ajtestbed AJ 06 • Recommended Reading Recommended Reading Surf travel, Balkan borderlands, Donner Party revisited, and fierce girls being themselves By Emily White Issue 06 Crossings Michael Kew · Spruce Coast Press · 2016 Outer Hebrides. Marshall Islands. Haida Gwaii. Tanzania. Vanuatu. Madagascar. Russia. Oregon-based writer Michael Kew heeds the siren song of hard-to-reach locales as … Read more
The perfect tree. It’s a ponderosa pine, an old-growth yellowbelly, one hundred fifty feet tall, one hundred fifty years in the making, with thick, jigsaw-puzzle bark that glows as if illuminated from within and smells faintly of vanilla. Where the green arboreal maze of Arizona’s Kaibab Plateau gives way to the red stony absence of … Read more
I sold my sea kayak yesterday morning. It was gorgeous: red, sleek, fast, light. Fiberglass, just under sixteen feet. It paddled like a dream, but despite my aspirations of getting lost in long expeditions in the Sea of Cortez as giant rays glided in silence beneath the bow, I’d owned it for seven years and … Read more
AJ 33 • Feature This IsSummer We asked some of our favorite photographers for their most evocative summery pics. Warning: Might lead to three months of adventure Nole Cossart enjoying his superblooming backyard in Central California Morgan Maassen: “Several years ago, as spring turned to summer, California experienced a superbloom like no other. Everything was … Read more
AJ 34 • Three Square Three Square Dirty Gourmet: uncomplicated, outdoor-friendly recipes from three friends By Mai-Yan Kwan, Emily Nielson & Aimee Trudeau Issue 34 Dirty Gourmet Photos by Dirty Gourmet Dirty Gourmet is a camp recipe partnership of three friends, Mai-Yan Kwan, Emily Nielson, and Aimee Trudeau. Their dishes are uncomplicated, outdoor-friendly versions of … Read more
AJ 39 • Three Square Three Square Dirty Gourmet: uncomplicated, outdoor-friendly recipes from three friends By Mai-Yan Kwan, Emily Nielson & Aimee Trudeau Issue 39 Dirty Gourmet Photos by Dirty Gourmet Dirty Gourmet is a camp recipe and cookbook partnership of three friends, Mai-Yan Kwan, Emily Nielson, and Aimee Trudeau. Their dishes are uncomplicated, outdoor-friendly … Read more
This should be easy, right? Pick a rating system and it’ll tell you what’s hard: double black diamond ski runs, 5.14 climbing routes, Class V whitewater. Except, not really. I’ve skied plenty of double-expert-only runs that were for me, in those conditions, easy. In my not-very-illustrious climbing career, I never got near 5.12, making 5.14 … Read more
In late September 2021, a team of archaeologists used ice axes, shovels, brooms, and warm water heated over a Primus camp stove to extract a rare artifact from an ice patch on Digervarden mountain in Norway: a thirteen-hundred-year-old wooden ski, with birch and leather binding still attached. The ski featured a raised foot platform (more … Read more
Can skiing’s problems be solved by a nomadic, human-powered, ‘backcountry light’ resort?
How a group of suburban dads from the Midwest unknowingly made the first undisputed expedition to the North Pole