The Dirtbag Diaries

"I think the jack of all trades gets a bum rap. The jack is the master of none, but I think the jack probably has a lot of fun," says Fitz Cahall. We open our annual Year of Big Ideas with an ode to “mediocrity” from Fitz, then turn, as always, to our community for inspiration for the coming year.

Some people grow upward and outward; some people root down. For Fitz Cahall, what growth means has changed over time. 

Cordelia Zars shares stories of her family's unconventional adventures--like dragged a 90-lb keyboard 10-miles through the snow on a 9-degree Colorado evening--and she reflects on how those excursions shaped her and her siblings. 

Katie Wallace learns to see family holidays as a privilege rather than an obligation. 

"It's like the Iditarod with a chance of drowning," says Jake Beatty, one of the organizers of the Race to Alaska. What's crazier than trying to race from WA to AK on a boat without a motor? Karl Kruger's decision to enter the race on a SUP.

For our eighth annual Tales of Terror episode, we have five stories that span the range of things to fear--from angry men with shotguns, to bears and mountain lions, to things that really don't have any explanation in the world of science. 

When Tyler Neese and four friends loaded up the truck for a spring break ski vacation in Colorado, the stoke was high. Until, just minutes from the slopes black ice and a distracted driver flipped their trip upside down. Sometimes, it's not about what happens to you, it's about how you react. 

For our third Endangered Spaces episode, we travel to Northern Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness to follow Dave and Amy Freeman on "Paddle to D.C." and "A Year in the Wilderness," two adventures that had a real impact in advocating for the protection of the place they love most.

"If you're thirsty, you're probably already dehydrated. That's what they say. Those perfect people who always have a clean, happily-colored, reusable adult sippy bottle on hand," says Anya Miller. "Most often, I only realize that I'm thirty when someone offers me a drink. My friend Jesse Bushey brought up climbing El Cap. I didn't even know I wanted to--until he suggested it."

"When we were living in a house, we were always compromising what we thought we should be doing," remembers Kathy Holcombe. Until, the day she, her husband, Peter, and their daughter Abby moved into a Winnebago to travel and work from the road. "I want her to see that... whatever her wildest dreams are, to chase them and not stop until they come true," says Kathy.  12 year old Abby's dream? To kay...

"I looked like some mountain man's girlfriend, and sometimes, that's all I felt like," remembers Andrea Ross. But after an accident on Mt. Humphreys forced Andrea to draw on her EMT training, she reached a turning point in her relationship and the way she imagined her life. 

Roland Thompson used to rob banks. Now he climbs and snowboards. 

"The reason that I was able to do it is because I was incredibly naive," says Lucas St. Clair. "I had no idea how much work it was going to be, when I started. Not a clue." The thing Lucas did: work to establish Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in the North Woods of Maine. We started this "Endangered Spaces" series for two reasons. First, we want to take a deeper look at a handful of im...

"Three days from the end of the trip, I started to panic," writes Emma Walker. "I still didn't know what to do with my summer, let alone the rest of my life. Inspiration, as I'd imagined it, hadn't struck. Now, I had to face the realization that I didn't have an exit strategy. This had been it, and it would inevitably end." The summer after her first year of graduate school, Emma enrolled in an Al...

"As a brown woman, I stand out," says Mary Ann Thomas. "People came up to me just because they were curious, just because they were like, 'There aren't a  lot of strangers here, we're just interested in who you are as a person-- as a whole person.'" Mary Ann is the daughter of Indian immigrants, she's queer and she had always lived  in the liberal bubble of big cities on the East Coast. When she e...

When a bad breakup sent him spiraling into a deep depression, Tom Ireson fixated on an unconventional way to get his head straight: "I really needed something to focus my mind on to pull me out of that," Tom says, "and about the biggest thing I could think of was to try and do a new route on a big wall." Not just any big wall, a big wall on the other side of the world in the remote and wild valley...

"I used to go climbing in the same way people would go to a well, a source of life equally routine and sacred. It would fill me up--leave me refreshed and full after a hard day in the mountains," writes Keith Erps. "After Ryan's death, climbing appeared dark and ugly. I wanted to love it, but had to find a new answer to the 'why' questions." For many of us, the relationship we have with the outdoo...

Matt Muchna and Peter Journel are best friends, and complete opposites. Matt is spontaneous. Peter is a planner. Matt is an idealist, Peter in a realist. And a few years ago, they made a bet: Peter bet that Matt couldn't climb one of the highest continental peaks for less than $3,000. If he did, Peter would pay him back for the trip. "When I made this bet, I had maybe two or three pairs of cut off...

"Every day on the mountain and every night at the bar, drinking and partying was as much a part of my life as skiing," remembers Paddy O'Connell. "That is until, of course, they became the only part."  We've heard the stories of addicts who found salvation in the outdoors and the outdoor community, but that's not the way the narrative arcs for everyone. For Paddy, recovery looked less like slashin...

Josh Ewing's metamorphosis from climber to climber-activist and the battle to protect Bears Ears.

Loosely speaking, there are two kinds of fear. There's the fear of external, objective hazards--like getting caught in an avalanche, or taking a bad fall climbing or getting mauled by a grizzly bear. Then, there's the internal, more slippery kind of fear, like the fear of not being pretty enough, or not being popular enough or not being perfect enough. When Kat Cannell embarked on a 350-mile, solo...

If you travel down to Ushuaia, Argentina, you might just find a bus plastered with a massive photograph of Sam Evans-Brown. In that photo, he's sprinting, shoulder to shoulder, with Olympic cross-country ski-racer Martin Bianchi in the final stretch of the 2008 national ski championship of Argentina. Today, Sam brings us the backstory to that photograph--a story about a split-second act of kindnes...

"'Oh, shoot', my dad muttered for the tenth or fifteenth time in the last five minutes. Then, he burst into exhausted chuckles," remembers Deron Daugherty. "I looked up the chute that we were trying to march out of: thirty degrees of slop, several hundred feet to go. 'Shoot', I agreed, and laughed, the dark laugh of those initiated to the secrets of redlined exertion. Type 2 fun before I knew its...

No matter who they voted for, right now, a lot of people in this country would agree that things could be better. In the long term, if want thing to go well or if we want to move forward or to grow, then two, almost evenly divided, sides of the country can't remain at intellectual war.  So, this year, we bring you our annual Year of Big Ideas, but with a twist. With the current state of our countr...

"I have now officially sold out," writes Chris Kalman. "I work more than I climb. I pay rent and sleep in a house I'm getting rich off of writing--so rich, in fact, that I do my grocery shopping inside the store now." Today, we bring you the story of Chris's life through the eras of three vans, "Ford," "Chevy" and "Van," to his current, nameless fancypants car. How do you reconcile a dirtbag soul...