When we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the web. Here are some of the best adventure links we’ve discovered this week.
Adventure Has No Retirement Age: Adventure is continuing well into the ninth decade of life for a growing number of paddlers and hikers. Ninety-one-year-old Dale “Greybeard” Sanders only took up extreme endurance challenges at 80. Since then, he has paddled the Mississippi River from source to sea twice, completed the Missouri River Race, and this year reclaimed the record as the oldest person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail.
The challenge of competing and breaking records keeps him going, but not everyone is chasing endurance records. For Wendy Eden, 77, the goal is just to be out in nature and to keep exploring her beloved Canadian wilderness on her own. That means adapting her approach as she gets older.
Hitchhiking revival
I Hitchhiked From Sydney to Perth: Aston Brown describes his experience of hitchhiking across Australia from Sydney to Perth. He sees hitchhiking as an opportunity to surrender control and connect with people he would otherwise never meet.
Far more common in the 1970s and 1980s, the practice plummeted in Australia because of its association with serial killer Ivan Milat, who targeted hitchhikers. Now it is starting to pick up again, as online communities and social media introduce it to a new generation.
Brown recognizes that hitchhiking carries dangers and that his experience as a man does not reflect the risks women traveling alone face. Yet his journey left him with a sense of connection. He spent three days and 1,900km traveling with Neil, a 79-year-old widower, on a four-month road trip around Australia. He also met a Zimbabwean family who had left the U.S. because of gun violence and immigration crackdowns, a retired tractor enthusiast, and Doug, head of Australia’s national science agency, who invited him birdwatching to see one of the country’s rarest birds.
Photo: Aston Brown
Survival epic
She Had a Will To Live: A 72-year-old hiker survived six nights in the wilderness after falling 30m down a steep embankment. Mary Beth Granbery was on the Cabin Creek Trail near Mount Shasta in California when she fell.
She had set out on a multi-day camping trip and was expected home within four days. When she failed to return, friends and family raised the alarm. Rescuers found her camper van at the trailhead and launched a search. They found her one day later, at the bottom of the embankment. Despite suffering injuries from the fall, dehydration, and hypothermia from the cool nights, Granbery was still conscious when the rescue team reached her.
Across Madagascar To Find The World’s Last Lemurs: Geena Truman and her husband took a 2,500km road trip across Madagascar to search for lemurs. In a rented 4×4, they set off from Antananarivo. On the RN7 highway, they drove through rainforest, highland rice paddies, canyons, and desert, encountering rare species including golden bamboo lemurs, ring-tailed lemurs, and Verreaux’s sifakas.
Leaving the highway, they ended up on rough tracks with tricky river crossings, mud pits, and routes so difficult to navigate that they hired a local guide, known as a pisteur, to find their way.
Driving through Madagascar’s iconic baobab trees towards Tsingy de Bemaraha and Kirindy Reserve. Photo: Geena Truman
Road trip nostalgia
Grand Ole Roadtrip: In the summer of 1976, six young climbers piled into a blue Ford van and drove west to tackle Wyoming’s Teton Range. That first trip to the Tetons saw them face loose rock on the Enclosure Ice Couloir, a terrifying slide down the Skillet Couloir that nearly carried two of the group over a glacier’s edge, and two separate encounters with violent thunderstorms that left them clinging to exposed rock.
At the heart of all of this was the Grand Teton Climbers’ Ranch (GTRC), an affordable base for mountaineers. It offered more than a cheap bed: It was a place to meet climbing partners, exchange stories, and recover from the day over shared meals. Today, the GTRC remains one of their favorite places on Earth.
Renate Powell Completes Munro Round in Barefoot Shoes: Renate Powell has completed her second round of Scotland’s 282 Munros, this time in barefoot shoes. The keen hillwalker turned to minimalist footwear in her forties when an old skiing injury left her knee in constant pain.
She started by walking just 100m a day, then spent more than a year gradually building up to take on a Munro in her barefoot shoes. Fourteen years after first trying them, she continues her long-distance walking, without the knee replacement that was initially suggested.
Climbing the Cuillin Munro in barefoot shoes. Photo: Gillian Parker
An old-school explorer
Mad, Bad and Dangerous To Know: Sir Ranulph Fiennes, 82, has been living with Parkinson’s for seven years. He’s been out of the public eye for two years, and his current state is uncertain.
Fiennes spent much of his life building a remarkable expedition career after serving in the military. His 1979-82 Transglobe Expedition saw him and fellow former SAS soldiers Charles Burton and Oliver Shepard complete a 60,000km circumnavigation using surface travel, crossing both Poles.
He later completed a 2,170km unsupported ski crossing of Antarctica with Mike Stroud, and attempted to reach the North Pole unsupported five times. After severe frostbite during a 2000 expedition, he famously amputated his own dead fingertips with a fretsaw. This article plots out the timeline of his extraordinary expeditions.
A Climber Has Now Called For Help Three Times in 2026: Two climbers had to be rescued on September 22 after becoming stranded on the 500m White Dyke scramble on British Columbia’s Edge Peak. The pair set out at 8:30 am, but later that afternoon, with only three hours until sunset, the less experienced climber was too exhausted to continue.
After two hours attempting to rescue themselves, they activated a Garmin SOS beacon. This is the third time one of the climbers in the duo has had to be rescued this year. Rescue veteran Brent Boulet warned that social media seems to be drawing less experienced people onto technical routes. He stressed the importance of realistic timing, turning back when necessary, and knowing a climbing partner’s capabilities before setting out.
