Snow Sports
Archive
Two decades ago in Sarajevo, Bill Johnson won America's first Olympic gold medal in the downhill with an astonishing kamikaze performance. Now, in the wake of a comeback attempt that almost killed him, skiing's crash-course survivor struggles with the consequences of a life lived too fast.
A tough-as-nails cadre of Russian and Ukranian speleologists wriggles and blasts its way to caving's grand prize: the mythic 2,000-meter mark
The Intrepid Travels and Incredible Tales of Col. John Blashford-Snell, Explorer
Milky skies marked our February arrival in Alaska as we bounced along the tarmac in Anchorage. Soon we were winding south on the Seward Highway toward Girdwood and our palatial base camp, the Alyeska Prince Hotel, while Celeste, our driver, pointed out the paths of hulking avalanches that pummel the…
Who needs Santa? We've got 65 of the choicest gifts for all the good little adventurers in your life—right here.
North American resorts have expanded boundaries, opened gates, and liberated skiers to revel in ungroomed wildness. Our guide to the great stuff you won't find on the trail map.
As the Last Cool Place becomes an adventure-travel magnet, the scientists and bureaucrats who run the show are feeling crowded. Is this big, beautiful continent big enough for everybody?
For newcomers—meaning most of us—they are merely picturesque. But for Native Americans, the sacred places of the Great Plains and Northern Rockies are alive with centuries of memory and meaning—and something much, much bigger.
Let the motorized leaf peepers have their New England. It'll keep them far away from ours.
Want instant access to the Big Outdoors—trails, rivers, wild shores, just minutes from home—without compromising your livelihood? Then check out these ten towns on the verge of paradise, where you don't have to ditch it all to have it all.
Injury, pain, the psychology of recovery, and getting back on the trail
Forget the Yosemite circus. Head north to Bugaboo Provincial Park, a fortress of world-class granite in a quiet corner of British Columbia.
A half-mad dash to Hkakabo Razi seemed like a good idea at the time. And hey, how tough can it be to sneak past the Chinese Army?
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
In remote Zapatista country, the good people of Chiapas are engaged in a once-a-year change to upend the world. Men become women. Night becomes day. And a pilgrim in a rental car is barreling toward them.
For generations, it's been a curious springtime pilgrimage: hiking up, then skiing, boarding, sliding, or crashing down Tuckerman Ravine. But there's a first time for everyone.
For generations, it's been a curious springtime pilgrimage: hiking up, then skiing, boarding, sliding, or crashing down Tuckerman Ravine. But there's a first time for everyone.
The most imposing figure on Everest has been told to stay home. But don't count Henry Todd out yet.
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.
Eight friends. Four volcanoes. Nine days. A primer on self-guided ski mountaineering.
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.
Look out, Alaska: Doug Swingley is coming back. And this time he's… happy. The author picks the brain of the greatest musher in the Lower 48 and reveals his cunning plan to slay that 1,100-mile-long monster of the North, the Iditarod, for the fourth time.
How 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.
Terror put a chill on global tourism, but adventure travelers—used to a little uncertainty—seem determined to stay on the road
He was packing for a trek through roughest Afghanistan when the world shook. Sometimes adventure has to wait.
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 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
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
Outside's guide to the 95 coolest trips, the world's top new adventure travel spots, and the ten accessories you can't go without.
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 major new resort opens in the affordable Great White North, where they apparently didn't get the word that skiing is dead
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…
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
Using cutting-edge techniques, three young mavericks set out to tackle one of the hardest routes in the Himalayas
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.
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.
New-school nomads pedal the singletrack of the ancients on the first mountain-biking trip to northern Mongolia
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?
The Adventurist: My Life in Dangerous Places, by Robert Young Pelton; The Snakebite Survivors' Club: Travels Among Serpents, by Jeremy Seal; Teewinot: A Year in the Grand Tetons, by Jack Turner; and The Water in Between, by Kevin Patterson.
So, feeling like a plunge down a Himalayan river, a race up the face of a Patagonian spire, or a ski expedition to the North (or South—that's O.K. too) Pole? Feeling a little scared? That's why we call them Tough Trips.
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…
So is adventure racing pure competition, or just a grueling way to grab TV ratings?
The peaks of the Italian Alps may look daunting, but climbing them is la dolce vita.
After all the bad weather, bad luck, and bad food, there was only one thing left for the publishers and producers of the next big adventure blockbuster to do: Kill the writer.
Come ski Mad River Glen, where it is resolved that progress is not a good thing—and that man-made snow is for sissies
A partner drops out, one thing leads to another, and suddenly our hero finds that peer pressure has him fighting for his life
A corps of rock rats in a hurry is putting the pedal to the mettle in big-wall climbing
Last winter was among the deadliest avalanche seasons on record in the United States and Europe. Why is the number of fatalities rising? And what's being done about it?
It takes a brave heart, a keen interest in cryogenics, and a thick coating of neoprene to climb into an iceboat and fly across a frozen lake at upwards of 60 miles per hour. But hey, hard-water sailors don't mind. What else would they do with all their free time?
They were mountaineering's best and brightest. Three decades later, their story hangs over the Montana Rockies like a winter mist.
A Wetland Restoration Comedy: how one man transformed vile, polluted, dank little swamp into the perfect glassy ice pond
Books to upgrade your coffee table, featuring photography by NASA's Apollo astronauts, mountaineering legend Vittorio Sella, Glen Canyon chronicler Tad Nichols, and wildlife portraitist James Balog, along with Patagonia moments, Jane Goodall's chimps, and the world's most disgusting foods.