News

Heading for the villa at one of the many breaks along the southern coast of Baja, Mexico. Photo: David Moran.. Operating on a tip that surfing in Mexico is better than surfing in California, I booked a two-hour flight from Los Angeles to check it out for myself.. It’s true. The water is warmer, the...

They thought they’d packed everything.. Nicole Grohoski and the brother and sister she’d teamed up with, Tom and Pam Perkins, had carefully assembled the food, clothing and shelter for an epic canoe trip.. Tent? Check. Camp stove? Check. Fuel? Check.. “We should have double checked,” Nicole recalled. “The first night we camped on an island....

There are SO many books out there — how’s a reader to choose? Well, literary competitions aren’t a bad place start, and if your looking for outdoor adventure reads, the annual Banff Festival offers up some good suggestions.. This year’s grand prize went to Freedom Climbers by Bernadette Mcdonald, a “passionate and literary tale of...

Hendrik Coetzee, a pioneering South Africa whitewater kayaker and river explorer, was killed by a crocodile while paddling last week in the Democratic Republic of Congo.. Coetzee, 35, was on an Eddie Bauer-sponsored expedition down the Lukugu River in the Central Congo with American kayakers Ben Stookesberry and Chris Korbulic.. The three paddlers were in...

This cannot stand. I’m paddling in the Delaware River a couple of weeks ago, and a snake swims by me with a big fish in its mouth. Amazing. Weird.. I ran to my car to get my camera and ran back to the river to get a photo of the snake trying to swallow the...

I’ve been traveling to fly fish on the Missouri River near Craig, Montana, for eight years now.. My father, brother and I do this for the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors, the art of the sport and the camaraderie that comes with spending a long day in the wild.. It’s an amazing place with...

Most outdoors enthusiasts dabble in weather forecasting, but Jim Steenburgh takes it to a whole new level.. An avid backcountry skier, Steenburgh also happens to chair the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, and has developed a better way to predict whether he’ll get to ski deep, fluffy powder or be stuck plowing mash...

A group of women snow camping in the mountains as part of a She Jumps trip. Photo: Re Wikstrom. Lidia Mejia was holding up the other skiers. Perched above a small cliff in Utah’s Alta ski area, she doubted her ability to make the drop.. But her friend, who’d just gone over the edge,...

Petzl recently unveiled its new Nao Headlamp, with a self-adjusting beam that reacts to light conditions. This means that the beam dims and narrows when your working up close and brightens and widens when your looking at something in the distance.. Pretty cool idea. So cool, it’s surprising somebody didn’t think of it sooner. Maybe...

It’s foggy and windy, my feet are soaked through and I’m cold to the bone.. Jeff Hofer, Johnny Poole and I have been hiking up the trail for three miles. The Appalachian Mountain Club calls it a trail, yet it feels more like a waterfall of rocks. The weather was sunny then cloudy, changed to...

A scene from In Nansen’s Footsteps, a film featured in the 2009 Banff Mountain Film Festival.. Spring and fall seem to be the times for adventure film festivals. Maybe the festival organizers know that during the warm summer months the audience for movies about adventure, travel and the outdoors would rather be doing than watching.....

Surfers get pretty nerdy when it comes to predicting waves. And powder hounds will endlessly debate which mountain range produces the best snow for skiing or snowboarding. But no one geeks out about snow like a scientist. . Kenneth Libbrecht, a professor of physics at Caltech, is so enamored with the delicate beauty of snowflakes,...

Offshore oil rigs as seen from Huntington Beach California.. President Obama is expected to propose today that areas off the southern US Atlantic coastline, in the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska be opened to oil drilling, according to news reports.. The new Interior Department rules would end a longtime ban on East Coast oil...

With the economy in the hole, seems people are seeking solace in nature. About 10 million more Americans and foreign tourists visited U.S. national parks last year than in 2008, according to statistics release last month by the Department of the Interior. That’s around a four percent increase and ranked 2009 as the five busiest...

The new GENUS is the first smartphone to offer dual terrestrial/satellite calling ability.. AT&T has teamed up with satellite phone service provider TerreStar to produce a smartphone that offers both terrestrial cellular capability and satellite connectivity for remote wilderness travel.. Called the GENUS, the phone costs $799, and will be available in retail stores later...

It’s a sad state of affairs when you can’t even escape into nature for some respite from the bad economic news. . Last week, officials in New York began contacting people who had reservations to camp in state parks to tell them that the parks would be closed, according to the New York Times.. The...

A mountaineer taking in the scenery of Denali National Park, where the park service proposes to raise climbing fees.. The U.S. National Park Service is proposing to raise mountaineering fees by 150 percent in Denali National Park, Alaska, the location of North America’s tallest mountain, Mt. McKinley.. If approved, the cost for climbing in the...