Category archives for Adventure Travel
Behind the Shot: Big-Wave Surfer Mark Healey Catches a Monster Wave at Teahupoo
Posted by Mary Anne Potts on May 22, 2013 
Learn how the photographer got the shot and see more images like this in our Extreme Photo of the Week gallery: http://on.natgeo.com/i3409T Adventure: What were you thinking at this moment? Mark Healey: I was thinking that falling wasn’t an option! A: Tell us about this wave? What was it like to ride it? M.H.: This wave…
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Celebrating 35 years of inspiration, the 2013 Mountainfilm festival in Telluride, Colorado, will run another exciting program of movies and speakers over Memorial Day weekend. The impressive lineup includes leading adventure athletes, environmental activists, and documentary filmmakers. Beginning with the Moving Mountains Symposium on Friday, the festival revolves around the theme of climate solutions. Here festival…
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Anyone who has picked up a camera has heard of the “magic hour.” It’s that perfect, golden light that appears an hour after sunrise and an hour before sunset that landscape photographers, in particular, fall over themselves to use to capture iconic scenes across the globe. Think Yosemite, Delicate Arch, Santorini, and the likes. And…
Everest Hero Jim Whittaker on the Outdoors, Gear, and His Favorite Ice Cream
Posted by Mary Anne Potts on May 17, 2013 
See more of Jim Whittaker in this video and portrait gallery. Read more about the state of Mount Everest in the June issue of National Geographic. The first time I met 84-year-old Jim Whittaker, a giant both in height (6’5″) and spirit, he was literally throwing around the heavy (and sharp) ice ax he used…
Expedition Denali Short from Distill Productions, LLC on Vimeo. I’ve been told it shouldn’t matter. But as one in a handful of black professionals in the outdoor recreation industry, I can’t help being wildly excited. In June the first team of African-American climbers will attempt to reach the summit of Alaska’s Mount McKinley, the tallest…
The Powder Highway Road Trip – Dispatch #7 – Haines, Alaska (Video + Photos)
Posted by Bruce J. Bauer on May 8, 2013 See previous dispatches >> A cold, dark winter subsides as the days grow longer and the sun’s rays intensify. The inevitable change in seasons triggers an innate response in all living creatures—bears awake from hibernation, birds take flight, and fish swim upstream. Migration is a matter of survival for certain animal species while select humans…
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The other weekend, I climbed my first couloir. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what a couloir was. I knew it was a mountain feature—but I figured it was somewhere in the realm of too extreme for me. I’ve always been intimated by technical mountaineering. So how did I find myself in the backcountry…
Top prize winners at the 2013 5Point Film Festival set the tone for an exciting spring season of adventure. The long journey of solo explorer Kyle Dempster in the movie The Road From Karakol took the Best of the Fest award. The compelling feature showed viewers the importance of vulnerability in the face of adversity,…
Video: 50 Years on Everest – Climbers’ Candid Thoughts on the State of the World’s Tallest Peak
Posted by Mary Anne Potts on May 1, 2013 On this day 50 years ago, May 1, 1963, Jim Whittaker became the first American to stand atop Everest, a feat which made him a national hero. A few weeks later, May 22, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld made the daring first ascent of the West Ridge and the first traverse of the peak, electrifying…
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“I forgot to pack my underwear, but I brought a headlamp!” said Winnie. By now we had known each other five days. We were in a remote, Costa Rican jungle and I couldn’t help but laugh at my new Swedish friend and expedition mate. Her parents named her after the loveable children’s character and bear,…
Last week, Sally Jewell—former CEO of REI—took the helm as the new Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior. This is great news for everyone who likes to hike, bike, run, ski, fish, paddle, climb, or explore the outdoors in any way. Why you should care? I’ll tell you. The Department of the Interior,…
Antarctica: Exploring the Frozen Frontier
Posted by Freddie Wilkinson on April 18, 2013 
Pick up the September 2013 edition of National Geographic to read writer Freddie Wilkinson’s feature story about this expedition. Queen Maud Land—the adventure starts in sun-soaked South Africa in late spring. On the evening of November 11, 2012, a little after dinner hours, a group of men steadily forms in the back corner of the departures terminal…
Saving the Colorado, America’s Most Endangered River – Video + Interview with Pete McBride
Posted by Emily Nuchols on April 17, 2013 When we think of the Colorado River, we think of its power and its beauty, running from the rugged peaks of the Rocky Mountains and twisting, turning, and splashing through seven western states and two countries. The Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon—a symbol as iconic to the United States as the bald eagle or…
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Marmot Presents: DUK COUNTY (2013) Produced by Jordan Campbell & Michael Herbener from Duk County on Vimeo. A new documentary, DUK COUNTY, about a humanitarian expedition to South Sudan to restore preventable blindness will premiere at Mountainfilm in Telluride this May. Jordan Campbell first shared this story with us in December 2011 from the remote…
It’s that time of year—the eve of summer, when the earth starts to awaken from her long slumber and I get itchy for adventure. After all, it’s what feeds me. Sure, my weekends are packed with fun outdoor forays all year long. But nothing compares to setting your sights on a somewhat scary goal and…
The 5Point Film Festival running April 25 to 28 in Carbondale, Colorado, kicks off the adventure film festival season and sets the stage for the rest of the year. By presenting a wide range of movies that push the definition of adventure, the film festival aims to inspire the community—young and old, and of all…
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See JP Auclair in the “street skiing” scene from All.I.Can, one of our favorite skiing video segments of all time. We are innately drawn to the mountains as skiers and riders. When the autumn aspen leaves curl and begin to fall, we catch our first wave of ski stoke. Memories of last year’s epic pow…
Have you ever considered quitting your job and hitting the trail for something like, say, 3,100 miles? Sounds like a pretty extreme backpacking trip, huh? My coworker, Peter Sustr, just left Outdoor Industry Association to tackle the Continental Divide Trail, a fabled route that follows the spine of the United States from Canada to Mexico.…
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Jim Harris is currently on a National Geographic Expeditions Council assignment with Gregg Treinish to look for wolverine DNA evidence in Mongolia. Read updates on the expedition here. Windmilling his kayak paddle into the pushy breeze, Luc Mehl, 34, pulls onto the sandbar at the mouth of Mexico’s Rio Antigua and squints at the novelty…
You have to have a healthy respect for people who tackle ultra running races. Especially off-road races. It takes a special personality to grunt through the pain and suffering that comes with running dozens of miles through the woods—particularly if it involves rain. I have a coworker, Loraine, who’s crazy about running. She gets up…
Video: Everest-Bound Speed Climber Ueli Steck Learns to Fly for an Alps Triple Link-Up
Posted by Mary Anne Potts on March 28, 2013 Ueli Steck is hard to please. The man, known as “the Swiss Machine,” seems insatiable in his quest to push the limits of speed climbing. His latest vision led him to learn to paraglide in his home country of Switzerland. The goal was to climb three peaks—the Alps’ iconic Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau—in one day,…
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I live in Kars, a snowy, cold eastern Turkey town that author Orhan Pamuk describes as “the edge of the world.” Sometimes when I am staring off the dramatic dropping cliffs of the Anatolian plateaus, I couldn’t imagine a place that would better fit the description. Everywhere I look, it is white rolling mountains uninterrupted by…
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See previous dispatches from the Powder Highway Road Trip >> A remote lodge trip may be the signature experience of the Powder Highway. Enough of my friends have returned home, minds blown, from a weeklong trip to interior B.C. Few regions in the world are blessed with so much cold, dry snow; and when you’re…
Don’t you love it when you set out on an adventure knowing it’s going to be fun … and then it blows your mind? This is what happened when I ventured into the Jackson Hole backcountry recently. We headed to Jackson to check out the ski resort. But when a friend said you can’t fully…
“Silence” Film: How Ultrarunner Adam Campbell Made Room for Silence
Posted by Mary Anne Potts on March 20, 2013 If you’re reading this blog, this new film will resonate. In Silence, the filmmakers at Duct Tape Then Beer explore why it’s important to escape the chains of urban life to find your own peace in the outdoors, whatever that means to you. And they paint an exceptionally beautiful image of life beyond the boundaries…
