Urumqi, China. Ever heard of it? The city boasts a population of more than 3.5 million, yet I had never heard of it until landing there in late January 2020. Its airport serves Altay, an even more remote prefecture in the far northern reaches of...
Sometimes it’s not about the destinations we visit so much as the in-between places along the way—even when those places are in the middle of nowhere....
Concrete chalk. That was the texture of the snow on Taos’ West Basin, a steep and slippery swath of terrain at New Mexico’s biggest ski area. It was also the venue of the next day’s big-mountain competition, which I was in. Hard as heck, but...
Sitting on our gigantic backpacks, our shoulders feel like Celtic knots, painfully twisted. Ten hours of ski touring carrying 50 pounds of winter camping gear has turned my wife Allison and my once-supple torsos into tough, overcooked meat. Daylight is fading fast, but we have...
Canada’s Whistler Blackcomb is epic. Just two hours’ drive north of Vancouver airport along the scenic Sea-to-Sky Highway, the British Columbian ski resort is impressive by any measure....
Mount Rainier rises like a wayward iceberg from the green sea of moss, fir and ferns that drape both sides of the White River. Towering 10,000 vertical feet above us, it is a disorienting and intimidating glacial behemoth creased and crinkled by yawning crevasses and...
I sometimes envision the highways and off-beaten paths that crisscross Nevada’s vast landscape as contrails intersecting in the sky. They are expansive, multi-dimensional, and lead to endless and sometimes unchartered corners of a map. Many of these roads were built with dreams of finding silver or...
Caves harbor secrets so intriguing that spelunkers will go to extreme lengths to uncover them. They will search for days to find a hidden opening or dive into unforgiving darkness. They will squirm through tight tunnels and narrow crevices based on nothing more than a...
O Canada! Your natural charms are many, but perhaps none so staggeringly stunning as the steep, snow-covered summits belonging to Banff National Park. Established in 1885, not long after three Canadian Pacific Railway workers stumbled upon a series of natural hot springs, the 2,564-square-mile swath...
A backcountry snowboarding adventure into the Great Western Divide Mileage smileage. This is one of those High Sierra adventures where it’s better not to know exactly how far we’re trying to go. Distances and elevations spinning in our heads might only distract from our confidence. The...