If you’re interested in laying down some of your backpacking burden, you can find plenty of advice in bookstores and online. (Type “ultralight backpacking” into the YouTube search box and you’ll get over 3,100 videos.) But no one synthesizes the opposite poles of obsessive-compulsive, shorten-and-drill-out-your-toothbrush hysteria and utterly...
Over the past year, we’ve come across a couple of innovative projects—one was a documentary, the other a band’s throwback vinyl record—being funded through Kickstarter. Kickstarter, if you haven’t seen it, is worth a look. The web site says it’s the largest funding platform for creative...
There’s a special charm in seeing someone honestly and appropriately awed by someone else. Like watching a kid walk up to the mall Santa, or a young football player shaking hands with Peyton Manning. We read a bit of that same enchantment in a recent story by Scott Williams in...
This is how extraordinarily tough Amos Richards is: the 64-year-old North Carolinian was hiking in Utah’s desert backcountry, around Little Blue John Canyon, when he fell about 10 feet, suffering multiple leg fractures and internal injuries. He was alone and unable to put weight on the injured...
Apologies to all who visited the site this evening. We’re learning our craft on the job—it’s like an old world apprenticeship program, absent the stingy and abusive master who actually knows the business—and most steps forward are pretty halting. So, for a bit, you might have...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLTEPzKRa-k Can we recommend that you click through to a sweet, poppy, and mildly infectious homage to the beach that was? It’s pretty good, right? We would have picked this for our summer song but we didn’t find it until September. There might be a metaphor lurking in that. Anyway, hope you liked it. Time...
Outside of the actually sport, the word “surfing” seems to suggest something that is easy and effortless. (“I’ve been eating nachos and channel surfing all afternoon.” “Those kids spend all night surfing the web.”) This is odd because the sport of surfing strikes the non-surfer (we are...
There’s still plenty of good paddling left in 2011, but this is the time of year when people start looking ahead to the 2012 season. To accommodate that casting forward, canoe and kayak manufacturers are already making promises about what they’ll have available in the spring. (Pouring...
By rights, we should hate Alastair Humphreys. He is pretty clearly having more fun than we are, in more exotic locations, with better gear. But it’s very hard to take issue with a person who has such infectious enthusiasm. And we especially like his campaign to make 2011...
This isn’t the first time you’ve heard this but it bears repeating. Alcohol, in moderation, is part of a healthy lifestyle. The latest proof comes from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—your go-to source for health information—which puts alcohol up there with diet, exercise and...
There’s a condescending “good for you” tone to many profiles of very fit seniors. The implication is that tough old birds are also rare birds. We much prefer articles like this recent overview of senior athletes—runners and bikers and mountain hikers—living in the Los Gatos, California, area. The...
At 47, Sarah Palin is a few years shy of fitting into this site’s target demographic. But still, credit is due the former Alaska governor for her performance last weekend in the “Jump Right in and Run” half-marathon hosted by Iowa’s Storm Lake Running Club. Running under her...
Shoulder Season 2: (Supposed) Best Hikes in the U.S.
Mar 4, 2020
Shoulder Season 1: It’s soon time to hike
Feb 25, 2020
Klaus Obermeyer is a 100-year-old beast
Feb 22, 2020
The Soft Bigotry of Age Brackets
Feb 19, 2020
Ski North Korea! Also, Again: Climate Change
Feb 17, 2020
When obsessions collide: Pensions, skiing and climate change
Feb 15, 2020
Vail Speaks! Vail Speaks! (And More About Crowds)
Feb 14, 2020
Ski Passes Suck But Also Don’t
Feb 12, 2020
A mid-season reminder that (some) seniors ski free (or cheap) in (some) places
Feb 9, 2020
Every ski hill is Disney-fied
Feb 6, 2020