Ah, yes. With the COVID-19 pandemic winding down at last, and with summer just over the horizon, many Americans are probably jonesing for that idyllic beach holiday that's seemed out of reach for so very long. Well, just when you thought it was ...
The Triumph and Tragedy of K2’s Epic Winter Season
This was no ordinary winter on K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. For the first time ever, a team summited 28,251-foot-high K2 in winter, marking the achievement of the last great first in Himalayan mountaineering. The successful team ...
Mountaineering Hacks: Popping Viagra and Teetotaling on Top of the World
High-altitude mountaineering is a miserable endeavor. In the rarefied air of the world’s highest peaks, there’s simply not enough oxygen for the body to function normally. At great height, however, our genes kickstart a whole host of corporeal ...
Nepalese Team Edges Out American O’Brady for Historic 1st Winter Ascent of K2
Near sunset on Saturday, a team of 10 Nepalese Sherpa climbers paused just short of the summit of the world’s second-highest mountain. Even amid temperatures dipping below minus 60 Fahrenheit, and with the lethal promise of the looming night on the ...
Hellespont: I Swam from Europe to Asia and Earned My Survival
I stopped swimming to poke my head above the waves and figure out where I was. While treading water, I met a chilling sight — nothing. Through the spray of the 30-knot winds coming off the water, I could barely make out a cell phone tower on the ...
‘There Is Magic in Suffering’ — The Allure of the Ultramarathon
6 a.m. — At the trailhead of the Illinois and Michigan Canal State Trail, three runners silently step up to the starting line through the morning fog. There are six spectators on hand. The trio of runners have their arms folded against the early ...
In Historic Ascent, American Woman Free Climbs Yosemite’s El Capitan in a Day
While most Americans remained glued to the news, watching the presidential election results slowly roll in during the wee hours of Nov. 4, American climber Emily Harrington was hard at work adding her own personal mark to a historic week, becoming ...
Big Wave Surfing: An American Just Rode One of the Biggest in Surf History
Big wave surfing walls as tall as a seven-story building is a dangerous and complicated business. Mason Barnes is in that business. And business is good. In October off the coast of Portugal, Hurricane Epsilon combined with a low-pressure system ...
Antarctic Ice Marathon: A Trial by Fire
I passed the threshold of the aircraft door and the cold cut through my piled-on layers of down and fleece in a flash. The cold went straight to my bones, and the primitive, reptilian part of my brain spoke, informing me that this ...
Island Peak: How Two Special Operations Veterans Found Each Other — and Healing — in the Himalayas
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say "These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.” After I left the military in 2011, I wandered for months, crisscrossing India and Nepal. I studied Buddhism in the misty mountain ...
