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Sep 5, 2026

Dear 2025 Brandy “Pumbaa” Sales, You already know why you hike. At least, you think you do. Last year, you wrote about your 10 reasons for backpacking the Laugavegur Trail. You talked about health, adventure, pushing yourself, and the way you feel when you’re out there. A year later, I don’t think your why has changed. But I understand it a little better now. The biggest reason is pretty simple: You are choosing your health. There are a few things I wish I could tell you about the year ahead. ... The post Dear Pumbaa in 2025, This Is Your Why in 2026 appeared first on The Trek .

Sep 5, 2026

Here I sit, about a month after I started the Tahoe Rim Trail. In some ways it feels like yesterday, in others it feels like a lifetime ago. I’d always heard that the trail teaches you something. That when you’re on trail long enough to not worry about where you parked your car, or work on Monday, something inside of you changes. If you let it. Letting it change me. As I’ve noted in previous posts, ... The post Lessons Learned: A Tahoe Rim Trail Retrospective, Part 1. appeared first on The Trek .

Sep 5, 2026

On June 21, the summer solstice, French climbers Hugo Parmentier and Esteban Daligault set out to free the three hardest routes on the Grand Capucin in the Mont Blanc massif in under 24 hours. They began at 5:10 a.m. on the 450-metre Voie Petit, climbing difficulties up to 5.13c in 4 hours 10 minutes. After 12 raps, they started Trésor de Romain at 11:15 a.m., reaching its summit at 4:30 p.m. despite intnse heat. The final route, L’Or du Temps, climbs 450 metres at 5.13, and they were ready to begin by 6 p.m. A few drops of rain soon turned into a hailstorm, soaking the wall and ending the att

Sep 4, 2026

Antonin Cotte a French strategist in sport & entertainment writes on LinkedIn in a length blog post titled “UTMB has a problem that money cannot solve.” (auto-translated): The UTMB is no longer merely a race with sponsors; it is a group whose business is selling access—access to a legendary starting line, access to a captive audience for brands, and access to licensing rights for local organizers worldwide. This model has enabled the group to multiply its revenue and build a circuit of 65 events in just a few years. However, a model based on the scarcity of a unique location (the Chamonix Vall

Sep 4, 2026

Original image: Dera. Modified by author. The night before Dera ’s public launch, founder Morgan Tuohy accidentally left a single size medium belt in stock on the website. The launch was set for 10:00am the next morning, but a little after 3:00am, he awoke to his phone buzzing. It was a Shopify notification: the belt had sold. Someone had checked the website early, spotted a single belt in stock, and claimed it before a single launch email had gone out. As 10:00am approached, Morgan had three browser tabs open: one to update inventory, one to flip the site from “coming soon” to “now available,

Sep 4, 2026

I really wasn’t going to write about Brian Metzler’s article in Trailrunner about Gary Cantrell “Laz” visiting Chamonix during UTMB week. But, after Trailrunner promoted the article on Instagram with the tagline “ Gary “Lazarus Lake” Cantrell Came to UTMB. He May Know How to Save It. ” I thought, hey, I am rage baited, let’s go. Here it goes Laz. How many films do we need? What new nugget of new information can there be shown? Yes, he’s an attractive figure to cover. But man, are there no others that would deserve a biopic? Laz and the Barkley phenomenon is a huge deal in France. In fact I wou

Sep 5, 2026

My shop is back open ! // The fall edition of Creative Fuel Quarterly analog newsletter is coming later this month. Subscribe now Hello friends, After a little break, the newsletter is back. It was nice to have some time away from writing these weekly missives, but I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things. I returned home from a trip to Norway and Sweden on Wednesday night, and my first items of business the next morning was to see if I managed to make it back in time for some of the last blackberries. In the rain, I picked a small bowlful, navigating between the moldy ber

Sep 4, 2026

“This is an important victory in the fight to ensure American Prairie’s bison can continue grazing on Montana’s prairie, as they have for over two decades. The Trump administration’s decision to force more than 900 bison off federal land was illegal and politically motivated. We look forward to presenting our case to ensure bison can remain on public lands across the country.” - Jenny Harbine, Managing Attorney with Earthjustice’s Northern Rockies Office. American bison graze on public lands in the northern Great Plains. Author photo. For more than 20 years, bison owned by American Prairie Fou

Sep 4, 2026

We’re back from the Tongass, the nearly 17-million-acre national forest in Southeast Alaska that now sits at the center of some of the most consequential conservation fights in America. The future of the Roadless Rule , the administration’s timber blitz, and whether we are really prepared to keep cutting what remains of our last great intact old-growth forests. Of those 16.7 million acres, I want to start with just 16.2. Sixteen point two acres. On paper, that can sound almost trivial. Especially now, when millions of acres of public land are at stake across the country. But these 16.2 acres a

Sep 1, 2026

Stone Mountain sits in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, a great grey granite dome rising 600 feet above the surrounding country. From a distance it looks almost benign. Up close, as you snake your rope, don your harness and tie your bowline, it becomes something else. The mountain is a vast sweep of exposed granite slab, brown and grey, weathered smooth in places and covered elsewhere in tiny crystals and imperfections. There are few cracks and few features that look as though they should be climbed. Your feet matter more than your hands, and the ability to smear, e

Sep 1, 2026

Acknowledging the roots and conceptualizations of the outdoor activities that we so passionately pursue enriches our participation and ties us to the land, as well as to one another. When we view our industry through a historical lens, we inevitably hear about John Muir, Sir Edmund Hillary, Royal Robbins, and other giants of outdoor recreation. We revere them based on their successes and physical… Source

Sep 1, 2026

This story was co-published with The Dispatch . Readers can get 25 percent off an annual membership using the promo code RE:PUBLIC through September 8. The Pioneer Center in Salt Lake City sits at the mouth of Emigration Canyon, near the spot where, in 1847, Brigham Young saw the country before him and announced to his followers that they had found their new home. The Latter-day Saints had come west, to Native American lands claimed by Mexico, to settle beyond the reach of the United States. Today, visitors to the center walk beneath a statue of Young and Joseph Smith, the founder of their sha

Aug 31, 2026

Just two weeks after losing 13,000 soldiers at Cold Harbor, Abraham Lincoln signed what he couldn’t have known would become one of the most consequential and long-lasting pieces of legislation of his presidency: The Yosemite Grant Act. That transferred Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Big Tree Grove to California, “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort, and recreation; shall be inalienable for all time.” It was the first time an area of land had been set aside to create any sort of state or federal park. And it couldn’t serve as a more stark

Sep 4, 2026

I’m sad about Wendell Berry, but he taught me to be sad. He wrote about death, about resurrection, and about simple, quiet beauty. Jayber Crow is one of my favorites, and I have recommended it to many. I cried when I finished Hannah Coulter , and I’m not at all ashamed. Those tears didn’t come when I learned of the writer’s death. He wrote so much about death, rebirth, and the cycles of things that it just seemed to fit. But I’m sad. Do you see yourself pulling back, shrinking from what this place has become? That’s how I feel. I see it everywhere, but maybe it’s just me. Trying to escape the

Sep 4, 2026

If you pick up a copy of Outside ’s Fall 2026 Style + Design issue on newsstands right now, flip to page 44. There, across four pages, is my story about why hiking and backpacking apparel looks more stylish than ever, largely due to an infusion of young designers bringing influences from fashion, design, and streetwear who are rewriting hiking’s style codes. Here’s an excerpt from the article: “The previously established hiker uniform—blocky boots, khaki nylon pants, pilling fleeces, and still rain shells, all in a riot of mismatched colors—simply don’t appeal to them…What connects them isn’t

Sep 4, 2026

Our coffee order - one campfire mocha, one hazelnut latte Mark and I walked in with our Caribou Coffee cups, like we always do. Nothing unusual about that morning. Except his mom, who’d barely spoken or moved in days, lifted her hand and pointed at his cup. “What’s that?” she mumbled. Carol has always taken her coffee black, no sugar, no cream. Not once in the years I’d known her had she gone anywhere near something like a mocha or a latte. “It's my latte, Mom," Mark said. Her hands stretched toward the cup, the same hands that hadn't managed to hold a fork in weeks. Mark helped her take a sma

Sep 4, 2026

What is the hike up to Burnt Lake without the greyed spectral snags of ancient old growth, killed, but not entirely destroyed, by fire? Would it be like walking through a graveyard with no gravestones? The stand of trees along the trail is uniform, almost homogenous. A mix of hemlock and Douglas-fir. Scattered among these conifer poles are columns, smoothed and greyed, sometimes hollowed out. They can measure four times as large in diameter. These are the markers of the great fire that gave Burnt Lake its name. The forest fire of 1904 started from a homesteader burning slash near what is now R

Sep 4, 2026

These are tiny, harmless flower flies. / Image credits below No denying it: flies have a public relations problem. Horse flies, sand flies, black flies, and tsetse flies aren’t the only offenders. The screwworm now making news is a fly whose larvae (maggots) feed on living flesh. And mosquitoes — yep, they’re flies. But we generalize about nature at our peril. Consider the flower flies, which are among the most endearing insects you will ever know. Marvels of evolution, they’re diverse, ornate, and vital pollinators. And even as they masquerade as bees and wasps, flower flies neither sting nor

Sep 3, 2026

Tomorrow is my birthday where I will turn 27 years old. Tomorrow is also exactly 4 weeks from when I nearly lost my life while cycling around Eastern Canada when a semi-truck clipped my back wheel as I made a lefthand turn. A lot has happened in the past 4 weeks. Claire's Substack Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. I nearly died, first of all. For the first time in my life I was lifted into an ambulance, a moment where I was screaming and crying and hysterical and at the complete mercy and trust o

Sep 3, 2026

Greetings, and welcome to the RLRH newsletter! Can kale lower lactate—or does that even matter? Lower blood lactate during exercise sounds like an automatic performance win. But lactate is not merely fatigue waste, and a lower reading does not necessarily mean an athlete can ride or run faster. That’s why I’m a bit skeptical of the hype around certain supplements promising to dramatically reduce lactate during exercise—including one made from a compound present in kale and broccoli sprouts that was tested in a recent randomized study . A total of 15 healthy adults—11 women and four men—complet

Sep 3, 2026

Everyone wants to talk about national parks in summer. Fair enough, that’s when the waterfalls are running and the trails are dry. But summer is also when Zion feels like a subway platform and you’re circling the Yosemite Valley lot for forty minutes looking for a spot. Winter strips all that away. The crowds thin out, the light gets long and low, and the parks start to feel like they belong to you again. Here are five parks that are not just tolerable, but actually better in the cold. Yellowstone National Park: Most of Yellowstone shuts its roads to cars in winter, and that’s the whole point.

Sep 3, 2026

A few nights ago, I had my bicycle up on the stand in our garage, pulling the old chain through the derailleur, thinking about how I used to do bike maintenance in the bathtub (not while bathing). And that I’d had the same chain tool ever since those days, almost 19 years ago now. I laid out the old chain on my workbench, next to the new chain. The guy at the bike shop had cut the new one for me a few hours earlier, with a few extra links. As I paid for it, he asked me, “You have a chain tool, right?” I said I did. The bathtub bike maintenance phase feels like a long time ago now. I was in my

Sep 3, 2026

There will be no Red Bull Hardline Tasmania in 2027, but the team behind Maydena Bike Park aren’t standing idle. Instead, they’ve created Beyond Gravity, a new event set to run on February 26-27, that could become the highest-paying DH race ever, with a minimum prize pool of $190,000 AUD. Beyond Gravity won’t simply be Hardline with a new logo. The course is set for a major redesign, and the whole thing is structured around a broadcast model that gives athletes a direct share of the event’s revenue. And that’s just the headline act. The race will sit at the centre of a seven-day mountain bike

Sep 3, 2026

At some point in the night I stopped looking back. The chasing headlamps were no longer visible. I felt very alone, and it was a nice feeling. Solitude in the mountains can be cozy, clarifying. I am doing the thing I came here to do. There is no turning back. Really, it was accidental. I rolled into Les Contamines (32km) with the lead group. As I changed into a long-sleeved shirt, Kathy prepared my bag. I extended my arms, she slipped it on, and I was running again. All photos coutest of The Adventure Bakery and Albin Durand First out of the aid station, I passed through the crowds and into th

Sep 2, 2026

Adam Ondra went out for a bouldering session in Toit d’Orsay in France. He had his sights set on a V14 flash, but ended up making a V14/15 (8B+/C) first ascent instead. He called the problem Little Boy du Fond, and says it is V14/15, “or soft [V15] if you don’t believe in slash grades”. The boulder is very much an Ondra-style problem. It features wild 360-degree rotations, a dynamic move to a strong gaston, and an approximately 41-second bat hang rest. It’s not the most aesthetic climb, but it definitely looks hard, and Ondra’s expression of joy after his send signals that it’s a good one. “Po

Sep 2, 2026

The stump of a Giant Sequoia at Converse Grove in California. (Photo: National Park Service). “A story of greed and mass destruction of a mighty forest.” While I was in the area for my recent 50-mile hike through Kings Canyon National Park , I took a few hours to drive up a long dirt road and visit a place with a dark and painful history, especially for those of us who love California’s magnificent sequoias. The place is called Converse Basin Grove , and it was the site of what some have called one of the worst human-caused environmental catastrophes in U.S. history. I’ve been fascinated by it

Sep 2, 2026

After a week of hiking through the burn zone of the 2021 Dixie Fire, these three days felt like a turning point. I saw an incredible sunrise from Lookout Rock, finally left the burn zone behind, and reached the best views of my section hike. Along the way, I was reminded once again that the trail always provides, whether it’s an unexpected ride at 5:00am, amazing views after a tough climb, or a friend driving four hours to bring you trail magic. The post From Blowdown City to Sierra City: Out of the Ashes and into the Sierra appeared first on The Trek .

Sep 2, 2026

he Loowit Trail circles Mount St. Helens through one of the most unique landscapes I’ve seen in the entire Pacific Northwest. It traverses lava fields, old-growth forest, wildflower meadows, deep erosion gullies, loose pumice, and the northern blast zone created by the volcano’s 1980 eruption. Although the official loop is only 30 miles, the rugged terrain and limited camping and water make it feel much longer (e.g., slower) than that. Most backpackers should plan for two nights and roughly 34 miles in total from Climber’s Bivouac. ... The post The Loowit Trail: A 30-Mile Backpacking Loop Arou

Sep 1, 2026

Before we start, let’s talk Yosemite I usually write these newsletters about two weeks before they land in your inbox. It gives me time to research the hikes, double check my writing, change things I don’t like, and make sure I’m giving you something useful each month. This September I planned it to be a very personal one. A year ago, I lost my corporate job of 18 years. Within days, I escaped to the Eastern Sierra and went hiking. This month’s five hikes retrace that trip, and the story of how one of the worst weeks of my professional life ultimately helped lead me here. Then, on August 28, n

Sep 1, 2026

MSRP: Lumina 100 ($289), Lumina 200 ($379) A shady venture on Smashmouth in Zion National Park, Utah provided opportunity for Mountain Standards reviewer Lani Chapko to test the Lumina 100 jacket. [Photo] Sam Boyce The La Sportiva Lumina down jacket series—100, 200, and 300—set out with the goal of achieving the highest warmth-to-weight ratio out there. In November and December of 2025, I wore either the Lumina 100 or 200 jacket every day. They came with me on multipitch climbs in Red Rock Canyon in Nevada, Zion National Park and made the journey all the way to Wadi Rum in Jordan. I get cold e

Sep 1, 2026

There’s been a lot written about the craft of guiding fly anglers, mostly by guides explaining technical nuances with an inferred authority that translates into bookings, or later in life, book sales. This isn’t inappropriate, really, as guiding is a business and that needs tending to. But if you’ve done any amount of it, you begin to realize your motivations for staying involved in the profession change, and often a bigger picture begins to emerge. I’ve had the privilege of spending a dozen years guiding in and around a major national park in Colorado, usually running between 100 and 125 days

Sep 1, 2026

Jeremy Nelson wrote a line at the top of his notebook before Roll Recovery had a single customer: build a product that you don’t need a marketing army to sell. His logic was that if a product requires a lot of marketing, it probably isn’t a great product. That was 2011. Roll Recovery is now in Fleet Feet, Boulder Running Company, and running stores around the world. Olympic and world champions use the R8. So do NFL and NHL teams, and so does NASA. The company has never taken outside investment, didn’t run a digital ad until a few years ago, and got its first wholesale order because Adriana car

Aug 31, 2026

(I broke-up this ride with a night in Katherine. Which meant a six hour bus trip from Darwin to Katherine the first day, then a seventeen hour ride from Katherine to Alice Springs the next. If you follow along on a map the route went from Darwin, to Katherine, to Birdum, to Tennant Creek, to Alice Springs.) The fires outside Birdum 1 made the already impossible red landscape redder, adding glowing rings of red fire to a dirt red ground saturated with red termite mounds, and red smog to the sunset red sky. That cinematic entry, after four hours of unchanging but dramatic scenery, fit Birdum’s p

Aug 31, 2026

U is for UTMB, of course I spent the last week in Chamonix in the French Alps. I was experiencing the glory of the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc for the first time, and it truly was glorious. Everything from spotting the white peak of Mont Blanc appearing through an alleyway or across a vista as I turned a corner to the food to seeing the first non-white winner of UTMB since the very first edition on Saturday afternoon. All week, Ben Dhiman winning the 100-mile event was top of my conversation of what I hoped to happen. A man with heritage from the Indian subcontinent winning the most prestigious

Aug 31, 2026

What a week it has been! Last Friday, Erik and I summited Capitol Peak, Colorado’s hardest 14er. It was our 40th 14er on our journey to complete all 58, and a truly climactic moment. Capitol Peak has a little bit of everything—forests, an alpine lake, a loose scree gully, endless talus, and technical scrambling from K2 all the way to the summit. Once you’re on that ridge, the route toward the summit is a huge commitment with no easy way to bail if you get hit by bad weather or find yourself beyond your climbing limits. When I summited Capitol Peak, I shattered the glass ceiling I had created a

Aug 31, 2026

The young buck who offers to take us up Time Wave Zero instead drinks twenty-eight Tecates and keeps the hot tub party going until 2am; The silent and slight European who walks slumped and duck-footed seamlessly climbs 12a and slouches away, unexpectedly the most badass climber in Virgin Canyon; The excitable new guy brings a Nike backpack, a strawberry lemonade vape, and half a twin… Source

Aug 22, 2026

“If you’re unwilling to contribute $392 to the U.S. economy for one day of skiing at Beaver Creek, then the terrorists will win” - President George W. Bush Share Over several months in 2026, The Storm examined hundreds of newspaper articles, ski area master development plans, U.S. Forest Service reports, and other archives documenting the evolution of lift-served skiing across the American West – and, in particular, Colorado – since the end of World War II. This fossil record of a mostly pre-internet culture captures the facts and sentiments of skiing’s past unfiltered by nostalgia or selectiv

Aug 13, 2026

“You’re on belay, Mom.” “What does that mean?” she replied. “You’re safe, Mom. Climb when ready.” Over the last five-plus years of her life, before she passed away from complications caused by dementia, we’d often say, “You’re safe, Mom,” in an effort to calm a growing sense of restlessness and panic. Story by D Scott Borden, published in Volume 24 of The Zine. Photos: D Scott Borden… Source

Jun 27, 2026

I’d walked these redwoods a dozen times before I ever set foot in the Grove. I thought I knew this forest. I’d driven the dirt road that threads through it, stood under trees that made me feel like a child, told myself I understood what a redwood was. Then one day I walked into the Grove of Titans, and the forest I thought I knew turned out to have been keeping a secret the whole time. I don’t reach for the word lightly, but it’s the only one that fits. Primeval. These aren’t big trees the way a city park has big trees. They’re something older and stranger, ancient beyond easy comprehension, a

Jun 13, 2026

I climb toward the lake with two dogs, one real and one a ghost. I am the first person to make it this far this year, and there are still snowdrifts. Trees, weakened from the fire three years ago, or is it four, have toppled into the trail, forcing us to claw our way through. The logs that we crossed the creeks on for years have been swept away in earlier floods. For someone who moved every six months for ten years, someone who gets restless if one day is a replica of another, I find change surprisingly hard. Exactly eight months to the day, October 1, I took Ruby on her last hike to this lake

Aug 10, 2026

This one took me three years and several hundred dollars in archival fees to be able to write. It's the most personal thing I've published here, and it's also the most political — those turned out to be the same essay. One branch of my family came from Romania during the immigration wave America decided it feared. The other branch is Diné and never came from anywhere. I went into the federal record to find out what the country actually did with both of them, and what I found changed how I think about the fight we're in right now. If you're new here: I usually write about water, public lands, a

Jun 30, 2026

In the second installment of his 2026 Tour Divide field report, photographer Eddie Clark follows the race deep into New Mexico, capturing the defining moments of an unforgettable year—from Victor Bosoni's composed march to victory to Meaghan Hackinen's dominant ride and Felix Laberge's remarkable singlespeed performance. Find a striking set of photos, a unique perspective on the riders, and behind-the-scenes stories from nearly 5,000 miles on the road here... The post Tracing the 2026 Tour Divide (Part 2): The Final Push appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com .

Jun 9, 2026

What do we actually want from a mountain bike? After hundreds of miles on the Neuhaus Solstice, Logan kept arriving at the same answer. It didn’t involve a certain spec sheet or a particular geometry, but something far simpler. Read on for his full review of the Neuhaus Solstice, an uncomplicated steel hardtail that quietly excels at many things... The post Neuhaus Solstice Review: Disappearing Act appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com .

Aug 27, 2026

Through the long Arctic night, I pushed my fatbike through soft snow in the dense forest. The clouds blocked out the stars, and the tree canopy pressed in on me. Running my front light on the lowest setting to preserve the battery, I was surrounded by darkness, with only a small patch of light shining on the snow in front of me to show me the way. The very image of grim determination. Photo by John Summerton. Subscribe now I wasn’t supposed to be pushing my bike. On cold snow, my fatbike runs like a tractor over the trail and movement is easy. But the March weather in Lapland was too warm, hov

Aug 10, 2026

Devils Hole Pupfish / Olin Feuerbacher / USFWS Maybe we should kill off the pupfish — the Devils Hole Pupfish, which is reputed to be the rarest fish on Earth. It would be a quick extinction. We’d drain the only pool in the world where this endangered species survives: a bedrock cavern in the U.S. state of Nevada. And we’d live-stream the killing on YouTube. Only then might oblivion no longer be an abstraction. The last wild Devils Hole Pupfish, an inch long, iridescent blue or green, flopping on hot desert limestone, would gasp … and then gasp no more. We’d witness something that happens all

Jul 31, 2026

Photo of the Pancake Herd Management Area in Nevada (WWP/Erik Molvar) In northern Nevada, helicopters are flying over the Callaghan Herd Management Area and driving wild horses across miles of open desert in the Bureau of Land Management’s largest roundup operation of the year. Nearly 2,000 horses are slated for removal. Several have already died. Most will spend the rest of their lives in government holding facilities, where taxpayers will pay to feed and care for them for years to come, while others will face the threat of landing in kill pens awaiting slaughter in foreign slaughter plants.

Jul 30, 2026

Vincent Bouillard chased down Francesco Puppi late to win the 2026 Western States 100 in a course-record time of 13:46:15. Thomas Cardin, racing his first 100-miler, finished fourth in 14:07:58 – also under the previous record. In this exclusive conversation, one month after their feat, the two Frenchmen break down the pacing, preparation, technology and tactics behind the fastest edition in race history. The post Vincent Bouillard & Thomas Cardin: Rewriting Western States appeared first on Ultra Running Magazine .

Jul 28, 2026

One of Flip’s final production days. Photo: Chad Smith . The news hit me like a 1/0 Clouser to the back of the head. Scrambling to find sources in support of what I hoped was one of those idiotic death hoaxes, I found nothing but confirmation of the latter. The realization dropped like a lead weight from the screen of my iPhone to the pit of my stomach: Flip Pallot, dead at 82. I pinched my own arm and squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to wake up from a bad dream, but my consciousness and reality stayed the same, as did the truth–Flip was gone. Nearly a year has come and gone and it’s still hard t

Jul 23, 2026

Over five days at the start of July, American alpinists Eli Spitulnik and Michael Telstad made the first ascent of Hologram Wall (VI 3,300′ 5.9 A3R M6+ WI5) on Alaska’s Kichatna Spire. Their line is the first to climb directly up the mountain’s imposing south face, succeeding where an earlier attempt in April 2025 had been turned back by storms. Telstad described the ascent as a committing blend of big-wall and alpine climbing, undertaken in one of the most remote corners of the Alaska Range. After spending 1o days moving equipment, fixing pitches and sitting out bad weather, the pair finally

Jun 29, 2026

I bet my career on this sport. I left a steady job to build inside endurance running full time, and there are mornings that decision feels brave and mornings it feels insane. I just spent a week on the ground in Tahoe, across Broken Arrow, TrailCon, and Western States, watching the sport from every angle I could find. I came home more excited than I have been in years. Not because trail is having a moment. Because of why it is having one. Let me try to explain the mechanism, because the mechanism is the part that makes me think this is durable and not a bubble. First, the growth is real I am w

Jun 24, 2026

A Whitetail Buck harvested for food and land management. Most mornings, nothing happens for a long time. You walk in under a headlamp, find a place, and sit down against it. The light comes up gray and then gold. Your feet go cold. A bird you can’t name starts up somewhere off your left shoulder, goes quiet, starts again. An hour passes, then another, and you have not done a single thing that would photograph well. That, it turns out, is most of what hunting is. I didn’t know that going in. Like a lot of people who come to this as adults, I thought the whole thing was the shot. I came to it la

Jun 22, 2026

Sometimes I hate hiking. That wave of dislike has an annoying tendency to hit when I’m at the furthest point from my car and there is no way to easily throw in the towel. I could give up and refuse to move any further, but then I would just be condemning myself to sitting in the (likely tick-laden) brush for eternity. Except in the most dire situations, if I walk into the woods, I have to walk myself out of them again—no matter how much I wish I could teleport to the nearest spot serving burgers and beer. Hating hiking is a different feeling than being in the midst of a Type 2 Fun adventure .

Jun 19, 2026

I was supposed to be headed north to the Catskills today for Manitou’s Revenge, my all-time favorite trail race: 53 miles on some of the most beautiful and rugged terrain in the world, with 15,000 feet of ascent (and my first race since Hardrock). Instead, I’m driving south to Baltimore to begin cancer treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Rather than a 5th shot at the Manitou, it’s my turn to wrestle the bear. If you just flashed to that scene from The Revenant, that’s what I was going for, because that’s how I’m thinking of what’s ahead... wrestling the bear . And maybe I’ll look back later a

Jun 17, 2026

Just a few meters from an aviary in southern Austria, where the mountains are rough but the valleys lush and expansive, Barbara Steininger got nervous. At twenty-five, Steininger was about to become a foster mom. Not an everyday occurrence, she said, “especially if your fosterlings are birds.” Moments later, a Wildlife Park Rosegg zookeeper placed two featherless chicks in Steininger’s warm hands. Her freckled face lit up. Two down, thirty-three more to go. From that chilly day in April 2023, Steininger and her colleague, twenty-eight-year-old Helena Wehner, would be the chicks’ sole caregiver

Jun 17, 2026

The desert has a way of testing you. Sometimes it does it through heat. Sometimes through long water carries, relentless wind, or miles that seem to stretch endlessly toward the horizon. Other times it does it more quietly, asking you to trust that what you need will show up when you need it. Somewhere between mile 400 and mile 500, I started believing that might actually be true. The Heat and the Water I woke up at Sulphur Springs to the sound of spotted towhees calling through the trees. ... The post At Mile 500, the Desert Starts Letting Go appeared first on The Trek .

Jun 16, 2026

In July 2023, a small, sleek cat crossed in front of a trail camera in southern Arizona, sniffing the bases of a Ponderosa pine and an alligator juniper, its glossy rosette spots rippling as it moved. A year later, another ocelot was caught on camera as it lapped from a spring in Coronado National Forest, near the Mexican border. This particular cat, who citizens of the Tohono O’odham Nation dubbed Himdam, or “Traveler,” has been detected in four different mountain ranges across Arizona in a little over a year, the longest-known journey by a single ocelot. Then there’s Ocelot #4, or El Jefecit

Jun 13, 2026

Sam Morris took on the 1,430km Atlas Mountain Race — 25,000m of climbing, roughly three Everests — on a singlespeed. A tale of wind, rancid sardines, Imodium and Berber mint tea.

Jun 10, 2026

I was gonna say: you should go climbing. We were naked in bed, my girlfriend and I, and talking, as we often have, about mental health. Her struggles, my struggles, the world’s struggles. It was a warm afternoon in June. My double windows swung open to the back terrace to let in the Mediterranean city air. She had just been to therapy, and me, I had just been outside climbing. Why? she asked in return. I took a long pause. There was something I’ve been trying to say for a long time about climbing, something that has been germinating in my writing for years, but was only recently clarified. It’

Aug 27, 2026

“New analysis of more than 300 bear encounters suggests our canine companions often increase odds of conflict and rarely serve as early warning systems many recreationists assume,” reads a subhead in Mountain Journal . The thing is, that study reaches no such conclusion. But you have to read beyond the abstract to understand that. Mountain Journal is not alone. Let’s look at a brief list of takeaways published elsewhere just to establish that none of them seem to know how to read science. Wes Siler’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consid

Aug 24, 2026

As a general rule, ultra marathons don’t tend to reveal life’s great metaphors early in a race. You usually need to suffer a bit longer for your wisdom. Yet barely a few miles into the Tamalpa Headlands 50K, while beginning the first of a half dozen serious climbs, the day’s great big revelation hit me hard. “You don’t have to be anybody but you.” You don’t have to be elite. You don’t have to be legendary. You don’t have to be, as I told a friend the day before the race, dramatically bold and/or potentially stupid. You just have to be you. It was you that got yourself to this moment with your

Aug 20, 2026

What happens when an identity outlives its original purpose? The Walmart Meal Plan consists of $.79 mustard, a loaf of bread, pre-sliced cold cuts & cheese, a Monster Energy drink, yogurt, and Lu Petit Ecolier cookies. The shadow of the wind turbine on I-80 swoops past the pickup truck like a plane, but instead of disappearing into the horizon of the setting sun, it loops back around and over us again. Iowa is a bosom of green that’s welcoming with hospitality; the kind of place that has interstate rest stops with water spigots and educational displays about grassland health. Deeper into South

Aug 20, 2026

Feature produced in association with DPS A decade into DPS’s relationship with the American military and NATO allies, making skis has never carried more weight for the ski brand. Leading up the operation is Mike Cannon, who gets a point of view into a world which few civilians ever see when he travels to mountainous and arctic regions around the globe. The experiences have given him a unique understanding of what soldiers demand from their skis and how DPS can meet those demands through innovation, design and in-house manufacturing. It’s not enough to survive; 10th group soldiers must learn to

Aug 20, 2026

I ran 300 laps on the indoor track at the gym in our neighborhood, each one one-tenth of a mile, clockwise. This was a couple Fridays ago, when the air quality index was 110, which is technically “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” according to the EPA. At least I think it was 300 laps. It was probably more, because I ran until my watch hit 30.06 miles, and the gym says the track is 0.1 mile per lap, but my watch often recorded something a little short of 0.1 mile per lap, and I wasn’t going to try to keep count of my laps for five hours. The wildfire smoke moved into town the last week of July,

Jul 28, 2026

How pants made by a hippie California rock climber for high-stepping up granite became one of the most influential silhouettes in modern menswear

Jul 20, 2026

Opening scene from the film Warfare. I am a collector of parallel friendships. By this I mean my friendships tend to be defined by side-by-side interaction—relationships formed through common activity, practices, rehearsals, or collaboration. I’ve met most of my friends through sports, jobs, or some sort of physical exertion. Our friendships were cultivated over casual chats on group runs or banter riding bikes along a country road. Our conversations were defined by the rhythm between swings chopping wood in the backyard or by work projects approached shoulder-to-shoulder (or virtual square-to

Jul 17, 2026

This April, I spent four days in the basement of Utah State University pulling faded catalogs from olive-gray archival boxes in the . I’d crack a book from the 1970s looking for anything related to wool , flip a few pages, and get distracted by the same thing: men in fishnet undergarments . I’m not even kidding. Look: Upper left, from the 1973-74 Fall & Winter Norm Thompson catalog: “Norse-Net”as full of surprises as it is holes. Actually a thermal undershirt! Full of holes to keep you warm in the winter, cool in the summer, comfortable all the time. Wear it under a soft cotton T-shirt and lig

Jul 15, 2026

Lisa Jackson and her husband Graham regularly ran together - although she found more enjoyment from the sport “To imagine a future without him was inconceivable. I’d never lived my adult life without him by my side.” Lisa Jackson is talking about her husband, Graham, who sadly died from mesothelioma in 2021. Subscribe now Graham’s passing came at the start of a heart-breaking period of 17 months in which she also lost her father and her sister. Their story is part of Lisa’s latest book, ‘Still Running After All These Tears: A Runner’s Journey Through Grief’. In it, the serial marathoner and Ru

Jul 13, 2026

“But the killing of the females was totally wrong”: Changing conservation ethics expressed in William Hornaday’s Our Vanishing Wildlife , 1913 “What’s it about?” asked ecologist Stuart Pimm when, more than forty years ago, his colleague Michael Soulé called with an invitation to a meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Conservation,” said Soulé. “What’s that?” Pimm asked slyly. “Well, whatever it is, you’re doing it!” answered Soulé. With the support of Pimm and other prominent ecologists, the Society for Conservation Biology was founded on a May afternoon in 1985 . Soulé, who had recently returned