Adventure
ArchiveHow did a mellow, mop-haired, lackadaisically unfashionable snowboarder achieve freeride immortality? First he lifted his carve to a fine art. Then he linked turns down impossibly steep terrain on some of the planet's highest peaks. Now he bucks industry trends, eschews money, and foreswears fame. But most important, he just rides.
Thanks to improved safety standards and tandem flights, scores of acrophobes are giving hang gliding a second wind. And now, they're soaring in style—over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Meet the proud residents of the nation's arsenic capital. Now, will someone please explain to these good people why poison's a bad thing?
Where do you want to go? Whether you're planning a weekend getaway or a full-blown vacation, Outside Online's Adventure Advisor is here to show you the way.
Where do you want to go? Whether you're planning a weekend getaway or a full-blown vacation, Outside Online's Adventure Advisor is here to show you the way.
Hundreds of wilderness experts rushed to Ground Zero—and found a maddening, hellish new frontier.
Ted Turner and his son Beau aren’t your typical green crusaders—the kid is a hook-and-bullet guy, and dad is hatching plans to sell buffalo burgers as theme food. But together they control 1.8 million acres of prime U.S. ranchland, where they’re unloading a fortune to revive endangered species, revolutionize grazing, and (don’t tell the neig
We asked and you responded. Outside readers from across the globe wrote in with their nominations for the A-Team. Herewith, a sampling from the field.
For intrepid sailor Ellen MacArthur, round-the-world records are meant to be shattered
For a bargain price of $1.7 million, Doug Tompkins and his wife Kristine have sewn up a vast Patagonian wonderland. Who says cranky visionaries can't close a deal?
Going core with Yvon Chouinard—leery capitalist, walking contradiction
A Flotilla of Stouthearted Men and Women Confronts Hissing Snakes, Weird Rocks, Flat Water, and the Greatest Mud in the West; or, What I did on My Summer Vacation
This is what happens to your body when you get tangled up in the business end of a box jellyfish—the most venomous creature on earth.
For decades, the U.S. Navy has used a verdant, biodiverse Puerto Rican island as a target-practice bull's-eye, raining high explosives onto an idyllic tropical landscape. What's a loyal citizen to do when his government seems so thuddingly wrong? Sometimes even a lawyer's gotta break the law.
Scenes from the Gorge Games, and looking for the new face of adventure
October 15, 2001 American freediver Tanya Streeter reached a depth of 60 meters at the World Freediving Championships in Ibiza, Spain, this past week, leading the U.S. women's team to a second place finish and furthering her position as the world's best female freediver. Streeter's dive was the…
A new wave of adventurers makes the case that the world has much left to offer
Dateline: Nepal, 2001. The royal family has been murdered. Maoist guerrillas prowl the countryside, fomenting agrarian revolution. Kathmandu has succumbed to general strikes and indiscriminate bombings. And everybody's got his own pet conspiracy theory. Is this in the Himalayas, or the next Asian apocalypse in the making? August 10, 2001: Symmes reflects on th
Struck by an urge to leap off a tall building? Pack your chute and head for Malaysia.
LAST FALL, 20-year-old human fly Chris Sharma clawed up the first 80 feet of limestone on Biographie Extensiona 70-move, 140-foot climbing route in Ceuse, south of Grenoble, France, that has yet to see its first full ascent and that is believed by many to be the hardest sport climb in…
Richard Synergy is taking kite flying to new heights—14,509 feet, to be exact.
The brutal Southern Ocean has seen more races this year than ever before. Here's why.
The world's largest scuba-training company plunges into the treacherous depths of technical diving, where fatalities are the accepted price for adrenaline
In these fragile, frigid ecosystems, the phrase tread lightly takes on a whole new meaning
One climber broke his back. One wandered in a daze. One tried, and failed, to save a friend. They all left behind a moment and a place that would haunt a dead mountaineer's daughter for decades. A pilgrimage in search of a lost father.
A major new resort opens in the affordable Great White North, where they apparently didn't get the word that skiing is dead
Some peaceful recreation on a journey from Gallipoli to Troy, where the echoes of war never die
A cold mountain, a mismatched pair, and a meditation on the strange chemistry of partnership
SKIER'S HOP Start with your left leg on the ground and your right leg planted on an 8- to 12-inch-high platform. In one motion, use your right leg to leap laterally over the platform and land in the opposite of the starting position. Repeat, leaping from side to side…
Enter the pucker zone: Alaska's Chugach Range, land of waist-deep powder and drop-dead steeps, where the best big-mountain freeskiers in the world come to unhook. Up here, however, being best isn't the point.
Having blown both knees, the Olympic champ is back with her twice-proven prescription for total recovery
Searching for the keys to endurance, a ski racer pushes his body and heart to the limit—until his father's sudden illness changes all the rules
YOU DON’T float the Desolation and Gray Canyons of the Green River for the rapids. You go for a blissfully mellow trip through remote wilderness. During a trip down the Green one recent fall, an old friend and I didn’t wear life jackets or get our feet wet for eight…
Around the world in 65 days? The competitors who plan to make good on Bruno Peyron's dream.
Boat designer Adrian Thompson and skipper Pete Goss set out to revolutionize catamaran design with Team Philips. Will it survive its 25,000-mile shakedown cruise?
Cam Lewis says he knows the risks—and he's ready. Ready to sprint 25,000 miles in one of the fastest wind-driven vessels ever to grace the ocean, and become the first American skipper to set a round-the-world speed sailing record. That is, if he and his boat make it back in one piece.
New catamaran cruisers serve up sailing and diving adventure in Belize's pristine outer atolls
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. camps in the Arctic and asks why big oil can't keep its hands off America's largest patch of wilderness
Sometimes you just have to escape into the night, where unpredictable rendezvous and things that bite await you
Where the water is calm, the camping great—and the sea kayaking takes you to a world of beautiful swimmers
If you want to get high, there's still a price to be paid for invading the towering ranges—despite some newfangled shortcuts
You could call it a youthful passion, but why mince words? What seized the author at age 19 was a fateful obsession with El Capitan.
Using cutting-edge techniques, three young mavericks set out to tackle one of the hardest routes in the Himalayas
Who is Barry Clausen and why has his two-bit cloak-and-dagger act made so many radical environmentalists, FBI agents, animal rights activists, and conservative ideologues furious?
Meet the toughest wall rats ever. Some of them are still redpointing routes (fused ankles and broken backs notwithstanding). Or running their own companies. Or passing the torch to young acolytes. A portrait gallery of American climbing's greatest generation.
Has this tired old world been explored-out? Not Down Under, where uncharted, bottomless slot canyons hide just west of Sydney.
The Rise and Fall and Exile and Triumphant Possible Return of Rod of Massachusetts to the Battle-Torn Bedouin Kingdom of Dahab
Warning: Research at your own risk. Welcome to the new frontier, where scientists use extreme adventure skills in the wild pursuit of knowledge.
IPO sluts, "lifestyle" vintners, and eco-radicals bearing lawsuits. Eroding hillsides, glassy-winged sharpshooters, and an imperiled river with dying steelhead. Napa Valley has them all, and each lends its own bouquet of New Economy hilarity, nose-out-of-joint agrarian rage, and NIMBY intolerance to wine country's unique, full-bodied blend of environmental poli
Floating through class V whitewater and grizzly country in the shadow of Mount McKinley
Once a year, the adventurous Jenkins boys will be boys, reforging the bonds of brotherly affection by nearly killing themselves
There's nothing more all-American than a long summer road trip—except maybe a long summer road trip sponsored by a kayak company. Meet the hard-drivin', trick-huckin', heart-throbbin' river punks that may just turn freestyle kayaking into whitewater's answer to snowboarding.
Will Al Gore's green vision lead him to the Oval Office? Knock on wood.
We liberate the sport of fly-fishing and take you back to the clean and simple basics. Now go fish.
What's a brilliant woman like this doing in a rough-and-tumble sport like downhill mountain-bike racing? Trying to think her way to the top of the winner's podium, that's what.
Canoeing pioneers unveil the new 700-plus Northern Forest Canoe Trail
An outsized wilderness lives on in mythic dreams and salvaged hope
Will Earth's most fragile unexplored ecosystems survive the age of adventure?
Guy Waterman had climbed every peak in the Northeast high country—in winter, and from all the cardinal directions. With his wife, he had co-authored four scrupulously principled books on New England wilderness, and he was revered as the conscience of the mountains, a beloved teacher and friend, a paragon of Yankee self-reliance. Why, then, did he hike to the top of his favorite peak on the coldest day of the year and lie down to die?
On Alaska's most dangerous body of water, a rugged band of sailors lives to sail—and to tell about it
It’s not easy to add up all the ways in which Lance Armstrong has earned the title of American hero. Lance Armstrong Lance Armstrong First he was the fiery phenom, a brilliant athlete on the brink of greatness. Then he showed us the vulnerable, terrified, but always…
Is it ever too late to become the caring parent you thought you could be? To find out, one man went in search of his adopted manatee—only to discover the many injustices that humankind has heaped upon these hapless marine mammals. And when Junior is fat, slow, and endangered, family values are nothing more than an easy way to break your heart.
Surrounded by a staggering array of hazardous waste, toxic emissions, chemical pollutants, and lethal military experimentation, the Goshute tribe of Utah decided to do the logical thing and offer up its reservation as a dump for 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive nuclear fuel. The neighbors are very upset.
The treacherous history of the Matterhorn can be read in books and snowy graveyards, but to write it you've got to survive it
Successful guerrilla angling requires stealth, perseverance, and an insatiable, what-the-hell willingness to hunt for fish in some damn weird places