the adventure life

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60-Second Expert: How to Manage Your Climbing Skins

by steve casimiro on March 12, 2010 · 1 comment

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There are few pieces of gear that better illustrate the saying “sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you” than climbing skins. These amazing devices stick to the bottom of your skis–they have a directional nap, like an animal’s fur, that allows the ski to slide forward (uphill) but not backward–and enable you [...]

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‘Pillow Line’ Is A Charming Stop-Motion Winter Delight

by steve casimiro on March 11, 2010 · 0 comments

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You don’t have to be a skier to appreciate this clever stop-motion film, but it helps in order to understand the title. “Pillow Line” refers to the delightful mushrooms of snow that form on top of boulders–when the snow is deep enough and the slope steep enough, you can ski a route that’s like dropping [...]

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Telluride Contest Has a Winner: Home-Made Video Grabs the Loot

by steve casimiro on March 11, 2010 · 2 comments

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The Adventure Life, Wagner Skis, and Visit Telluride are psyched to announce that Ryan Hollington has won the season-long “Share Your Ski Stoke” contest. Judges from Skiing Magazine, Ski Press, Wagner, T-Ride, and this site picked Hollington’s video as the purist expression of stoke from the scores of entries received. Although not the most polished [...]

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8 Days of Climbing + 10 Pounds of Tequila = New 1,100-Foot Tepui Route

Climbers Mikey Schaefer, Kate Rutherford, Brittany Griffith, and Jonathan Thesenga recently spent eight days in the jungle of Venezuela, establishing a new 1,100-foot 5.12 free climb on the east face of Acopan Tepui. The four flew to the small village of Yunek in Venezuela’s stunning and isolated Gran Sabana (the “Great Savannah”), home to a [...]

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The Gallery of the OIdest Living Things in the World

In a world transfixed by the new, Rachel Sussman is obsessed with the old. Not just old–ancient. The Brooklyn-based photographer has frequent-flown all over the world the last few years documenting the planet’s oldest living organisms. It’s a quest that seems as much fueled by the imagination as the aesthete, because many of these life [...]

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60-Second Expert: How to Make a Skiing Kick Turn

Back in high school, when I was going through life guard training (”lesson 1: how to spin your whistle without hitting yourself in the face”), one of the first things we learned was the simple survival skill called the dead man’s float. It had nothing to do with swimming or saving people and everything to [...]

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And the Oscar For Best Use of Sheep Goes To…

You’d think a country as surf-crazy as New Zealand would have come up with this tasty bit of marketing, but no, it was the Brits. British surfing apparel company Finisterre has just started using wool in its clothes and had a rather ingenious idea about spreading the word.

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Clothes Make the Man…And They Make A Difference for Nepal’s Women

One sweater won’t change the world, but it might change how you see it. High-end cycling apparel maker Rapha teamed with Apolis Activism to design the Transit Elite cycling sweater, and they in turned partnered with Citta Himalaya, a non-profit, to have the sweaters made at Citta’s women’s collective in Kathmandu. The Transit Elite is [...]

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Surviving A Massive Earthquake and Tsunami: What It Feels Like

In April 1991, Costa Rica was struck by a 7.6 or 7.7 scale earthquake (experts still don’t agree on the magnitude). My girlfriend (now wife) Joni and I were in the far southeastern corner of the country, warming up in the Caribbean after a long winter. On this day, we’d rented bikes in a village [...]

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Waves That Will Make You Say ‘Hurry Up, Summer’

When most surf photographers shoot empty waves, they focus on the prosaic–the wave’s potential for surfing or its typical and obvious beauty…the barrel, the corduroy stacked up to the horizon, the molten glass backlit at sunset. You know–post cards. They rarely dig deeper, into the elements, the molecular, the composition of components. But not so [...]

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The New Snow Test That Could Save Your Life

Propagation is a dirty word. And while you might not use it in everyday conversation–or even having a working familiarity with its meaning–if you’re a snow traveler it can send chills down your spine. The reason, in the context of snow, is because propagation describes an avalanche that starts locally and spreads globally. It occurs [...]

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Earth’s Day Shortened, Axis Tilted By Chile Earthquake

Days are short enough as it is without these dang earthquakes getting in the way: According to NASA, the Feb. 27 magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile may have shortened the length of each earth day.
Here’s what the space agents had to say:
JPL research scientist Richard Gross computed how Earth’s rotation should have changed as a [...]

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The Greenest Job? Might Be Professional Tree Climber

As job descriptions go, the arborist’s is pretty badass: climb trees all day with a chainsaw, handsaws, and other sharp objects on your belt. Lash your riggings onto elements that can bend or break. Oh, and be careful not to cut your own rope.
These beautiful glimpses into the life of professional tree climbers were [...]

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60-Second Expert: The Right Way to Clean Your Goggles

You think you know how to clean your goggles? Well, maybe you do. But that’s what I thought, too, and after scratching more than a few pairs I thought I’d check with experts at the goggle manufacturers themselves to get some recommendations.

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Before There Was The Hurricane, There Was the Double Daffy

It’s tough to say which is more entertaining in this 1970s ski jumping segment from Dick Barrymore, the clothes or the sheer infinite number of ways proto-huckers can go cattywampus in the air. Eventually, you start pulling for someone to stick a landing…but not for a while. Seeing that wild hot dog hair caked with [...]

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