Ötillö Swimrun is a grueling race series alternating long passages of open-water swimming with rugged runs of up to 40 miles. But unlike a triathlon, there’s no biking. That’s great news for W. Hodding Carter, a former collegiate swimmer who plans to qualify for the world championship. At age 56.

How much does the world need to know about a deadly bear attack? That question was tested in the Yukon last year, after the horrific loss of a mother and daughter caused a destructive media storm.

At 1.1 million acres, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is one of the largest and most popular backcountry destinations in the U.S. and a longtime proving ground for adventurers. But now the region is facing the threat of sulfide-ore copper mining. Stephanie Pearson paddles into the wild.

Since 2000, Tim Friede, a truck mechanic from Wisconsin, has endured some 200 snakebites and 700 injections of lethal snake venom—all part of a masochistic quest to immunize his body and offer his blood to scientists seeking a universal antivenom. For nearly two decades, few took him seriously. Then a gifted young immunologist stumbled upon Friede on YouTube—and became convinced that he was the key to conquering snakebites forever.

The end was coming for Roany, a strong and beautiful horse who’d been at the center of Pam Houston’s life for 25 years. What she wanted for him was simple: a peaceful exit, lifted by the touch of human hands.

A recent report found that 259 people died between 2011 and 2017 while stepping in front of the camera in often dangerous destinations. Our writer went deep on the psychology of selfies to figure out what's behind our obsession with capturing extreme risk-taking.

Outpost wants to disrupt the outdoor gear trade show business. Our writer descended on its California festival last fall to check out the felt hat–wearing, Bulleit bourbon–sipping crowd and to find out whether the buzzy experience is anything more than an Instagram-ready fad.

Josh Morgerman is an obsessive stormchaser. As hurricanes grow fiercer and more destructive, what does it mean to be someone who loves them?

What kind of sadist creates the hardest race in the world? We sent our writer to find out.

When my wife tried to kill me, when I went to jail for battery, and when I finally tried to take my own life, there was one thing that kept me from unraveling

At the 2019 Los Angeles Marathon, Adam Gorlitsky will set out to become the first American paraplegic to walk 26.2 miles—and bust his British rival's 36-hour time in the process. But his real dream is to bring assisted mobility to people with disabilities.

Indian relay racing is sometimes called America’s first extreme sport. For years, the Brew Crew—a team from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota—were a dominant force. Then tragedy struck. This is the story of the Lakota’s spiritual relationship with the horse, and a quest to regain glory on the track.

In the wake of a bizarre physical attack and the death of her father, Katie Arnold felt paralyzed by the anxieties of parenthood and being a woman alone in the wilderness. She got through it the same way she’d always done, by lacing up and hitting the trail. An exclusive excerpt from her new memoir, Running Home.

Can a relationship survive a grand adventure? That’s a question neither partner thought to ask when She got the bright idea to refit an old sailboat while He was dreaming of life on the range. A he-said-she-said tale of a voyage that somehow managed to avoid the rocks.

For some climbing rangers in Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park, every ridgeline holds the memory of a rescue, every peak a body bag. It's more than they can handle alone.

In 2017, the Trump administration announced that it was shrinking the iconic Utah national monument by nearly 50 percent. Leath Tonino devised a sketchy 200-mile solo desert trek, following the path of the legendary cartographer who literally put these contentious canyons on the map.

For years, three old friends from California had been making an annual pilgrimage to fish Alaska's wild and pristine waterways. But in 2018, only two came home.

It warms our hearts that so many readers purchased Outside’s most recent book this year. Out There is a collection of the 32 most riveting stories that have graced the pages of our magazine for the past 40 years.

Deep in the heart of the Adirondacks, the unexpected death of a small-town police sergeant has added fuel to a nationwide controversy over an herbal supplement

When outdoor athletes launched the first energy bars more than 30 years ago, no one could have predicted it would revolutionize the way Americans eat. A look inside the hottest—and strangest—category in natural foods.

The Kurdish region of Iraq is home to spectacular peaks, wild rivers, and fiercely hospitable people, and it could be the Middle East’s next big adventure tourism destination. But there’s one small catch: it’s still dangerous as hell.

Sal Masekela, first son of a Haitian immigrant and a legendary South African jazz musician, was the face and voice of the X Games, Red Bull’s Media House, and the Olympics. Now, as the meteoric growth of the action-sports industry comes back to earth, the most connected man in the room is left wondering what’s next.

Some of the world's most passionate athletes are high pointers, climbers who will do anything to reach the tallest point in every state, county, or whatever other designation they can dream up. A lot of those peaks aren't so tall—like Delaware's 447.85-foot Ebright Azimuth—but there's plenty of challenge in this quest. Just ask John Mitchler, who had knocked off everything on his dream list except the tallest spot in a remote U.S. territory: Agrihan.

Current guidelines for sun exposure are unhealthy and unscientific, controversial new research suggests—and quite possibly even racist. How did we get it so wrong?

For decades Jeffrey Lendrum helicoptered up and rappelled down to aeries on cliff faces from Patagonia to Quebec, snatching unhatched raptors and selling them, investigators believe, to wealthy Middle Eastern falconers. This week in London, one of the most bizarre criminals in modern history goes on trial for the fourth time. Here is his story.

Tim Klein and Jason Wells were weekend warriors. They were also two of the best climbers to ever ply their trade on Yosemite's most iconic wall. So the climbing world was stunned when they died on some of its easiest terrain.

A lifelong runner and outdoor athlete is hit with a mysterious physical breakdown. Once the engine starts to fail, what happens to the mind?

Inside the most destructive fire in American history—and why the West's cities and towns will keep on burning

Justin Alexander went searching for higher meaning. No one expected the quest to end in a search for his body.

When Dick's Sporting Goods announced that it would reduce gun sales in the wake of the Parkland school shooting, CEO Edward Stack said he wanted to start a conversation about gun safety in America. What he got instead was a firestorm.

The former white-boy rapper and mega-successful serial entrepreneur has become a bestselling wellness author and Tony Robbins-style life coach. His latest venture, a highly social weekend of walking up mountains until you drop, called 29029, is pitched as a new breed of restorative endurance event. But is this just a brutal group hike with good marketing?

When 60-year-old Tim Watkins disappeared on a stretch of singletrack outside Colorado Springs, no one suspected that the truth of how he died would rip the community apart

As a child, Cody Sheehy made headlines when he vanished into the freezing wilderness of Northeast Oregon, making it out safely after 18 hours of determined slogging. Retracing his steps 32 years later, Sheehy says that getting lost was one of the best life lessons he ever had.

What happens when America's most fabulous advice columnist fires up her polka-dot car and hits the road to ask total strangers about love and cleaving in a bunch of tiny towns called Eden? Let's just put it this way: Paradise is Regained, and John Milton himself would have said, “Oh. My. God.”

Richard Carr, a retired psychologist who had long dreamed of sailing around the world, was in the middle of the Pacific when he started sending frantic messages that said pirates were boarding his boat. Two thousand miles away in Los Angeles, his family woke up to a nightmare: he might be dying alone, and there was almost nothing they could do about it.

If she wins tomorrow, the 38-year-old Democrat would become the country's first Native American governor. Can a moderate still win in Trump's America? Idaho is about to find out.

Kale Poland, founder of Cleetus Fit, takes pride in a brand of fitness where dumpster towing and beer yoga are equally at home. Now he's out to conquer the Deca Ironman—ten Ironmans in a row.

Told here in full for the first time, this is the horrifying story of the first murder on the Appalachian Trail, the kidnapping that followed, and how one woman learned to survive.

About an hour before midnight on Mother’s Day in 1986, a group of teenagers assembled at an Episcopal high school in Portland, Oregon, to embark on an expedition. Their goal was to summit Mount Hood, completing an adventure program that was required for all sophomores. What followed was a story of tragedy and loss that is commemorated annually at the institution it changed forever.

Casey Brown overcame poverty and the bizarre death of her brother to become a world-class mountain biker, doing jumps on a terrain with no margin for error. But is she good enough to be the first woman to compete in the sport's most dangerous event?

Athletes and adventurers use rituals to get ready for big moments—whether it's wearing a new pair of socks on summit day or bouncing the tennis ball exactly seven times before bashing a serve. Does it work? Steven Kotler explores the cutting edge of neuroscience, plus a little bit of black magic, to find out.

The 33 special agents assigned to the Investigative Services Branch handle the most complex crimes committed on NPS land. When a day hike in Rocky Mountain National Park ended in a grisly death, ISB veteran Beth Shott hit the trail, where she began unraveling a harrowing case.

She won Olympic gold in a sport that chose her. Can she do the same in the one she truly loves?

As America wrestles with high rates of suicide among military personnel and veterans, outdoor programs have been offered up as a promising treatment. Dan Sidles seemed like the ideal candidate: an Iraq War vet who suffered from PTSD, he tried to find a renewed sense of purpose through climbing and mountaineering. Ultimately, it wasn’t enough. Brian Mockenhaupt explores the final years of a tortured friend.

As the minimalism trend enters a curious new phase that has clothing makers like Mac Bishop of Wool and Prince showing us how to get through a year with only a few pairs of underwear, one brave adventurer attempts to defend his gear closet

How I learned to do group travel—without hating everybody else

For more than 40 years, tribal chief and artist Roy Vickers was obsessed with a totem pole that was taken from a remote native village in British Columbia. He decided to make a replica, and all he needed was will, skill, and a 17,500-pound tree.

Thousands of people flock to the Alps each year to ski tour high-elevation routes, spending comfortable nights in a string of huts that serve wine and hot meals. This spring, a group of experienced skiers and their guide were trapped in a storm overnight on an exposed saddle. By morning, nearly all were dead or dying.

Filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi doesn’t climb, but her determination to shine a light on what drives extreme mountaineers produced two of the best adventure documentaries of the past decade

In 2017, the suicide rate in Durango, Colorado, was three times the national average. After 32 deaths in two years, the town's leaders banded together and instituted a range of changes with the goal of stopping the contagion. Their efforts may help other mountain towns to put an end to the grim "suicide belt" moniker for good.

Bike Snob NYC spent three days scootering around Portland, Oregon, to determine, once and for all, whether the now infamous tiny wheeled contraptions are a scourge on our cities—or whether they’re damned convenient and laughably benign

For decades, women in the Forest Service and U.S. Department of Agriculture have been trying to bring justice to those who have discriminated against them. A new investigation reveals that the inaction is due to a much larger problem: a system set up to make their complaints go away.

Avery Shawler left her Idaho apartment one morning in 2016 to hike a prominent peak. But the day outing quickly took a turn for the worse, and Shawler would end up needing a lot of luck—and all her backcountry skills—to make it home alive.

For decades, the staff of Grand Canyon National Park has lived with a culture of bullying and harassment. Can the park's first female superintendent heal the old wounds?

As the U.S. battles over the fate of public lands, the Chilean government and Kristine Tompkins are doing something extraordinary down in Patagonia—setting aside millions of acres for stunning new national parks. And they aren't done yet.

Golf courses! Water parks! Man-made lakes! If Utah has its way, the retiree oasis of St. George will explode with growth, turning red rock to bluegrass and slaking its thirst with a new billion-dollar pipeline from the Colorado River.

Summit fever, a lack of mountaineering skills, and the allure of social media are leading to serious accidents on the lower 48's highest peak. Can anything be done to stop the injuries and deaths?

Amid a frenzied conversation over shrinking public lands, Native Americans run hundreds of miles to honor—and take back—the land that's sacred to them

New York's Citi Bike, one of the largest bike-share programs in the world, relies on a volunteer army to help redistribute some 12,000 bicycles among 750 stations each day, ensuring that users can grab a ride when they need one. Most of these volunteers do a few out-of-the-way deliveries a month. Then there's Joe Miller, whose superhuman efforts seem to defy any plausible explanation.

The high-tech material has been used to build frames and components for decades, but as bikes age, catastrophic failures are leading to lawsuits

What possesses an American cleric, a man of history and scholarship, to renounce his vows, move to a crumbling stone farmhouse in a small French village, and spend his days digging potatoes and translating Thucydides? Bill Donahue goes in search of his favorite unconventional uncle.

A glorious and ill-considered expedition to retrace the nearly 300-mile sufferfest endured by colonial badass (and not yet turncoat) Benedict Arnold and his 1,100 brave, starving men. Their aim: to take Quebec City from the British. Ours: to survive.

In 2015, in a secret medical procedure carried out in Bogota, Colombia, the 44-year-old woman got dozens of experimental gene-therapy injections. Why? Because Parrish, the creator of a longevity company called BioViva, believes that science is on the cusp of delivering radically longer lifespans—and she wants to help bring on the revolution.

The first Golden Globe Race, a solo, nonstop, around-the-world sailing event held in 1968, was a mixture of triumph, tragedy, and madness—all chronicled in a classic bestselling book and recent BBC movie. Fifty years later, 17 sailors are once again setting out for the most ambitious—and loneliest—regatta on the planet.

The Spanish ultra-athlete has spent the past decade crushing a generation of elite rivals and redefining the limits of human endurance. But when he notched back-to-back speed ascents of Everest in 2017, critics pounced on the claims.

The e-commerce behemoth is on its way to becoming the biggest marketplace for outdoor-recreation products and its influence over the industry grows every day. Is this the apocalypse for the shops and brands that have fueled our love of adventure? Or can they learn to fight back without destroying one another?

Now that the mines have closed, the small towns of Emery County, Utah, are dreaming up an ambitious plan: A veritable outdoor playground with a new monument and more than half a million acres of designated wilderness. Can this scheme convince other towns to transition from extraction to recreation?

It was just another beautiful day in the mountains for the author and his one-year-old Australian shepherd, Merle, when their lives changed in an instant

From miles out in the storm-ravaged Chesapeake Bay, the Tangier Island crab boat radioed a mayday, then fell silent. Fellow skippers from this lonely and legendary speck of land rallied to save the two-man crew. God willing, they'd get there in time.

When Kyle Dickman set out on a month-long road trip with his wife and infant son last spring, he was fueled by a carefree sense of adventure that had defined his entire life. Then he got bit by a venomous snake in a remote area of Yosemite National Park, and the harrowing event changed everything.

He was the best alpinist of his generation, a quiet, unassuming Canadian known for bold ascents of some of the world’s most iconic peaks. At the age of 25, he traveled to Alaska to join climber Ryan Johnson for a first ascent outside Juneau. They never came back, and a frantic nine-day search left more questions than answers.

Spitfire excels at the curious sport of dock diving, or, in other words, jumping really, really far. That skill has landed him and his owner, 13-year-old Sydney Mackey, five world records—and counting.

During the 2018 California L'Eroica, Bike Snob NYC braved saddle sores and a single pizza-size gear on a century-old Mead Ranger—all in an attempt to prove that bike technology hasn't gotten that much better. Or to prove that, well, maybe it has.

The Democratic candidate and son of the Burt's Bees founder is seeking a win in Maine's rural 2nd District with a simple message: The recreation economy can bring back jobs

The 29-year-old CEO of Outdoor Voices is taking on Nike, one color block at a time

A four-year battle over a tiny patch of river beach in Northern California—between two middle-aged guys with way too much time on their hands—illustrates the deep divide in how we perceive access rights to public lands

Jason Nez studies something that's too often forgotten amid the awe-inspiring views and canyon walls: those who live there

The world’s best bike racer is a woman: Vos, a 31-year-old Dutch superstar with more than 300 podium finishes. She’s also an activist, taking on the fight against gender inequality in a sport whose future has to involve knocking down a few doors.

There’s a common misconception that black people don’t love wild places. Latria Graham, a southerner with deep connections to farms, rivers, and forests, says the problem isn’t desire but access—and a long history of laws and customs that have whitewashed our finest public lands.

When you take former sex-trafficking victims into the wilderness for a few days of roughing it, know this: they’ve seen worse. Florence Williams goes on a trip organized by Atlanta-based She Is Able and learns that one size of adventure therapy does not fit all.