The Feed

Aug 11, 2026

Three weeks ago, I drove all the way to Italy to run the Monte Rosa Walserweag 100k (MRT), and I had a bit of a rough day out when my stomach didn’t cooperate at all. The culprit was not (entirely) heat, nor was it intensity or illness or the types of nutrition I had. The culprit was entirely my own lack of gut training, something I neglected out of my own free will. What I mean by that is, I knew that I needed to gut train, which is as simple as eating when you go running, but I did not do it because I have so much lingering disordered eating ideals that the notion of snacking on high carbohy

Aug 11, 2026

Animas River / San Juan River – Durango, CO If you could travel the country to trout fish different rivers, knowing that at the end of this journey your favorite place would become home, where would you go, and why? John Flick took this challenge seriously. While in his 20s and fresh from a job with the United States Forest Service, he and his friend Tom Knopick decided to poke around the West for several months, fly fishing all they could, soaking in the finest trout destinations of the Rocky Mountains. They ultimately landed in Durango, Colorado, and established Duranglers fly shop. Durango

Aug 11, 2026

ost thru-hikers eventually reach the same terrible realization: it’s more or less physically impossible to stay 100 percent dry during a multi-day rainstorm. When a downpour on the Appalachian Trail or Pacific Crest Trail lasts for several hours, moisture attacks you from two directions: external rain pushing through your outer layers and internal sweat building up inside your clothing as your body works to dump heat. Managing thru-hiking in wet weather isn’t so much about finding the magical jacket that will keep you completely dry. ... The post Why Your $400 Rain Jacket Fails in Heavy Rain (

Aug 11, 2026

Two months ago, a friend pointed at several baskets and said to Brent and me, “Study those. Then close your eyes and picture them with your mind’s eye.” We both did. When we opened our eyes, he asked, “What did you see?” “The baskets,” Brent said. “Me too,” I replied. “You literally saw them?” our friend asked. Brent frowned. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I?” Now I was confused. I hadn’t literally seen them — I hadn’t seen anything. When I’d “pictured” them, I’d described the baskets to myself in my head like I always do when I imagined something. What I saw was blackness because — duh, my eyes were clos

Aug 11, 2026

In 1975 when I started out on my solo thru hike, it was silent. Only a couple of hundred hikers a year tried to thru hike and I rarely saw anyone. I sometimes marvel at how I managed to persevere with no one around help interpret the day's happenings. I have a memory from Georgia of drinking water that cascaded through moss and rocks arranged as if a florist had designed it for the Chelsea Garden Show. It was a pregnant moment. I fully took in that I was hiking the Appalachian Trail and it was all up to me. I felt small in a dauntingly large universe. In 1975 I hiked on for 1500 miles before w

Aug 11, 2026

My happy place is in the water, surrounded by hills, trees, or rocky coastlines. If I’m feeling stressed or sad or just out of sorts, the only thing guaranteed to soothe is a long, peaceful swim. I live in Yorkshire, in northern England, in a country that is currently subject to privatised water companies polluting our coastlines and rivers, and so most of my local swims are in lakes and reservoirs. During this summer’s prolonged heatwave, I’ve noticed almost constant rants from newspapers and social media accounts warning about the dangers of wild swimming, especially in reservoirs, citing a

Aug 11, 2026

How and where we spent our Saturday. ( Shot on my iPhone .) Good morning! A couple weeks ago I was listening to this episode of The Running Effect podcast with Mike Scannell, who coaches double Olympic medalist Grant Fisher and is one of the top high school coaches in the country. In it, he said his biggest controversial take is that high school kids are married to mileage. “They’re just mileage maniacs, and they’re addicted to that end figure,” he says. “You should be addicted to how you ran those miles, not if you ran those miles.” I was nodding and mouthing “yes, yes, yes!” the entire time

Aug 11, 2026

Pepa Šindel has just made the second ascent of Adam Ondra’s Big Twin 5.15a (9a+) in Laggio Nord in the Italian Dolomites. It was an effort that took the young Czech climber a little less than two weeks, according to his 8a.nu . This big send for Šindel was sandwiched between two other hard climbs: a few days earlier, he climbed Welcome to the Club 5.14d in Cortina d’Ampezzo, and the day after he sent Big Twin, he managed a third-go ascent of Falco 5.14c. “I clearly remember in May when I received a couple of messages and a call from [Adam Ondra] who motivated me to try this route,” said Šindel

Aug 11, 2026

With a few picks that have been in his bag since he first started bikepacking, Nic’s summer Editor’s Dozen is both practical and sentimental. Focusing on affordable, small pieces of gear and ideas that will hopefully serve someone, somewhere, it’s an interesting list that offers insight into how he’s gone about riding and bikepacking over the last several years… The post Editor’s Dozen: Nic’s Favorite Gear of 2026 (Spring/ Summer) appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com .

Aug 11, 2026

Last fall, Marek Švančara and Lucia Tureková bikepacked a modified version of the Cyprus Crossing route, riding 675 kilometers from the west side of the island to the east over three weeks. Find a short written recap, their trip video, and a collection of photos here... The post Bikepacking Cyprus, an Island of Contrasts (Video) appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com .

Aug 12, 2026

Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis . We are currently living through 90+° heat under unhealthy skies here in the OMD 1 on account of wildfire smoke. The nearby Elder Fire, which was burning just over the ridge about five miles from here, is contained, though the fire camp off Mullan Road is still there last I checked. Still, none of this is anything like what our relatives in Spokane are suffering. In service to relief for that community, they have set up a website for donations if you are in the area

Aug 11, 2026

Do your dogs put in big miles and hard work outdoors? You’ll want to help make their recovery as effective as possible by putting them on a good dog bed. My wife and I have three big, active dogs, which just so happens to correspond with the number of top-tier offerings from working dog-adjacent brands Orvis, Gunner, and Yeti. Let’s work through the things a bed needs to do for you and your dog, and help identify which one might be best. What Does A Dog Bed Need To Do? First, a dog bed needs to support your dog’s body and cushion their joints. So, you’re going to want a bed that keeps them off

Aug 11, 2026

Another summer, another wildfire forces the cancellation of Teanaway Country 100 in Washington State. Rainshadow took over the event from founder Brian Morrison and since then the event had to be cancelled twice. And that’s not on Rainshadow at all, this event, even under Morrison’s tutelage had seem more changes/cancelations and interruptions that regular runnings. Something, something being build on ancient burial ground… this event really does feel like it’s cursed. Or maybe it’s just that these are the realities of our summers in the “new normal”? Link: https://www.rainshadowrunning.com/te

Aug 11, 2026

Dreamcatcher is one of Canada’s most iconic sport climbs and one of the first to be graded 5.14d. The first ascent was by Chris Sharma in 2007 and it has been repeated several times. It follows an old line called Rurp Riot on the Cacodemon Boulder in Squamish. So far in 2026, Dreamcatcher has had three recorded sends, with the first coming from South Korean climber Hyeonu Song, who followed it up with a send of The Reckoning V14. Not long after Song, V17 South Korean climber Sung Su Lee also clipped the chains on Dreamcatcher on his final climbing day. The most recent redpoint was by Lukas Geu

Aug 11, 2026

Curious to see what all the buzz is about, Jesse Turner of Slow Southern Steel in Fayetteville, Arkansas, recently fabricated his first 32-inch bike. The result is a striking singlespeed titanium ATB with a truss fork from Black Sheep and a one-of-a-kind finish from Rare Earth. Find Jesse's short reflection on building his debut 32er here... The post Notes on Building My First 32-Inch All-Terrain Bike appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com .

Aug 12, 2026

Before heading to the North Cascades, I made a brief stop in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington. In Tacoma, I stayed with Zehra, a new Turkish friend from Couchsurfing, who showed me the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. I remember teaching my middle school students in Spain about Tacoma’s infamous bridge. We watched footage from “Gallopin’ Gertie’s” fateful collapse in 1940; my students squinting in amazement as the swaying bridge seemed to defy the laws of physics. Zehra took me to Titlow Beach with an excellent view of the reconstructed bridge, where we had snacks and went on a walk along the waterfront.

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

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

Aug 7, 2026

If you’re looking for a section hike of the PCT with the most postcard views per step, you could do much worse than the stretch from South Lake Tahoe to Mammoth. I spent ten days this summer doing a southbound hike through this roughly 208-mile section, and it was pure bliss. From South Lake Tahoe, I took the Emerald Bay Shuttle (just $5, reserve in advance) out to the Eagle Falls trailhead. My friendly driver Chris explained that Tahoe had a tough 2025-26 winter with a piddly snowpack and a much-abbreviated ski season, ... The post Tahoe to Mammoth: Ten Days in Paradise appeared first on The

Aug 5, 2026

If this landed in your inbox from someone else: I write All At Once — about land, water, energy and power in the West, usually from inside the fights rather than above them. I'm Diné, I've spent about fifteen years working in and around the conservation and energy sectors, and I've taken money from, collaborated with, and written for organizations that appear in this essay. Three weeks ago the president erased three million acres of monument protection with a signature. This one is about a quieter loss: what happens when a tribal nation asks the conservation movement to support returning land,

Aug 10, 2026

Democrats in the House of Representatives are launching an investigation into whether two American executives at Canadian mining firm Energy Fuels engaged in insider trading in the days before the July 13 announcement that Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase National Monuments would have their boundaries reduced by over 90 percent . The allegations include a claim that a massive $725 million loan from the Department of Defense announced in June may also have been prefaced on foreknowledge of the decision. “We write regarding concerns about potential insider trading at Energy Fuels, Inc,” Begins a l

Aug 10, 2026

There’s a little town in Colorado called Niwot with a population of about 4,000 people. It’s best-known for its powerhouse high school running program, which has won 46 team state championships and 222 individual state titles. It’s also where artist Nicole McLaughlin is based, and where she creates her one-of-a-kind designs, like her viral croissant bra and Carhartt thong . If you’re not familiar with Nicole, you’ve likely come across her work unintentionally. She’s regularly featured on Hypebeast, Vogue, and Complex, and has collaborated with brands like Oakley, Arc’teryx, HOKA, Salomon, and

Aug 10, 2026

Some of the most beautiful recent large format mountaineering books have been produced by the Scottish Mountaineering Press. This volume, that comes in its own box, fired my imagination before I even received a copy, because of the subject, the photography of one of the most influential mountain photographers of the twentieth-century, British climber and photographer, John Cleare. Cleare’s career began in the 1950s and lasted until shortly before he passed away in 2024. I interviewed him several times, and he was always full of anecdotes and willing to discuss everything from the evolving tech

Aug 10, 2026

A few days ago, after a ridiculous day of smallmouth fishing on a remote Adirondack lake, I found myself rowing a 14-foot jon boat back toward its resting place along the bank. The boat moved with all the grace of a loaded cafeteria tray. That long, awkward row gave me plenty of time to consider the jon boat and the strange combination of admiration and resentment it inspires. Jon boats are not elegant. They are not especially comfortable. They row terribly. They slap against waves, announce every dropped pair of pliers to the entire lake and possess roughly the same visual appeal as a livesto

Aug 9, 2026

Welcome to Growing Conditions , a summer series of letters to the places I used to live. Each week, I’m writing a letter—sent in the mail and posted here—to an address that grew me. We’re finally in the mountains. There is a lot of lore in my family. There are many photos, blurred from grime and dirt on every lens that would find my parents, of fires and parachutes, backcountry cabins and rifles. My dad, jumping into fires, leaning on lookouts, skis in the air. My mom, leading the pack train, tending the owls, alone in the woods. It was a lot of legacy for a girl with a mowed lawn in the Ohio

Aug 8, 2026

We were at the crux move. We had been hiking, if you could call it that, for two hours and had covered about two miles. Call it scrambling, then, and traversing, and boulder hopping and route finding. It was all my fault, my obsession. We had peered down from great heights at the 74th lake on my list the year before. It didn't count unless I reached it. My own arbitrary rule. Because we had camped too far away in order to accommodate another hiker who didn’t want to meet us in the dark (a hiker who would later inexplicably drop us from any future hikes), we had already been traveling for six h

Aug 7, 2026

“Big Bend National Park is under attack. With each passing day, the wildest place in Texas is looking more like an industrial construction zone. They want to destroy the Rio Grande, cut off river access for people and wildlife and dynamite rugged canyons — just to enrich politically connected contractors. Nobody else wants this. They are preparing to inflict the biggest destruction, the biggest butchery that we have ever seen on an American national park. ” - Laiken Jordahl , National Public Lands Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity As I reported on Wednesday , federal contractors

Aug 7, 2026

Most runners focus on pace, heart rate, and fueling, but heat may be the hidden factor that determines whether a great race turns into a survival march. In this conversation, CORE endurance performance lead Aline Barre explains how the body regulates temperature, why overheating steals blood away from your muscles and gut, and how even well-trained athletes can unravel when heat gets ahead of them. She shares simple, research-backed ways to become heat adapted using overdressed runs, saunas, hot baths, and smart scheduling, while also explaining why hydration, electrolytes, and cooling strateg

Aug 7, 2026

We started this series in May of last year, and the premise hasn’t moved since. Jim and I have spent our entire adult lives on America’s public lands, first with cameras and then with this newsletter and wholehearted public lands advocacy, and the places that actually stick with us were almost never the ones on the postcard rack at the visitor center. They’re the forest roads that dead-end somewhere unreasonable. The trailheads with four cars in the lot in the middle of August. The lookouts and guard stations and unmarked gravel pullouts that nobody has built a reservation app around yet, most

Aug 7, 2026

For Leanne Bentley, riding in the 2025 Silk Road Mountain Race was an exercise in giving up control. From 30-kilometer hike-a-bikes to perilous river crossings and rationing a dwindling food supply, she learned to roll with the punches and was rewarded beyond measure. Find her hazy memories and reflections from Kyrgyzstan here… The post Letting Go: Memories of the Silk Road Mountain Race appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com .

Aug 7, 2026

This isn’t my 500-mile update quite yet. I’m still about 70 miles away from that milestone, but so much happened during this short section that I couldn’t wait until I hit another hundred miles before sharing it. Sometimes the most memorable parts of the trail aren’t necessarily the biggest milestones, the longest days, or the hardest climbs. Sometimes they’re the moments where you almost make a different decision. And this section almost didn’t happen. After getting into Etna, ... The post The Section I Almost Skipped appeared first on The Trek .

Aug 6, 2026

A rabble of monarch butterflies in Veracruz. World Bank Photo Collection. “ I’m tired of being only an archivist of loss,” Becky Chaplin-Kramer , a lead scientist for the World Wildlife Fund, told the Fourth World Biodiversity Conference in mid-June. The scientific effort to document the biodiversity crisis, she told her listeners, had successfully forced political leaders to recognize the crisis as an existential threat. But to solve the crisis, she said, the “science of decline” must be accompanied by a science of recovery. Chaplin-Kramer is far from the first to argue that the “ crisis disc

Aug 6, 2026

Image created by author. By the time Vincent Bouillard hit the streets of Auburn, it was inevitable. Word had gotten around that he’d passed fellow HOKA athlete Francesco Puppi near Quarry Road and built a big enough gap to win. A short climb after Robie Point, a downhill, and a few turns later, he appeared on the track, the crowd erupting as he closed out a historic day. He worked his way toward the finish, slapping hands with seemingly everyone in attendance before grabbing the tape. 13:46:15. An almost incomprehensible time and the fastest in race history by 23 minutes. Puppi finished less

Aug 6, 2026

Over the past few years, I’ve radically transformed my relationship with the internet. This begun back in August 2022, when I decided to leave Instagram and my 10,000+ followers for good. This decision sparked a gradual elimination of digital clutter so that, four years on, I’m now at the point that I still spend time online, but on my own terms. You may have heard of a ‘journal ecosystem’ but I want to introduce you to the concept of an ‘internet ecosystem’, a simple strategy that helps us use the internet with intention rather than habit. I’ve used my years of trial and error to craft a simp

Aug 6, 2026

A quick note before we start. As you read this, Jim and I are somewhere in the Brooks Range, past the end of cell service, at a basecamp well above the Arctic Circle. We’re out for a while so comments and emails will sit until we’re back on the grid. If you missed where we’re headed and why, start here . This is the law that made the country we’re standing in, and the law that’s being used to put a mining road through it. In case you’re new here – this is the latest in our series on the laws and tools that stand guard over America’s wild places. We’ve covered NEPA , the Roadless Rule , the End

Aug 6, 2026

More than two decades ago, Yosemite climber, guide, and conservation advocate, Ken Yager had reached a tipping point. Every season he watched Yosemite Valley become a little dirtier. He began to feel an itch he couldn’t scratch. Ken needed to do something. Yosemite National Park welcomes around 4.3 million visitors each year, while climbers account for tens of thousands of climber days annually. That is a remarkable amount of human movement through one of the world’s great wilderness landscapes and, regardless of how John Muir people might be feeling, it inevitably creates waste. As a climbing

Aug 6, 2026

Inside the Marys River RMA, closed to livestock grazing. Photo: Paul Ruprecht, WWP. In 1991, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Elko District Office completed a land exchange that resulted in public acquisition of nearly 47,000 acres of private land within the Humboldt and Bruneau River watersheds in northern Nevada. As part of the agreement, numerous livestock exclosures and riparian pastures were created on the new public lands, including roughly 25,000 acres along the Marys River and several tributaries. The largest of these areas, known as the Marys River Riparian Management Area (RMA), r

Aug 5, 2026

Two big pieces of news around the sources of wildfire this week: a man has been arrested and charged with arson for allegedly starting one of the three major wildfires that tore through Spokane over the weekend. And, an investigation by the LA County Fire Department has concluded that electrical arcing on an out-of-service SoCal Edison electrical tower is responsible for starting last year’s Eaton Fire, which damaged or destroyed 9,000 homes and killed 19 people in Altadena. While it might be easy to point fingers at the people or corporations who technically ignite a fire, they’re far from th

Aug 5, 2026

“But you’re still learning to walk again,” I said aloud to myself as I gaped at the limestone cliffs blocking any hint of a viable route to the summit. The rock walls loomed over a steep, grassy bench as I emerged from the forest, forming a gray fortress of impossibility. What was the date I hiked to Cecret Lake in Utah with my sister and niece and nephew? It was July 17, not even three weeks ago. I’d done plenty of walks, even some steeper road walks, but that was my first “real” hike post-knee-surgery. My first time tackling steep singletrack with mud and rocks. I became so dizzy and discomb

Aug 5, 2026

New brand cash is turning race weekends into parties, and some runners are asking if their sport is leaving its dirtbag roots in the dust

Aug 5, 2026

View of the Beagle Channel at Estancia Harberton in Tierra del Fuego. Travel into the unknown: On a journey you’ve never made before, to a place you’ve never stayed before, where you’ll be alone with your thoughts for a specific number of days. The anticipation of a solo writing retreat exerts a stomach-tingling fear and goose-bump dread as you prepare for the unfamiliar. How will it affect your physical and mental well-being? Will you write with more clarity? Be more productive? Will you achieve an inner contentment? There’s one guarantee—you’ll experience a particular kind of heightened sens

Aug 5, 2026

Chhabi R Pokhrel for Everest Today : Nirmal “Nimsdai” Purja, the Nepal-born mountaineer who compressed the pursuit of the world’s fourteen eight-thousanders from years into months, died in an avalanche on Broad Peak in Pakistan on 30 July 2026. He was 43. 9 other climbers were swept off the mountain and perished in this avalanche. Mountaineering is inherently dangerous and this tragic event will have follow stories over the next few month digging into the decisions that went into this particular expedition. And while the mountaineering world needs to process the accident, it’s also worth remem

Aug 5, 2026

For years, Logan has searched for the perfect flat pedal, convinced that each new contender might finally unseat his longtime favorites. After more than 1,000 miles of testing on rocky singletrack and dirt roads, the Tectonic Alibi may have done exactly that. Read his full review here... The post Tectonic Alibi Pedals Review appeared first on BIKEPACKING.com .

Aug 10, 2026

My book writing journey began in November 2024 when an email from a literary agent landed in my inbox. Fast forward 21 months and I’ve finished (bar a few tweaks) writing my debut book, ‘ The Scottish Art of Living Slowly ’, due to be published in spring next year. I knew nothing about writing a book or the publishing industry before I begun this project and although it was a steep learning curve, it’s undoubtedly been the most rewarding work I’ve ever completed. I know there are many aspiring authors on Substack, so I thought I’d share some of the things I wish I’d known before beginning this

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

Jun 5, 2026

I wanted to sit outside and listen to the roar of the ocean, but I was afraid. I wanted to walk through the redwoods, but I was afraid. I wanted to glide in a kayak and feel the cool water splash in my face, but I was afraid. For me, the fear is like a heartbeat, always present, while at the same time intangible, elusive, and difficult to define. So pervasive, so much a part of me, that I hardly knew it was there. In fact, I wasn’t fully aware of my troubled feelings about nature until I was invited to teach at a women’s writing workshop held each summer on the McKenzie River in the foothills

May 18, 2026

When I checked myself out of eating disorder treatment on New Year’s Eve, I returned to the assisted living facility where I was housed, threw my belongings in a black trash bag, and drove toward Chicago, never looking back. I was 23 years old, sick of being told I would always be sick. I was tired of locked doors and pills and fluorescent lights. I was over people with badges controlling my every move. I left and drove toward the unknown, claiming a freedom no one would have offered me. I had to steal it. Take it for myself—against medical advice. The awareness of the risk got my heart beatin

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 .

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 27, 2026

On a Sunday night in July, Chase Field in downtown Phoenix sold out for a band almost no one running American environmentalism could name. The roof was shut against a hundred-and-eight-degree evening. Fuerza Regida — four guys from San Bernardino who turned the narco-corrido into stadium music — came out on a catwalk into a crowd that knew every word. The lyrics were in Spanish, and so were the chants between songs, the vendors, the conversations around me. Grandmothers, nineteen-year-olds in soccer jerseys, families three generations deep. One of the largest gatherings of Spanish-speaking Ari

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

Jul 15, 2026

Subscribe now Share Monarch is not supposed to make it. Monarch is not supposed to matter. Monarch is short. Monarch is small. Monarch has no snowmaking. Monarch’s lift fleet is a Mad Max fever dream of scavenged and patched-together machinery. Monarch is 21 miles from the nearest town and more than 100 miles from the nearest interstate. Monarch is not on the Epic or Ikon or Indy or Mountain Collective passes. Monarch has been independently owned and operated for 87 years. Among Colorado’s 27 chairlift-served ski areas, Monarch ranks 17 th in skiable acreage and 23 rd in vertical drop. Vail an

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

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 11, 2026

I’m in the back of an orange Skoda Fabia, with the white-and-green license plate that marks us as Palestinians, cruising through the mountains of the West Bank on our way to the crag. I grabbed a Black Diamond bottle opener, which I acquired from the Black Diamond store in Boulder, Colorado, earlier this year, to crack open the best, cheapest soda water one can find these days. It’s called Uludag… Source

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’

Jun 5, 2026

Image created by author. Nike put ACG on Olympic athletes, decked out the Western States champion in a prototype cooling kit, and spent $225,000 to sponsor major prize purses for Broken Arrow and Gorge Waterfalls. Yet the company discloses $0 in trail or outdoor revenue and barely mentions ACG on its earnings calls. Meanwhile, Amer Sports — parent company for Salomon, Arc’teryx, and others — separately reports financials for its Outdoor Performance category, a $2.4B division that’s still growing. What a company puts on its income statement is a choice, and that choice tells you whether trail i

May 31, 2026

The week Kadek’s family traveled north for a cremation ceremony, the compound next door went quiet. No children racing through the courtyard. No scooters returning home after dark. No grandparents calling instructions from somewhere deeper inside the family property. No karaoke drifting over the wall at night. Even Jojo stopped barking. For the first couple of days, I couldn’t figure out why the villa suddenly felt so different. Then one evening beside the pool, while the sky dimmed into that heavy blue Bali seems to specialize in, the silence started feeling strangely wrong. The villa felt st

May 26, 2026

I remember the exact moment the guilt crept in. I was somewhere over the Atlantic, probably six hours into a transatlantic flight, watching the little plane icon crawl across the screen. Somewhere below me was ocean. Somewhere behind me was a carbon trail I didn’t want to think about. I was heading toward a family adventure in Europe a weekand I was already slightly dreading the mental math. Because here’s what nobody puts in the glossy brochures alongside the waterfalls and the crater lakes: adventure travel has a cost. Not just a financial one. Many of us have used the rational of the the ec

May 25, 2026

The Droplet (<1mm across) on an Eastern Dwarf Mistletoe shoot © Bryan Pfeiffer Given the world’s troubles, I recognize that a droplet at the tip of a bizarre flower isn’t exactly breaking news. And yet you, dear readers, are among the few people ever to see this droplet, which is the sugary secretion of a parasitic plant called Eastern Dwarf Mistletoe. That’s because, as best I can determine, I’m the first person to photograph this phenomenon in the wild and publish its image. But this isn’t about me, or even entirely about the droplet, which botanists unceremoniously call “stigmatic exudate.”

May 19, 2026

I grew up on ten modest acres surrounded by hardwood forest. No neighborhood kids. No cul-de-sac. Just trees, dirt, and a particular kind of quiet that teaches you things you don’t know you’ve learned until decades later. Summers were different — what people in Michigan just call “ up north ,” the lakes and rivers of the northern lower peninsula, a landscape so specific it has its own cultural gravity. Fairytale summers. The school year was lonely in the way only rural childhood can be. I didn’t choose that formation. It got built into me. What enough looks like. What freedom actually feels li

May 14, 2026

I pushed the start button on my running watch with my right hand, two thick envelopes in my left hand, and jogged across the busy street when I saw an opening in traffic. I wasn’t sure where my run would take me, aside from a stop at the blue USPS box outside the grocery store seven-tenths of a mile away, where I’d pause to drop the envelopes and then run off. As I dropped the envelopes in the box, I thought: I wonder if any of those famous fast runners I follow on Instagram do this sort of thing? Like do they ever have to squeeze their running in around real-life stuff? A friend who is a coac

Jun 4, 2026

The moon. (Photo: NASA) For thousands of years, the moon has quietly tugged at California’s coastline. Its gravitational pull raises and lowers the Pacific twice a day, creating the tides that surfers and beachgoers know so well. In this way, the rhythms of the moon are also the rhythms of the earth. But tucked within those familiar rhythms is a much longer cycle, one that takes nearly 19 years to complete. Scientists call it the lunar nodal cycle . Most Californians have never heard of it. Yet it may help shape some of the state’s biggest environmental challenges of the coming decade: coastal

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