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Historical Badass
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They Called Him Snow Leopard
Ang Rita Sherpa climbed Everest without bottled oxygen more than anyone in history.
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Greg Noll Was A Big Wave Icon Carved From a Redwood Tree
Greg Noll was the Platonic ideal of the big-wave surfer.
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Henry David Thoreau: America’s First Yogi?
International Yoga Day, dedicated to celebrating yoga as part of the “intangible cultural heritage of humanity,” has proved controversial since…
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Rell Sunn, Surfing’s Graceful Queen, Was as Tough They Come
Few people ever touch their particular corner of the world, culturally, geographically, or spiritually, like Hawaii’s Rell Sunn. She was,…
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Lean and Hard and Sunbrowned and Kind: A Reading of the Audrey Sutherland Story
If you’re into women doing badass things on the water all by themselves, you gotta listen to this week’s Adventure…
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Natalia Molchanova, World’s Best Free Diver, Vanished During Final Dive
Assume a comfortable position. Now close your eyes, exhale slowly and steadily, then draw a long deep breath, completely filling…
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Leon Crane Survived a Terrifying Plane Crash, Then 80 Days Alone in an Alaskan Winter
Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve is a land of river canyons, flatlands, and gently-sloping mountains due east of Fairbanks, smack in…
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The Tour de France Winning Smuggler Who Saved Hundreds of Lives in WW2
Italian Gino Bartali is one of the all-time greatest road cyclists. If it hadn’t been for the Second World War…
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Louise Boyd, the ‘Ice Queen’ of Greenland, Spent Her Fortune on Adventure
If you were born into fabulous wealth with no real responsibilities, what would you do? Loaf around, wealthily, assuming your…
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The Motorcycle Queen of Miami Was More than Fast Enough
To ride a motorcycle across the United States in the 1930s meant harsh riding over unforgiving dirt roads, careful planning…
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Colin Fletcher, the Father of Modern Backpacking
Lieutenant Colin Fletcher looked up from the soggy gray paper bags leaking ropy streams of yellow vomit into the bilge…
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John Fairfax Wrestled Sharks, Rowed Across Oceans, Did a Little Gunfighting on the Side
Like a baccarat player holding his cards close to his tuxedo, the buttoned-down headline barely hints at the payout to…
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Pioneering Travel Writer Ida Pfeiffer Was Not Afraid of Cannibals
If you’re in your mid-40s and feel it’s too late to follow your dreams of hardcore, on-a-shoestring international travel for…
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Earl Shaffer, the First Thru-Hiker of the AT, Embodied the Trail’s Soul
On April 4, 1948, 29-year-old Earl Shaffer shouldered a rucksack and started hiking near Mt. Oglethorpe in Georgia. He soon…
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Minnie Mae Freeman Saved a Schoolroom Full of Children During One of the Country’s Deadliest Blizzards on Record
It was called “The Children’s Blizzard.” A powerful, quick-moving snowstorm that blasted the American Midwest on January 12, 1888. It…
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Why’d They Call Him Snow Leopard? Because He Climbed Everest Without Oxygen 10 Times
Ang Rita Sherpa climbed Everest for the final time on May 23, 1996, alongside Göran Kropp, just days after…
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How Rosalie Edge, the “Hawk of Mercy,” Became the Conscience of American Conservation
Rosalie Barrow Edge was 52 years old and summering in Paris when she opened the pamphlet that ignited her…
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Sonia Livanos Was 99 Pounds of Rock-Climbing Dynamite
At first look, Sonia Livanos seems an unlikely climbing hero. A 99-pound weekend warrior who was born and raised at…
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Don Flickinger Explored Jungles to Save Crashed WW2 Airmen
The Patkai mountains are small for the Himalaya: Only 12,552 feet at their highest. But on August 2nd 1943, they…
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Mt. Rainier Legend Dee Molenaar Was the Last ‘Brother of the Rope’
In early August 1953, the American Karakoram Expedition was hunkered at more than 25,200 feet on the Abruzzi Spur of…
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Alfonsina Strada, The ‘Devil In A Dress’ Who Rode The World’s Toughest Tour
They don’t do bike races like they used to. Take the Giro d’Italia, one of the world’s longest and most…
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John Salathé, the Mystic Swiss Climber Who Changed Yosemite Forever
John Salathé, the first real icon of Yosemite climbing, didn’t see the valley for the first time until he was…
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Oskar Speck Set Off From the Danube in a Kayak—He Ended in Australia
There are a great many ways to get to Australia from Germany, nearly all of them easier than the…
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Nick Clinch Showed the World Americans Could Make First Ascents Too
Nicholas Clinch standing, middle of back row. American Antarctic Mountaineering Expedition. Photo: via AAC. Despite a nickname that makes it…
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The Wisdom of Sir Edmund Hillary
Everest was first climbed 70 years ago this week, cementing Edmund Hillary’s and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay’s place in world history.…
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Amy Johnson Left Her Secretary Job Behind to Become One of History’s Most Daring Pilots
Amy Johnson was your classic dreamer. Anybody who’s ever pushed back from the expected will recognize a little bit of…
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Meet the ‘King of the Ocean’
On February 22, Aleksander Doba made the last few strides to the top of Kilimanjaro, a pleased 74-year-old man, waving…
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Hallie Daggett, First Woman Fire Lookout for USFS, Blew Minds: ‘I hope your heart is strong enough to stand the shock.’
6,600 feet up a mountain in a small wood box, three hours by foot from the nearest dirt road, the…
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Millican Dalton Was the Chain-Smoking, Cave-Dwelling Godfather of Ultralight Camping
Millican Dalton knew how to make an impression. When a correspondent from the Sunday Chronicle newspaper came calling in 1933,…
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Walter Greaves, the Vegetarian, One-Armed Cyclist, Rode Further Than Anyone
Walter William Greaves was never marked for fame or fortune. He came of age in the late 1920s in Bradford,…
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Greta Anderson, For a Decade, the World’s Greatest Swimmer
In an Olympic-sized swimming pool, it would take thirty-three laps (that’s swimming from one end to the other) to swim…
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Dora Keen Pioneered Some of Alaska’s Toughest Mountain Routes
Dora Keen had already impressed the climbing world before she became the first woman to mountaineer in Alaska in 1911.…
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Big Wall Beverly Johnson Changed the Calculus of Yosemite Climbing
In 1969, Beverly Johnson left school in the last semester of her geology studies for a more hands-on education in…
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Climber John Bachar Blew the Doors Clean Off the ’70s Yosemite Climbing Scene
In the early 1970s the major Yosemite climbing proving ground was an area called the Nabisco Wall, a series of…
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Justin Schmidt, ‘King of Sting,’ Was Like a Sommelier of Insect Sting Pain
Shackleton suffered tremendous adversity and pain and overcame the fear of starvation, freezing, and death. But did he ever willingly…
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Mary Barr Fought Expectations as First Female Forest Service Air Boss
When Mary Barr was pregnant with her first child, she knew she wanted a woman obstetrician to deliver her baby.…
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Hannes Keller Showed the World Humans Could Reach the Ocean’s Black Depths
Ever turn a cup upside down in the bath or a pool and dunk it below the surface? The…
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Hannes Keller Showed the World Humans Could Reach the Ocean’s Black Depths
He was the first to dive to 1,000 feet, but the dive was a tragic one.
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Underappreciated Badass Davo Karnicar Skied Everest’s Impossible Line
Remembering Slovenia’s underground legend, the first climber to make a full ski descent down Everest.
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Nick Gabaldon Surfed Against Southern California’s Tide of Segregation
The first black surfer at Malibu didn’t let segregation keep him from surfing the waves he dreamed of.
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Abigail Becker Might the Baddest Badass You’ve Never Heard Of
See why they called her the “Angel of Long Point.”
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Abigail Becker Might the Baddest Badass You’ve Never Heard Of
In 1854, Abigail Becker married a widower and moved to a small, rugged trapper’s cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie,…
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RIP Pat Curren, Enigmatic Icon of Surfing’s Golden Years
Surfing loses a legend.
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Marion Smith Explored More Caves Than Any Human in History—Now That’s Badass
His real home was deep underground.
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Joseph Kittinger, the Man Who Dove to Earth
First, the indescribable view. Earth, many miles below, twinkling blue, whorls of white and grey clouds. Home is down there…
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Buzz Holmstrom, First to Solo Row the Grand Canyon
In November 1937, Haldane “Buzz” Holmstrom sat in the sand below Lava Cliff, the last substantial rapid in Grand…
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Joseph Kittinger, the Man Who Dove to Earth
The “man who fell to earth,” Kittinger leapt from balloons at 100,000 feet, set records for free fall speed, was…
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Roald Amundsen Had to Make Do With Being First to South Pole
Roald Amundsen There’s no evidence of this, but surely there must have been a saying among the great polar explorers…
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Solo Paddler Audrey Sutherland Did the Most Important Things
The first time Audrey Sutherland explored the rugged northeast coast of Moloka’i, she swam the 20-mile stretch. Forty-one years old,…
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Meet Ann Davison, the First Woman to Sail Solo Across the Atlantic
After the sea took the life of her husband, Ann Davison decided to sail the Atlantic by herself.
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Free Spirited Solo Paddler Audrey Sutherland Did the Most Important Things
The first time Audrey Sutherland explored the rugged northeast coast of Moloka’i, she swam the 20-mile stretch. Forty-one years old,…
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Buzz Holmstrom, First to Solo Row the Grand Canyon, Built Own Boat
Holmstrom paddled 1,000 river miles in a boat he built in his mom’s basement, for $20.
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Roald Amundsen Had to Make Do With Being First to South Pole
When the North Pole was reached before he got there, Amundsen simply decided to be the first to reach both…
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Matthew Henson, Peary’s Aide, Was 100% Polar Explorer Badass
As steam and rail shrunk the globe at the turn of the twentieth century, the race was on to claim…
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Surfer Mark Foo Died Doing What He Loved, Which He Thought No Great Tragedy
Tragedy seems easier to digest the further away it is in the past, but this doesn’t seem to be the…
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Douglas Mawson, Antarctic Explorer, Refused to Die Out on the Ice
Chris Turney is the author of 1912: The Year The World Discovered Antarctica, a book about the five major expeditions…
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Ageless Rock Climbing Legend Marcel Rémy Kept Climbing at 99
Swiss alpinist Marcel Rémy celebrated his 99th birthday last February at his local rock gym, climbing to the 50-foot rafters…
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Poppa Neutrino Jazzed His Way Across the Atlantic on a Raft Made of Trash
The first thing you should know about Poppa Neutrino is that he once sailed from Maine to Ireland on a…
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One-Eyed Wiley Post Broke Every Flight Record He Could Find
He flew planes while having only one eye. He set a record for fastest flight across the globe with a…