Resources

The topography of Kurdistan is more like Montana than the arid oil fields of southern Iraq, and as an oasis of stability in a region of tumult it’s ripe for tourism—but we’re talking true adventure travel, where things go wrong and the unexpected should be expected. Outfitter Secret Compass hasn’t put a Kurdistan mountain bike trip on its calendar yet, but it does offer an expedition to climb Halgurd, Iraq’s highest climbable peak, in spring. Want to do your own thing? Pick up a copy of Kurdistan: A Companion, found on Amazon, book a ticket to Erbil, and start there. Kurdistan Iraq Tours is also a good source of beta, kurdistaniraqtours.com.

Author Aaron Gulley is a lifelong traveler, journalist, and cyclist. This is his first piece for AJ. aarongulley.com, @aarongulley

Photos: Dan Milner, danmilner.com, @danmilnerphoto

Author Steve Hawk has been senior editor of Adventure Journal since our inaugural issue, but his CV goes much, much deeper than that. Hawk was the editor of Surfer magazine from 1990 to 1998 and of Sierra magazine from 2009 to 2015. He currently is the editor of Stanford Business magazine. One of the few people who’ve surfed on every continent, he would never ever choose surfing over a deadline, not ever ever ever. Ever. @hawkmhb

Photos: Chris Burkard, chrisburkard.com, @chrisburkard; Marcus Paladino, marcuspaladino.com, @marcuspaladino

It’s not a happy story, it really isn’t. As photographer Cristina Mittermeier’s foundation, SeaLegacy, tells it, “Below the thin blue line, our oceans are in trouble. Eighty percent of fisheries are overfished or collapsing. Pollution is choking seabirds, seals, and whales. Vast areas of reef are dying rapidly, and species from plankton to polar bears face precipitous decline.” But without confronting problems head-on, we won’t find solutions, and SeaLegacy is doing that, powerfully, with a social media presence that dwarfs older and larger organizations like the Wilderness Society. Start with a follow @sealegacy and @cristinamittermeier and then drop by sealegacy.org.

Author and interviewer Mary Anne Potts is a longtime veteran of adventure publishing and has one of the deepest Rolodexes we know—she ran National Geographic Adventure’s digital editorial division from 2005 to 2017, was a member of the National Geographic Young Explorers Grant Committee, and was most recently the editorial director of Roam Media. This is her first piece for Adventure Journal. @maryannepotts

The Faroe Islands haven’t yet turned into Iceland and hopefully won’t. While its larger neighbor to the northwest struggles with a massive influx of tourists, the self-governed group of 18 volcanic islands is in no hurry to follow suit: For two days in April 2019, the Faroes were “closed to tourism and open for voluntourism,” said Guðríð Højgaard of Visit Faroe Islands. One hundred volunteers from twenty-five countries helped perform maintenance on ten shuttered tourist sites. They’re doing it again in 2020, but competition is fierce—there were 3,500 applicants for that handful of slots. visitfaroeislands.com

Photos: David Fletcher, @davidfletcher_; Jason Stirling, @northsouth

Jessica J. Lee was living in Germany and working on her doctoral thesis on environmental history when she went for a swim in a lake near Berlin to clear her head from the dissonance of dissertation writing. That soon became a project that any of us can relate to—a mission to swim fifty-two German lakes, one a week, over the course of a year—and that led to a charming, meditative memoir called Turning. jessicajlee.wordpress.com, @jessicajlee

The polar bear club is, relatively speaking, for amateurs: a quick dip in icy water and then out. The British swimmers that Welsh photographer Mark Griffiths studied in his series “Wild Swimming” are in it for the long haul. Cath Pendleton swam the English Channel in nineteen hours. Becca Harvey was almost killed when she was sitting in her stationary car and hit by a drunk driver traveling 120 mph; swimming in cold water suppresses her PTSD and calms the pain from nerve damage to her brain. Others use long, cold swims to salve depression, anxiety, body issues, and stress. markgriffithsphotography.com, @markgriffphoto

If you know your presidents, you can rank the mountains of the Presidential Traverse in New Hampshire’s White Mountains: Mount Washington is the tallest and is named for the first president (duh), the second-tallest is Adams, etc. It’s a tidy way to remember the peaks, until you get to Mount Monroe, where a survey error led to the fourth-highest summit being named for the fifth president. Somewhere, the ghost of James Madison is grumbling about the injustice of it all.

A Vermont native, author Leath Tonino has penned two essay collections about the outdoors, most recently The West Will Swallow You (Trinity University Press, October 2019).

Photos: Joe Klementovich, klementovichphoto.com, @klementovich

Our favorite foodies got hitched! The couple that you know as Fresh Off the Grid and we know as Megan McDuffie and Michael van Vliet tied the knot in Yosemite National Park in August 2019. We threatened to crash the wedding, and they said we were welcome—but for food we were on our own. Wait, what? freshoffthegrid.com, @freshoffthegrid