Mountaineering
ArchiveSo you want to climb a mountain, but you’ve never done it before. No sweatthere’s a first time for everything. Even the world’s greatest climbers were once beginners like you, gearing up with ropes, carabiners and crampons and heading for the hills for their first technical ascents. To help fuel…
Three years after a notorious kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan, new evidence and big changes emerge from Central Asia
Cut your alpinism chops on North America's best routes.
Experience is the key to mountaineering prowess, but high-altitude fitness makes all the difference on summit day
Lodges at base camp? Tourists on oxygen? Everyone seems to have a vision for the next 50 years on the world's highest mountain.
Ten years ago, extreme snowboarder Stephen Koch cooked up a media-savvy plan to become the first to climb and ride down the Seven Summits. Now there's only one mountain left to conquer: Everest. And for his grand finale, Koch is determined to fling himself down the most dangerous descent possible.
Who says you can't take your children mountaineering? The trick is to choose the right summit—then watch as they amaze themselves by scaling it. These five peaks, in order from easiest to hardest, are handpicked to bring out your kid's inner Messner.
Want an easy plan to prepare you to climb a mountain—say, 14,494-foot Mount Whitney? Here's a five-week program that'll whip you into summit-worthy shape.
In honor of the 50th anniversary of Hillary and Tenzing's historic first Everest summit, we're opening the vaults to bring you the best stories ever written about the planet's tallest mountain. From Jon Krakauer's groundbreaking article, "Into Thin Air," to Brad Wetzler's account of sex, death and bad behavior at Base Camp, a collection of Outside's
Of course they do—they get to trek with camels. But you can, too! We’ve got the COOLEST TRIPS, TOP TEN TRENDS, EXPERT ADVICE, AND BEST NEW PLACES TO GET LOST IN 2003. So what are you waiting for? Giddyup! Star…
In Bhutan's pristine alpine sanctuary, even a heathen climber can see the light
Thirty years after losing his brother on a Himalayan peak, Reinhold Messner battles ugly accusations that he abandoned him at the top.
Mount Everest becomes a prize on TV's Global Extremes. Is this a Good Thing?
A generation ago, mounting an expedition meant drafting a herd of porters, slogging loads of gear to a rocky base camp, and laying siege to a Himalayan peak. These days, light, fast, and self-supported expeditions are in, and multisport explorers like Mike Libecki, Mark Synnott, and Brad Ludden are showing us how to do it. Here, our preview of the hottest adven
High over Hemingway's Africa, our hero discovered a last epic feat somehow still undone. Going where no man has ever bothered to go before, he vowed to become the first person to descend Mount Kilimanjaro on a pair of stubby Kneissel Big Foot snowboards. Never mind that it was illegal, and basically insane.
A quarter-century after he changed everything by summiting Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, Reinhold Messner is looking fit, feeling adventurous, and acting about as mellow as a snapping turtle. Ah, well: Great men aren't always sweethearts—and Messner is still the best there ever was.
Remember the lessons of Everest 1996? Nobody else seems to. The world's highest peak is more crowded than ever—and ripe for a deadly reckoning.
It’s no wonder that the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia has produced some of the world’s best mountaineers: You can’t travel north of the country’s capital, Ljubljana, without butting up against some of Europe’s most precipitous ranges. And since the 11-year-old country is still underneath most Americans’ radar, Europeans have…
How To Get Off the Beaten Trail (or River, or Mountain) With These 43 Soon-To-Be-Classic National Park Adventure
32 YEARS AGO this summer, my pal, the crime novelist Jim Crumley, his overeducated farmer friend from Arkansas, Harold McDuffy, and yours truly hiked six miles to Bowman Lake in Glacier National Park. For someone who had spent most of his life in the desert country of southeastern Oregon, this…
Ten lodges where you can take it all in, and then launch an expedition out the back door
After a dark year, Nepal offers up a trove of glittering new prizes: 103 peaks and miles of virgin terrain
When the weather turns ugly and conditions get rough, every mountaineer must make the ultimate choice: storm the summit, or call it quits.
We’ve learned a lot in a quarter-century of roaming the planet. This month, to kick off Outside‘s silver anniversary, we’ve chosen 25 bold, epic, soul-nourishing experiences that every true adventurer must seek out—from the relatively plush and classic to the cutting-edge and hard-core. All that’s left for you is the…
It sounded like a good idea at the time: Journey to the sopping epicenter of the wettest place on earth, bag the peak, and get back in time for supper. But that was before the clouds clamped down on Mount Waialeale. Before the jungle closed in and the map became irrelevant. Before the machete-wielding, pig-hunting swamp guide said, "Would be so easy to get lost
New zealand may be smaller than Colorado, but it sure crams a lot of outdoor superlatives into a tiny space—mountains rivaling Europe’s Alps, fjords to match Norway’s, and beaches, forests, and hiking trails as beautiful as any in the world. If you have limited time to see it all, head…
Want some sound business advice? Go climb a mountain. Hey, it's what all the savvy capitalists are doing these days.
“There is a reasonable chance somebody could die,” says a Dallas-based doctor and Hardrocker. “I’ve fallen, and almost been swept away by a waterfall.”
Fifty-odd years ago, a young guy's visit to Vanuatu inspired the legend of Bali Hai. Thankfully, the good life's still here. Why aren't you?
Once you've made a name for yourself in the burly world of ski mountaineering, astonished your buds, bagged a few sponsors, shot some sick footage that had Banff buzzing—in short, once you're at the top of your game, can you actually take a vacation? The author investigates in Peru's Cordillera Blanca, where six adventurers scramble to beat "poachers" to f
His life’s grand pursuit has killed his closest companions. His bride-to-be is his best friend’s widow. His exploding fame owes as much to happenstance (stumbling upon Mallory’s body on Everest) and luck (escaping an avalanche in Tibet) as it does to his great skill as a mountaineer. An intimate look at the serendipitous, tumultuous, and nearly unbearable success of Conrad Anker.
Get lost in Alaska's Wrangell--St. Elias: It's six Yellowstones' worth of icy lakes,anonymous meadows, and peaks you won't find on any map.
Five wunderfamilies show how children are no impediment to real, no-holds-barred, self-supported adventure.
Discover the wild side of Greece and western Turkey with 12 getaways—from Spartan to Olympian.
For three hours, a team of scientists collected samples from deep inside the crater of a seemingly peaceful volcano. Suddenly, an apocalyptic eruption shot white-hot rocks into the darkening sky. Nine people were killed high on the Colombian mountain that day, and volcanologist Stanley Williams barely escaped with his life. In an exclusive preview from the cont
An oral history of Everest's endearingly dysfunctional village
There's nobody more qualified to drag you to the top of the world than Babu Chiri Sherpa. And he'll gladly do it. But when he's through, he's got some business of his own to attend to. Namely, obliterating every last climbing record on Everest, shattering the myth of his people as high-altitude baggage handlers, and taking the Sherpa brand global.
Exploring the most enchantingly rugged places on earth is easy. Just follow our guide to the world's ten classic treks, put one foot in front of the other—and don't forget to take it slow.
Close encounters of the bear-human kind are skyrocketing, though actual attacks remain few and far between. Hopefully, new outreach education efforts will keep things that way.
Eight friends. Four volcanoes. Nine days. A primer on self-guided ski mountaineering.
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.
An ice-climbing trip to Scotland—land of rain, sleet, and mad outdoorsmen—brings new respect for the sport's big-hearted pioneers
Terror put a chill on global tourism, but adventure travelers—used to a little uncertainty—seem determined to stay on the road
A new wave of adventurers makes the case that the world has much left to offer
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…
Outside's guide to the coolest trips and the world's top new adventure travel spots.
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 cold mountain, a mismatched pair, and a meditation on the strange chemistry of partnership
If you want to get high, there's still a price to be paid for invading the towering ranges—despite some newfangled shortcuts
Using cutting-edge techniques, three young mavericks set out to tackle one of the hardest routes in the Himalayas
The peaks of the Italian Alps may look daunting, but climbing them is la dolce vita.
A partner drops out, one thing leads to another, and suddenly our hero finds that peer pressure has him fighting for his life
Some of the most innovative boats ever built prepare for the fiercest race in sailing history
On a sunny day in 1953, a tall young New Zealander named Edmund Hillary became the first human to stand atop the world's highest mountain—and, thereafter, a paragon of grace and bonhomie for explorers who would follow.
In an exclusive excerpt from the book by the men who led the quest to solve the mystery of George Mallory's disappearance, the authors for the first time reveal the evidence they uncovered—and offer their chilling re-creation of Mallory and Irvine's last hours.
New School Skiing is teaching good old hotdogging some radical new tricks
Alaskan eccentric Trigger Twigg attempts the first winter ascent of the world's tallest face
They go to eastern Honduras, the wildest stretch of idyll that our hemisphere has to offer
After a lifetime of wanting, Jon Krakauer made it to the world's highest point. What he and the other survivors would discover in the months to come, however, is that it's even more difficult to get back down.