News

A mountaineer taking in the scenery of Denali National Park, where the park service proposes to raise climbing fees.. The U.S. National Park Service is proposing to raise mountaineering fees by 150 percent in Denali National Park, Alaska, the location of North America’s tallest mountain, Mt. McKinley.. If approved, the cost for climbing in the...

We all own the rivers, right?. Not so fast. Paddler’s rights to navigate Western rivers will be a matter of debate this spring.. Trouble’s brewing in Utah. More accurately, it’s brewed and has begun to froth. The state legislature is debating the rights of paddlers to navigate the state’s river, according to American Whitewater.. One...

It’s a little difficult to describe America’s Great Outdoors, the Obama administration initiative to revisit America’s conservation policies, mostly because it’s such a huge topic.. In launching the initiative this spring, Obama invoked President Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1908 held the first White House conference on conservation.  So broadly speaking it’s about conservation and everything related to...

Race Across the Sky, a documentary about the 2010 Leadville 100 mountain bike race, hits theaters November 4. Tickets are on sale now.. It’s the second film about the grueling 100-mile race from the former mining town of Leadville, Colorado, to the top of 2,570-foot top of Columbine Mine. The first iteration of the film...

The National Public Radio show All Things Considered ran a feature yesterday on the rise of cycling in American transportation planning.. The piece was inspired by cities like Washington DC and Portland, Oregon, which have been steadily improving bike lanes and trails, and by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s pledge to expand biking infrastructure nationwide.. Responding...

The Tour Divide, a 2,745 mile North American mountain bike race, started in Banff, Canada, last Friday. As of this morning, the winner of the two previous tours, Mathew Lee, was in the lead near Seeley Lake, in Montana.. The video below, posted on YouTube by the creators of Ride the Divide, a documentary about...

But no guilt. Just because you don’t pedal heavy loads across town everyday, doesn’t mean you’re a weak-thighed Earth hater. We can’t all live in Portland, Oregon, the most bike-friendly city in the US. . Then again, maybe it’s a chicken-and-egg scenario: if you come — i.e., ride on sketchy suburban roads built for...

A rent-a-bike station in Washington DC. Courtesy: Bike Portland. The U.S. Department of Transportation is waxing bike-friendly. Earlier this month, the agency formally announced plans to consider biking and walking as equal forms of transportation to cars and trucks. That translates into greater federal investment in building networks of bike and walking trails and making...

Ines Brunn’s got crazy bike trick skills. In fact they are circus crazy, which might explain the theatrics and spandex.. Brunn took up “artistic cycling” in Germany at age 13 and joined the national team 3 years later. Yes, Germany has a national team in artistic cycling.. After performed professionally for years and becoming...

A lucky dude surfing in late winter at Sandy Beach in Rincon, Puerto Rico.. The waiter was suspiciously tan. My friends and I had decided to splurge one night during our trip to Rincón, Puerto Rico, at a swanky Spanish villa-style restaurant where they serve the food under silver hoods, like in old movies.....

Benafsha, a young Afghan woman, tops out on the new Skateistan rock climbing wall in Kabul, Afghanistan.. Not all news from Afghanistan is bad.. The capital of the war-torn country, Kabul, just got its first indoor climbing wall, installed at a facility run by Skateistan, a non-profit that runs skateboarding and educational programs for Afghan children.....

Andrew Temple, of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies, in Silverton, Colorado, looks out over the dusty snow of of the San Juan Mountains. Courtesy: Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies. Dust deposited on Colorado’s high peaks is causing snow to heat up and melt sooner, meaning paddling season starts earlier, but ski season...

The Wildest Dream, a National Geographic movie about climber Conrad Anker finding George Mallory’s body on Mount Everest 75 years after his death, comes out on DVD on March 15, 2011. You can pre-order it through Virgil Films and other online DVD sellers.. Here’s the description of the movie from the website:. George Mallory...

While serving in Iraq two years ago, Troy Yocum used his spare time to devise an epic plan.. Concerned for a friend and fellow veteran who had lost his job, Yocum decided to raise money for veterans who returned home to find themselves jobless and in debt.. For 15 months, he’d walk 7,000 miles across...

The Australians are laughing at us. As we break out sweaters and chapstick here in the Northern Hemisphere, they continue their campaign of “slip, slop, slap” – slipping on a shirt, sloping on sunscreen, slapping on a hat. Okay. We get it. You live in a sun drenched paradise. . Now, to give the Aussies...

New U.S. park policy would put limits on setting new fixed climbing anchors. . New regulations proposed by the National Park Service seek to limit the placement of fixed climbing anchors and the replacement of aging anchors in wilderness, including iconic climbing areas such as Yosemite, Zion, Black Canyon, and Rocky Mountain national park.. The...

After nearly a century, the White Salmon River in Washington has been freed, opening a popular whitewater paddling run to natural water flows. On October 26, engineering blew up Condit Dam, which had constricted the flow of the river and covered a large stretch of the river bed since 1913.. “New and improved recreational...