The Strange Grand Canyon Disappearance of Glen and Bessie Hyde

On November 18, 1928, Glen and Bessie Hyde said goodbye to brothers Ellsworth and Emery Kolb, left the Kolb’s house near the Grand Canyon’s Bright Angel Trail and began walking down a path leading to the Colorado River. The Hydes had a boat tied up there, one in which they’d spent weeks floating down the … Read more

The Addictive Hunger of ‘Alpine Sandwiches’

Some things are self evident. The high alpine is awesome. Sandwiches are civilization’s gift to itself. Combine the two of them and angels pour forth from heaven with trumpets. At least, that’s what it seems like when you’re hungry and there’s nothing but sky above you, and it’s all documented in a brilliant website called … Read more

How to Camp (Almost) Anywhere and Not Get Busted

It’s one of the most stressful questions of the adventure cyclist: “Where the hell I am going to sleep tonight?” Well, I believe that it is every human being’s nature-given right to sleep without having to pay for the privilege. Some might consider the idea delusional, delinquent, idealistic, or impossible. But believing it acts as … Read more

How the Whole Earth Catalog Reinvented the Environmental Movement

In the fall of 1968 a Stanford-trained biologist, organizer of the legendary Trips Festival and Merry Prankster named Stewart Brand published the first Whole Earth Catalog. Between 1968 and 1972, the Catalog reached millions of readers and won the National Book Award. The title and iconic cover image of this counterculture classic celebrated the first … Read more

17 of the Best Songs About Mountains

    There are more than 3,000 stories in Adventure Journal’s archives, most of which are evergreen, and occasionally we put the best of them back on the home page for new readers to see.—Ed. It seems like mountain songs come from two places: the South, the home of original mountain music, and the West, … Read more

A Letter to All the Tents I’ve Loved

To my very first tent, that nameless damp canvas cavern propped up in a small clearing just north of Green Hand Bridge, within smelling distance of the wetland. You were my shelter from a merciless thunderstorm…until we abandoned you for drier ground. Still, I’ll never forget our time together, as brief as it was. To … Read more

The Small “a” Adventures of Bodysurfing

There’s a rocky cove along the Northern California coastline just a short jog from my house where, in the winter when the surf is enormous, I swim in the waves and occasionally smash into mussel-encrusted boulders. It’s only a ten minute run at a reasonable pace, five minutes maybe if I’m soaked and freezing in … Read more