastic soda bottles…
Outside Magazine, February 1995 Marathon: Chariots of Permafrost By Ken McAlpine Whiteout. Headwinds that set your cheeks to slapping the back of your neck. Then a starting pistol fires and a hundred fleecy distance runners peel out across the permafrost, taking baby steps lest…
Outside magazine, March 1997 Lean, Green, and Amazingly Serene An ode to Moss Man, who after 28 days in a hot spring emerged a changed person By Randy Wayne White The reason I was reluctant to participate in the bizarre…
Outside magazine, May 1996 Walking the Walk By Brad Wetzler Veteran through-hikers like to answer the question, “How do you go about hiking the Appalachian Trail?” with the chest-thumping response, “Drive to Springer Mountain and start walking.” Don’t believe them. Most undergo a Kennedy-Space-Center-style…
Outside magazine, June 1998 Out There: Getting Up Again What you do when the bottom drops out of your world By Tim Cahill Televised baseball. October play-offs. Someone hit the ball and there it went out into center field,…
Outside magazine, June 1999 Music Concerto for Cricket and Frog in B Minor Maestro and mayor, Phillip Bimstein goes wild in search of harmonic convergence Unlike most musical composers, Phillip Bimstein has little…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Beach Volleyball: Odds That… Reno and McPeak will garner gold……..1-1 The American duo will hug after the match……..75-1 Sinjin Smith and Carl Henkel will medal…..100-1…
Outside magazine, September 1997 Bet My Bentley Can Smoke Your Rolls From the Great Wall to the Eiffel Tower, would-be Andrettis put their classics to the test By Carl Hoffman Why Is This Woman…Still Standing? Ultradistance…
Dispatches, February 1998 EVENTS Have Corpulence, Will Hurtle Think there’s no sport too absurd for the X Games? Get a load of shovel racing. By Gretchen Reynold True, the cold season’s competitive-sports options for big-boned fellows with a fondness…
Outside magazine, August 1996 Mountaineering: Tragedy at the Top of the World What really happened that fateful day? By Jeff Herr When you’ve just climbed to the top of Mount Everest, you want to linger there a few minutes, snapping photographs…
Long after Ken Burns inspired a nation to sniffle, Civil War hobbyists are reenacting America's deadliest conflict—over and over and over. Live from the ersatz killing fields of Gettysburg, our man asks: Is this any way for adults to behave?
Outside magazine, September 1999 Straight Up, No Cheating Professional advice for topping 14,000 feet? Don’t sprint. YOUR INNER ARNOLD Talk of personal-best bench presses may be the stuff of locker-room preening rituals, but it’s…
Outside magazine, September 1999 Virgin Land: A History POLITICS | VIRGIN LAND: A HISTORY | FRONT LINES | CONTENDERS Two millennia before President Lyndon Johnson signed the Wilderness…
Outside magazine, Februrary 2000 Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 Fresh Breath Modern snorkels may…
Dispatches, September 1998 Climbing Hi, My Name is Hans. Now Gimme My Check Lessons in gold-digging from America’s speediest wall rat By Bill Donahue Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s…
Outside magazine, November 1995 The Seein’ Red Blues “Cowboys are always depicted as easygoing. Not me,” says 56-year-old Weatherford, Texas, songwriter Don Edwards. Meaning? “I’m the cowboy from hell. Good Lord, in the old days, if you weren’t pissed, you weren’t a singer at all.” Edwards…
Outside magazine, February 1996 Mr. Armani, Meet the King of Beers By Todd Balf and Paul Kvinta (with Debra Shore) This month, John Tesh will pose for an ad sporting a tie splattered with Budweiser; in April, Sugar Ray Leonard will do the same…
Destinations, March 1999 A Green Lining? Ten years after the tragic spill, Exxon’s loss is Kachemak’s gain By Doug Fine A decade ago this month, when the Exxon Valdez hemorrhaged 11 million gallons of crude…
Dispatches, December 1998 Exploration Calamari for Everyone! A pack of researchers pursues the elusive giant squid By Michael Menduno “A vast pulpy mass,” wrote Herman Melville in Moby-Dick, ” lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms radiating…
Family Vacations, Summer 1996 Independence Days Mom’s gone rafting, dad’s on a hike–at a multisport resort, you do what you want By Kate and David Butwin Our Favorite Places My dad, David, is a…
Outside magazine, September 1994 Sailing: Liberte, Fraternite, Butt-Whuppin’ Why French skippers are–again–likely to bop the competition in the world’s longest race By Dan Dickison Every four years French sailors make the competition eat spray in the BOC Challenge–a four-stage around-the-world solo rip across 27,000…
Outside magazine, August 1996 The Book On: Men’s Sprints Can anyone beat Donovan Bailey, track-god-come-lately? By Mark Jannot It must be hard for other sprinters not to pigeonhole Donovan Bailey, 28, as just another track-world dilettante. A native Jamaican who immigrated…
Destinations, May 1997 Follow Me. I Have a Mule. The right outfitter can keep a highlands trip low-stress By Bob Payne While it’s possible to plan and outfit a trip through the Ecuadorian highlands on your own, the logistics of…
Outside magazine, August 1996 The Book On: Middle Distance It is written in the sod: two golds for Haile Gebrselassie By Martin Dugard Haile Gebrselassie doesn’t just run: he redefines the perceived boundaries of human performance. Last June, the 23-year-old, 5-foot-3…
Outside magazine, August 1996 The Minutiae: Of Medal Dreams and Collard Greens Behind the scenes, actuarially speaking, at Atlanta’s shining moment By Katie Arnold and Cory Johnson Established “quiet time” for athletes at the Olympic Village: 10 p.m. Closing time…
 Outside magazine, October 1994 Bruce Babbitt, Alone in the Wilderness He was hailed as the Secretary of the Interior who would finally make a difference. Now his friends are abandoning him, his enemies are outmaneuvering him, and the president is nowhere to be found. Will…
Outside magazine, October 1995 Mountaineering: Someone Get the Bouncers By Todd Balf (with John Alderman) For better or for worse, 12-year-old Merrick Johnston is the youngest person ever to have reached the summit of Mount McKinley. The Anchorage sixth-grader and her mother, Jennifer Johnston,…
Dispatches: News from the Field, November 1996 Technology: Flop, Flop, Fizzle, Fizzle Think $5 million can buy cycling gold? Guess again. By Eric Hagerman It was, of course, high comedy, a refreshing respite from hours of jingoistic cooing and Macarena-dancing…
Features: Election Preview ’96, November 1996 Vote For Me, I’m Nut’s Perot just too stable for you? The Federal Election Commission has a couple hundred other options. Our favorite dark-horse candidates. By Michael Kessler Harry Browne Party: Libertarian…
 Outside magazine, December 1997 The Downhill Report: Hot Hot Hot When you’ve got it, you’ve got it, an illustrious fashion tout once said. Here are 17 ways to make sure you keep it. The Hot State It’s chic! It’s…
Outside magazine, January 1998 Review: Go Directly to Go The modern snowshoe is light, versatile, and ready for action the moment you are By Andrew Tilin SNOWSHOES |…
Fitness ’97, February 1997 Finding the Right Beat Before you begin endurance work, a little math is in order. The key is to keep your heart rate below the point at which your metabolism changes from efficient burning of fat to gluttonous…
Outside magazine, April 1995 Milestones: Walt Stack, 1908-1995 By John Brant “I’m a real bag a hell today,” Walt Stack would joke as he ran along in a dogged shuffle, “but tomorrow I may be a dead mackerel.” On January 19, after a long…
Outside magazine, May 1999 Environment Your Tax Dollars at Work. Sort Of. A bold plan may save the Okefenokee. But is the price too high? When itinerant silversmith steve Knight and his wife, Jo, decided…
Outside magazine, June 1994 Anthropology: Quest for Roadkill By Amy Goldwasser These days the zeitgeist cauldron is bubbling with all things Cave Man. The discovery of a “missing link” skull in Ethiopia. The Flintstones movie, and, of course, the enduring popularity of Fabio.
Outside magazine, August 1996 The Gizmos: Better Olympians through Science Can Technology help score medals? Consider the $5 million superbike By Andew Tilin Strength, stamina, agility. They’re only part of the equation. In some sports, your gear had better be as…
Vacation Special, August 1997 T U B I N G T H E I C H E T U C K N E E Blissful Indolence Made Simple A Florida stream, an inner tube, and no ambition in sight.
Outside magazine, October 1995 Caveat Emptorium A user’s guide to a very iffy marketplace By Amanda Stuermer Aaron Bacon’s death has prompted new demands for oversight of the wilderness-therapy industry, but for now, parents seeking reliable information won’t find a one-stop source.
Dispatches, November 1998 A Murder in the Karakoram One of the most successful adventurers of his era, Ned Gillette spent a lifetime courting the edge of risk and disaster. The thing he never expected, however, was to die in his sleeping bag.
Out Front, Fall 1998 Science “I Have to Be … Fiorella” First, there was Copernicus. Then, Galileo. Eventually Madonna. Now comes Dr. Terenzi: astronomer, pop star, visionary. By Amy Goldwasser “We are not communicating with celestial objects,” says Dr.
 Outside Magazine, January 1999 Blackbeard Doesn’t Come Here Anymore And for that matter, neither do the Bahamian picnickers, or the drug runners, or the gentle eccentrics who once made Gorda Cay their home. Of course, that was…
Equipage: Rush Slept Here Jerry Wigutow has just the bag for your right-leaning dreamer By Wendy Marston “It’s the best sleeping bag ever made for a mediocre and ungrateful world,” boasts Jerry Wigutow, the Brooklyn-born founder and CEO of Wiggy’s Bags, a ten-year-old…
Dispatches, February 1998 SPORT Attention, Boy Scouts In one adventure race, manners come first and butt-kicking a distant second By Paul Scott ‘A couple years ago, one of our racers had a tremendous bike crash and broke the fork…
Outside magazine, March 1994 A Few Good Gatormen Beating the swamps for mythological survivors By Randy Wayne White I’m no admirer of tabloid newspapers, but last November, while standing in line at the grocery, I noticed a startling headline on the…
Outside magazine, June 1994 Videos: Remembering Abbey By Gregory McNamee Edward Abbey has been dead for five years now, a fact that, as you might imagine, has spawned a sizable wave of anniversary remembrances. A new “spiritual biography” of Abbey has just appeared…
Outside magazine, August 1999 Going to the Source Guides. Mentors. Teachers. The dedicated ones who showed us the way, who showed us how, who did it right, and who shared their passionate devotion to the wild world.
Outside magazine, July 1996 Sand, Sun, and Acrimony At the Jose Cuervo Gold Crown event last April in Clearwater, Florida, all was right with beach volleyball. The world’s best players were all there, with Karch Kiraly (below) and Kent Steffes taking their eighth-straight tournament. Which…
Outside magazine, December 1991 Unhappy Birthday The National Park Service gets older, but no wiser By Alston Chase Last October the National Park Service threw a birthday party for itself. It was a posh event, held in Vail, Colorado, featuring speakers representing the inner…
Outside magazine, August 2000 The Life Worth Living I couldn’t put down Rob Buchanan’s haunting, thought-provoking article on Guy Waterman (“A Natural Death,” June). As the mother of nine, all grown, and a resident of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, I…
 Outside magazine, February 1998 We Won’t Let Him Hurt You Everlasting fitness through the painless Socratic method, with help from our favorite answer man By Paul Keegan Mark Allen sits in the dining room…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Ride With Pride: Well, It Won’t Fix Itself: Part 2 Be stronger than your weakest chain link By Scott Sutherland Even if you’ve got a surgeon’s hands and a frame-builder’s knowledge of bike anatomy, a chain tool is…
Outside magazine, January 1996 The Outside Prognosticator: The Road to Wetville “After my husband’s lecture on the colon, our guests can’t wait to get cleaned out,” says Wendy Pope, the perky founder of the Mountain Trek Fitness Retreat & Health Spa, a British Columbia wilderness lodge…
Outside magazine, March 1995 Hard Parts A skeletal view of trilobites and other objets d’art By David Quammen Let me pose an intrusive but well-meant question: When you pass from this life, what will you leave behind? And don’t try to tell…
Outside magazine, April 1997 Continued Cool, with Occasional Tsunamis Is it us, or do things seem to be getting a little less pleasant out there? By Debra Shore Golly, it was a super year, wasn’t it? We’re speaking of…
Outside magazine, June 1995 Books: The Dumbo Complex By Miles Harvey When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy (Delacorte Press, $23.95). In what might be considered a most idiosyncratic book, controversial Freud scholar Masson teams…
Outside magazine, June 1996 The Little Freshman Who Could Living up to preseason predictions declaring her American sport climbing’s next great hope, 15-year-old Katie Brown won the season-opening U.S. competition last March in Tucson, Arizona. Brown’s victory, her first in adult competition, was impressive, particularly since…
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…
Outside magazine, October 1996 Be Like Sri By Lolly Merrell Hey, kids, try this at home. If you want to start your own mystical, spiritual movement, consider Sri Chinmoy. In order to carve out his particular niche–especially after his knees grew sore from running–he…
Outside Magazine, April 1999 Would You Be, Could You Be, Won’t You Be, (And Why in the Hell Does Anyone Want to Be) My Neighbor? What happens when cabin fever sets in and the whole town lives…
Outside magazine, January 1997 A Watery Grave Life sprang abundant from the Philippines’ Boac River. Then something killed it. By James Hamilton-Paterson The Philippine province of Marinduque is a heart-shaped island roughly 30 miles by 20. It lies in the middle…
Dispatches, July 1997 C A R E E R S A Not-So-Golden Parachute Your humble tour guides: former cycling greats By Andrew Tilin Whither the retired professional cyclist? Times were tough enough while carving out a spot in the…
Outside magazine, October 1996 Deeper To the peerless Moles, practitioners of the gloomily claustrophobic sport of freshwater spelunking, the ultimate accomplishment is finding a virgin cave By Bucky McMahon It’s a horror hole, just a depression full of springwater with a…
Out Front, October 1997 To Do: Hang Out at Mall, Torture Little Brother, Save World A few young go-getters who’ll soon be making headlines By Brad Wetzler Don’t worry, we know your type. sure, you’re interested in what happened during…
Dispatches, October 1998 Public Relations No Wonder the Reception’s So Good at the Statue of Liberty A few modest proposals for ways the cell-phone industry might dress up its towers By Bruce McCall The purveyors of cellular communications,…
Outside magazine, December 1997 Sport: From Tabula Rasa to Pipeline Masters Shaping a few winning boards with the North Shore’s humble Picasso-of-the-planer By William Finnegan E A R T O T H E G R O U N…
Dispatches, June 1997 Diversions: Because It’s…Absurd and Illegal The latest sport to take London by storm: sewer canoeing By Denise Dowling Given that most British celebrities — David Bowie, Brenda Blethyn, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales — tend…
Outside magazine, March 1996 The Virtuoso: Front-Suspension Symbiont, Meet Ms. Controlled Abandon Cross-country world champ Alison Sydor shows how you and your bike can achieve that elusive two-part harmony By Ken McAlpine When it comes to bike handling, there are…
Outside magazine, June 1996 O My Preppy Soul! Hours from anywhere but on the edge of nowhere, the rough Down East passages welcome the well heeled and unpedigreed alike By John Skow We had rounded schoodic point some hours before, or so…
Dispatches, June 1997 Science: If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, De-Clone ‘Em A revealing look into a future clouded by double vision By Bruce McCall For The Record Just Smush It…
Outside magazine, August 1995 Solitude on the High Seas By Lawrence Burke There are few sporting events on earth more taxing of mind and body than the BOC Challenge, the around-the-world solo sailing marathon that ended late last spring in Charleston, South Carolina. During…