Years After My Mentor Died in the Tetons, I Retraced His Final Steps

“When my alarm split open the darkness at 1:00 AM on July 10, 2021, I wondered vaguely if this was the day I was going to die. The climb I was about to do was the one that had killed my mentor. A piece of me wondered if I was doomed to the same.”

Tahiti’s Massive Open-Ocean Canoe Race is As Badass As it Sounds

"As I clutched the side of the boat, drenched, shivering and desperately trying to keep my breakfast down, I couldn’t help but remember that Steve had tried to warn us.”

How to Date a Mountain Guide

“The date had gone well, and we were both feeling the chemistry, so he invited me back to his place.

The catch? His place was a 2010 Toyota RAV 4.”

The Harrowing Beauty of the Torment-Forbidden Traverse

“Climbing Washington State’s Torment-Forbidden Traverse feels like riding the spine of a dragon. The ridge shifts and molts. Water vapor clings to the gendarmes like wisps of smoke. You’re dirty, exhausted, and in peril, with no easy way off.”

Cold War

“The elevator bundled us down, and the narrow hallway coughed us out, and that’s where the cold found us again. It crept up and sank in and made itself at home in the marrow of our bones. But tonight was Christmas Eve. Stars hung from the bellies of bridges, their reflections glittering in the canals below. Tonight, there was light enough in Russia to keep the ghosts at bay.”

This is What You Learn When You Bury Your Father

“This winter, I buried my father’s ashes with a long-handled floral shovel in the soil behind our house. When someone you love dies, the world flips. I was suddenly hanging by my feet, staring down into the earth. Staring back into the past.”

At Denver’s George Floyd Protests, the Brothers of Bass Set the Rhythm

“For Brothers of Brass band founder Khalil Simon, there are two essential tools of protest: a megaphone and a sousaphone.”

Finding Home, One Leaf at a Time

“I kneel in the dirt on the side of the trail, just beyond the sumac’s reach, and thumb a blade of grass to compare the ligule to my fingernail. To anyone else, the bundle of stems wouldn’t be worth a second glance. But it is to me. I need to know what it is. I need to know its name.”

How Scotland is Reinventing its Centuries-Old Canals for Paddlers

“When we told our Scottish friends our plan to kayak from Glasgow to Edinburgh, they were anything but supportive. Scotland is home to stunning peaks, scenic coasts and mist-veiled lochs—but the canals?”

Breaking the Bank

“As you read this, your life savings are funding things that probably repulse you. You’re paying to raze the Amazon, lay pipe across Arctic tundra, and manufacture the cigarette butts that line the bellies of fish. You didn’t make those decisions. But your bank did.”

Shifting Gears

“My bike tottered. My screaming quads and rasping lungs made their opinion very clear: No gear was low enough for this hill.

Far ahead, my coworkers, chatting easily, pedaled uphill in their sleek wind jackets and flashy clip-in shoes. For a minute, I hated them.”

The Mountain You Never Finish Climbing

“As descents into madness go, this one was slow and steady. If you wanted to, you could trace my downward spiral to age 15 when I started pinching my side in the high school lunch line to remind myself not to add dessert to my tray.”

Thomas Camero
Finished Last

“Thomas Camero doesn’t look like a legend. He doesn’t look 78 years old, either. If you stare a little longer, you’ll maybe notice the wire-frame glasses or the ears that stick out a little from under his helmet. But mostly, you’ll notice the grin.”

Lauren Shartell becomes the second US woman to send the Lightning

“On November 8, 2020, after 160 feet of climbing, Lauren Shartell of Rifle, Colorado, stuck both picks into thin ice and pulled onto the slab that rims Vail's Rigid Designator Amphitheatre.”

The Strange Underworld of Competition Ice Climbing

“The man in charge has a horseshoe mustache and an enormous Russian fur hat. It’s March 2019, cold, and he’s been stomping around this defunct apple orchard in Michigan, with a power drill for days now…”

Learning to Embrace the Invisible on New Zealand’s Mt. Taranaki

“We watch the cloud’s ragged hem through the high windows as it rises and falls on the slope like an ocean tide. Tomorrow, we’re to climb a vertical mile up a mountain we’ve yet to see.”