All Stories
As the world grapples with the effects of the pandemic, climate activists continue to fight for our future.
After surviving calamity in British Columbia’s Coast Mountains, a few skiers return to COVID-19.
Rolando Garibotti looks back at a lifetime spent in Patagonia and forward to the generation following in his footsteps.
Photo Essay: Waiting for the Wild on Oregon’s North Coast
Greg Long, Al Mackinnon and Pete Geall’s dusty search for uncrowded perfection at Location Redacted.
Feature: Squeaky Wheels, Wild Fish and Carrot Sticks
Donald Sanderson launched the country’s first mandatory curbside recycling program in Woodbury, New Jersey, in 1980. The recycling landscape has since changed. A lot. Is it still worthwhile?
“That comfort, the ability to feel like you’re not stepping outside of some boundary; It’s not like, ‘Do I belong here?’ No, this is where I’m supposed to be.”
After a century of conflict on the Columbia between salmon and dams, the fates of these two iconic energy systems are now intertwined.
With oceans getting warmer and more acidic, a group of divers are planting baby corals to restore the dying coral reefs.
Welcoming Back the ‘Welcoming Noise’ Near the Arctic Circle
Southeast Alaskans are on the front line of the fight to protect the Tongass National Forest from logging.
There’s nothing more important than having waves a few minutes away.
Jocelyn Torres of Conservation Lands Foundation on the power of grassroots lobbying and voting for public lands.
Changing our dynamics with the mountains can help us be in them longer, and appreciate them more.
Can a cotton T-shirt really help stop the climate crisis?
When Vince Anderson took a break from alpine climbing, his mountaineering attitude manifested itself in a single-speed hardtail, on which he’s won some of the sport’s most grueling races.
In 2019, after a record Colorado avalanche season bulldozed millions of trees, a team of avalanche experts rallied to collect as much information as possible from these 300-year-old keepers of time.
The Slickrock Trail, in Moab, Utah, is one of the most popular mountain bike rides in the world. Now, under a recent BLM decision, it could also be opening to oil and gas drilling.
The Trans-Cascadia has become one of the Pacific Northwest’s most notorious races. This past August, the Back Country Horsemen of Washington joined the Trans-Cascadia team—a first for all involved.
How a father and son found a way to climb one of Utah's most sought-after ice routes in a bygone era.
She was searching for a role with a nonprofit that takes a nontraditional approach to nature conservation. She found it in her inbox.
Mustafa Santiago Ali talks with Naomi Hollard of Sunrise Movement about the power of cross-class and multiracial movements and the mandate for environmental justice.
An intimate canoe trip through The Boundary Waters with Nathaniel Riverhorse Nakadate.
While Australia burns, its government is greenlighting oil drilling in the unspoiled Great Australian Bight. But surfers and coastal communities are saying no—and uniting to keep Big Oil out.
Sometimes when I look at the Fitz Roy Range, I see a silhouetted jawline of mountainous teeth that gnash the sky. Other times, the teeth transform to fingers that don’t crush aspirations but cradle them, like a hand cupping something precious. The distinction really depends on whether I’m looking at the mountains from the relative…
Predawn on April 4, 2019. There’s hardly any snow in the mountains. Worst year in recent history, the locals are saying. We’re loading boxes of food onto the ferry, preparing to board the Alaska Marine Highway from Juneau to Haines. “It’s southeast Alaska, you never know,” Ryland Bell says. “It might rain for 90 days…
My family arrived in Ohio from Jamaica in the mid-1970s, during a time of environmental turmoil. The previous decade had brought to light significant issues around the treatment of land and water in the United States. The Cuyahoga River, which flows into Lake Erie, caught fire in 1969 due to excessive oil coating its surface.…
“To change someone’s behavior, there must be rewards,” says Lizzy Plotkin. Her voice is earthy, grounded, easy and full of conviction. Horns honk, people talk, buses drive and a city thrives in the background, but she doesn’t sound like part of the chaos; she is instead superimposed into the scene. We’ve never met in person,…
Leah Penniman is the cofounder of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, where she works toward her commitment “to ending racism and injustice in our food system by increasing farmland stewardship by people of color, promoting equity in food access and training the next generation of activist farmers.” She published Farming While Black (Chelsea…
A round of applause and a hurrah of thanks for President Donald Trump: he’s finally bringing the Endangered Species Act (ESA) the attention it deserves! Last fall, the president announced a number of administrative “rule changes” to the ESA, changes that may sound trivial, but which attack the intent and letter of the law. Trump,…
Three years ago, on December 28, 2016, President Obama used his executive power under the Antiquities Act to establish the 1.35 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument. This was the first time that tribal sovereign nations allied to petition the president for a national monument designation. The Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Ute Mountain Ute…
A mining company owns the mineral rights to a Colorado mountain. For 42 years, the Red Ladies have been showing up—and dressing up—to keep the mountain wild.
In Japan, it is possible to simultaneously stand both in a cultivated field and under a solar array. A group of engineers and entrepreneurs developed a model whereby solar panels can be installed on top of existing farmland and still allow the required amount of sunlight to reach the crops below. These collaborations between businesses…
Former Navy SEAL Josh Jespersen battles the destruction of wild places he served to protect.
In the Arctic, Gwich’in youth are learning that protecting land means preserving a way of life. On Alaska’s North Slope, where polar bears den and gray wolves howl, protecting the land isn’t about supporting a cause or posting on social media from a protest at city hall. Here, it’s a matter of survival. Jewels Gilbert…
As seen in the November 2019 Journal. For the recipe behind Carston’s Spicy Magic Sauce, scroll to the end of the story. Although my tongue felt as if it might melt, Carston Oliver assured me I was not, in fact, going to die. “That’s just the capsaicin,” he told me, as he calmly ordered some…
Eric “EB Extreme” Brown scurries up the root wad, surveying the devastation that once was Cougar Ridge Trail. Located on the east side of Lake Whatcom, east of Bellingham, Washington, “Cougar” was once an unsanctioned downhiller trail scheduled for closure. Now it’s one of the area’s premier—and legal—rides. This section, however, is a mess of…
It’s fascinating to hear Zaria Forman talk about ice, especially the way that it sounds. She describes the way it rumbles and thunders and cracks, even when you can’t see anything. It crackles and pops like breakfast cereal on high volume. “Ice crispies,” she calls it. “It’s a really beautiful sound.” Polar ice is possibly…
A group of four skiers moves methodically across the snow-covered Wapta Icefield ahead of me in single file connected by a thread-like rope—mothers on each end, Cheryl and Nan, and their two daughters, Roan and Sailor, in the middle. As Roan’s father and Cheryl’s husband, I’m tagging along on this five-day hut-based ski tour in…
I wake early to the dazzling heat of the African sun. Perched 400 meters high on a huge granite face in central Madagascar, all I can see is black and blue, the color of the Malagasy granite meeting the sky and, coincidentally, the same color as large areas of my body from the constant abuse…
Snow and icy rime break from the porous black volcanic ridgeline crackling beneath my feet. Gale-force updrafts from the gullied ridges below whip the skis and splitboards strapped to our backs. Each gust forces us to step toward the cornice that hangs above the caldera to our right. The temperature drops steadily and our breath…
What if we could wear our garbage? That’s the idea behind ReCrafted, our line of clothing made from the scraps of used garments collected at our Worn Wear facility in Reno. It’s premium, Patagonia, upcycled. A second life for products that might not otherwise get one. ReCrafted was created by Kourtney Morgan—the designer behind some…
Hear “climate crisis” and you may picture a skinny polar bear stranded on a fragment of sea ice, bleached coral reefs, burning forests or maybe a world without bees. You’re not wrong: All those things (and more) are sadly unfolding or could be in the coming decades. Even more troubling, however, is that your mental…
Thirteen youth climate activists are taking to the courts to protect the Mississippi River and the people who depend on it for survival. Brent Murcia crosses the lively Mississippi River every day by bridge on his walk to class at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The sunset sometimes paints its gray murky waters a…
Lessons from Yosemite’s first climbing guidebook “I have this idea,” Mikey texted last October. “Let’s climb all of the suggested routes from the Yosemite red-cover guidebook.” I agreed immediately. The tattered copy of A Climber’s Guide to Yosemite Valley arrived in the mail less than a week later. First published in 1964 by the Sierra Club,…