Bikepacking races heat up
This past weekend was a busy one for endurance mountain biking, with fierce racing in the Stagecoach 400, Trans Iowa, and Arizona Trail Race 750. The Stagecoach 400 started Friday morning under clear skies and…
Monthly Archives: April 2013
The long haul: Memoirs of an industrial athlete
In Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods, Christine Byl takes readers deep into the gritty and hardscrabble work of a professional trail builder. Dirt Work tells the story of Byl’s years working as a traildog in the…
Limit broken: Interview with Aaron Gulley
Aaron Gulley, a writer and journalist from Santa Fe, New Mexico, won this year’s Arizona Trail Race in 2 days, 3 hours, and 59 minutes. After several unsuccessful tries on the Arizona Trail, Gulley returned…
Arizona Trail — never easy, always engaging
The stories that have emerged from this year’s Arizona Trail Race are gruesome and beautiful, often at the same time — a man using pliers to pry cholla balls out of his wife’s thighs; doctors surgically…
Gulley blazes possible new record on AZT
Aaron Gulley, a journalist from Santa Fe, New Mexico, appears to have finished the 300-mile Arizona Trail mountain bike race under the current record of 2 days, 5 hours, and 10 minutes. According to the…
Arizona Trail Race begins Friday
The Arizona Trail is an elaborate setting for a mountain bike adventure. The often narrow, usually rocky path traverses an entire state the hard way — across lonely deserts occupied by amusingly anthropomorphic saguaro cacti, through…
Escaping society
Earlier this week, a man’s 27-year escape into the solitude of the Maine woods came to an end when police arrested 47-year-old Christopher Knight after he tripped a surveillance sensor while burglarizing private property. Knight…
Behind the Scenes: Mastering adventure photography
Full disclosure — Dan Bailey is my friend. But objectively he’s still an accomplished outdoor photographer, who has been shooting imagery for high-profile clients such as The New York Times and Patagonia for more than seventeen…
Sixteen take on Alaska Wilderness Classic
Sixteen intrepid skiers set out to cross the remote and rugged Wrangell Mountains for the 26th annual Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic, which launched from McCarthy, Alaska, at 10 a.m. Sunday, March 31. Crossing frozen…
Barkley Marathons: Cruel joke, serious passion
From the outside, the Barkley Marathons seem like joke — an over-the-top parody of all the ultrarunning events that take themselves much too seriously. One imagines a bearded race director puffing a cigarette on his back…