With usage skyrocketing on America’s public lands, the Bureau of Land Management this week unveiled a new initiative aimed at improving access to acreage that is unreachable or challenging to reach because of land ownership patterns and other obstacles. Public land doesn’t serve the greater good if hunters, anglers, campers or other users can’t get … Read more
Norway is clearly a country that appreciates a good, stylish cabin more than most, making them available for regular folks hiking the gorgeous, if often cold, landscape. Beautiful cabins and huts dot mountains overlooking stunning fjords, green valleys, snowbound passes. Many are publicly funded too. A system of elegant hiking shelters that reward those willing … Read more
It’s the year 2082. And things kinda suck out there.
Especially in this current phase of human history in which sourcing good bike components is very hard for all but the biggest of players, it’s fascinating to see exactly how and why bike brands spec their rigs the way they do. Different designers and project managers will have different ideas about what parts are worth … Read more
A neighbor buddy of mine was sitting next to me in our local coffeehouse the other day, pondering where and what he could pull off in a two-night epic. He’s a former ultrarunner, with fitness levels most of us will only read about, so his idea of an epic couple of days might be different … Read more
“Beringia” and “Aleutian” aren’t terms you’d normally associate with warm weather, shorts, and swimming, or surfing in trunks. Yet, here we are, wearing the Beringia Aleutian Shorts every dang day now the mercury has poked its head above the 70-degree mark regularly in Northern California. What’s so special about these shorts? Really just the cut … Read more
These Russian reindeer were happily grazing shoots in the snow when they were frightened by an approaching human. To confuse the potential threat, the deer arrange themselves into a whirling spiral, with the vulnerable at the center. A full-on reindeer cyclone.
China, especially the southern, part of the country, is riddled with caves many of which contain sinkholes all eroded into vast formations of karst. Some of the sinkholes are truly massive, measuring hundreds of meters deep. A 630-foot-deep sinkhole previously unknown to researchers was discovered recently by cavers that itself held a surprise: A primeval … Read more
Early in the Covid-19 epidemic, I visited the Bison Range on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. But the bison didn’t get the memo about social distancing. A trio of bull bison — each a ton on the hoof — fed on bunchgrass. I watched my son’s eyes grow wider as one of … Read more
Not sure how, but we didn’t realize until this weekend how much video there is out there of ole’ Ed Abbey on the internet. Yellowed films of the man ambling around the Utah desert, his cantankerous humor a bit dated, sure, but his observations as razor sharp as ever.