Adventure
Towering challenges
When water washed away the red sandstone of the Colorado Plateau, it left the improbable spires of rust-colored rock, fingers flipping off the over-baking sun and the sand-spitting wind and the improvised protection the climbers who lusted after the tops of those ...
Make your own legends
Filmmaking has always been an adventure. Whether it was Robert J. Flaherty trekking out to the arctic in Nanook of the North (1922), Werner Herzog pulling a 320-ton steamship over a Peruvian hill in Fitzcarraldo (1982) or Hubert Sauper building a lightweight plane to...
Finding the flow
What defines a flow trail? Let’s think back to the halcyon days of a kid’s summer, dripping popsicles, scabbed knees and all...
Schooled in snow
Colorado.The state is known as “Ski Country USA.” It’s a place of rugged peaks, high mountains and snowy winters. So, if you’re a skier looking for a place to get educated, it’s no surprise that going to an institute of higher education in the Centennial state might ...
First light from the summit
You feel the fluid building up, and you feel a kind of rattling in your lungs,” says Glenn Randall of a night spent in a snowbound tent in the Sawatch range, high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE) slowly drowning him. He’d had the condition before, at 16,000 feet in ...
Mountain of a man: Fred Beckey discusses his new book
What impresses Fred Beckey, the 89-year-old mountaineer with more first ascents than he can, or at least has bothered to, count, is Madonna’s halftime show...
In the East Rampart Roadless Area, solitude rules
Across the road from the dirt bikes and ATVs in Rainbow Falls, Colo., is a different world. It’s a world hiker Tom Mowle discovered two years ago, looking for trails close to his Gleneagle, Colo., home. “As you can see, we’re the only people here. You can hike ...
An odyssey remembered
"My friends, welcome to Lesbos — now you are going to Moria.”
The blue bus with iron grates on its windows sits perched on a...
Dancer in the wild
High up on the southern side of Bear Peak at the southwestern edge of Boulder, the rock feature known as The Maiden hooks from the ground toward the western horizon. The rock monolith, dusted in lime lichen, catches the setting sun, holding on to the light after ...
Gone to the dogs
Mountainsmith went to the dogs years ago. Many a stylish pooch has been spotting wearing the classic K-9 dog pack designed by the Golden-based gear manufacturer. This year, bipeds and quadrupeds alike were introduced to Mountainsmith’s new line of tents, sleeping ...
Warriors in the wilderness
If the shocks in his prosthetic arm would reload faster, Marc Dervaes could spend all his evenings doing one-armed pushups. After losing his right arm just above the elbow in combat, Dervaes had a replacement prosthetic built with a set of shocks like those on a ...
Now you see it, now you don’t
John Birchak’s eyes well with tears as he speaks about his first days in Tibet — three days in the sacred city of Lhasa, often spent watching Buddhist devotees walk wellworn paths around and around and around monasteries on Barkhor Street...
