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.
Surf Imagery Like You’ve Never Seen: French photographer Thomas Fotomas transforms conventional wave shots into surreal, almost dreamlike images through digital illustration and compositing. Rather than chasing a typical surf photo, Fotomas enhances the images using fluorescent colors and clean horizontal lines. Here, he discusses how he began to capture his local surfers, the cameras he uses, how his approach has evolved, and his resistance to the excesses of surf travel culture.
Parrot Goes on Underwater Adventure: At the beginning of April, a viral video showed a small green-and-white parrot floating around in a tiny submarine. Many assumed it was AI. In fact, it was Bebe, a white-winged parakeet, who was very real.
His owner built a tiny submarine to take his pet parrot underwater during a trip to the Bahamas. Some viewers have questioned whether it is ethical, but Bebe’s owner insists the little bird was quite comfortable and showed no signs of stress. He details how the device was carefully engineered and tested, and Bebe’s history of skydiving, cycling, and other adventurous outings.
Alpine divorce
The Uncomfortable Truth Behind ‘Alpine Divorce’: “Alpine divorce” is a phrase that is gaining traction on social media. It is when someone leaves their partner on a trail mid-argument, or because they don’t want to be slowed down.
Evie Nichols believes that this often stems from mismatched experience levels and unpacks why tensions arise in the first place. A gap in ability can quietly shift the dynamic. Nichols believes the more experienced partner needs to accept that the unspoken responsibility lies with them and adjust their expectations accordingly.
The Hill List That’s Out of This World: The authors of the Ribus list — peaks that have 1,000m of prominence on Earth — have been inspired by the recent Artemis mission. Now they have created the Lunar Ribus, a list of the Moon’s mountains.
In total, they have listed 3,670 lunar summits and 11,003 craters with over 1,000m of prominence. Daniel Quinn speaks about what it might be like to summit some of the lunar peaks and how they compiled the list.
The central peak of Tycho crater. Image: NASA/Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
The life of a rafting guide
The Reality of Working as a Professional Raft Guide: A 10-year veteran pulls back the curtain on what it is really like to be a professional raft guide. For many, it is their dream job, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. The hourly salary is low, and guides’ earnings depend on the number of trips they can squeeze into a day and their tips.
Many outfitters don’t provide housing or charge almost the guide’s entire salary to cover it. Sexism is still an issue for female guides; rookies are often subject to hazing rituals. At the same time, you get to work in beautiful, wild places, become part of a close-knit rafting community, and get to do the thing you love for a living. For many, rafting is as much a lifestyle choice as a career.
Angel Collinson’s Tips for Harnessing Fear: Former pro skier Angel Collinson discusses her approach to handling the intense fear that comes with skiing extremely steep, high-consequence lines. She worked on reframing fear. Rather than something to eliminate, she viewed it as something to work with.
In big-mountain terrain, she relied on mental tactics like breaking overwhelming descents into small, manageable sections, careful preplanning, and staying present in the moment to keep fear from taking control. Off the mountain, she used breath work, meditation, and daily self-check-ins to manage her nerves.
Louis and his horse Sasha rest in the long grass, just west of the city of Arles. Photo: Kiki Ho
A four-month horseback journey
Across the Ligurian Alps and Beyond on Horseback: Inspired by Don Quixote, Louis D. Hall decided to ride across the Ligurian Alps on horseback as part of a much longer journey from Italy to the far western edge of Spain.
Rather than a straightforward travelog, he writes about two points in the 111-day journey. The first captures riding through the snow-covered, wolf-laden Apennine Mountains. The second is in the height of summer, riding into the main square of Santiago de Compostela with a few extra horses and a stranger-turned-companion.
America’s Hiking Culture is Built on Ego: When Joe Whittle, an ex-wilderness ranger for the U.S. Forest Service, lost his job, he decided to walk sections of the Appalachian Trail, reconnecting with the Lenape people’s ancestral homeland. He considers the rise of ego-driven goals, such as peak-bagging and thru-hiking milestones, and argues that they reduce landscapes to backdrops for personal accomplishment.
At the same time, this approach erases indigenous histories and relationships to the land. Along the way, he sees vandalized sacred sites, cultural appropriation, and environmental damage, noting how conservation efforts can sometimes mirror colonial attitudes.
