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.
Am I a Bad Feminist? An outdoor-loving woman reflects on why a hyper-fem, pink-clad Pacific Crest Trail hiker bothers her so much.
A Love Letter to the Great Divide: For Polish photographer Adam Wilkoszarski, riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route was more than a 4,800km cycling adventure. It was two months of his life where he felt almost completely free.
Over the 48 days he spent pedaling from Canada to Mexico, he and his group settled into the rhythm of riding, camping, and navigating through the changing landscape. Every day, distractions fell away, creating space for deeper thought. Nearly two years later, Wilkoszarski has created a short film about his journey.
Photo: Adam Wilkoszarski
She’s Set to Swim the Entire California Coast: Elite open-water swimmer Catherine Breed is attempting something no one has ever done before: swimming the entire 1,448km length of California’s coastline.
She expects the journey from Oregon to Mexico to take between 80 and 120 days. Throughout, she will have to battle cold water, strong currents, jellyfish, sharks, and physical exhaustion.
A former national swimmer and record-setting marathon swimmer, Breed sees the expedition as part adventure, part conservation mission, and part test of human endurance. Here, she discusses what motivated her to take on a challenge no one has ever completed before and what she has learned from her previous swims.
Catherine Breed plans to start her swim in July. Photo: Catherine Breed
A historic send of ‘Bibliographie’
Janja Garnbret’s Historic Send of ‘Bibliographie’: Earlier this week, double Olympic gold-medalist Janja Garnbret completed the iconic Bibliographie (9b+/5.15c) in France. One of the hardest lines in sport climbing, she is just the second woman to complete the route.
Jon and Jess Glassberg have been documenting her journey on the wall since her first sessions projecting the line in 2024, noting how quickly she has taken to outdoor climbing. It took her just 20 days and 30 tries to make the ascent.
Strava Dives into the Hiking-App Market: This summer, Strava is expanding into the hiking market and will launch a range of new features to compete with established hiking apps like AllTrails and Apple Maps. For paying subscribers, the updates will include trail discovery based on user activity, custom route planning, offline maps, Apple Watch navigation, and route saving. All users will gain access to improved trail information, 3D maps, and live elevation data.
Descending Mt. Rainier. Photo: Corey Buhay
On climbing Mt. Rainier
Everything I Wish I Knew Before Climbing Mt. Rainer: Corey Buhay shares the lessons she learned from climbing the popular Disappointment Cleaver route on Mt. Rainier. She and her climbing partner were lucky; they managed to get walk-up permits on the day they wanted to climb. The downside is that they were only able to get one for a single day; she recommends securing climbing permits to give yourself more time.
The route is generally well-marked, and guides maintain ladders over crevasses. Even so, it is hard terrain, and anyone without a guide needs strong mountaineering skills, including self-arrest, crampon use, and crevasse rescue.
The Mysterious Story of Moncacht-Apé: Years ago, while researching Lewis and Clark, Mike Bezemek came across a claim that their journey was influenced by an indigenous explorer who crossed the continent a century earlier. Intrigued, Bezemek retraced the journey of Moncacht-Apé, a Yazoo explorer who claimed to have walked from the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific Coast in the late 1600s.
Long dismissed by historians, his story began to look increasingly credible as Bezemek followed his clues across the Great Plains, over the Rockies, and into the Pacific Northwest, consulting tribal historians, cultural experts, and descendants of the peoples Moncacht-Apé encountered.
The first TransAmerica bike ride in 1976. Photo: Dan Burden/Adventure Cycling
The Appalachian Trail of Biking
50 Years of the TransAmerica Bike Trail: Fifty years after its creation for America’s 1976 Bicentennial celebration, the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail remains one of the country’s most iconic long-distance adventures. Stretching 11,300km from Virginia to Oregon, the route is known as the Appalachian Trail of Biking.
Set up by Dan and Lys Burden and Greg and June Siple in 1976, it started with 4,000 cyclists taking on the route Lys Burden mapped out through backroads and the country’s most scenic landscapes. More than a physical challenge, the trail offers an opportunity to experience America at a slower pace.
How An Enslaved, Shipwrecked African Became the U.S.’s First Great Explorer: Almost 300 years before Lewis and Clark, an enslaved Moroccan known as Estevanico accomplished one of the most remarkable and forgotten journeys in American history. After surviving a shipwreck on the Gulf Coast in 1528, he was captured by indigenous tribes and held for five years.
In that time, he learned both their spoken and sign language. Eventually, he managed to escape and free two of his fellow survivors. He became the de facto leader of the small group of survivors crossing thousands of kilometers of unfamiliar territory. Estevanico became the first known outsider to explore parts of the American West.
