ajtestbed It’s full-on winter surf season here in Northern California, and already, the below scenario has happened this year. It happens every year, the first truly scary moment in the surf. As I was practically soiling my wetsuit praying my recently surgically repaired shoulder would hold through the imminent violence, this essay popped into my head … Read more
Nothing is as restorative as an adventure in the wilds with friends. Or by yourself. Doesn’t matter really. Just get out there.
Now I love (the idea) of swinging an axe into a log and splitting it into perfect kindling as much as the next wannabe expert axe-wielder, but in reality, that’s not remotely as easy as it looks. If you’re in a place where you’re going to be needing to split lots of cut logs, it’s … Read more
For thousands of years, grizzly bears wandered the North Cascades, spreading plant seeds through their poop and otherwise making their mark on the approximately 13,600-square-mile ecosystem spanning Washington and British Columbia. But over the past few centuries, humans hunted these vending-machine-sized carnivores to near-extinction. There has not been a confirmed grizzly sighting in the North Cascades since 1996, and … Read more
We’re not normally into trials riding around here but holy crap have you seen this? Danny MacAskill absolutely painting the streets of San Francisco with some utterly impossible lines? It’s bike parkour. Also, shout out here to the campus of San Francisco State University, a beautiful campus that doesn’t get a lot of screen time … Read more
By Justin Housman If you’ve been reading AJ online for any length of time and peruse the gear section, surely you’ve come across numerous references I’ve made to my wife and I being on the tall side. She is 6’3″ and I am 6’2″. As you can imagine, we have…issues when it comes to tents … Read more
The Petzl RocTrip breezed into Manikia, Greece, last spring with a plan to climb, of course, but also to attract artists, musicians, videographers, photographers, anyone with a vision and a climbing harness, basically, to make something truly unique. We say they pulled it off.
History’s greatest ocean rowing career started with a classified ad. It was 1972, and Peter Bird was selling velvet paintings door-to-door, the latest in a string of dead-end jobs he’d held since leaving school at 15. Derek King was the new man on the crew, having answered a newspaper ad cynically targeting the counterculture youth … Read more
In its calmer moments, Bennett Lake, located in the southwest corner of Canada’s Yukon Territory, is a placid pool of aquamarine. When one of the area’s notorious storms blows in, however, its waters roil with a certain violence. For Leigh Swansborough and Clarissa Black, who were caught in a sudden maelstrom this summer while paddling … Read more
Well, the joy of bicycling can’t really be all that unexpected, can it? Still, when a trail running injury sidelined Mirna Valerio, she picked up the bike. And hasn’t looked back.