With the news that Bike, Powder, and Surfer magazines are being shut down, as well as the print edition of Snowboarder, the last few days have seen an outpouring of sadness online, via text, and through phone calls and emails. Folks I haven’t talked to in decades have reached out, more than a few confessing … Read more
Today is a tremendously sad day for fans of high-quality enthusiast publications and for Joni and me in particular. The magazines Bike, Powder, Snowboarder, and Surfer are being shut down by owner A360 Media, née American Media, which also owns Men’s Journal. This includes both print and digital products for Bike, Powder, and Surfer, and … Read more
When Helen Macdonald was in her 20s, she worked at a falcon breeding center in Wales, where every day she lifted eggs from incubators, weighed them, and used a graphite pencil to sketch the outline of each growing embryo onto its eggshell. But she always felt dizzy and troubled on leaving the incubation room, a … Read more
Ernest Shackleton’s epic tale of survival after the sinking of his ship the Endurance in Antarctic waters is well known, but less known is what he and two of his companions experienced after they made their way by open boat, above, to South Georgia Island and trekked across to a whaling station to find salvation. … Read more
Sometimes you just want to ride a bike. You’re not looking for a leg-crushing singletrack jam on a full suspension tank. Nor a lung-busting sprint on a greyhound-inspired road bike. Just a bike ride. Maybe on pavement, maybe on a dirt road. Maybe a bit of both. You don’t want to be overbiked, don’t want … Read more
Yvon Chouinard is probably most qualified to be called the patron saint of dirtbags, having been one of the originals himself in Yosemite during the 1960s, at one point eating cat food to get through a season on very little money. Then he started Chouinard Equipment, and then Patagonia, and found himself becoming a CEO, … Read more
Hey, do you like camping and backpacking with your friends? Of course you do. So obviously you’d like to be invited on lots of trips. How do you get invited on lots of trips? You learn how to be a good tentmate, and make your tentmate’s experience a good one. Here are a few tips … Read more
Being a beginner sucks. There’s nothing worse. If you’ve managed to survive to adulthood while preserving even the tiniest, most minuscule shred of pride, it’s gone the instant you step out on a limb and become—God forbid—new at something. Kids, on the other hand, can learn anything in five minutes and be smug little jerks … Read more
There are well over 4,000 stories in the Adventure Journal archive. Every so often we dip in to those archives and republish an older piece for new readers to enjoy. – Ed. Aloha Wanderwell. It’s a name so perfect for an adventurer it sounds invented. Because actually, it was invented. But Wanderwell, a 1920s traveler, … Read more
It is a frosty March morning in the Hoh Rainforest, deep within Olympic National Park in Washington state. The forest is full of Jurassic ferns, hanging moss, and towering spruce and cedars, but what I hope to find is an absence. I seek a spot known as the “One Square Inch of Silence” — one … Read more