The Dirtbag Diaries

When Kevin Fedarko stepped through the door of the O.A.R.S. boathouse in Flagstaff, AZ, he didn't realize he had crossed a figurative threshold as well as a literal one. Kevin had planned on rafting the Grand Canyon for a wilderness medicine course. Then, he planned to go back to his life as a successful freelance writer. But what he saw in that first week on the Colorado River left him desperate...

"My future captain interviewed me with three questions," remembers Joe Aultman-Moore. "Had I ever sailed before? No. Did I get seasick? I don't know. And, could I leave tomorrow? Yes." As Joe learned to sail while hitchhiking a sailboat across the Atlantic Ocean, he also discovered the unexpected ways in which travel could explode his perceptions of normal. Check out "Going Into the Wild," another...

When Matt McKee first heard about the position forecasting avalanches for Minera Pimenton, a gold mine in the Chilean Andes, it sounded like the snow geek's dream job. But, mere hours after his plane touched down in Santiago, Matt started getting hints that maybe he had walked into a situation that more closely resembled a nightmare: a den of avalanche paths, a mine full of workers who didn't beli...

"In the day to day tangle of life, it's easy to let go of the things that provide focus, and calm and perspective," writes Fitz Cahall. "I find that serenity so easily in wilderness. How do we carry that home?" While on a trip to Minnesota's Boundary Waters, Fitz resolved to do something back in "regular life" to try to tap into that quietness every day, for one year. 

It's January. Time for our annual "Year of Big Ideas." This year, we talked to Alastair Humphreys, a 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. Among other things, Alastair has walked across India and 1000 miles through the largest sand desert in the world, cycled 46,000 miles around the world and rowed across the Atlantic. People often come up to him after his talks and tell him they wish t...

There comes a stage in a great athlete's career when the pursuit of the technical difficulty take a backseat. It gives way to simplicity, an aesthetic, and possibly to an iconic style that leaves an impression on a sport. Will Gadd is one of the most accomplished mountain athletes ever. Most people know him as a climbing legend, but he also holds that stature in the fringe sport of paragliding whe...

"I'm thirty-year-old, and a complete and utter failure," writes Chris Kalman. "My mom is a PhD astrophysicist, my dad, a PhD mathematician, and my sister has a Master's in epidemiology. They all have jobs, children, houses. I, on the other hand, am a dirtbag." Earlier this fall, Chris moved away from his favorite climbing haunts toward something bigger and more intimidating than giant rock walls....

"Death-by-lightning-strike statistics kept swirling through my head, causing me to push my 13-year-old daughter to the very limits of her physical ability. We were on her Trip," writes Otto Gallaher. Today, we bring you the story of a rite-of-passage tradition in Otto's family simply known as 'The Trip'. What outdoor traditions does your family keep? CLICK HERE TO LISTEN   You can find more photos...

Regardless of how you choose to play outside, if someone gets hurt in the mountains, the first step on the checklist remains the same: "scene safety"--you make sure the thing that hurt your buddy isn't going to hurt you too. But there's no checklist for emotional safety when things go wrong. Today we bring you the story of a family, an accident and the repercussions they navigated for years afterw...

Ghost stories. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, ghost stories have a way of seeping into your mind. And, if they're really good, suddenly, that soft rapping on the window or the flickering lights become more ominous--like we've primed out minds to seek another explanation. In part, that's the fun of ghost stories. But how do we explain those things we had no intention of seeing? Our Tales of...

"It's never encouraging to be awoken in a tent by headlights. I wanted to play possum--roll over, and pretend to sleep until they left," writes David Hanson. "But this was exactly why I was here, a few hundred miles into a 500-mile canoe float down Georgia's Chattahoochee. I came here to see the river, but I really came here to see its people. And here they were."  Today, we bring you David's stor...

"The reality of climbing is, if you climb long enough, you're bound to bail," writes Dean Fleming. "I've left rappel biners on sport bolted 5.8s. I've bailed from trees, chockstones, fixed cams, and Manzanita bushes. Sure, sometimes my pride gets a little dinged, but so far I've survived some pretty weird situations." We figured with that kind of experience, Dean could teach us a thing or two. Tod...

"Encouragement. Peer Pressure. Bullying. Call it what you like," writes Tom Ireson, "but the climbing community is full of it." We rely on our friends, mentors and coaches to push us past our own self-doubt--help us realize what we're capable of. And yet, we never actually know what someone is capable of ahead of time. Today, we bring you a story on searching for the line between pushing someone t...

"I remember really quickly going from, 'Wow, I'm home, this feels great', to 'Holy s***, what did I do to my mom'?" says alpinist Kyle Dempster. "And that was the first time I saw how truly difficult it is for mothers." Today, we bring you two stories--one from Hilary Oliver, and one from Kyle Dempster and his mother, Terry--about the struggle of loving an adventurer. The struggle between loving t...

"I was disoriented beneath the cold water. I kicked toward the surface, but the force of the water held me down. I twisted and hung underwater for a moment. A thought passed through my head--this is what it feels like to drown," writes Dan Gingold. Dan and three friends planned to raft the Musconetcong River into the larger Delaware River over three days. With the river running high with spring ra...

"It's like you're scared to move forward-- you just need something to give you a little nudge," says Jonah Manning. "You can call it support, but, really it's just like a little bit of a shove forward. And I'll never forget it, because Widge was certainly that for me."  Today, we bring you the story of Widge, the ultimate adventure partner. Sometimes when that metaphorical door of adventure opens,...

"Standing up in my pedals, I dug so deep to make it to the top of the hill I wasn't positive that my butt could bear sitting back down on my bike seat when I got to the top," Hilary Oliver remembers. "I'd hardly said a word to another human being all day, and began to wonder: What the hell was I doing out there, anyway?" Hilary had driven that stretch of asphalt between Fort Collins and Denver man...

A month ago, we headed south for our annual pilgrimage to the 5 Point Film Festival and our live Dirtbag Diaries. Today, we share stories from two women, from two different generations who share a love for rivers. In 2013, Amber Valenti had the opportunity to paddle one of the last great free-flowing rivers in the world-- The Amur River. Amber, along with three other women paddlers, documented the...

Committed. It’s a word we use to describe people we know, our friends, even ourselves. Committed to a sport. A ski line. A lifestyle. It can be easy to commit to those daily or short term goals. But carving out time to achieve a bigger dream, something that may take weeks or months, even years–it can feel really hard to take that first step. To even know what that first step is. And sometimes, the...

The average American spends a third of their income on housing. Almost as much as the next two greatest expenses--food and transportation--combined. So, theoretically, if you just stopped paying for housing, you could earn a living working three days a week. Or two thirds of the year.  Today, we bring you a story about the pursuit of snow, world domination and cheap rent. It's imperfect. It comes...

Brody Leven applied for a climbing permit for Denali from a rented Subaru parked outside a closed cafe. In a blizzard. In Iceland. Weeks later, he would fly to Alaska to meet up with his team of overly accomplished athletes with the goal of climbing and skiing from Denali's summit. Determined not to be the weak link, he spent his two week layover in Salt Lake City obsessing over his gear. “I packe...

There are two kinds of dreams. An honest dream. “The kind of dream,” writes Luke Mehall “that keeps you up at night, and wakes you up in the morning with a knot in your stomach that can only be untied with blood sweat and tears.” For Luke, climbing El Cap was that kind of dream. And then there’s the other kind of dream. The kind that starts out as a joke, then escalates to the level of the ridicul...

We all know the feeling of remoteness. The stillness. The perspective. It's part of what keeps drawing us outside. But what does it feel like to be standing, literally, in the most remote place in a state? In the country? And what might those places reveal about the fate of our country's wild lands? In 2010, Ryan and Rebecca Means embarked upon Project Remote to find out.      CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

“With steely determination, I pointed my tips downhill and tried to power through the deep snow, but I was doomed,” remembers Julia Rosen. “I started to do the super slow splits as my skis drifted further and further apart under two piles of snow that felt like wet concrete. My feet stopped, but my body lurched forward and I was thrust into an unwelcome downward dog.” Anyone who’s skied powder rem...

Plastic bags. They clog drawers, landfills, coastlines and trailheads. Recycling them is confusing and inefficient. But what if there was a way to turn the trash into something of value? Enter Industrial Designer Will Wells. Today, we bring you our annual Year of Big Ideas. We talked to contributors and friends about their goals for the coming year. Here's to going big, traveling to new places and...