When we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the web. Sometimes we’re a little too plugged in and browsing adventure reads can turn from minutes to hours. To nourish your own adventure fix, here are some of the best adventure links we’ve discovered this week.
I Survived an Avalanche in 1984. It Took Me Decades to Pick Up the Pieces: Mountaineering and avalanches, unfortunately, go hand in hand. In recent years, avalanches have killed some of the world’s top climbers, from David Lama to Marc-Andre Leclerc. This essay focuses on one climber’s brush with death on Alaska’s Eagle Peak. His account won Outside’s inaugural survival stories essay contest.
What It Takes to Row Across an Ocean: It’s not uncommon for ExWeb to cover ocean rowers who suffer capsizes, unwelcome weather, injuries, and a good dose of pain. To gain further insight into what ocean rows involve, a British research group recently interviewed 71 trans-ocean rowers who (mostly) made it to the other side. You won’t be surprised to read that the most common ailment reported was “salt sores/chafing/rashes.”
British ocean rower Mark Delstanche trains before rowing from New York to London last year. Photo: Square Peg
We Can’t Leave Them — Climbing and Humanity: It could be argued that the greatest act of humanity is to put your life on the line for another. In the climbing world, many have faced this choice. Veteran climber Mick Ward argues that everyone can learn from some of their stories.
So why didn’t the Nepalis do it before? “Because I wasn’t there! “
Meeting Nirmal Purja, Universal Mountaineer: A few weeks before Denis Urubko gave a brutally honest account of Purja’s mountain exploits for ExWeb, the French outlet Alpine Mag caught up with the record-breaking Nepali mountaineer. Purja is characteristically boastful and, among various things, reveals plans to tidy up some of the 8,000’ers.
Nirmal Purja on the summit of K2. Photo: Nirmal Purja
Lionel Terray, Mountaineering’s Conqueror of the Impossible: In this Historical Badass piece, Adventure Journal covers the life and times of the great French climber Lionel Terray. Among stunning first ascents of mountains like Makalu and Jannu, he is perhaps best known for the book, The Conquistadors of the Useless, an all-time classic mountaineering tome that takes the reader on climbs in Chamonix, the Andes, the Himalaya, and Patagonia.
“You feel hunted in the alpine”
An Interview With Jim Bridwell, Climbing Legend: First published in 1994, this interview with the late American climbing legend Jim Bridwell runs the gamut: aid routes, alpinism, fast free climbs, vivid dreams, Patagonia, sport climbing, and more.
Hiking Hipsters: How Outdoor Clothing (Somehow) Became Cool: In recent years, technical outdoor clothing has made an unlikely leap into the mainstream. It has become the style of choice for TikTok teens, high fashion brands, and rappers. The Great Outdoors Magazine looks into how this happened and asks what it means for the outdoor industry.
The retro-styled Berghaus ‘Dean Street’ collection. Photo: Berghaus
Necessity Bears: Bears are fierce; bears are cautious. Bears are solitary; bears, the females at least, are dedicated to family. Bears are omnipotent; bears are vulnerable. They are everything we want to be and everything we cannot abide. Those are a lot of human characteristics to project onto another species, especially when we are so ill-equipped to handle them ourselves.
