Resources

Original chairs from the country’s first chairlift in Sun Valley, Idaho, will run you about $13,000 a pop from Colorado Ski Furniture, cdc.coloradoskichairs.com. In the French Alps soon? Taninges Télécabines, a ski lift graveyard/open-air museum in Taninges, looks incroyable. @taningestelecabines

Mattias Fredriksson is a photojournalist and writer whose work has appeared in Åka Skidor, Powder, and Freehub, among other places. He’s a Swedish expat homesteading in British Columbia. mattiasfredriksson.com, @mattiasfredrikssonphotography

The Glen Canyon Institute maintains a terrific recommended reading list covering the area’s cultural and hydrological histories at glencanyon.org. To their list we’d add Edward Abbey’s classic Desert Solitaire and Kevin Fedarko’s The Emerald Mile, though we could go on and on. The Returning Rapids Project is also a knowledge goldmine. returningrapids.com

Zak Podmore is a writer and river-runner based in southeastern Utah. He’s the author of the books Confluence: Navigating the Personal & Political on Rivers of the New West (2019) and Life After Dead Pool: Lake Powell’s Last Days and the Rebirth of the Colorado River in Glen Canyon, forthcoming in 2024 from Torrey House Press. zakpodmore.com

Elliot Ross always goes above, beyond, and occasionally below in his work, as he did on this assignment. While leading a boat through shallow rapids, he plunged into overhead water with his main camera in hand, drowning the poor thing. Ross is a Taiwanese-American photographer based in Colorado and has published two books of his photography, American Backyard and Guy Pei: Couture Beyond. elliotstudio.com, @elliotstudio

Not all wintertime Presidential Traverses are near-hypothermic slogs—just most of them. Intrigued? Good. Just know average winter highs are in the teens and average lows are below zero. Mount Washington, the highest peak of the range, stands at a mere 6,288 feet, but it’s one of the deadliest mountains in the country and experiences hurricane-force winds about every four days. Yeah, you might want a guide in the winter. Try Northeast Mountaineering, nemountaineering.com

Michael Wejchert is a climber and writer whose first book, Hidden Mountains, was published in January 2023. He lives in New Hampshire, as a thirty-year-old curmudgeon ignoring social media and most emails. michaelwejchert.com

You don’t have to be a pollyanna to have hope for the future—the following books offer roadmaps leading away from despair: How to Be a Climate Optimist (2022) by Chris Turner; Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility (2023), edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua; and A Wild Love for the World: Joanna Macy and the Work of Our Time (2020) by Joanna Macy.

Rebecca Solnit is an author based in the Bay Area. She’s written more than twenty books on history, social change, and wandering, among other topics. We’re big fans of A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2016). rebeccasolnit.net

Craig Kelly won four consecutive snowboarding world championships from 1988 to 1991 and three consecutive U.S. Open championships from 1987 to 1989. During a twelve-year stretch in the mid-1980s and 1990s, Kelly, along with Jake Burton Carpenter and Paul Alden, formed the tip of the spear that opened most North American resorts to snowboards. Let it Ride: The Craig Kelly Story was a film festival award winner in 2008 and is available on DVD.

Eric Blehm is a writer and adventurer based in Southern California. He’s the author of the New York Times bestselling books The Last Season and Fearless. Blehm’s biography of Craig Kelly, The Darkest White: A Mountain Legend and the Avalanche That Took Him, will be published in February 2024 by HarperCollins. ericblehm.com

Inspired to make sketches like these? Tim Musso used paper from Hahnemühle’s the Grey Book, General’s Charcoal Pencil White #558, and for the ink, Sakura Micron Pens, tip size 01-05.

Tim Musso is a naturalist, artist, and professor at La Sierra University in Riverside, California. His fascination with nature and preferred medium of relief printing combine in Chasing the Sun (2023), a children’s picture book that takes the reader along with a family of Arctic terns as they migrate around the world.

Bill Edwards climbs and writes in the Pacific Northwest. Edwards helped found Early Winters, a Seattle-based gear brand, where he designed some of the first Gore-Tex shells. He’s the author of Banquet of the Infinite: Dropping Out to Find Myself (2021). williamhedwards.blogspot.com

The first time anyone rode a bike the entire thousand-mile trail from Knik to Nome was in 1989 when four Alaskans pulled off the feat on standard mountain bikes, not the floaty fat tire bikes ridden today. Jeff Oatley of Fairbanks set the FKT in 2022, completing the ride in just over ten days, breaking the long-time record held by Adventure Journal contributor Mike Curiak. Wanna see if you can beat Oatley’s time? (LOL). The Iditarod Trail Invitational sign-up sheet is waiting. itialaska.com

Kurt Refsnider left his job as a geology professor to cofound Bikepacking Roots and help design the Western Wildlands Route, a 2,700-mile ride from Arizona through Montana. If it’s long and difficult, he’s ridden it. @kurt.refsnider

Aska cabin is just a kilometer from Lake Mývatn, located in the middle of a 300-year-old lava field, and it can be rented on Airbnb for about $200 a night.

Karissa Hosek and Linhbergh Nguyen’s blog Gondirtin is dedicated to two things: going and dirting. Wait, no, we mean cooking and overlanding. gondirtin.com, @gondirtin

In the southern Sierra, even nine hundred inches of snow will melt eventually. While Mammoth Mountain’s 2022–2023 ski season was the second-longest on record, with slopes open through August 6, just two weeks later mountain bikers were flowing down snow-free trails at the top of the mountain. mammothmountain.com

Regular contributor to AJ Christian Pondella has shot for National Geographic, Outside, and Climbing, among lots of other tentpole outlets. He lives in Mammoth Lakes, California. christianpondella.com, @christianpondella