After years of trying to fit in with Western trail culture, one runner realizes that what she’s been missing lies in the Colombian mountains of her youth.
Simplicity, style and lessons in bike jazz on Eastern Washington’s Beacon Hill.
A friendship built between waves becomes a powerful alliance for the protection of surf breaks.
Running Up For Air is not a race. It’s a community, a gathering of friends and a fundraiser for clean-air advocacy.
How one young family took on 1,300 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. (Hint: There’s candy.)
Running won’t solve the issue of wood pellet biomass pollution. But it can ignite community and conversation—and that’s a start.
narinda heng finds out by taking public transit from Oakland to Yosemite National Park.
A Patagonia advanced R&D designer takes to the Swedish alpine to test out a new pack prototype—and a bold idea for rethinking multiday trail travel.
Josh Wharton knows how to evaluate risk as an alpinist. How does fatherhood change the equation?
In the wake of a devastating wildfire, the communities of California’s Lost Sierra look to trails for hope, healing and a dose of dirt magic.
A trip to Amami Ōshima, Japan, transports Gerry Lopez to a familiar feeling on a distant land.
A captain’s log from the biggest swell to hitO‘ahu’s outer reefs in recent memory.
Those with the most to lose are uniting to save the Northwest’s salmon and steelhead.
In a small British Columbia mountain town, one woman is using trails to help heal wounds and bridge two communities.
Hard alpinism in the Cordillera Huayhuash endures as the climate changes the routes.
Footprints Running Camp is as much about finding solutions to the climate crisis as it is about running.
Photographic time travel with longtime Patagonia contributor Gary Bigham.
Scenes from ground zero of the greatest surf event in seven years.
TM Herbert helped put up the first ascent of the Muir Wall in 1965. His son followed in his footsteps 55 years later.
Descending through Colombia’s coffee country, a crew of mountain bikers explores how climate change is impacting one of the world’s most cherished beverages and the lives of those who depend upon it.
In Southeast Alaska, a Native skier searches for something deeper than powder on her homelands.
Inside Yakutat Surf Club’s budding stoke scene in Southeast Alaska.
Poet Cameron Keller Scott reads an excerpt from his piece, A River’s Own Name. View a video excerpt of A River’s Own Name at the link below. I. Valley Maker Suppose one day we were to wake up and understand the name of a river. Not the names we’ve given, but the name it asks us to…
A runner explores what it takes to find quiet in the world, and in our minds.
Elder Wilson Wewa tells the creation story of Animal Village. Tara Kerzhner and Len Necefer consider how these stories can reshape stewardship.
Patagonia and Pop-Up Magazine Productions present a series about knowledge.
There’s more to life than three-to-the-beach, surf contest results and a clean cutback.
Charlie Fowler was a world-class alpinist; what did he find out in Colorado’s Wild, Wild West climbing area that kept him coming back?
An exchange of waves and Indigenous cultural practices on the Pacific coast of Mexico.
Delusional optimism and alpine immersion in British Columbia’s South Chilcotin Mountains.
Reflections on the 2022 Oak Flat Prayer Run, a gathering and a protest of a planned copper mine that could destroy this sacred site.
Grappling with her aging trail dog’s declining health, a mountain biker decides to give her furry best friend one last dose of singletrack.
On an intergenerational new routing trip in the Sierra, Tad McCrea asks, What if your best adventure is the one you’re already on?
In learning her ancestral language, one mountain biker finds a different way to relate to the world, herself and her community—and ride her bike.
The toughest fish you’ll ever catch could knock a few minutes off your finish time at Flyathlon, a backcountry race in Colorado that combines trail running and fly fishing.
An excerpt from Dylan Tomine’s Headwaters: The Adventures, Obsession, and Evolution of a Fly Fisherman proves he was born to fish and born to write.
A band of mountain friends learns that when they give attention to what they see, trust and confidence can follow graciously.
You’re never too old to send. A film about bikes and one bad-ass mother hucker.
As we make a transition to renewable sources of energy, let’s not renew the same old mistakes.
After nearly 30 years on the hallowed trails of southern British Columbia, Betty Birrell still thinks life is one big playground—and that you’re never too old to send.
Tiny but mighty, herring might be the most important fish in the ocean.
Folkeaksjonen is taking action against petroleum exploration in the Norwegian Sea.
Martin Johnson embarks on his most challenging run, as he explores the connection between Black British history and the River Thames.
An attempt to set the fastest known time on the 184-mile path to the source of the River Thames.
When they urged climbers to stop using their best-selling product in 1972, Tom Frost and Yvon Chouinard laid the foundation for Patagonia’s work today.
Fifty years ago, Yvon Chouinard, Tom Frost and Doug Robinson set down an ethic for climbing that emphasized restraint and respect for the rock. In 2022, it’s needed more than ever.
Big Mineral Mining is tearing up the coastline and restricting access to some of South Africa’s most pristine beaches and waves—and it’s getting way out of hand.
Upstream of the Snake River dams in Idaho, Riggins waits for the fish to return.
In North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest, a collaboration between anglers and mountain bikers uses better trails to create healthier rivers.
In a tiny Colorado ski town, the world’s oldest mountain-bike club is facing the complicated reality of recreation gone right.
One woman’s against-all-odds journey to save a beautiful piece of a stolen future.
Cydney Knapp and her husband, Bartek, knew they wanted to raise their kids to love the outdoors, so they learned how to navigate change and embraced the chaos.
Reciprocal learning while exploring traditional Indigenous territories in British Columbia.
Niseko’s Akio Shinya on avalanches,kayak expeditions and rules to live by.
The case for readopting Indigenous fire management practices.
Ohio’s burning river made headlines in 1969. Now, the Cuyahoga’s telling a new story.
How a mother’s own childhood experience on the Appalachian Trail shaped the way she teaches her four children to find nature in the heart of New York City.
Lydia Jennings honors Indigenous scientists of the past, present and future.
Are the recent advancements in safety equipment and protocols making big-wave surfing more dangerous?
How Captain Liz Clark’s Tahitian residency opened a new chapter in her activist work.
Rolling Stone called him “the real Indiana Jones.” His new memoir reveals why our friend Rick has always been a great deal more.
The Big Muddy is polluted. Securing the Driftless Area can help clean it.
The communities of Cajón del Maipo, in Chile, are seeing their environment be threatened by an unnecessary hydroelectric project.
Trail runner and activist Felipe Cancino takes us on a 120 km run through the Maipo River Valley—revealing along the way the impacts of the Alto Maipo hydropower project on the local ecosystem, its communities and traditions; and the threat it poses to the water supply of Santiago’s 7.1 million residents.
Tapping into the beginner’s mind while teaching his daughter to surf.
An interview with Gabo Benoit, trail advocate and mountain-bike mayor of Coyhaique, Chile.
Exploring one of the least visited but most revisited national parks, on foot.
Childhood friends, Hayley Talbot and Dan Ross, are determined to save a mighty river.
Building positivity, inspiration and purpose out of a racist encounter in Los Angeles.
Not totally relating to some forms of climate activism, Josh Wharton found his own way to contribute.
This Great Lakes surfer never felt represented in the surf scene, so she created a new surf culture of her own.
Seasoned waterman, master woodworker and Patagonia Surf Ambassador Ben Wilkinson channels his skills toward a new environmental calling.
Rule changes and the future of the Olympic Peninsula’s wild steelhead.
An unlikely community, in the most unlikely location, has become an even more unlikely force for public lands conservation.
Ramón Navarro and Kohl Christensen bring Léa Brassy into the jaws of a Chilean monster.
How a nonprofit that takes San Francisco kids surfing expanded its work in 2020.
Coauthor Kim McCoy recounts discovering the mystery of what lies beneath the waves, where ocean and land meet and compete.
Following in Indigenous Footsteps on the Ute Pass Trail.
A look into surfing’s impact vests and the people they’ve brought back home.
The mountain-biking star of Becoming Ruby seeks out some of skiing's most powerful females.
Recreation in the Alabama Hills is surging at an unsustainable pace. But some people are working to ensure that it doesn’t get loved to death.
Snowboarder Alex Yoder takes a Regenerative Organic approach to his new coffee business by thinking like an astronaut.
6,000 words about dressing for alpine climbing you didn’t know you needed to know.
Clyde Aikau on why the most culturally significant big-wave event in surfing will always matter.
As editor of the world’s largest mountain bike magazine, Nicole Formosa showed her audience the world’s largest issues—and revealed the sport’s resistance to confronting them.
A dead-end dirt road is the start to a new challenge—and a fight to protect South America’s Yosemite.
Solving for Z explores IFMGA guide and father Zahan Billimoria’s relationship to the intoxicating highs and crushing blows of big mountain skiing.
How one suburban mountain biker’s vision for a trail system reshaped a former industrial town—and turned trail building into a family tradition.
Reflecting on a lifetime of climbing, and the risks and rewards that come with it.
From 2-foot to 20-foot, the Big Wave Risk Assessment Group (BWRAG) is sparking a global movement in surf safety.
How Zahan Billimoria recalibrated after unthinkable tragedy.
A Small Florida Town Was Once Host to the World’s Largest Tarpon. What Happened?
Kohl Christensen discusses how BWRAG came to be and his recent near-death experience courtesy of Pipeline's reef.
Eric Bissell captured his first published image with Patagonia on a climbing trip to establish a new route on Mount Ololokwe.
Natasha Woodworth, the designer behind Patagonia’s new backcountry ski touring kits, approaches skiing and technical design with the same understated competence.
Observations of unraveling ecosystems from the snow-lovers of Sitka, Alaska.
Snow lovers and professional athletes are mobilizing to elect climate leaders.
Patagonia Fly Fish releases “We Stand for the Water We Stand In” poster.
In the second installment of our “Best of Home” series, photographer, writer and editor Colin Wiseman takes us to Washington State’s gloomy, fern-filled Whatcom County for a signature Pacific Northwest ride.
A climber remembers her first experience with theunexpected on Thalay Sagar.
Eliza Earle, Austin Siadak, Drew Smith on the 2019 fall climbing season in Yosemite.
The Red Desert in southwest Wyoming is the largest unfenced area in the continental United States. In order to raise awareness about this threatened ecosystem, several Wyoming conservation groups have banded together to organize a trail race that brings runners, local stakeholders, and concerned citizens together to experience this place and see exactly what is at stake.
Photo editor Kyle Sparks kicks off our new social media series, “Best of Home,” documenting the everyday, out-the-back-door trails that mountain biking depends on.
Are public lands still “public” when you can’t access them?
An eclectic band of Argentine locals cultivates a grassroots backcountry ski community in one of the world’s most unforgiving mountain ranges.
Running through the most-visited wilderness in the continental United States, rallying to its defense.
A trail running race in southwest Wyoming brings attention to the importance of protecting the largest unfenced area in the contiguous United States.
Dave Rastovich and Greg Long log in and discuss the current state of surfing, its cultural and ecological impacts, and where it’s headed.
Outdoor recreation can be a lifeline for rural economies, but the industry has also benefited from the erasure of Indigenous peoples from their lands.
For a closer look at the dangers a toxic sulfur-ore copper mine poses to the more than 1,000,000 acres of backcountry in the Boundary Waters, please see our accompanying film, “A Northern Light,” (below) Encompassing more than 1,000,000 acres along the US-Canada border, the fresh water, wilderness habitat and sustainable jobs of the Boundary Waters…
BIKE Magazine contributing editor Michael Ferrentino on our perceived right to ride wherever we want.
For three women of color in Wyoming, going into the mountains isn’t about representation—it’s about reclaiming their power, together.
A climber takes a road trip to Bishop and Las Vegas, and breaks down the narrative of who travels and who climbs.
Meet Annie Reickert, the 18-year-old Maui charger Paige Alms is mentoring in the Jaws lineup and beyond.
A bikepacking expedition inspired by one of North America’s most iconic landscapes, and the American Prairie Reserve’s audacious effort to restore it.
Last November, Fitz Caldwell (age 6) finished his first multipitch climb, Sunnyside Bench in Yosemite National Park. He did it with his dad, Tommy.
A Sierra trip with good light and only one case of altitude sickness.
After years of dreaming, Nick Russell and Christian Pondella complete a clean descent on Mount Morrison in the Eastern Sierra.
In Coyhaique, Chile, the ghosts of resource extraction may offer a path toward a new recreation-based future.
Arturo Pugno, a fisherman in the Italian Alps, is the last known practitioner of an ancient style of flyfishing remarkable for its pure simplicity.
Join Kimi Werner on her journey in Lessons from Jeju, where she learns about motherhood, culture, diving and providing from South Korea’s mothers of sea, the haenyeo. “The world doesn’t seem to embrace how badass motherhood is,” says Kimi.
Kimi Werner takes a journey to Jeju Island for lessons in motherhood, culture, diving and providing from South Korea’s “women of the sea” aka the haenyeo.
Captain Liz Clark’s been self-isolating aboard her sailboat Swell since 2005; here she provides her experiences and insight for navigating isolation during a pandemic.
Perched in the Himalaya and once accessible only by trail, India’s Zanskar region has remained largely free of Western influences for over 2,000 years. That could all change as a new highway brings a wave of instant globalization.
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
“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.
There’s nothing more important than having waves a few minutes away.
Changing our dynamics with the mountains can help us be in them longer, and appreciate them more.
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.
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.
Feature: 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.
Listen to the story 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…
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…
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.
Former Navy SEAL Josh Jespersen battles the destruction of wild places he served to protect.
In the 1980s, a group of cyclists in Washington banded together to protect their local trails from illicit activities; 30 years later, that momentum has reshaped the city and preserved a watershed.
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…
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,…
The patchwork history of public lands that transformed the area around a small New Mexico town into a world-class bouldering area We left the Mills Canyon Rim Campground, where we’d been living for three cold January weeks, just before dawn on our last morning in New Mexico. I pulled over to the north side of…
On an incredibly clear, early autumn morning, the aging Yosemite Search and Rescue (YOSAR) van bumped along Tioga Pass Road, taking precariously tight turns at an alarming speed. Twelve of us were crammed in the back, chattering and bracing ourselves against the van’s interior walls. When the road was no longer passable for vehicles, we…
Sampling the Offerings at Crater Lake “Go for Dirksen…” There was considerable static on my little two-way radio, but it was a small miracle we could hear Josh Dirksen at all. We hadn’t seen him since a dinner rendezvous two days prior in Bend. An agreed-upon radio channel and call time had actually worked, as…
Downieville, California was once one of the richest towns in the state, but by the mid-1990s it had gone full bust—until a few local mountain bikers’ began using the local trails to breathe new life into the town, turning the former ghost town into a recreation mecca.
Jenn Shelton traverses the Sierra High Route.
He’s on a mission to be the best climber in the world.
In a nation known for its massive resource extraction, salmon farming is now bigger than all of Chile’s industries except copper mining.
“Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.” —William Ruckelshaus, first administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency A coho salmon the size of my pinky drifts quietly in the shade. It’s hardly distinguishable from the sand below. But Marie-France Roy, a professional snowboarder who does volunteer habitat- enhancement work in her hometown…
In a fossil-rich corner of western Colorado, set against lush agricultural fields, the big-box stores of Grand Junction and the sandstone formations of the Colorado National Monument, you’ll find Fruita. These days, the town is an international mountain-biking destination known for its ribbony, high-desert trails, technical routes overlooking the Colorado River and funky downtown where…
Krissy Moehl reports from the 2019 inaugural takayna ultramarathon “There are no footprints.” Fellow Patagonia ambassador and New Zealand native Grant Guise voiced what I was thinking. Our headlamps and phone lights dimly illuminated the overgrown double-track from Rebecca Road. “If 100 people are starting a race in five minutes, we would see footprints,” he…
At Fletcher Chouinard Designs, the focus is on durable, high-performing equipment that lets you have fun no matter what the ocean is doing. There are never enough hours in a day for Fletcher Chouinard. As a surfer, shaper, kiteboarder and new father, he was really doing the dance. Then along came foilboarding, which has made…
The Best Times Are About Friends, Not Perfection It had been four years since Liz Clark, Léa Brassy and I first spent time together, on a sailing trip through the Tuamotus. We knew we’d found something special from the moment we met, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since. We’re all very individual women and…
Fog from the distant Caspian Sea swirled around us as we left the road, crossed a narrow mountain stream on a rickety footbridge of wornwooden planks, passed a pungent corral full of dank, scruffy sheep, and started the steep climb to Alam Kuh base camp in the Alborz mountain range of Iran. Brittany Griffith, Kate…
On the west face of Mount Whitney, just off the summit of the highest peak in the lower 48, we had to traverse right. For us skiers it was no real issue, a bit of sidestepping and poling would do the trick. Yet, our group was comprised of both two sticks and singular planks, and…
Friday night at the Hot Tomato is not for those in a hurry. Hungry customers grip pints of beer and compare notes on the day’s rides in lines that spill into the parking lot. Music pumps and the staff whirls behind the counter, tossing floury dough, yelling requests to the kitchen, giving each other shit.…
The Trump administration wants to open almost all of America’s coastline to the oil industry, putting our beaches and oceans at serious risk. Fifty years ago, an offshore rig spilled 100,000 barrels of crude oil into California’s Santa Barbara Channel, creating a 35-mile slick that fouled the wave-rich shoreline from Goleta to Ventura. It should…
Steve House joins forces with coach Scott Johnston and athlete Kílian Jornet to develop a comprehensive approach to finding the joy and the payoff of intense training. Even lunges.
Patagonia is thrilled to publish Steve House and Scott Johnston’s second training book, Training for the Uphill Athlete, for which they teamed up with world-class endurance athlete Kílian Jornet. This is an excerpt from the book, now available in Patagonia stores, on Patagonia.com, and at your favorite bookstore or online distributor. I race a lot:…
It was November 1991. I was with two friends and we were at the beginning of a three-month surf trip around the coasts of Spain and Portugal. Mundaka was our starting point. We all agreed that we would be happy just to get something better than the cold, windblown beach breaks we had left behind…
For the slo-mo, bug-bitten, exhausted joy of really long runs. Time expands and compresses on long runs. Moments of navigation or extended discomfort can seem endless, while the landscape sifts by like a slow-moving picture. And then suddenly it’s been hours that slipped by without you noticing, except for the subtle changes in light and…
When you lose your trout stream to climate change, where do you go to find yourself? It was late September and the creek ran clear and low out of the West Elks in southwestern Colorado. My favorite time of year: Through the V of the ravine upstream I could see the shoulders of Mount Gunnison…
When we move through the forest in winter, we’re often left wonderstruck by snow-shrouded trees bent and morphed from years of wear in silent solitude. Their depth of character becomes evident as we weave ourselves into their lives and ecosystems. But we often tell our stories and not theirs. Our new film Treeline follows skiers…
When we move through the forest in winter, we’re often left wonderstruck by snow-shrouded trees bent and morphed from years of wear in silent solitude. Their depth of character becomes evident as we weave ourselves into their lives and ecosystems. But we often tell our stories and not theirs. Our new film Treeline follows skiers…
When we move through the forest in winter, we’re often left wonderstruck by snow-shrouded trees bent and morphed from years of wear in silent solitude. Their depth of character becomes evident as we weave ourselves into their lives and ecosystems. But we often tell our stories and not theirs. Our new film Treeline follows skiers…
When we move through the forest in winter, we’re often left wonderstruck by snow-shrouded trees bent and morphed from years of wear in silent solitude. Their depth of character becomes evident as we weave ourselves into their lives and ecosystems. But we often tell our stories and not theirs. Our new film Treeline follows skiers and…
On establishing a route in Cochamó Valley that might be too hard—but might not. It often blows me away, the apparent randomness that sets the paths leading us through life. Just over a year ago, a friend of mine met Crispin Waddie while working on an oil rig in the North Sea. A member of…
Some families share religion, camping, lavish vacations, opera. Other families go running.
Weather has a way of complicating—and enriching—everything. By the time I top out, it’s snowing and it’s dark. I walk back as far as the rope will let me, and in the flattest spot I can find, I dig a hole and sit, bracing myself. I yell, “Rope-fixed!” repeatedly, but my partners can’t hear me…
After a failed first attempt, three friends return to India’s Mount Nilkantha to confront—and embrace—the terrible, beautiful duality of a life in the mountains.
Quietly, patiently, trees endure. They are the oldest living beings we come to know during our time on earth, living bridges into our planet’s expansive past. Treeline is a film celebrating the forests on which our species has always depended—and around which some skiers and snowboarders etch their entire lives. Follow a group of snow-seekers,…
Never Town explores Australia’s remote southern coastlines—and what surfers are willing to do to keep them wild.
Before we could challenge the snow industry to move to recycled materials, we had to change our thinking, too. There are a number of ways to reduce a garment’s impact, but none more significant than making it out of recycled fabric. Doing so keeps material out of landfills and cuts demand for the petroleum used…
A climber describes her passion for the wildness of the world. My brother’s cheeks smooshed against the blue velour seat and his mouth hung slightly ajar. His gangly legs stretched from door to door, covering the back bench of our family Buick. On the floor, parallel, I fidgeted over the hump dividing passenger and driver…
On clear days in the Pacific Northwest, views of Mount Baker depend on the marine layer and the storms. The 10,781-foot snowcapped dome is often obscured by the shifting weather, and though I’d grown up looking at the mountain, I didn’t see it much this year. But when Jeremy Wolf emailed me about running to…
Patagonia mourns the loss of Tom Frost, Yvon Chouinard’s former climbing and business partner, who passed away Friday morning. Tom, with Yvon, Chuck Pratt and Royal Robbins, made the first ascent of the North America Wall of El Capitan in 1964. He made other notable first ascents with Valley pioneers and others in Yosemite, the…
Six years ago, when that famous wave broke on the Third Ledge at Cloudbreak—tearing down reef, tearing through time, majestically unridden, surfers scrambling for their lives—there was one question left hanging in the air like sea mist. As the last wave washed through the lagoon and slunk back into the ocean, the water still hissing,…
I’m sitting on a sunny bench in some random park in central Oregon holding my eight-month-old daughter in my arms and watching my four-year-old son launch himself down a slide. We’ve been on the road as a family for nearly a month now, and the daily hunt for a decent playground is often as essential…
I recently had the opportunity to tag along with two of the world’s leading bonefish researchers for a weekend of fishing Grand Bahama Island out of East End Lodge. Dr. Aaron Adams serves as the director of science and conservation for Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (BTT), a non-profit based in Miami whose mission is to conserve…
Groggily I stirred in the sweaty musk of my sleeping bag. I’d spent the night on the hard concrete slab directly outside the Independence campground’s pit toilets, with the wafting stench of shit enveloping my fitful slumber. I shut my eyes, trying to forget where I was. My hips were sore, my kidneys ached and…
It starts with the focal beam of a headlamp. Sunrise is more than an hour away and it’s pouring rain. Hands tucked into the sleeves of a jacket, and the pace already quick through the sharp Tasmanian buttongrass—trying to stay warm. There is an urgency to understand this threatened place, to know takayna / Tarkine as…
May 14, 2017, Mother’s Day. Dear friends, yesterday I topped out on the Zodiac on El Capitan. Some of you have loyally and patiently supported me for almost six months while I prepared for and fretted about this adventure. Some of you have no idea what the Zodiac is. No matter. Thanks for being part…
Yesterday, Alex Megos sent one of the most difficult routes in the world, completing the first ascent of Perfecto Mundo (5.15c or 9b+) at the limestone crag of Margalef in Catalunya, Spain. He called it the first hard route of his life. It marked not an apex, but rather a beginning. Which raises a wild…
You know, it’s strange, you grow up as a kid in Australia and you see all these photos of the Great Barrier Reef and you hear all about it, and you feel you have some understanding or knowledge about the reef, but until you actually go up there and see it firsthand you can’t ever…
On the Argentine side of the Patagonian Andes, the Chaltén Massif is a dense range of extremely steep mountains, famous for Cerro Torre and Chaltén itself (the native name for the peak also known as Fitz Roy). I have been coming to this mountain range on an annual basis since 2003, often for a three-month…
The map showed an unbroken line contoured to the ridge. We started running along that line and ran past its end, into a space between two worlds. A few orange ribbons hung on branches in natural openings, marking what might eventually be the beginning of a trail. We followed it. When a gravel slope appeared…
It had been a while. I don’t climb in weather like this. I stay inside and drink coffee. But I dutifully marched through the whiteout, following Simon as he navigated by compass toward the highland plateau of Cairn Gorm. He was searching for a particular block of rock, from which we would rappel into nowhere…
Last year I decided to truly dig in to my effort to raise awareness about epilepsy, a disease that affects 1 out of every 26 people in the United States, by using my social media and long-distance paddling skills. I worked hard to prepare for a 17-mile paddle, reached out to the Epilepsy Foundation of…
It was about an hour before dark. The spot had been a lot easier to find than I thought—five minutes from the main road and within easy viewing distance from a cliff. A few weeks earlier a friend had told me he had seen “something breaking” along this stretch of coast. This must be it,…
After an hour’s sleep, I wake to the sound of fat raindrops pelting the deck. The noise quickly escalates into a deafening torrent, and I push up off the settee and climb up the steps. Glancing at the radar screen on my way up, I see a massive squall blacking out the entire 8-mile radius…
The Continental Divide Trail is not often traveled, and rarely by bike. The sheer remoteness makes access tricky. With this in mind, Scott Rinckenberger, Justin Olsen and I set out for 11 days on our bikes, pedaling northeast from Chief Joseph Pass. We wanted to shed some light on this beautiful area. The second night…
When I think about climbing, I don’t think about summits. I see serrated ridgelines rising and falling between earth and sky, and sunlight slipping between spires, casting the shadows of giants onto rubble-strewn rivers of ice below, curving, moving, bending with the passage of time. I remember my partners and I, roped together with no…
Fly fishing guide Ansil Saunders recalls his time in the boat with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In May 1981, I set out in a home-built Hawaiian sailing canoe from South Point on the island of Hawai‘i to my home on Kaua‘i. It was an adventure that would take me from the southern-most to the northern-most point of the Hawaiian Islands. I named my canoe Holopuni, “to sail everywhere,” and I’ve been…
Besides a lighthouse, a dirt trail and a few small structures, Isla De Todos Santos is almost completely undeveloped. The only permanent resident is the lighthouse keeper, who greeted us in Spanish as we approached after stepping ashore on a bright October morning. Those who choose to live in solitude fascinate me and I wanted…
“The notion that there’s one dream that we’re all after, and agreed upon ways in which you can verify that you are indeed living that dream drives me crazy,” says Forest McBrian. “Everyone’s dream is a little bit different. If there is a dream that we all lust after, then we’re all just trying to…
As we sat on the tailgate of the truck, our frozen breath swirling under the light of a headlamp, we heard the first distant thud of rubber on dirt. The approaching runner was still a mile away, but you can hear just about anything that happens in the dense stillness of 2 a.m. in the…
On January 23, it was snowing so hard that the sound, the roaring hiss of snow hitting the ground, woke me up at 3 a.m. I threw on a jacket and walked outside into the certain knowledge that California’s nearly five-year snow drought was over. It was the deepest, most stacked I’d ever seen my…
Pain pulses in my right foot to the rhythm of my heartbeats. I know something’s wrong, but the only option is to ignore it. The swelling presses against my shoe, but I’m afraid if I take it off, I’ll never get it back on. Still, I feel like I can’t complain. My foot is still…
We were off-the-couch bikers, versed in miles per hour, not miles per day. After seven days of biking to ski, we needed a rest day. Hot springs mandatory. We remembered a shortcut to the Green Church pools, which was 9 miles shorter than the highway route. Shortcuts—with deeply rutted, washboard dirt roads on bicycles loaded…
Searching for adventure right out their backdoor, a group of skiers and snowboarders set off on a bicycle powered backcountry ski adventure along the Eastern Sierra. (It's as fun as it sounds)
As a younger climber I was totally committed to big long routes, often in the mountains and often involving a lot of suffering. The beauty of each place is what got me there, and the partnerships kept me there. I wanted to be in those big landscapes, sleeping on the wall, scoured by the wind,…
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks—a whirlwind of events, to say the least. Seems like the world got turned over in less than a month. Natural disasters are igniting on all sides of the globe. Could it be that the planet is trying to tell us something? Is humanity in harm’s way? Nature tends…
In honor of the release of A Mountaineer’s Life by Allen Steck, Patagonia Books is pleased to share this excerpt from chapter eight. Camp II was a desperate and fearful place. We spent seven days there in severe weather. We could not leave the tents without going onto the fixed lines; the weakened cornice behind us…
Jump in the van with Marie-France Roy and Alex Yoder as they weave their way through Scotland, exploring how personal accountability allows for universal land access and visiting old farm shelters that support mountain folks as they rove freely across the country.
If you were to ask me what I did on the Danube River during my 21-day solo paddle from Ingolstadt, Germany to Belgrade, Serbia, my answer is simple. I fought crime, outran bad guys in speedboats with machine guns, almost died a few times from river monsters and 20-foot waves … oh yeah, it was…
Punta de Lobos is awarded World Surfing Reserve status—an all too rare conservation success story.
We are so sad to learn of the deaths of Hayden Kennedy and Inge Perkins. Malinda and I knew Hayden all his years. His parents, Michael and Julie Kennedy, are good friends who passed on to their son their love of climbing and skiing, and their ethics. The family also shared, in the presence of…
Back in 2006, Patagonia hosted a social event in its downtown Denver retail store in conjunction with the Fly Fishing Retailer trade show. At the event, a colleague and I addressed the attendees about an emerging threat to the world’s most productive wild salmon fishery in Bristol Bay. Later that evening, I met a young…
I’m not a scientist. But I am a fisherman of more than 70 years, and I’ve seen firsthand that of the myriad threats facing cold-water fish all over the world, global warming is the most dire. Water all over the planet is heating up in response to climate change, and our cold-water fish are in…
The jacket was probably red once but it’s now more of a muddy pink with an overlay of permanent scuff and smudge. The zipper, replaced four years ago, stands out a little brighter. The interior sports a size tag (Kids XXS) but has no hand-me-down label—it predates that Patagonia tradition. Around 13 years ago, it…
About five minutes from where I live, there is a small village called Tapia de Casariego. The waves at Tapia are not world-class, but they can get very good on the right conditions. Tapia is also very significant in Spanish surfing history, being one of the birthplaces of surfing in this country. Most of the…
It started on a hot afternoon in May, deep in Bears Ears National Monument. Four of us had been going hard for a couple of days and the fatigue from difficult miles was stacking up. One of us was struggling. It might have been lack of training, or perhaps improper fueling for back-to-back 12-hour days…
Lasting Function and a Commitment to Repair In a landscape of disposable ski and snowboard fashion, fixing and keeping your snow gear in play is the most radical act we know. On average, most of us keep a piece of clothing for just three years, yet the materials and processes for making any new garment…
When I was ten years old, I was a hyperactive kid who had problems staying focused for a long period of time. One day I was sitting in class at primary school, listening to a subject that didn’t really interest me. Bored, I started playing with the scissors that I found in my school bag.…
Robby Naish once spoke about the irony of traveling the world to compete. He spent 30 years filling passport after passport, but never really saw anything other than the beach. It’s an easy trap to fall into. With today’s high-paced society and accurate weather forecasts, traveling surfers and kite surfers often focus too much on…
Teaching your kids to fish is smart. Having Yvon Chouinard teach your kids to fish is genius.
As I wake, I become aware of the shovel-scraping-asphalt croak of a blue heron, or the brilliant complex cascading song of the winter wren, or the yammering calls of the kingfisher being chased by an accipiter. In the fall a flock of kinglets, moving through the trees and shrubs surrounding our camp, deliver their pure,…
“Picture walking through a parking lot with a ski mask rolled up on your head and a pistol in your pocket. You’re getting closer to the bank, your heart’s beating faster, adrenaline’s starting to rush through your head, and you can’t believe you’re about to do what you’re about to do,” says Roland Thompson. “When…
It didn’t take long for Ben Wilkinson to figure out that there was freedom to be had in working for himself—and that freedom was the first requirement if he wanted to go surfing whenever the waves got huge. “I left home when I was 16,” he remembers, “which was old enough in my eyes. But…
“We just have to run 20, 30 or 50 miles a day over some mountains. What could go wrong?” When I received my itinerary from Jenn Shelton to run the Tour du Mont Blanc, I took a hard swallow of quickly drying saliva, knowing that my background as a middle-distance track racer (specializing in the 5K)…
Dear Kaz and Irenna, Today you are 10-months old. This week, the last of winter’s snow left our garden, and the final crocus patch bloomed and closed just in time to escape your attempts to eat its purple petals. I spent our first winter together pulling you behind me in a tandem sled that gave…
Filmmaking. Some people follow the storyboard, some follow their gut. Keith Malloy? Ten parts gut, zero parts plan. Well, I take that back. He’s got a plan, it’s just hard to discern it behind that beard. Fortunately, he’s got some friends (and a legendary wife) who know how to organize, use cameras, record sound, scuba dive…
A sea of a thousand rocky thumbs. Which one do you take? Balancing trustingly on ten millimeters of rocky protrusion, your index finger wraps around the top of a feldspar knob. Don’t breathe too deeply or it might push you off. You have it, but you feel your balance waver. For a millisecond you’re falling…
I can’t help but say or think or feel it: this is Abbey Land. Despite the various crusts that have formed over the years since Abbey was alive and well in the Moab area, this is still his place. Of course, it is the earth first, shifting and sliding and tectonically galloping—and not giving a…
The Secretary of the Interior arrived in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument midday on May 10, 2017. He came to perform an “assessment” of the monument—to see whether the current boundaries overstepped their task of protecting natural and cultural resources and spurring economic growth. It was raining, windy and cold, but hundreds of locals gathered at…
I’ve just returned to Seattle from a trip to the Central Alaska Range, which was shorter than most with only two weeks of camping at Kahiltna Base Camp, but more successful than some Alaska Range trips I’ve done that were three times the length. In May 2012, I attempted to solo Begguya—the third-highest peak in…
“MISHEEEEEEEE!” boomed Cecilia, almost crushing Michi’s large frame with a huge hug as we both walked in the door. It was 2016 and the twenty-eighth time Michi (pronounced Mickey) Mohr had come to Madeira Island. Even though he was based in Munich, he knew the waves of Madeira as well as anyone, and could more…
As I write these words, the future of this place we humans now call Indian Creek is up in the balance. In December of 2016, President Obama designated Bears Ears—in which Indian Creek is located—a national monument under the Antiquities Act. But lawmakers are pushing to rescind this designation in favor of privatization and development.…
Back in Tokyo, for a break. Just in need of a change, you know, “to get away from things.” Having worked hard all summer long, there couldn’t be more of a contrast between reeling in salmon on a river in Swedish Lapland and heading to Tokyo. For me, working hard means fishing hard and playing…
A crash course in crewing a sailing canoe.
Eight hours earlier, we were a canoe team without paddles. After a last-minute transport change, the Bad News Bears of outrigger racing had arrived at the start of the Moloka‘i Hoe having forgotten our most important equipment in another truck. It was a tense hour or so until our paddles finally arrived. But now, halfway…
Like the rest of the world’s climbing community, we at Patagonia are deeply saddened by the death of renowned Swiss climber and mountaineer Ueli Steck on April 30, 2017, in Nepal. Below, alpinist Steve House remembers his friend. “There are dreams that are worth a certain amount of risk.”—Ueli Steck Ueli was, and always will be,…
Professional photographer Andrew Burr reaffirms his skill set in Mongolia.
“It can’t be a route if there aren’t any holds, Sonnie,” Alex called from the ground. I could see him down there, sitting back in his harness comfortably, looking up at me, grinning. I was roughly 60 feet in the air, on the opposite end of the 9mm rope he was holding, and searching for…
Snowboarding began as a way of riding waves in their frozen form. There are still plenty of snow shredders who take their inspiration from surf style—and plenty of surfers who are just as stoked to get up into the mountains. Each year at Mt. Bachelor, the Gerry Lopez Big Wave Challenge celebrates the links between…
Almost a decade ago, I’d heard stories of mystical right points peeling forever without another soul in sight. What surfer addicted to logging wouldn’t crave to check it out, even though it meant ignoring travel warnings and venturing into a region suffering from civil unrest? Young, naive and most probably foolish, I set off on…
As I step into MAS Active-Leisureline, a Fair Trade Certified factory that makes Patagonia products near Colombo, Sri Lanka, the first thing that confronts my senses is the sound. Row after row of clamorous cutting and sewing machinery is being operated by a few hundred workers, all dressed in bright green uniforms and working under…
I woke in a daze and waddled, still in my sleeping bag, bottom unzipped, feet out, toward the camp kitchen to greet the team. The morning was brisk and we’d gone light on clothes to save weight. My hands snuck out to grasp a cup of hot coffee. Two bull bison emerged in the mist…
I was looking for real mountain wilderness in Europe. All of the roads, ski lifts, huts, dams and avalanche safety reports make it really easy and comfortable to access great ski touring, climbing and freeriding in the central European Alps. Some of the huts feel more like hotels than shelters for mountaineers. The price we…
Everyone in the Patagonia family is saddened to hear about the passing of Royal Robbins on March 14, 2017. Some in the company knew him personally, many of us did not. But we are, to this day, greatly inspired by his pioneering spirit and commitment to clean climbing. In honor of his friend, Patagonia founder…
It started as a joke: “Do you think the interior has snow?” Marie-France Roy posed the question. She, Kael Martin, Sean Black and I were eating a stale breakfast in a Campbell River, BC, hotel lobby. It was warm and murky outside. That kind of murk which can only mean January drizzle on Canada’s west…
For those of you who don’t know surfing, Gerry Lopez is an icon of the sport. Since the late sixties, Gerry has made surfers from around the world hoot with hyper fascination as he dazzled them with his tube riding prowess. His flowing, effortless grace in heavy-water situations is revered by surfers worldwide. Famous for…
Digging deep to climb the three hardest routes on Longs Peak in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park.
One Christmas, my brother gifted me a copy of 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. I hate those kind of books. He and his girlfriend could both name-drop dozens of the tick-listed destinations, but I was mostly perplexed. What did you do there? Came, saw, conquered—never to look back. Judginess harshed my holiday spirit.…
Gerry Lopez first surfed Uluwatu in 1974. The fabled Balinese wave was pristine, magical and empty (more on that below). Forty years later, he returned to host a yoga retreat, get a few waves between classes and help preserve Uluwatu for future generations. In this short film, Gerry uses Uluwatu and surfing as metaphors for change—and…
I was lucky to grow up in the valley of the Haute-Durance, located in the Hautes-Alpes not far from Briançon and the border to Italy. Home was a wild and protected area where my parents introduced me to the joys of mountain trails, skiing on beautiful slopes through evergreens and climbing on pristine cliffs. Later…
“I just want to stay home and ride wind lips,” Josh Dirksen says. A simple statement. A simple goal. It was April 2014. We’d been camped out on Central Oregon’s South Sister for a couple of days. Getting to our midmountain camping spot had taken some time, but not a lot of nerve. It was…
“The real conflict of the beach is not between sea and shore […] but between Man and Nature. On the beach, Nature has achieved a dynamic equilibrium that is alien to Man and his static sense of equilibrium. Once a line has been established, whether it be a shoreline or a property line, Man unreasonably…
For Canadian skiers Leah Evans and Jasmin Caton, winter is life at hyperspeed.
British Columbia doesn’t need another ski resort, especially one in the middle of the wild Purcell Mountains.
Every so often you come across someone whose actions and demeanor leave you both inspired and in a state of wonder. Such was the case when I first encountered Ramón Navarro. I was 19 years old at the time, spending an extended winter stint on the fabled North Shore of O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, hoping to further…
“This planet is so powerful and diverse, but also fragile. I felt that building a smaller home, out of as many local, natural and recycled resources as possible, would be a wonderful way for me to remain more connected and grounded.”—Marie-France Roy You can tell a lot about a person by their bookshelf. I’d repeatedly…
I took a hex off the rack and pushed it far into the crack. The rime was thick, and the crack’s edges blurry. The hex mushed into the rime and stuck. I beat on it with my ice axe just to be sure, then gave it a swift tug. It ripped straight out. Technical winter…
One of my earliest outdoor climbing experiences was at the crags around the quaint countryside village of Dunkeld. An escarpment of Schist can be seen escaping from the deep forest high on the hill just beyond the village. It was here that I would spend many a day for ten years. The climbing here is unique.…
As I swung my tools into the unconsolidated snowy headwall and tried to catch something that would hold my weight, I looked down and saw Jason and Caro huddled together at a hanging belay. In the gathering dark, they were trying to avoid the constant barrage of snow and ice I was creating. We’d been…
“You don’t have to be crazy,” Ty likes to say, “but it helps.” I’ve stopped counting how many times over the years these words have described our harebrained outings. Right then, I was trying to focus on surviving the current one. Anything that actually resembled running had stopped hours ago. The sun was shining, but…
The national park system may not have saved my life but it definitely allowed me to truly discover and continually define it. Following an abysmal 13th grade at an entry level university and an equally lamentable year employed in one of the most dangerous professions, I bolted west to manifest my destiny. After a summer…
Ten years after its original publication, Penguin Books has released a completely revised and expanded edition of Yvon Chouinard’s classic memoir, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman, with more than 40 percent new material and featuring a new foreword by Naomi Klein, author of the bestselling book This Changes Everything. In the…
I have epilepsy. I don’t know if I was born with it. The better conclusion is I developed it from a series of concussions in high school. But truly, no doctor will say for certain. Such is the story of epilepsy. I was diagnosed on my way to my freshman year at the University of…
The musings of a dirtbag’s disciple.
A portrait of the man who made more first ascents than any other North American climber, wrote beautiful and meticulous mountain guides of the wild areas he loved, and defined the “dirtbag” archetype in a way that no one else ever has or could.
My work with adaptive athletes began when my brother Sean was injured almost 25 years ago. He’s paralyzed from the waist down and lives life from a wheelchair where he more than rolls with it, he thrives. Ever since we topped out on El Capitan for the first time in 2005—that’s 3,000 feet of vertical…
There’s no place on Earth like southeastern Utah’s Bears Ears region. From world-class crack climbing at Indian Creek, biking singletrack in the Abajo Mountains, backpacking in Grand Gulch to floating the San Juan River, adventure abounds here. But it’s not just valuable for climbing and biking. Home to more than 100,000 archaeological sites, it is…
I couldn’t feel my feet. We had crossed the frigid river too many times to count, and locating a passable route along the narrow canyon floor required scrambling, crashing through willows and crisscrossing the river over and over again. We’d covered a mere six miles in three hours, and I began to think we’d bitten…
We are now third and fourth generation surfers. We have the confidence to leave the stereotypes behind. We’re the scroungiest dirtbags one day and then return to the urban environment as activists for change the next. Two time periods epitomize the style and sensibility of what we are working to create in the coming years.…
“Great climb, eh?” said a voice from up and over my right shoulder. “Yeah,” I replied, while clipping the anchor on After Midnight one of Mount Wellington’s most prized pitches and no giveaway at 24 (or 5.11d in Yosemite terms), “incredible, actually.” “Where you from?” the voice asked. “Canada!” I said. I looked up to…
After El Capitan, my desire for wall climbing diminished. Perhaps it was growing older, or perhaps it was just my surroundings. The Black Canyon was no longer an hour away. Yosemite was no longer in my waking dreams every day. Durango was so close to the desert, and thus the desert became all that mattered…
At first light, a toucan comes flying over the patio and sits in an old tree in front of the house. The bird stares at me as I have my first sip of coffee. Then another toucan lands in the tree, followed by a whole flock. I get up and snap a picture of the…
“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. ” – Edward Abbey Scale is a hard thing to get a handle on. We pour over maps to try to understand a landscape. Better yet, sometimes we get to fly over it, circling the valleys and mountains to get a real lay of the land.…
My previous Patagonia climbing season, climbing last year mostly with Marc-André Leclerc and Alex Honnold, had been my most successful yet. Among a bunch of other activity was the first ascent of the Travesía del Oso Buda, the first repeat and direct variation to El Arca de los Vientos, and a nearly complete, one-day Torre…
“Fish, two o’clock,” shouted Norman Chumaceiro, my guide to tarpon on the idyllic island of Curacao, 40 miles off the coast of Venezuela. “Now they’re at nine! And six. They’re everywhere!” he exclaimed. If anyone could help me come tight on a tarpon it’s Chumaceiro, who, along with his friend Albert Macares, are the only…
Both of my kids love their science classes in school, and Skyla often mentions wanting to be a marine biologist when she grows up. So when the field biologists from the Wild Fish Conservancy invited us to participate in some beach-seine sampling, as part of their project to assess juvenile salmon habitat around Puget Sound, we jumped…
It’s 2002. Dan Malloy, the youngest of the Malloy brothers, is surfing in a contest at Sunset Beach on Oʻahu. He is 25 years old and upholding a foundation built by his two older brothers, which has made him the most hopeful of the Malloy clan to excel in the competitive surfing world. But it’s…
The road has been my home for the better part of my adult life. That elusive space not quite here or there, but simply a collection of moments in between. Let’s rephrase that. The road has been where I’ve felt most at home for the better part of my entire life. Sure, I’ve had homes…
In early 2014, I spent some time exploring the coastline around southern Chile looking for waves and generally just checking out a place that I had always wanted to visit. I ended up heading as far south as Chiloe which is the first island on the coast of where Patagonia starts. It had been a…
Rolo and a handful of stoked Patagonia ambassadors and friends will be sharing images and stories of their adventures throughout the Patagonia climbing season. Follow along at patagonia.com/vidapatagonia. If you’re planning to make a climbing trip to the area, tag your photos with #VidaPatagonia to appear on the page. The peaks of the Chaltén Massif…
The pig squeals and groans in protest as I wrestle it back onto my sweaty body. I groan even louder. Seventy pounds of ropes, cams, pins, beaks, portaledges, tents, food, fuel and everything else for a month-long big-wall expedition bulge from my haul bag, digging deep into my spine. I’ve already carried two of these…
Feeling lost. Feeling far from help. Far from a store, motors and people. I am existing in a world much bigger than I can comprehend. What I can see is all that is. I’m alive to find what I can’t yet see. There are two times of day: light and dark. Food is fuel for…
“Just go in,” said the woman’s voice. “There’s nobody there at the moment but the house is always left open. Yours is room two, upstairs.” I was calling ahead to the small guesthouse where we had booked a room. Slightly bewildered, I looked across at my traveling buddy, Martín. “It’s cool man, aquí no roban,”…
It is with heavy hearts that we share news of the passing of two Patagonia climbing ambassadors, Kei Taniguchi and Kenshi Imai, in two separate incidents. Kei Taniguchi passed away on December 22 at Mount Kurodake in Hokkaido, Japan. Our deepest condolences and best wishes go out to her family and friends. She was 43 years…
Fire in the Belly What were we thinking? Was it arrogant of us to go straight up this blank-looking headwall? The chances that this line would go free were pretty slim. Was it the aesthetics of the blankness and steepness that had attracted us? Why didn’t we choose to follow more obvious features that were…
For 24 years, residents of the Kootenays in British Columbia, Canada, have been largely opposed to a proposed year-round ski resort in the heart of the Central Purcell Mountains—a region that encompasses both cherished alpine backcountry and critical core grizzly bear habitat. At the time this story was going to print, the provincial government had…
Winter in Iceland is ridiculously unpredictable. It can be beaten by wind and swell one minute and infused with silence and solitude the next. Drawn by the appeal of its wilderness, my partner and I dreamed of traveling there for a long time. Combining both of our passions for surfing and exploring, we decided to…
Jasmin Caton and Leah Evans both live and work in southeastern British Columbia: Caton as a ski guide and co-owner of Valhalla Mountain Touring; Evans as founder and director of the freeski program Girls Do Ski in Revelstoke. Caton has been skiing the backcountry since she was a child, while Evans comes from a hard-charging,…
On Saturday October 3, 2015, over 300 people—fishermen, Native Americans, farmers, orca lovers, business owners, students, salmon advocates, kayakers, and conservationists—took to the lower Snake River in southeastern Washington, a short distance from the Lower Granite Dam. Together, this diverse group formed the “Free the Snake Flotilla.” They were a representative slice of the movement…
If you didn’t look close you just might miss it, and we do. Gazing across the Columbia River Basin into the morning light on the Purcell Mountains, we pass right by the Radium Hot Springs municipal offices. It’s not difficult to do here, where human presence is a mere asterisk on the seemingly infinite word…
By Luke Nelson There is something unnerving about waking up shivering. I rolled over and did a dozen or so push-ups in an attempt to get warm enough to fall back asleep. My commotion led to Cody pressing the light on his watch. “It’s almost 4 a.m.,” I mumbled. “I’ve been cold for a while,”…
By Jessica Salcido For the past few years, a small group of kiters here at Patagonia have participated in Kiteboarding 4 Cancer, a spectacularly beautiful kite race in Hood River, Oregon designed to raise money for the survivor-focused nonprofit, Athletes 4 Cancer. Cancer has impacted all of our lives—we’ve loved and cared for friends, family,…
As my friends and I get older, the threat of slipping into a normal lifestyle becomes more real. I have to mow the lawn, get the oil and filter changed in the car, go to the dentist. These days, given a choice, I would rather do a few sport pitches and get a good workout…
The cacophonous boom of that explosion will forever resonate within me. With the flip of a switch, one hundred years of destructive history began to wash away. It was a new day—a day in which the Elwha was finally free. At long last, its waters could once again run unabated to the sea and its…
In its deep summer slumber, it is hard to gauge the latent fury this place can serve up to the unsuspecting. There are, however, clues to the power of this landscape that can both give and take in equal measure. The weathered faces of naked shale give evidence to deadly drops of tonnage. The natural…
His hands were unlike other farmers. Not calloused, hard, cracked and stiff, but broad, flexible and quick. He seemed not to mind the thick white suit we were both wearing or the suffocating screen helmet. I felt like I was going to melt away. The deeply forested Waiho‘i Valley on Maui has countless wild bee…
Honestly, we went to Iceland to catch big fish. It was that simple. We wanted to bask in the late Arctic sun while bringing dreamy meter-long Atlantic salmon to hand. We wanted to drink whiskey afterwards, go to bed and do it again every day we could. What surprised us wasn’t our ability to check…
This op-ed was originally published in the Sacramento Bee on July 23, 2015. On May 7, the Yuba Salmon Partnership Initiative (YSPI) shared a plan that would create the first “trap and haul” program of its kind in California. Trap and haul involves capturing fish, putting them in trucks, and moving them up or down…
Fifteen years ago, I was drawn to southeastern Utah by the vast tracts of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and National Forest lands where I could find the freedom to explore and climb and have an adventure—rarely seeing another human other than my climbing partners or an intrepid hiker. I loved the feeling that my…
Exactly one month ago I tightened the last bolt in the last hold on the first-ever climbing boulder in Mozambique—and then climbed on it with over 1,000 Mozambican school children. Tonight, over dinner in Central Mozambique, I made a promise to climb a 12-pitch run-out granite slab with a Mozambican farmer named Elias who’s never…
The official grand opening of the new Patagonia National Park in southern Chile is scheduled for late November but the park, even now, is attracting thousands of visitors including three of our trail running ambassadors who, in January, ran parts of the 100-plus miles of trails already constructed. Patagonia-the-company funded part of that construction but…
When the first surfers turned up at Mundaka around the late 1960s and set their eyes upon those perfect lefthanders, they had no reason to think the waves wouldn’t be there forever. Almost half a century later, we now know that Mundaka is a very special wave, perhaps unique in the world; not just because…
I got on a plane in Vancouver around midday on April 16. I was exhausted. After a four-month season in Patagonia, my six weeks back in North America turned out much less restful than I had imagined. Conditions had been excellent, and I couldn’t keep myself from going out in the mountains a bunch. The…
The Mont Blanc range is not a very big mountain range, but it is steep. It has become a kind of laboratory for skiers, mountaineers and climbers from around the world. Laurent and I consider ourselves somewhere is the middle as we are ski-mountaineers, IFMGA mountain guides and part of the Peakpowder guide team. The…
“It starts as rain or snow falling on Scotland’s highest mountain—Ben Nevis. Either as rain or melting snow it percolates the thin layer of peat soil until it reaches the granite rock and unable to penetrate it, runs under the surface until emerging in Coire Leish or Coire na Ciste. The outflows from these two…
Born and raised at Punta de Lobos, Ramón Navarro found his passion riding the biggest waves on the planet.
My friend Leonard Lee works in the oil industry across San Juan County, Utah, both on and off the Navajo Nation. He oversees oil and gas wells and the crews who work them. So it may surprise you that Leonard is also the Vice-Chairman of a Native American organization that intends to protect 1.9 million…
Ultrarunners Krissy Moehl, Jeff Browning and Luke Nelson run 106 miles through the newly opened Patagonia Park in Chile, to celebrate and highlight Conservacion Patagonica’s efforts to re-wild and protect this vast landscape.
How do you tell the story of 106 miles in two days in a short and concise manner? It’s nearly impossible—similar to trying to restore an ecosystem and build a national park. So many little steps, so many little stories. Our route would take us through the new Patagonia Park. Starting north in the town…
Things have changed. That old “live simply” ethos Jenna and I lived by, roaming around the desert and mountains in our ’83 Dodge Prospector van (with a sci-fi mural on the hood and velvet interior), feels a bit like a past life. Climbing these days is tightly packed between a life of airports, computers, conference…
By Michel Caron Not long ago, I joined Jasmine and my girlfriend, Marie-Pier, for a day of cross-country skiing in Craftsbury, Vermont. Marie-Pier is a certified ski instructor and Jasmine is a strong skier while I, uh, I am able to follow for some time until I find something else worth discovering and photographing. That…
I’ve had a few pets on Swell over the last nine years—most of them made their way aboard on their own. I don’t mind the geckos that often show up in a banana stock. They hide, so I rarely get to see them, but they are harmless and make cute coughing noises in the evening.…
An open-pit mining boom is underway in northern British Columbia, Canada. The massive size and location of the mines—at the headwaters of major salmon rivers that flow across the border into Alaska—has Alaskans concerned over pollution risks posed to their multi-billion dollar fishing and tourism industries. These concerns were heightened with the August 4, 2014…
The Copp-Dash Inspire Award, sponsored by Black Diamond Equipment, La Sportiva, Mountain Hardwear and Patagonia (with additional in-kind support from Adventure Film Festival, the American Alpine Club, Jonny Copp Foundation and Sender Films), announced the 2015 winners of the climbing grant established in memory of American climbers Jonny Copp and Micah Dash who were killed…
When I lived in Chicago I ran like there was no tomorrow. Sundays had me running long steady miles, Mondays were a set up for double-down Tuesdays, and Wednesday’s leg screaming repeats on the University of Illinois’s Circle Campus track provided the week’s endorphin highlight. A friend whom I trained with told me about ultramarathon…
![Alex Megos Makes the Third Ascent of Lucid Dreaming (V15) [Updated with video]](https://www.patagonia.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/6a00d8341d07fd53ef01bb07e602af970d-768x512.jpg.webp)
Patagonia climber Alexander Megos made the third ascent of Lucid Dreaming (V15) this week on the Grandpa Peabody boulder in the Buttermilks. It was a double-milestone effort for the German phenom. “Feels like a DREAM but it’s not. Finally took down my hardest boulder ever and as well my longest project ever!” Alex said on…
We are saddened today to give you the tragic news that Patagonia ski ambassador Dave Rosenbarger—“American Dave” as we knew him—died on Friday, January 23 when he was caught in an avalanche while skiing on the Italian side of the Mont Blanc Massif. Dave has been a part of the Patagonia family since 2010. Our hearts…
On January 14, 2015, Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson made the first free ascent of The Dawn Wall on Yosemite’s El Capitan. Today we’re happy to share this exclusive video of Tommy climbing pitch 15, rated 5.14c—the first footage released by the film crew on the wall. “The crux holds of pitch 15 are some…
We’ve been watching the updates with bated breath and now all of us at Patagonia are thrilled to congratulate Tommy Caldwell and his partner Kevin Jorgeson on the first free ascent of the Dawn Wall in Yosemite Valley. Tommy first conceived the idea of the climb in 2007 and, seven years later, summited the route…
I’m sitting in a bar with Doug Chabot, director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center. The man has more enthusiasm for snow science, alpine climbing and general life than about anyone I know. And the best part: it’s infectious. We are both a couple beers deep before our pizza arrives. The conversation floats, with…
Long considered impossible, coveted by many and attempted by a few, the Fitz Traverse has fueled the imaginations of climbers in Patagonia for decades.
After my second trip to Southern Chile this past July, I have absolutely fallen in love with its simple way of life. More and more nowadays, it seems there is so much going on that it’s impossible to get ahead. Chile doesn’t know or care about that. Life there is content to just continue rolling…
It’s early morning and our pre-dawn bedroom is see-your-breath freezing. But I’m curled up with my daughter Lily, snug in our cozy nest of blankets. I’m in that happy place between dreaming and waking. A habitual late-riser, I relish long, lazy mornings. I love adventure, I just prefer to initiate it after 9:00 a.m. and…
President Obama’s recent protection of Bristol Bay from oil and gas exploration may feel like a victory for fish and the environment, but I think it’s really about time and money. Which in this case, is just as good. Here’s why: Oil and gas reserves, as we know, are limited by however much is already…
By Greta Hyland I dream of running, not figuratively but literally. In my dreams it is effortless, exhilarating. When I wake from these dreams I feel pumped and want to jump out of bed and run—there have been times at night when I have. For a while, running was a nightmare. I got tired. My…
Every autumn since I’ve known Tommy we have loaded up our van, left our home in Estes Park, Colorado, and driven to Yosemite National Park for him to work on his mega-project, The Dawn Wall, on the monolithic El Capitan. After we had Fitz we couldn’t wait to share this breathtaking place with him. This…
At the wind-scoured southern tip of Argentina, between the vast ice cap and the rolling estepas of Patagonia, rises a 10,262-foot tower of ice and rock named Cerro Torre. Considered by many the most beautiful and compelling mountain in the world, it draws the finest and most devoted technical alpinists from around the globe. Reinhold…
The wind gusts, blowing spray from the water lapping on the banks of Lago General Carrera. Here I stand, eyes closed, feeling the cool mist on my sunburnt cheeks. When I open my eyes it’s still there, it feels like a dream, but it’s not—Patagonia spreads out all around me. I’ve long dreamt of seeing…
I anticipated the change with dread and excitement. My son was leaving the nest for college and I was determined to return to my former goal-driven climbing lifestyle. Fred Becky would be proud of me. After a night of mourning, alone under the desert stars, I promptly returned home, found my address book, and started…
There are only a few people that have truly played a pivotal role in the advancement of surfboard design, people whose contribution was so impactful that it changed surfing in massive ways forever. George Greenough would make any surf buff’s list as one of the greats, but for me I’m comfortable saying he’s flat-out the…
Until recently in our evolutionary history as a species, humans couldn’t extract resources faster than those resources were renewed. Even if we wanted to we couldn’t because Nature put a limit on the amount we could physically take. Then, sometime within the last few thousand years, we crossed a tipping point and now we are…
It all began five years ago, as many things do these days, with a simple email to a few of us Squamish cracks hounds from a friend in Okanagan Falls, British Columbia. Hey Boys, Check out these roof cracks. I think they’ll go free. Peace out. – Doug Doug and his wife Janet are longtime…
By Juilen Fillion, photos by Vincent Bergeron Montreal might be known for its welcoming French Canadian community, the beautiful women and the famous Poutine—French fries topped with a light brown gravy-like sauce and cheese curds—but it’s also known for a standing river wave called Habitat 67. This endless wave located on the center shore of Montreal…
Yesterday, National Geographic pulled the curtain back on the winners of their 10th annual Adventurers of the Year, “each selected for his or her remarkable achievement in exploration, adventure sports, conservation, and humanitarianism.” Four of the winners are from the Patagonia family and we couldn't be happier for them. Tommy Caldwell for completing the Fitz…
Patagonia is proud to announce our latest publication: Barry Blanchard’s memoir, The Calling. With heart-pounding descriptions of avalanches and treacherous ascents, Blanchard chronicles his transformation from a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks to one of the most respected alpinists in the world. This is the story of the culture of climbing…
All stories have to start somewhere. This one started over a cold beer when Marko Prezelj, Tadej Krišelj and I were sitting on the porch of Marko´s house on a warm, early summer evening discussing future plans. The debate evolved and ideas flew by when Marko briefly mentioned that together with Klemen Mali, more than…
How could we describe the feeling of taking our first shower in over two months? Mmmm… We have just hit civilization in Greenland. These last three weeks have been very exciting in many ways! Adventurous climbing, a close polar bear encounter (without anything to defend ourselves) and a very scary crossing back to Greenland which…
Earlier this week, we received the tragic news that Liz Daley, a former Patagonia snow ambassador, was killed in an avalanche on Monday in the Fitz Roy Massif region of Argentina. Our hearts go out to Liz’s family and friends. Liz was an amazing person known for her warm outgoing personality, matched by a smile…
“Check out that fin,” my buddy, Dillon Joyce, said. And there it was, 50 feet off the stern, an unmistakable dorsal, weaving in a slow “S” through the water. Wasn’t the sharp triangle-shape of a whitey, and as we were five- or six-miles out from Santa Cruz Island on our long sail back to the…
When the pintle snapped I felt a moment’s disbelief and then something like panic spark down in my belly. But I tamped that feeling with a long drink of water and a pep talk, noting to myself that I was not injured, that I had plenty of food and water, and that the conditions were…
If I’ve learned anything in these recent years of open boat adventuring aboard my 18-footer, Cormorant, it’s that everything is fine until it isn’t. But also, as Yvon says, “The real adventure starts when something goes wrong…” Late July, 2014—Shoving off from Gaviota for the 27-mile crossing to San Miguel Island came with a new…
Back in February, I started volunteering for the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy (OVLC), a nonprofit that protects open space through land acquisitions and conservation easements. They have a number of preserves scattered across the valley and the Valley View Preserve was their newest one. OVLC volunteers had already built two trails on Valley View and were…
Update 4/1/15: Previously shown at Patagonia retail stores and film festivals, we’re happy to share the full film with you online. Warning: Contains expletives. I’m a homebody. My friend Mikey Schaefer is not. I made a conscious choice to develop a lifelong relationship with my local ranges and the urban environment right out my front…
Three weeks have passed now since we arrived on Baffin Island. [Editor’s note: Get caught up with Part 1 here.] Our first encounter with the local population already happened miles away from the coast when we met eight polar bears drifting on chunks of pack ice. It was quite a surprise running into them while…
The kids and I decided to squeeze in one last, close-to-home, weekday excursion before school started, so we headed over to the newly dam-free Elwha River for a little float. The last piece of the upper dam was removed last week, so it seemed like a good time to go see what had changed since…
I started selling fleece for Patagonia in 1993, and for six years I worked in Washington D.C., Bozeman and Reno in various customer service functions. I had a blast, learned a ton about product and people and made a network of friends who are as important to me as my college cohorts. During this time,…
July 15, 2014—We are off again on an exciting adventure! Reverend Captain Bob Shepton is very excited to have the Wild Bunch—Sean Villanueva, Olivier Favresse, Ben Ditto and I—back on board the Dodo’s Delight for some jamming and big walls. Already four years have passed since our last expedition in Greenland with captain Bob. This…
“Climb it for me!” he yelled as I walked out of the hospital room. I gladly would if I could, I thought to myself, but this one might just be too hard. I can’t make any promises. A few days earlier, after a nice enjoyable day of climbing, we were heading back to my friend…
Travel in all its various guises is at the heart of surfing, so it was appropriate that there was a little of it involved for most of the people—Patagonia or otherwise—at this year’s Surfilm Festibal in San Sebastián, Spain. They say that change is good and that exploring new places nourishes the soul, but Nora,…
Head-high peaks stacked in perfect rows, warm clear water, and glassy surface conditions were not the reasons for the best surf session of my life. Sometimes it’s about more than that. If you were asked to describe your most memorable surf session, what would you say? Would you scroll through your memories of surf trips…
“Push the button.” “No, you push the button.” “What the hell, push it Ellen!” She did. I knew I was going to be profiled as a narcotraficante even though the contraband I was trying to sneak past the customs officer was anything but drugs. In fact, it was several thousand dollars worth of fishing goodies…
Surf meets snow this Saturday at Mt. Bachelor with the 4th Annual Big Wave Challange. This one-of-a-kind contest – the brainchild of host Gerry Lopez – features a series of huge sweeping banked corners, quarter pipes and spines shaped into wave-like features for a flowing course that brings the surf to the mountain. And you can watch it all right…
By Gavin McClurg, photos by Jody MacDonald Sailing around the world isn’t new. Historians recently learned that Chinese merchant ships in the latter 15th century, which were grander, faster, and better equipped than Spanish and Portuguese fleets (Magellan, Columbus, Gama, etc.), used trading routes that vary today only because of the Suez and Panama Canals.…
Iceland is a land of extremes – stark beauty within a harsh, unforgiving landscape and an equally daunting climate. Volcanoes are still erupting, earthquakes are nearly constant, yet the geothermal water provides Iceland with most of its energy needs and natural hot springs ease the cold of winter. Eleven percent of the country is covered…
By Patch Wilson Growing up in Cornwall, in the UK, it’s easy to feel blessed when you’re young. I thought we had the best waves ever, and in some ways it’s true. When you’re a kid, the waves at home are all you really need. But quickly the realization sets in – as you get…
“Hueco Tanks is the best bouldering in the world,” someone boldly posted on the encyclopedic climbing resource MountainProject.com. The best? Pretty strong words. I’ve been to a lot of famous climbing areas in the world and it was going to take more than a hyperbolic online endorsement to change my reservations (not the kind you…
“Holy guacamole,” I mumbled to myself. “There are a lot of ties in this room.” Lots of exquisite dresses, too. I was at the recent American Alpine Club Annual Benefit Dinner, which begs the question of place: What was my broke ass doing in a VIP seat, wearing a borrowed bow tie, at a fancy…
By Nowadays there are a lot of people making wooden surfboards. Environmentally it makes a great deal of sense. Wood is a natural, non-toxic material that is infinitely less harmful to work with than polyester, epoxy, polyethylene or polystyrene, and that can be assimilated back into the environment once the life of the board has…
![Tenkara with Yvon Chouinard and Patagonia [Updated with Video]](https://www.patagonia.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/6a00d8341d07fd53ef019b04b4e343970d.jpg.webp)
My watch battery died within ten minutes of setting foot on the plane about to whisk me out of Great Falls, Montana. I should have realized it for what it was: a sign things were about to change. I had left behind an increasingly weird existence on the Missouri River front and hopped a plane…
By Here I am in the middle of the hair-pulling, eye-bulging screen time that is post production. Another 14-hour day and I need fresh air. I go for long walks under the stars and think about the night skies of the Bahamas, Iceland and Patagonia. After my last film, Breathe, I really wanted to explore…
After years of discussion, the Alpine Association of Slovenia (formerly Slovenian Alpine Club) established a program for young motivated alpinists in order to help them get the experience needed for achieving the goals they dream about. Mentoring seven different characters with various goals and ambitions (and our soaring egos), is not an easy task. We…
October, 2013: Yes! We (Evrard, Sean, Stéphane and I) have hit civilization and made it back from the Chinese mountains. Thank God, food tastes so good now. And what a treat it is to be able to take hot showers whenever. Sorry for the lack of news. Again, all sat phone credits had to be…
“See you down there, f***er!” writes Ole Lied – a gigantic, hard-drinking, Norwegian party animal. He dresses in dark Scandinavian leather, stuffs his mouth with snus (little tea-bags of chewing tobacco, quite popular in northern Europe), and every now and then works himself into a berserker rage, attacking big, steep mountains, and returning home with…
October 15 was an idyllic autumn evening in the Northeast, cool and clear at the intersection of Bowery and Bleecker. As the sun set, amps and guitars and drum kits and crates of audio gear rolled through the front doors of the old CBGB gallery, awakening the musical spirits still lingering in the iconic venue.…
2004 My partner shouted at the top of his lungs, causing me to jolt to attention and look down to him and our hanging camp. We were high on El Capitan’s Shield route, and I watched helplessly as a yellow dry bag containing our garbage from the past five days – including twenty-four crushed aluminum…
Thumbing through my recently purchased copy of Dan Malloy’s Slow Is Fast paperback, I felt the same elation I had as a teenager buying new vinyl. Listening to Yes’s double album, Tales From Topographic Oceans, I would carefully examine Roger Dean’s ethereal cover art as Jon Anderson and Steve Howe’s highly energized rock transported this…
There are moments when words don’t seem to be enough, when we’re afraid they won’t do justice or that they might even scare the moment away. So instead we stay silent, keeping our thoughts and feelings to ourselves, and just hope that others feel the same. Sharing a sunrise, or when the sunrise is at…
I dreamed of climbing in Greenland for a decade. This summer I finally visited the southernmost reaches of that country and climbed in the Torssukatak Fjord with photographer John Dickey, Quinn Brett, and Prairie Kearney. Team Glitterbomb put up three first ascents: “Morning Luxury” (5.11-, 1400ft) on The Breakfast Spire, “Plenty for Everyone” (5.10+/11-, 1800ft)…
I am a climber, and at the risk of offending the enthusiasts of other outdoor pursuits, I’d argue that climbing is among the dirtiest, in the literal sense. Routes and problems are conceived and sent above cleared patches of dirt, moves grunted out through gritty clouds of chalk dust. Meals or snacks, if there are…
Catching small waves, like raising food on a small scale, involves a spectrum of intricacies.
By Eliel Hindert We live our lives one step at a time. Steps filled with dust, snow, mud, ice, rock, and increasingly present pavement. Right foot in front of the left ad infinium that move us through space and time, changing our surroundings while our surroundings undoubtedly transform us. Take a single step over the…
When a dream is achieved a new level of consciousness can be entered. During a road trip last year, full of California dreaming, I achieved two personal dreams: climbing El Capitan in Yosemite, and becoming an underwear model for Patagonia. Both dreams were mere sparks at first. Any climber that sees El Capitan considers climbing…
By Sometimes, to find the best solution to a problem, one has to be unafraid of trying out unconventional or seemingly counterintuitive ideas. Sometimes you have to go back and look at the original problem in a different light and think about what you are trying to achieve. When looking for a place to surf,…
I screamed at the granite wall. The sound bounced off Yosemite’s Fifi Buttress and drowned into the roar of Bridalveil Falls. I lowered to the belay, where Katie stood at a small stance. I was six inches from a free ascent. It felt like six miles. I’d cleaned the route. Pulled out old gear. Placed…
My ADD extends beyond the fact that I can’t finish vacuuming a room before checking my email, watering a plant or making fried rice from leftovers. It’s present in my climbing endeavors as well. But I do recognize what it is about, the different disciplines I appreciate most. My favorite thing about trad climbing: the…
I have known Rich Wheater (AKA the Beater) and Senja Palonen (AKA the Spoodle) since my very first summer of rock climbing in Squamish. We were introduced by a mutual friend one morning at Starbucks (back then everyone hung out there to find a climbing partner in the morning) and they invited me to join…
I used to dread the summers on the North Shore of O’ahu, Hawai’i. Famous for its winter surf, surfers from all over the world come to see what they are made of during a certain time of year. In the summertime, the waves go away and the crowds dissipate. My friends and I dreaded the…
By Patch Wilson I was lucky enough to spend a few weeks in Sumbawa last winter at Lakey Peak. The waves were really fun and a few days it was solid and pumping. It was my fourth time out there and it’s got to be one of my favourite places in Indo. I wanted to…
By Christian Beamish You know it’s going to stay light until midnight in Alaska. Everyone knows this. But after three days here it still feels unreal and comes with a psychedelic quality of glowing sunsets that last four hours and never completely fade to night. Then there is the sheer vastness of the territory –…
Take a moment and imagine yourself in Yosemite. You are climbing up a steep rock face, above the trees, with Half Dome behind you, but you do not have the security of a rope that can pull you taut from above if you get tired or slip. Instead, you are lead climbing. Somewhere down below…
All photos courtesy of Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll If you are chained to a wall in a dark dungeon famished rats will slowly nibble at your flesh. You can kick, scream and quiver all you want but the rats will sluggishly keep nipping away until they reach your heart and your body goes lifeless. Then they…
I remember running the 50K and getting off course but fighting back into third place, and I remember that it was hot… hotter than hell. And then… and then nothing… I don’t remember collapsing. I have no memories of kicking off good-Samaritan runners who pinned me down to the Prairie floor. I have no recollection…
Mark Sensenbach perches on a stool, back slightly hunched, eyes down, brows narrowed in concentration. His hands, toughened by mountains and work, maneuver the rubber sole of a climbing shoe against a sanding wheel. His movements made smooth by practice, Mark runs the shoe back and forth, rotates and repeats. He draws it away from…
Any wall climber will see that something is missing in that photo, trail line. The leader trails a small line so they can pull up a haul line to haul the bag. Right where the photo was taken, at the lip of the roof, Dgriff realized that he’d forgotten the trail line. “You have to…
“Some declared it the climb of the century. But did anyone repeat GIV to confirm our illusion of it? Besides, does it make sense to declare a poem the poem of the century? Can you choose a woman of the century?” – Voytek Kurtyka writing about the Shining Wall on Gasherbrum IV There are no…
June 11, 1938–April 21, 2013 By Cameron M. Burns One of the greatest American climbers of the late 1950s and ’60s, Layton Herman Kor, died April 21 after a long battle with kidney problems and cancer. The son of a Dutch mason (Jacob Kor) who came to the U.S. in 1897 from the Oldambt area…
By Tony Butt You are out surfing on your own. Someone else paddles out, comes up to you and says, “How long have you been out here?” You think as hard as you can. In the end you take a stab at it and tell him about an hour. But the truth is you really don’t…
The Usual magazine teamed up with Patagonia’s NYC surf crew to put together this unique edition. Check it out. “On the following pages, we start on the Bowery, where our favorite company Patagonia will take over the old CBGB gallery to open their first East Coast surf store in early 2013. Just like CBGB’s nurtured…
Here is a quick blog post that doesn’t include any cool climbing stories or photos, and will only appeal to gear nerds, like myself. I want to take a minute to rave about two new Patagonia products, the updated M10 Jacket and the new Knifeblade Pants. No one at Patagonia has asked me to make…
It’s my first six hours in Raglan and I’m already on my third round trip at Manu Bay – jump off the rocky point, stroke into an impossibly long left, surf until your quads are on fire, prone out, then scramble up the cobblestone point for another. At the edge of the rocks I see…
Editor’s note: We’re happy to follow up on Dallas Hyland’s moving tribute to Patagonia ambassdor Liz Clark — after she broke her neck bodysurfing — with good news. Liz’s neck has healed up well and she’s back in Tahiti living on an organic vanilla farm near the boatyard where she’s splitting her time between…
Guidebooks come in all forms. The kind that I like the most are more than mere guidebooks; they have bits of history, interesting information and stunning photos. They inspire me. By necessity, they can only be written by a true expert. They don’t hold my hand, but they have the essential info, the things you…
My good friend Dylan Johnson has managed to briefly escape his responsibilities as a new father and self-employed architect to come down to El Chalten for some alpine adventure. Since he is only here for a whopping two weeks, and since he arrived exactly at the end of the enormous, two-week weather window, he was…
My girlfriend, Sarah Hart, is joining me for some of this season in Chalten, and arrived on the same day that Jon took off. We had a week of bouldering in relatively stormy weather, and then yet another weather window descended upon Chalten – this time an extended one. Although Sarah’s only two previous ascents…
I came here with one goal. A New Year’s goal, despite my avowed no-resolution resolution of a year ago: Don’t un-send the Torre. My prolific spray about the single climb I’d done in Patagonia, a link-up on Cerro Torre with Colin Haley in 2007, might lend the illusion that I’ve climbed a lot here. Nope.…
Foreword By Fred Beckey We live on an astounding planet, punctuated by mountains on every continent. The mere presence of mountain ranges has long drawn the human imagination as an invisible force. Some say mountains have a “psychic gravity” enticing us into their grip. There is a magic among great peaks as a location of…
“Don’t throw that away” she said, “we can reuse it”. A small pot of dish water was clutched in my hand, as murky as the amazon, “Put it in here instead, we don’t have much left.” She was right, we didn’t. It was cold outside, a late November evening in Bishop, California and we had…
Roughly 10 years ago the Madeiran government gave the go-ahead to seawall project that was built to protect the village of Jardim do Mar. This seawall put an end to the best big-wave right point in Europe. The wave that breaks there now is a shadow of its former self. The huge concrete boulders they…
I always notice the sea birds when I’m out in the lineup, waiting for waves. On the south shore of Oahu, where I bodysurf most, I see manu o ku, or white terns, doing their aerial acrobatics. I see iwa, or great frigates, hovering almost motionless high above. But the birds that I really like…
This was my fourth time up to Vancouver Island to surf and camp along its coastline. I’ve sort of made a pact with myself to visit this place at least once a year after first falling in love with it three years ago. The beauty and power of Canada captures you, and it keeps me…
by Gerry Lopez, photos by Abe Blair Josh Dirksen is a very social, genuinely friendly person with a lot of close friends all over the world. He has been a well-respected and well-traveled professional snowboarder for his entire adult life – a top competitor, free rider and now, for the past 6 years, as an…
This may sound weird, but I love packing. When essentials are limited to two 50-pound bags – what a van can carry – a 40-liter backpack, or even just a carry-on, the things you think you need to take versus the things you actually do take is a fun game for me. My most recent…
Kohl Christensen's life balances the search for the biggest waves with building and farming at home in Hawaii. Deep Water, a new short video series, follows Kohl and his friends as they chase huge surf around the world. Hit the jump to watch episodes two and three. Maui in the morning and the North Shore…
We are constantly reminded that our oil-based consumer society, with our excessive use of plastics, obsession with air travel and inefficient ways of heating and lighting our homes, will eventually lead to environmental suicide in the form of global warming and resource depletion. But for many people, including surfers, global warming and resource depletion are…
Shadows crept across the pavement, clouds reflected stars and headlamps crawled slowly up the road, bicycles under a full moon at 12,000 feet. A month later – just last week, in fact – I parked my beater Honda and stood on the sidewalk outside of Supercuts, on my way home from Patagonia meetings in Ventura,…
Before reading the excerpt, see what Patagonia’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, has to say about Closer to the Ground. A note from the publisher: Why I love this book Dylan Tomine’s Closer to the Ground is a lot more than your usual tribute to local food or to a local sense of place, or how to…
I couldn’t help but laugh. Seeing Tommy Caldwell in a mohawk, a pair of bright green short shorts, and a hot pink sleeveless t-shirt was too much to take. In a way, he reminded me of Kelly Cordes, but I can’t put my finger on why. Anyhow, that’s another story, and this one is all…
The granite burned my forehead. I slumped my body further onto the wall, hoping it would support me. I cried. For the past two hours I seared my finger tips on the hot rock of the Boulder Problem, a twenty-foot section of unforgiving crimps that guarded my path to free climbing El Capitan’s Freerider. I’d…
Any climbing trip starts with a conversation. Kate and mine went something like this. Kate: “What’s your fall look like?” Majka: “October’s wide open.” Both of us: “Want to go somewhere good?” We considered Norway but were scared off by the rain; Germany was a strong contender but neither of us wanted to drink that…
“You’re going sport climbing at Antalya?” That was the question nearly everyone asked me when I told them that Brittany and I were headed to Turkey for a three-week climbing trip. A fair assumption – you gotta dig into a third or fourth level of research before you read about any sort of climbing in…
In the last month I have learned more about the people and places along the California coast than I had in 34 years and a thousand trips by car. Maybe slow is fast. We have been on the road for five weeks now and we are thoroughly convinced that we have found the fabled confluence…
Middle Cathedral: the ugly stepbrother of El Capitan that sits just across the valley, shoulders slumped, hiding his dark north-facing flanks that almost never see sun. The monolith hosts many seldom-climbed classics: Stoner’s Highway, the Direct North Buttress or DMB (more commonly known as the “do not bother”), Quicksilver and Mother Earth, to name a…
![Pull Half Dome – A Paraplegic Climbing Attempt [Updated with video]](https://www.patagonia.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/6a00d8341d07fd53ef017c324e6642970b-768x533.jpg.webp)
Words by Timmy O’Neill, Photos by Justin Bastien Nothing imagined, nothing created, nothing ventured, nothing gained. These thoughts come to mind as I am painstakingly carrying my brother Sean, a t-12 paraplegic, uphill through jagged talus and clawing bushes. It is dark, I am sweating profusely and the rescue coil of rope that supports Sean’s…
Words by The Phreenix, (5.11, 800m, Phoenix Wall on Mount Dracula, Vampire Peaks, Ragged Range, Northwest Territories, Canada, North America, Planet Earth) A year and half ago, I sat at a dive bar in Kansas with Pat Goodman. Bob Seger jammed some "Old Time Rock & Roll" on a bejeweled jukebox in the background. Halfway…
After being on the road for a good part of the last 15 years, I have a lot of catching up to do at home. The truth is, for about ten of those years I didn’t think twice about California, never felt home sick or that I was missing a thing. Well, that time has…
by Jason Slezak There is something I love about recording a voicemail greeting that says I will be out of the country, with no cell phone access, for a few weeks. Usually included is the customary, “You can try to reach me by email…” but even that was questionable. This time, I’d be traveling somewhere…
Hopefully, you’ve been keeping up with the Kamchatka surf crew during their travels through remote eastern Russia. We just received a new sat-phone call from Patagonia ambassador Keith Malloy and our on-the-scene reporter Foster Huntington describing the latest leg of their journey. Listen to “Kamchatka Surf Trip 2”(mp3 – right-click to download) [Above: Made to…
On August 30th, surf ambassadors Keith Malloy and Trevor Gordon, along with Chris Burkard, Cyrus Sutton, Dane Gudauskas and myself set out on an exploratory surf trip to the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia. For two weeks we’ll be camping out, looking for waves and doing some fly fishing. Above: Preparing To Surf In Russia.…
Patagonia ambassadors Kohl Christnesen, Jason Slezak and Fletcher Chouinard are down in Chile right now hoping to score south swell and good wind for kiteboarding. Kohl just called in with a surf report: Listen to Kohl Christensen Chile Phone Report(mp3 – right-click to download) We're hoping to hear back from the boys as the swell…
Perhaps an overly dramatic title. After all, it’s just climbing, and it’s supposed to be fun. That’s the cliché, anyway. Though often a disingenuous one. Then again, part of what we love about climbing is the escape from the daily b.s. of today’s world, the immersion into a place where we can move freely in…
Spending a few months in Oz this year, I was looking for a way to not blow my budget. I didn’t want to spend every waking moment living out the back of my van, constantly scrimping and saving. I wanted to surf as much as possible on one of the best coastlines for waves in…
The incredible northern aspect of Latok I (~7200 meters) needs no introduction as one of the world’s greatest unclimbed mountain escarpments. Since the historic first attempt by an American team in 1978 (still holders of the current highpoint), the peak has seen more then 30 unsuccessful expeditions. Although it has been climbed once from the…
by Michael Kew From “Jewel of Palm and Rain,” Chapter 26 It was California's autumn equinox, with its earthy browns and yellows, its wind and its chill, on the cusp of solitude, that had sent me away. A shirtless late-afternoon bike ride across the farm, down the leafy corridor of Rincon Creek and out to…
I am loath to admit it, but Colin Haley was right. He’s been singing the praises of the Pacific Northwest in summertime, proclaiming it better than my beloved ‘Rado. At last, I humbly concede (although they pay for it the rest of the year, with continual grayness and rain). I’m wrapping up a trip to Squamish, and…
Today we’re featuring two rivers in Australia and two takes on stand up paddleboarding. First we’ll hear about Zeb Walsh’s (Patagonia Australia) one-day training run down the icy waters of the Snowy River. Then, Adam Colton (Long Treks on Skate Decks) takes us on a 30-day trip down the Murray. A Man In Snowy River by Patagonia…
Patagonia Books is proud to announce our latest release: Christian Beamish’s first book The Voyage of the Cormorant, which tells of his journey down the Pacific coast of Baja in an 18-foot open boat he built himself. The book includes maps and is illustrated by Ken Perkins. Below is an excerpt: From Chapter 3 –…
Corsica is a mountainous French island in the Mediterranean, and according the The Lonely Planet Guide, “it’s hard to find a better combination of nature, culture and pleasure”. With a description like that, it’s pretty hard not to want to make a trip there! But as I was planning my annual spring Euro climbing vacation,…
I gotta dig down, I gotta go monk. Ever seen Zoolander? Of course you have. Me, too – about a hundred times. It’s a hilarious spoof on the world of male modeling, and there’s that classic scene of the “walk-off” challenge when, between rounds, Hansel digs deep and pulls out what’s needed to win the…
The good times are moving fast these days, zipping by as we fly through space on this big ball of rock. As a writer it is my job to record, to pause, to go back in time, if only slightly, and squeeze the juice out of divine moments, and leave something special for those that…
Two weekends ago, I had the ridiculously good fortune to watch Patagonia Ultra Runner Jeff Browning put on a display of trail running zen mastery at the San Diego 100. One could not ask for a better experience and the fact that so many friends had gathered for the event made it all the sweeter.…
Dude at curbside didn’t budge from his chair. Gave me a bored look. “Can you take my bags?” I asked. He sighed. “How much they weigh?” “‘Bout 65 pounds each. I already checked ’em in online.” “Still gotta take ’em inside,” he said, barely moving. “They’re too heavy.” “You sure? Because I’m allowed three 70-pound…
by Recently, I had the opportunity to hitch a ride from Indonesia to Australia on a sailing yacht my friend owns. I had been working at home for a good while, and was starting to get itchy feet, and this seemed like the perfect way to get back on the road and go exploring again.…
Patagonia Surf ambassador Trevor Gordon, 22, is not just a guy who, in the words of Dan Malloy, “surfs just like Curren.” Here we take a closer look at Trevor’s land-based talents. Michael Kew: How would you describe your art? Trevor Gordon: A bit folksy. Colorful, textured, simple. I try to paint or draw people…
Dammit Hammershark, I mumbled as CFS and I began rapping from Mammoth Terrace – 10 pitches up El Cap – to the ground, in the dark. Someone had forgotten our food bag. Granted, Hammershark had nothing to do with it, but he was outvoted. (We had to blame someone.) CFS and I were the last…
You’ve no doubt seen Tyler Stableford’s name many times in the Patagonia catalog – his iconic photos have graced the pages for years. Today, we’re excited to share Tyler’s new video project featuring Patagonia ambassador Steve House. Enjoy the film and a three-part behind-the-scenes series after the jump. We are excited to premiere our new…
On the final evening of our trip, we enjoyed a feast prepared by expert saltwater fly fisher, FFF-certified casting instructor and Veteran Anglers of New York (VANY) volunteer, David Blinken. We called it “Bahamian Thanksgiving” with native conch salad, sautéed grouper, brown rice with chicken from the Abaco Big Bird poultry farm and spiny lobster or “crawfish” tails. We…
“The best thing about screwing up,” I said, speaking from a wealth of experience, “is that you can only improve from here.” Tommy had just forgotten his climbing shoes. He and Alex Honnold – a climbing dream-team if there ever was – were 45 minutes into the hike for their first climb in an utterly audacious Yosemite linkup: the…
I remember the feeling more than the sound; a palpable ‘crack’ shattered through the bones of our house. At first we thought it was a car accident or maybe a gas explosion, but as we looked out the bay window to the north, we knew it was far worse… a mushroom cloud vigorously boiled…
“I hear Tommy had to carry you out of the Park the other night,” the Danimal said over the phone. “Carried ya in his strong arms like Kevin Costner with Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.” Dammit. So this is how rumors get started. Rewind. First, last weekend, me and my special lady friend (SLF) did this: Pretty nice little Saturday,…
by From “Coral Refuge, Ocean Deep,” Chapter 8 This atoll is on the way to nowhere except the crossroads of romance and adventure. Après-surf and brunch, Yvon and I board the skiff and buzz into close range; Francois kills the motor. Adrift within the lagoon’s turquoise comfort, far from the roily pass and its fish…
In early 2009, Kelly took a trip to Northern Chilean Patagonia with climbing legend Jim Donini. Here, Kelly revisits his notes from an adventure with Jim. This is the final part of a series of short posts from their trip. Click to read the first, second and third. Birdwatching As we start down from the top of the snow…
Puzzles When we stood there, scoping the face with binoculars and discussing possibilities, somehow I thought of Jim’s story about why he got into the military some 45 years prior. He was a teenager driving on the turnpike in PA – near Philly, where he grew up – and had two buddies with him in…
Chances are if you’ve perused the Patagonia website or catalog, you’ve caught sight of a few of Ben Moon’s images. From surfing and climbing to capturing the music scene, the self-taught Moon took the photography scene by storm more than a decade ago. Moon’s work will be featured this weekend at the 5Point Film Festival…
Dave Graham wasn’t holding back at the Outlook. For those who don’t know, Graham is one of the best rock climbers to come along in the last decade. We were guests on a live on-stage radio show, by ClimbTalk, at the Outlook Hotel and Bar in Boulder last Monday. The various guests talked usual climber-talk,…
[Catch up with Heroes – Part One] We were in Manzanares el Real for less than an hour when a keen local showed up, in the middle of a Wednesday afternoon, driving 45 minutes to meet us and show us around. Which was great and very helpful since La Pedriza is an extensive labyrinth of granite…
From “Coral Refuge, Ocean Deep,” Chapter 8 WOULD THEY DO IT IN PARIS? It’s the second T-shirt I’ve seen today that poses this question, a lingering sting of animosity toward France’s three decades of nuclear testing in L’Archipel. France ignored a 1973 World Court request to stop the practice, sparking protest worldwide, including New…
In early 2009, Kelly took a trip to Northern Chilean Patagonia with climbing legend Jim Donini. Here, Kelly revisits his notes from an adventure with Jim. This is the second in a series of short posts from their trip. Read the first here. Porch Angles Just before dark, utterly worked at the decidedly unimpressive altitude of…
Following up on his sat-phone call from last week, Patagonia snowboarding ambassador Ryland Bell called last night with another update from the Bagley Icefield in Alaska.
I don’t have many heroes – Julia Child, Nakano Takedo, Florence Nightingale… and Arnaud Petit and Stéph Bodet. If you haven’t heard of Arnaud and Stéph, just Google, “World’s Most Adventurous Climbing Couple.” From Morocco to Algeria to Venezuela to the climbs of Ceüse above their self-built house, they’ve done first ascents in more countries…
In early 2009, Kelly took a trip to Northern Chilean Patagonia with climbing legend Jim Donini. Here, Kelly revisits his notes from an adventure with Jim. This is the first in a series of short posts from their trip. Entry Fee I’ll be damned, the old man was right. Chilean friends universally flashed doubtful looks…
by Ryland Bell Today, Patagonia snowboarding ambassador Ryland Bell checks in from the largest non-polar icefield in North America. Ryland made his big-mountain debut in the highly acclaimed human-powered snowboarding film, Deeper, and rejoins Jeremy Jones and the Teton Gravity Research team this spring on the Bagley Icefield in Alaska to film Further. The crew…
Regular readers of The Cleanest Line are no doubt familiar with our musical Belgian climbing ambassadors Nico Favresse and Sean Villanueva (see Secret Passage, Asgard Jamming, Greenland Vertical Sailing). The boys just completed a big wall expedition in Venezuela and today we're happy to share the reports from their trip, with meaty details on two…
Iceland is frozen in time. Arriving there in February 2012, it was exactly as I remembered from 1998 when I was there to climb with Jay Smith and the late Guy Lacelle – grey, windy, and remote. It is the largest land mass along a mountain ridge that begins under the ocean, where the North…
We understand mere fragments – of most things really, but especially of a fish called steelhead. Its nominal definition goes that it’s a rainbow trout that migrates from river to ocean and back again to spawn, like a salmon. But like most living things, after you dedicate time to deep observation, their essential superpowers transcend…
Bang. The gun went off. I was wearing a suit. First time in a couple decades or more (for the suit, not the gun). All black, like Johnny Cash. But I wasn’t robbing a train or singing the Folsom Prison Blues; I was doing a randonee ski race. Don’t think I’ve done a formal race in…
After the Australian release of Come Hell or High Water we received this heartfelt message from Coffs Harbour based parents Greg and Donna Edwards. Kyan, their 8 year old son has autism. After watching the film their lives were changed forever. I would like to share our little breakthrough and in some small way, say…
From “The Five Pillars of Lakshadweep,” Chapter 17 This room is moving. Trevor Gordon’s eyes are open and glazed, his pupils wide. It’s 5:04 a.m. He rubs his belly clockwise, breathes oddly, speaks flatly. “Don’t let me pass out, man. We’ve got to stick together.” Outside, pale moonlight glints off the warm Laccadive Sea. The…
Seems most of us have moved on from the latest climbing world drama. Thank god. So I’ll sneak-in a quick suggestion that nobody can disagree with: Put the compressor in a museum. Uh-oh. I just remembered that this is climbing. And this is the Internet. I should revise my assertion: nobody reasonable could possibly argue…
I first met Fred Beckey about 6 years ago at the Crossroads Cafe in Joshua Tree. He was sitting at a corner booth surrounded by young women (in their 40’s), empty pint glasses, and wearing an ear-to-ear grin. I was told he had more first ascents than anyone in the world. He was in his…
My college friend Chris Kalous and I had an epic weekend climbing Texas Tower, which is down between Blanding and Hanksville in southern Utah. Two-hours of aggro, axle-smashing 4×4, then two hours of heinous post-holing up to our knees through breakable-crust snow just to get to the base at 11:30am. Shoes soaked. Pants soaked. 600…
Crazy world we live in. Somebody ought to sell tickets. Hell, I’d buy one. Some thoughts on current events, large and small: • Wednesday was National Margarita Day. It’s about time, what with all this recent climbing world drama. Surely a little drinky can soothe some nerves, maybe temper the frenzy. Me, I’ve been fine…
By Tony Butt One would think that the early nineties would be a relatively late stage to discover new surf in Europe. When I set off from Cornwall to Galicia in November 1992 in a van with two mates, all we were expecting to do was satisfy our own curiosity. Nobody we had spoken to…
A response to the recent controversy surrounding Cerro Torre.
On March 25, 2010, nearly two years ago now, I was climbing the north face of Mount Temple when a hold broke and I fell some eighty-feet. Far enough to break my ribs in 20 places and my pelvis twice. As I lay on the ledge near my partner, Bruce, I quickly got very very…
by Chris Darimont How could we possibly give voice to marine mammals and other life threatened by one of the largest industrial projects ever conceived? After all, whales, dolphins and the like – as intelligent as they are – cannot mount their own defense against the oil industry. [Video: Groudswell (Trailer) from the Patagoniavideo on…
Scott scrambles up to Cache Col and drops his pack besides mine. We’ve been moving just over two hours since the trailhead and have stopped to get our first glimpse at the route before us. Our goal is the Ptarmigan Traverse – a 35-mile off-piste, haute route traversing the southern upheaval of the North Cascades.…
I ran my last ultra on a warm, spring day in Wisconsin five years ago. The course was surprisingly tough – small roller coaster hills come at you like black flies. Crossing the finish line I didn’t feel the exhilaration that I normally do after a race. I chalked it up to burnout and decided…
My dream job would be being an underwear model. A friend helped me figure this out one day after I’d just purchased some new undies, and we were looking at the models on the packaging. “What a job that would be, wearing underwear for a living,” I said. “You could do it,” Amber answered. “And…
by Patch Wilson A friend of mine, Nick Pumphrey, who I grew up with surfing, skating and generally causing mayhem, now lives in South West France. He has called Hossegor home for about six or seven years now. Now turned semi-professional photographer he still works the summers in bars and restaurants and sleeps in his…
In the mid-1990’s a Vermont ski area executive told me this joke. “How do you make a small fortune in the ski industry in New England?” he asked. “Start with a large one.” He was talking about the challenges he faced then, which seemed normal at the time: limited water for snowmaking, labor shortages, skyrocketing…
In honor of the release of Fred Beckey’s 100 Favorite North American Climbs from Patagonia Books, we recorded a short audio story in which Yvon Chouinard talks about his alpine apprenticeship with sensei Fred Beckey in 1961. Fred Beckey’s 100 Favorite North American Climbs is available now from patagonia.com and select book sellers. In the book,…
Note: On this blog in 2011 I wrote over 30,000 words in 40 original blog posts (to TCL readers, I apologize for the resultant drop in your IQ). I also edited and introduced another seven posts from other authors, and wrote a little on my personal blog (where I put my inappropriate rants). So I…
After more than a week camping in Patagonia with Jamie Sterling, Jack McCoy, and Mel and Kenny, founders of 1% for the Planet member Sol Raiz Organics, along with their crew, we regrouped and repacked for the coast. While we were in Santiago packing our surfing gear, we heard that the nearby ski resort, Valle…
Full disclosure: the following sardines and pasta recipe is not my own. And I know what you are thinking: “Sardines? Gross!” But have you read the fine print about sardines? Printed on the box of the Wild Planet ones I bought: “Ounce for ounce, sardines provide three times more calcium and phosphorous than milk, more…
“What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” folks ask. They don’t really ask me, though, because I’m wary of holiday parties (depends on how much booze is there) and go, Huh? Is that like a “five-year plan” or whatever? I heard a person recently talking about how ten is the new five, or something – like now…
Mid-morning it hit me for the millionth time: this is ridiculous. Only, at this point in my life I rarely think of it as ridiculous-stupid. More like, ridiculous-ok-fine-so-what, with a chuckle-twist on the side. It was my inaugural day of taking the tools for a walk, 2011, and my friend Artley and I carried packs…
“Why would you come to Sicily to climb when you live in Utah?” the svelte Swiss woman asked in a barely detectible, yet posh accent. I looked at her blankly for a few seconds, wondering if she was attempting “second-language humor” or if she was indeed serious. “Uh, we don’t have overhanging tufas along the…
Following up on Monday’s recap of the Dirksen Derby, here’s the latest edition to the Patagonia Video Gallery featuring snowboard ambassador Josh Dirksen and snowsports designer Glen Morden. The guys were testing designs for next fall on this particular trip.
Right about the time contest organizer and Patagonia snowboard ambassador Josh Dirksen yelled go, professional snowboarder Scotty Whitlake fell over laughing, legend Terje Haakosen cracked a smile and 28 shreds of all ages and genders grabbed splitboards and took off running uphill in shitty snow and poor visibility for no prize money and nothing but…
On El Capitan in 2010, British rock climbers Leo Houlding and Jason Pickles completed their nine-year project, The Prophet (600m, E9 7a, 5.13d R). The difficult and dangerous new route climbs the far right side of El Cap, and Houlding, renowned worldwide for his boldness and skill, successfully freed every pitch, on lead, on their…
I made my way through the Pumalín Park area in Patagonia. Fjord Quintupeu was my next destination along with fellow surfer Jamie Sterling, Sol Raiz Organics, and filmmaker Jack McCoy. We paddled our kayaks into the wind with the sun warming our faces while refreshing splashes of freezing water hit our faces. We had a…
Some places seem special, and I can’t always articulate why. I think it’s the smell of the air, the look of the place, the memories it holds. In a sense, Hyalite Canyon, near Bozeman, Montana, one of countless canyons in the American West of similar scale, isn’t extraordinary. Until you begin to unlock its secrets,…
Take a peek at the latest issue of Climbing magazine and you’ll find Patagonia climbing ambassador Pete Whittaker sporting the kind of face that only climbing offwidths can produce. The story that goes with this photo: “The World’s First 5.14 Offwidth.” Together with his partner Tom Randall and photographer friend Alex Ekins the crew from the UK travelled throughout the American…
I spent a lot of time surfing a spot in Indonesia called G-Land. Remotely located on the edge of the Alas Purwo National Park, on the southeastern tip of Java, it was, relatively speaking, far from civilization. Actually, as the Indonesian sea eagle flies, it was only about 15 kilometers from the nearest village but…
I’ve long thought that the most wasted resource on earth is talent. Talent abounds, yet optimizing its potential requires devoted effort. Of course we also have to consider opportunity, and the whole talent-and-effort issue makes regular news. There’s the “10,000-Hour Rule” of practice, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his celebrated and best-selling book Outliers –…
In the spring of 1991 I was guiding in the Everest Region of Nepal – the Khumbu. Knowing that I would be looking to climb a route on Kusum Kanguru on my own after the departure of my last climbing guest, my Sirdar, Tensing and I took advantage of a couple of down days to…
Today, Tommy Caldwell writes about the conclusion of another season of trying to free-climb the Dawn Wall. And coming up empty – though that’s really not the right word. We’ve covered his efforts in multiple posts (click here, here, or here), and it’s made frequent news in the climbing world for its nearly incomprehensible difficulty. Here’s how it…
by Patrick “Patch” Wilson Eyeing up a promising looking swell chart and coming to the end of a massive restoration project at work, I jumped at the opportunity to hitch a lift in my friend Lowey’s van and get back out to Eire for some waves again. The swell was looking big and the winds…
I arrived in Knoxville early afternoon on Wednesday to spend some time with my mother before the Rock Creek Stump Jump 50K in Chattanooga on Saturday (Oct. 1st). I picked up the rental car and drove to Manorhouse, her assisted living home. Mom has severe dementia and is physically frail, no longer capable of performing…
With a brief window of calm winds, Crystal and I readied Swell to move east among the atolls. With the news of Barry’s passing, I wanted to check out what was rumored to be a new boatyard on an obscure strip of coral a few atolls east, plus with a swell on the way, we…
Damn, I thought as I glanced around, I’m like Barney Rubble at a superhero convention. Sonnie Trotter to my left, Alex Honnold to my right. I know what you’re thinking: Did you owe those guys money? Or maybe: Oh, one of those high school intelligence tests, “Which does not fit in this group?” Sonnie is…
Tuesday night, November 1, 9:58 p.m., posted on Tommy Caldwell’s Facebook page: “No send tonight. But the craziness of the situation struck me. Trying to climb 5.14 by headlamp during a super intense wind storm. Strangely invigorating. I love the experience but am still overwhelmed by the magnitude of this project.” I’ve often been a…
When I see a photo of someone climbing a severely overhanging 5.14 limestone sport route, I marvel at the physical prowess. Amazing. And though I can’t imagine being that good myself, I can see how some people can do it; I can sort of imagine it. At least I can see the holds. But 5.14+…
by Crystal Thornburg-Homcy As I packed my bags for my trip to Patagonia, reminiscing about my last visit over four years ago, I remembered the sudden shift of weather patterns from cold to hot, to snow and even rain. My activities would range from surfing, kayaking, hiking, snowboarding, to relaxing in the natural hot springs,…
I hung limp on the end of the rope with my forehead resting on the taut line. I felt my throat tighten. I hadn’t been this frustrated in a very long time. I realized a long time ago that grades were relative, but it seemed everyone here, 30-40 people, including a seven year old homeschooled…
I wiggle the tip of my pinky finger into a small opening in the crack, and step high onto a small edge. Ouch! Maybe if I focus harder on the moves I will forget the pain. I pull onto the rock again, climb a few feet, then surrender. Such a long way to go, I…
I just returned from seven weeks in Pakistan, where I took a few notes: • Getting from the States to Islamabad went smooth as silk. Best airline ever? Emirates. “Baller,” as Hayden put it. Side note: “Baller” is not, as I’d ignorantly guessed, a crude reference. Rather, it originally referred to great basketball players, usually…
"I think we say a lot about who we are through our work." —Chris Burkard One of the joys of working at Patagonia is dropping by the photo department and peeking at the recent submissions. We share the best of the best in our catalogs and on our website, and they never fail to inspire…
Ty Draney, a member of the Patagonia Ultrarunning Team, and friend Luke Nelson recently completed the Great Salmon Run in partnership with Save our Wild Salmon. The pair were inspired to trace over 120 miles of the Snake River sockeye's migration route, motivated by facts like these: • Thirteen populations of salmon and steelhead are…
Early winter in Estes Park, tourist season finally over and the town asleep, I stood in an empty backroom at a local bar. “Tango,” said Jay, “is the dance of passion. It’s a dramatic cat-and-mouse game – teasing back-and-forth, graceful, seductive.” It’s so fun being a beginner. My girlfriend and I soaked up our fifth…
![Quality AND Quanitity at 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell [Updated with video]](https://www.patagonia.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/6a00d8341d07fd53ef015392185154970b-768x574.jpg.webp)
When she’s not busy making us jealous about climbing in places like Greenland and France, Patagonia Climbing Ambassador Jasmin Caton guides folks to some of British Columbia’s choicest rock climbs and snow-covered lines with Valhalla Mountain Touring, a business she owns and runs together with her husband. Jasmin teamed up with fellow ambassador Brittany Griffith for this year’s 24 Hours…
Most of our photo-centric "Picture Story" posts have been about climbing. Today, the fishing guys get in on the action with an encouraging report from one of eastern Canada's iconic salmon streams, and a family fishing operation that depends on the health of the river's fish populations: – Ed Live Release of Atlantic salmon is…
It's been about 4 1/2 years since my last trip to Patagonia, but my memories of the vast landscapes, milky blue rivers, and wild animals had never left my mind. What really left an impact on me was the thought of this place, being DESTROYED by dams, deforestation, mining, and invasive species. Returning to The…
Patagonia climbing ambassador Pete Whittaker, climbing partner Tom Randall, and photographer friend Alex Ekins recently arrived in the U.S. with a singular – if not enviable – objective: tick off America's nastiest off-widths. If you follow the global climbing scene, you might recognize the duo for their impressive gritstone resumés. In addition to floating many…
JT and I are headed to Baja tomorrow to celebrate his 40th birthday. I totally suck at surfing and I’ve had a few close calls so I’m always anxious when we go on a “surf trip.” It seems we never go someplace mellow – Peru, El Salvador, Nexpa. Isn’t that like taking a 5.4 climber…
Welcome to the first day of Fall, and a fresh installment in our occasional series of posts for the more visually oriented. For a lot of folks, autumn is the time of the last great hurrah. No bugs, perfect weather, decent daylight. Whether it’s a alpine route or long days on the water, this time…
The Patagonia ambassador team is pleased to share today's interview with one of their newest members, snowboarder Forrest Shearer. Forrest joins fellow riders Ryland Bell, Josh Dirksen and Taro Tamai in the lineup. Raised as a surfer at the famed Dana Point, Forrest made the transition to snowboarding with his move to the foot of…
We traverse a rare and beautiful band of bullet rock, smooth with long reaches and thirty-foot runouts, the universe dropping away to the valley floor. We’re getting close. Justin continues along the line of weakness, toward the northwest ridge 500 feet below the summit of Mt. Siyeh, Glacier National Park, Montana. For 15 years I…
The transition to darkness scares me. Fleeting rays of final light linger on the horizon. I stare down thousands of feet, where immense shadows from ice-capped towers overhead cast dark shapes into the valley below. I barely make out the specks of our tents at base camp. A fire starts. Our cook is warm, comfortable,…
I think back a few weeks to when I found my friend Craig 52 miles into a grueling mountain run, wobbling on the trail like a baby deer. He held himself up with his trekking poles, grinned and told me he was fine. Uhhh, you don’t look fine, dude. I’d joined him for morale toward…
Our friends on the Patagonia Books team are proud to announce a new title by Mickey Muñoz called No Bad Waves. The book was a collaboration between Mickey, who recorded the stories in a series of interviews, Jeff Divine, who culled through Mickey's extensive photo archives, John Dutton, who massaged the transcripts into shape, and…
I try to embrace all forms of climbing, and I can learn something from everything. Furthermore, the more things I’m willing to climb, the more fun I can have. Jack of all trades, master of none, baby. Wintertime? Don’t whine, ice climb. Only got a few hours? Clip some bolts near the road or go…
“You guys are idiots,” Cousin Bob told us over the pay phone. “I’m coming to get you.” I don’t know which I do better, come up with stupid ideas or talk others into doing them. In my defense, I will say that my ideas seem a lot less stupid since being hobbled and wiser with…
Thanks to Patagonia Climbing Ambassador Zoe Hart for today’s post. A recent trip from her new home (Chamonix) to her old one (New Jersey) triggered some thoughts on the directions life’s paths take us. Her story originally appeared on the Dutch mountain travel site Bergwijzer. -Ed I woke this morning to my husband, Max, lamenting…
The Patagonia crew extends a hearty welcome to Josh Dirksen. Josh joins fellow snowboarders Ryland Bell, Forrest Shearer and Taro Tamai in our ambassador lineup. Josh is widely known as one of the great understated riders in the sport. With over 20 years snowboarding and a pro career spanning over a decade, Josh is one…
A breeze floats mountain air across my face and triggers of flood of chemicals to my brain. I feel something. Something familiar. I’ve been here before, at different times and in different places. Deep blue water ripples along the lake shore; stout green shrubs stand firm and stubborn against the alpine elements; orange-streaked granite encapsulates…
In contrast to the mountains of Chamonix, but in a similar vein of easy access, I recently headed north to a beautiful spot in Wyoming called Ten Sleep. I took a few notes: • The official name is Ten Sleep. I thought my illiterate friends who pronounce it plural (“Ten Sleeps”) were mere simpletons. I…
OMG I was so stressed out. I had a million errands to do before meeting Nancy at the climbing gym: post office… liquor store… vacuum bag store (yes, I have this special vacuum that I can only find bags for at one store in SLC)… Whole Foods… bank… the electronics recycling center… UPS… hardware store……
Zeb Walsh will be representing Australia in the 15th annual Molokai 2 Oahu Paddleboarding Word Championships. Zeb is the assistant manager of Patagonia Torquay, dad, great surfer and all-around talented waterman. I was lucky enough to have a chat with Zeb right before he left for Hawaii. Editor's note: Today's post comes from our sister…
As the sun heated up our little apartment, I drifted out of my dream and awoke to a bizarre scene: people sprawled all over the floor, futon and tiny twin beds…I could hear chatter in half a dozen languages, clinking plates and glasses… the faint smell of tobacco, espresso and butter… a marching band playing…
A grateful reminder of the beauty of life—and singing, lots of singing.
It is with profound sadness and respect that we share news of the passing of our friend and ambassador, Bean Bowers, after his six-month battle with cancer. Our thoughts and prayers are with Bean’s wife, Helen, and his friends and family. We’ll share more in the coming days. For now, you can read about Bean’s…
Easy access to real mountains is a highlight of Chamonix—just don’t get too relaxed.
Good news to all you trout-chasers sidelined by swollen creeks this season: SoulFish2, Fish Mode from the Burl Productions is now available on DVD. Fire up the video while you're waiting for the waters to mellow out and enjoy footage from choice locations around the world. Here's a note from Burl Productions' founder and Patagonia…
When I graduated from college in 1990 (SUNY Oneonta), I always thought I'd end up moving out west to ski. I'd already had plenty of years of experience in both pizza making and delivery so I was primed for a life of scraping by and dawn patrols in a town like Alta or Jackson Hole.…
I had only just returned from Algeria, dumped the contents of my well-used Freewheeler Max into the washing machine and put everything right back in there before heading to Croatia. I only had 10 days for the trip, but it was so perfectly set up I couldn’t resist – Kate and Mikey would already be…
Today’s post comes to us from Hayden Kennedy about a climb he recently attempted with Jason Kruk. Anyone who’s paying attention these days is blown away by the progression. The talented youth just keep getting after it, and it’s not just in cragging and bouldering. The serious alpine has always attracted only a few inspired stragglers,…
We're pleased to welcome Ryland Bell to the Patagonia Ambassador lineup. Ryland is a snowboarder who has spent all the summers of his life on boats in the Alaskan village of Elfin Cove (population 20), where his parents fish commercially. He can't think of a winter growing up when he wasn't riding on sleds, skis,…
Unrelenting spindrift avalanches and gusty winds constantly blasted and buffeted our portaledge. Our small cocoon of safety on this harsh and hostile mountain was slowly being engulfed, as we nervously watched the snow level rise up the fly walls. Five of the toughest days climbing of our lives it had taken to get to this…
What makes a good cover? Well, as with most things, that depends. What do you want? Sex appeal? Eye candy? Or are you hoping to convey something more? The story behind the image means something. To me it does, anyway. Since 2000 I’ve been one of the editors of the American Alpine Journal, and we…
Sitting on a warm piece of granite in front of a crystal-clear stream, Steve House called this morning on his way out from Makalu towards Kathmandu. The news you'll hear is both positive and somber. Everyone Steve traveled and climbed with are all safe and healthy. Unfortunately, he and Marko were asked to assist another…
“When you land in a freeride mecca and things are neither free, nor rideable, what’s a guy to do? It was time to make lemons into lemonade.” The fourth in a series of posts from Nick Waggoner and the crew at Sweetgrass Productions. They’re currently hard at work on their third movie, Solitaire. Cleanest Line…
Steve House called today and shared the latest news from Makalu. He and fellow Patagonia ambassador Marko Prezelj finished their acclimatization and spent some time on the west face where the weather didn't cooperate all that well. But the forecast is improving slightly so the duo are going to head back to ABC and give…
Over the years and all of these injuries, I’ve learned some things about success and failure. I’ve learned that there is one way, indisputable and proven through the ages, to ensure success. You lower your expectations. And so on my first day back climbing two weeks ago, I scanned the Boulder Rock Club for the…
Editor’s note: Patagonia ambassadors Steve House and Marko Prezelj are back at Makalu. Longtime Cleanest Line readers will recall their previous attempt to climb Makalu’s West Face in 2008 with Vince Anderson, and Steve’s subsequent trip in 2009 when he made an emergency solo decent from 21,300 ft. with High Altitude Pulmonary Edema. Similar to…
When she's not busy making us jealous about climbing in places like Greenland and The day had gone so well, maybe that was the problem. My Mum was up at Valhalla Mountain Touring to visit and ski while I worked as the lodge custodian for a self-guided group. I had had my eye on an…
My springtime objective (okay, to be perfectly honest, it has been a dream of mine for a long time) of free climbing Zion’s Moonlight Buttress was quickly unraveling. My partner, Nellie, had spent the previous night projectile vomiting in a rental van. Puke everywhere—in her shoes, on her pack and on the rope. As Nellie…
The Copp-Dash Inspire Award, sponsored by Black Diamond Equipment, La Sportiva, Mountain Hardwear and Patagonia, announced the latest winners of the new climbing grant established in memory of American climbers Jonny Copp and Micah Dash, who were killed in an avalanche in China in May 2009 along with filmmaker Wade Johnson. In addition to providing…
Salmon are anadromous. They live mostly in the ocean, but return to distant, fresh mountain headwaters to spawn. This term that describes their biological ties to seemingly disparate environments (ocean and mountain) might just as easily describe the ways in which salmon bring together competing cultures and histories. Their power, their story, have earned salmon…
The third in a series of posts from Nick Waggoner and the crew at Sweetgrass Productions. They're currently hard at work on their third movie, Solitaire. Cleanest Line readers are invited to join them on their journey to produce their most ambitious film to date.This third installment from their behind-the-scenes series focuses on the crew's…
Early spring means it’s desert season. Well, it does now. Fifteen years ago it meant belaying my boyfriend on his three-year sport-climbing project in the Virgin River Gorge. Now, I spend March and April weekends climbing sandstone splitters in the beautiful desert of southeast Utah. Back in the 1990s, I would burn away those same…
When last we left the fly-fishing filmmakers of MOTIV Fishing, they had converted a mid-'90s F250 to run on used vegetable oil and successfully crossed the Mexican border. Today, we pick up their scent in Baja as they continue traveling south in their pursuit of tight lines. Over 2500 miles behind us and we were…
As a book editor at Patagonia I work in obscurity, helping writers make the best of their story. I like it that way, but don’t often hear about how the projects I work on impact their readers. So an email from a great friend in Santa Barbara about the impact that 180° South – a…
Its been over a year since the initial premiere of our film 180°South at the Santa Barbara Film Festival. After that we had a west-coast tour. Then, for the next four months, it played at selected theaters around the country. There were some international shows as well – Spain, Australia, Japan, Canada, to name a few. It was an…
When I set out on this trip, I thought there would still be places where I could see what the Earth looked like prior to human impact. Sadly, I think I was wrong. Every place I have sailed has borne painful evidence of humanity’s maltreatment of the Earth. The coral is dying, fish populations are…
One of the nicest parts about being involved with Patagonia Music is getting the chance to meet some of the artists who’ve generously donated their music to benefit the environment. Ben Sollee stopped by the office on his bike-powered tour through Southern California, moe. played a show for Patagonia employees right before we launched, and,…
A photographic exposition, in which the photographer herein pontificates on the significance of sufficient competency in the face of ample conditions . . . -Ed The joys of competency and individuality – The Chief and I seemed to have the latter down pat, anyway. I suppose we delude ourselves, which is part of the beauty…
Another in our occasional series of posts for the more visually oriented. This one goes out to all those lucky enough to charge off the couch and into the unknown without looking back or thinking twice . . . or doing much thinking at all, for that matter. – Ed This photo is from one…
[Update 4/18/11: Congratulations to Patagonia ambassadors Katsutaka Yokoyama, Nicolas Favresse, Sean Villanueva O'Driscoll and their teams for bringing home Golden Ice Axes from the 2011 Piolet d'Or. Read about their respective climbs below and check out some photos from the awards ceremony at the end of this post.] The award ceremony for the 2011 Piolet…
Our friend and fellow Patagonia climbing ambassador Bean Bowers just finished his second round of chemotherapy. It all seems so weird, so different. One of the best things about climbing is the feeling of control in unknown, even chaotic environments. I love that. We all do. The most adventuresome among us—people like Bean—inspire with their…
The comments got me thinking. I’m talking about the comments on my last post, about adventure and youth. So many shifts, twists, turns, contradictions and evolutions that keep life interesting, and keep adventure and individuality alive. How do these shifts interplay with our desire to share our stories? Several commenters – here and on the…
The second in a series of posts from Nick Waggoner and the crew at Sweetgrass Productions. They're currently hard at work on their third movie, Solitaire. Cleanest Line readers are invited to join them on their journey to produce their most ambitious film to date.The second trailer from the upcoming film, this latest installment focuses…
While gazing into my navel and pulling out lint the other day, I wondered about adventure. It seems to me that, based on my admittedly unscientific observations of news reports and the ascents I encounter in my American Alpine Journal editorial job, refinement ascents are all the rage. By refinement, I mean something other than…
When he's not in the office developing Patagonia wetsuits and surf gear, you'll find Billy Smith and his crew carving the hills around Ventura and Santa Barbara on their skateboards. In fact, they're pretty hard to miss. Billy and his brother Nick are the creators of the Sporting-Sail, a parachute-style speed break that was originally…
A test of the elements atop the Bishop’s Cap, Glacier National Park, MT, with Justin Woods back in 2009. In early 2010 I destroyed my lower leg, and multiple surgeries later, culminating with several procedures this past Monday by my heroes at the Steadman Clinic, I’m on my way again. Though I might not look…
First off, I’m talking about my ankle. My cankle, still swollen from my broken leg and part of my next round of surgeries on Monday. My final surgeries, inshallah, making six in a little over a year. I’ve had enough. Should be minor, removing most of the hardware store in my lower leg, trimming my…
“March is a killer month in the Sahara. Temperatures rise and fall with such rapidity that the body has difficulty adjusting.” This sentence from the book I was reading (The Conquest Of The Sahara, by Douglas Porch) made me more anxious than the current kidnapping news. How was I to pack two weeks of clothes…
[Today, we're pleased to bring you the first in a series of posts from Nick Waggoner and the crew at Sweetgrass Productions. They're currently hard at work on their third movie, Solitaire, and have graciously invited Cleanest Line readers to join them on their journey to produce their most ambitious film to date. The story…
I’d been dreaming about Haida Gwaii for as long as I could remember. Or, if not quite as long as I could remember, at least since my time as a skinny, bespectacled kid in public school, staring wide-eyed at the Haida totems in front of the Royal British Columbia Museum. In more recent years, with…
I’m excited and worried about my Pakistan trip later this summer. Most people are good people, I think, but still, the world is a dangerous place. Then again, so is sitting on the couch with your seatbelt buckled. What to do? My Pakistan fears have nothing to do with jihadis, and everything to do with…
Day 14 and our last here in southern Algeria. As is our tradition on international climbing trips we got a hotel room for our last night in-country as a way to smooth the transition back to the “real world” and finally take a shower. It was Brittany’s birthday yesterday and Zaoui, Aziz and Mustapha surprised…
Introduction Little compares to Yosemite's El Capitan in majesty and sustained steepness. But contrary to popular lore, it’s not the Lower 48’s biggest rock face. It’s not even the biggest in the Valley – the south face of Mt. Watkins is bigger. Well, maybe. How do you measure? (OK, I feel the urge to crack…
Day Nine here in Algeria and the adventure sweetness keeps rolling along. Today is a rest day and we spent it hiking off into some distant wadis to investigate some attractive-looking summits we saw from afar (which turned out to be choss). We followed old goat trails through the unending black rock, stumbling upon a…
It’s the end of Day Six of our trip to Algeria and we are freezing. Seriously. All of our clothes on—including long underwear and down jackets! How is that possible? Aren’t we in the Sahara? Well, delete those pictures of sand dunes and palm-tree-fringed oasis from your mind—we are bivied up in the Atakor region…
I sat in a cloud of dust; pants dirty, my hand planted in the sewing needles of some patagonian flora. I'd just landed there after my tired muscles failed to correct a small foot slip on the steep gravel. We were headed down from Fitz Roy on this 5th day. I stood and wiped the…
Editor’s note: Fletcher Chouinard originally shared this story about the trip he made from California to Chile to ride some of the biggest surf ever at El Buey in 2011. Saturday Kohl: “Bru, it’s going to be puuummmmpiing! Meet me in Chile!” Sunday Kohl: “Looking SICK! I’m in Houston. I’ll be there tomorrow. Coooome down!” Monday…
End of Day Three here in Algeria and it’s safe to say we’ve already had an amazing adventure. Brittany and I have traveled and climbed in Mali, Morroco and Oman, so we are no strangers to the desert terrain of northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, but southern Algeria is a whole other level of…
Last week, 14 Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) terrorists in southern Algeria kidnapped an Italian woman. The terrorists escaped with her across the Sahara and disappeared into the no-mans land of northern Niger. 2007 was an especially bad year in Algeria with a reported 375 people kidnapped; the AQIM claiming responsibility for 115.…
The 5th and final installment in Kelly Cordes' series about perils and pleasures of aging gracefully while slaying stereotypes (the first installments are here:1, 2, 3, and 4). A series of significant injuries – the most recent a severely torn shoulder – forced Kelly to bow out of an exciting trip to Patagonia. In this…
As we barreled down I-70 headed for Moab, I suggested we try Ziji on King of Pain tower, which is part of the Bridger Jack formation at Indian Creek. I handed her the Mountain Project topo and her eyes lit up. “Four pitches long and only two pitches of 5.12!” She seemed relieved—it wasn’t nearly…
Like a father handing his teenage daughter the keys to the family car for the first time, JT worrisomely handed me Gypsy’s keys. Gypsy was the newest addition to our family, a big white 2010 Mercedes Benz Sprinter Van. I gently grabbed the keys while simultaneously executing the extremely athletic lunge required to get myself…
Like flocks of swirling swallows or shimmering schools of tropical fish, our customers swoop in with mysteriously synchronized concerns and questions on a regular basis, prompting the need for ready answers. Times like these, nothing would be more handy than magically beaming knowledge out into the ether. Building on his " Another winter climbing tip,…
Nobody likes to wear booties when they surf, but there are some places where the water is so cold it can’t be avoided. What happens then when you forget your booties after hiking in to surf beautiful head-high waves in 30-degree water? You get creative. So, I’ve long been a fan of Patagonia products. However,…
Climbing virgin big walls from the deck of a sailboat anchored in frigid ocean waters. You've read the blog posts and seen the pictures, but the best is yet to come. Get ready for a five-part video series featuring Nico Favresse, Olivier Favresse, Seán Villanueva, Ben Ditto and the Reverend Captain Bob Shepton, coming this…
Like flocks of swirling swallows or shimmering schools of tropical fish, our customers swoop in with mysteriously synchronized concerns and questions on a regular basis, prompting the need for ready answers. Times like these, nothing would be more handy than magically beaming knowledge out into the ether. Kelly Cordes is our guest Trencher today, fielding…
Maybe we're all getting old, or maybe just obsessed with trying not to, but Kelly Cordes' ongoing series about Fighting Forty makes today's post – from runner and guest-contributor, Liz Mosco – particularly appropriate. As a friend of patagonia, Liz has come to know some of the folks around here. She's a fan of those…
Part 4 in Kelly Cordes' series about perils and pleasures of aging gracefully while slaying stereotypes (the first three installments are here:1, 2, and 3). After a series of significant injuries – the most recent a severely torn shoulder – Kelly was forced to bow out of an upcoming trip to Patagonia with fellow climbing…
[Arne Backstrom Revelstoke Tribute. Video: Subaru Freeskiing World Tour.] The Subaru World Freeskiing Tour put together a nice tribute video for our late friend and ambassador Arne Backstrom. The video was released in conjunction with this week’s Revelstoke leg of the World Freeskiing Tour which Arne won last year. Head over to the official website…
Our friend Rolo Garibotti just sent word about his latest labor of love for the region he loves so much. Previously, we updated you on his work with the Patagonia Sustainable Trails Project. Today, we're happy to share news on the launch of Pataclimb.com, an online climbing resource assembled by Rolo and his friend Doerte…
Today we've got Part 3 in Kelly Cordes' series about the bout of injuries he's experienced this past year (here's the links to check out part 1 and 2). His most recent setback, a severely torn shoulder, happened shortly before his scheduled departure for a climbing trip to Patagonia. Part 3 brings us the details…
Another in our informal series of posts for the more visually oriented. Today's is from Kelly C, who's still on the mend after last week's shoulder surgery. Earlier picture stories can be found here (1, 2). – Ed Jim Earl crests the north ridge en route to the summit of Nevado Ulta, on the first…
In 2005, Marko Prezelj and I planned an expedition to the (still) unclimbed north wall of Kalanka, a formidable 21,000 foot peak in the Indian Himalaya. With three weeks to go, the bureaucrats who hold the key to that fine mountain threw up one final hurdle, a second permit fee to be paid to the…
We test our gear on a variety of levels. Our Athletes & Ambassadors are responsible for putting the latest designs and fabrics through the paces before we'll add a new product to our lineup. But just because something reaches our shelves doesn't mean testing is over. Once a new item shows up in our catalogs,…
We posted some pictures on Flickr a few weeks back of a surfboard that Stru built during some of his off hours. We got such a reaction to the pics that we decided a Q&A with Dr. Strukenstein was in order. This interview was conducted over a three-week period, during which there were some highs…
Today we've got Part 2 in Kelly Cordes' series about the bout of injuries he's experienced this past year (part 1 is here). His most recent setback, a severely torn shoulder, happened shortly before his scheduled departure for Patagonia. Kelly was helping Tommy and Becca Caldwell pack for departure last week – instead of joining…
It started out as an idea and later became a vision while on a trip across Argentina seven years ago. Former members of AEG Media, creators of The Trout Bum Diaries and Fish Bum Diaries DVDs, have collaborated once again to document a new expedition throughout Mexico. The crew is operating under MOTIV Fishing these…
It's tough to say who's been getting more exercise lately, Kelly Cordes or his insurance policy. TCL regulars might remember his recent injury, a dislocation he wrote about back in October. As the surgery date approaches, Kelly's found himself in a pensive mood. Today we offer the first in a multi-part series where our hero…
FCD Board Report – The first thing I noticed about the 5’7″ Fish was how lightweight it was, making it a lot easier to throw around in the surf. I usually ride smaller Fish, somewhere around 5’4″, so i didn’t really know what to expect. The extra few inches made it way easier to paddle…
Patagonia Climbing Ambassador "Annapurna III's 2300 metre southeast ridge featured in an Alpinist 4 article titled Unclimbed – a 'to do list' of nine objectives in keeping with the spirit of exploratory alpinism. Conrad Anker, writing about his attempt to climb the south-east ridge, said: 'Every mountain has a line that defines it; this line…
Zack Smith shares a story about losing track of time while climbing with friends—and how precious memories become down the road.
Editor's note: Fitz Cahall joins us today to share another behind-the-scenes story from the making of Tracing the Edge. Winter was fickle last year. Bryan and I were set to work with surfing legend Gerry Lopez. I’d already spent a day filming with him in Bend. He’d shown me every powder stash available on Mount…
A couple weeks ago we told you about Kohl Christensen's win at the Nelscott Reef contest up in Oregon. Here's a video from our current digital surf catalog featuring Kohl and Fletcher Chouinard talking about the shapes they've been working on together, and some time-lapse footage of one of Kohl's boards being built by the…
Last night I saw the best outdoor film I’ve seen in awhile. It’s about fly fishing. Huh? I’ve never fly fished and, honestly, I never really “got it.” I know there must be something there, though, because even if it makes as much sense to me as drinking margaritas in Russia, people love it, obsess…
It had been over five years since I was in Baja, experiencing its vast coastlines, colorful culture and fine tequila as part of the “Bend To Baja” crew; and what a great way to reunite with Baja than a perfect, sunny swell-filled weekend with the Save The Waves Coalition, a global nonprofit organization whose mission…
Out there and awesome. That’s what comes to mind when I think of Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson on the Dawn Wall. If you aren’t a climbing geek who’s been following, they’re trying to free climb the steepest, blankest part of El Capitan. It’ll be a fight, for sure – it already is. They left…
Sometimes a compelling image says everything, no words needed. Sometimes the most basic photo hides a deeper meaning, an experience, a story; maybe a few details deepen what we see in that captured moment, or maybe it’s something we never imagined. Other times it’s just a pretty picture. That’s all. A lot of my posts…
Congratulations go out to Patagonia ambassador and FCD team rider, Kohl Christensen, on his first place finish in the Nelscott Reef Big Wave event. According to event organizers this year's contest took place in the biggest conditions ever surfed at Nelscott Reef. Stoked for you, brother! Photo: Tyler Roemer. Hit the jump for more photos…
How do you get to work in morning? Are you stuffed into a sweltering New York subway car? Crammed fender-to-fender along LA’s mind-numbing 405? Either way, our morning commute to work was way more stressful than yours. I promise. We chased the sun across the Inca Lake in Portillo… Editor's note: Freelance writer Greg Fitzsimmons…
One of the coolest things about climbing is how everyone can get their fix – whether you climb 5.5 or 5.14, we can all find that same feeling, that same immersion, focus and engagement at our own levels. This summer, Patagonia rock climbing ambassador Sonnie Trotter devoted himself to two, long new routes with very…
It’s been a nice summer. Sacred Rok had four camping trips, two in Yosemite Valley in May and June and two at Tuolumne Meadows in July and August. Editor's note: Last December we started a new series, Yosemite Dispatches,with longtime Patagonia ambassador Ron Kauk. In his April dispatch, Ron described a new summer project called…
After the fifth lower I called “off,” grimaced, untied with one hand and walked cautiously to a flat rock. Dammit, I’m getting sick of this. Across the valley El Capitan rose straight skyward and I sat down, surrounded by dirt, pine and granite. Clouds moved, darkening, signing an incoming storm. I held my left arm…
We test our gear on a variety of levels. Our Field Report: Climbing El Cap, Yosemite Valley, early October 2010Conditions: Kinda like rock climbing, kinda like paddling whitewater.Products Tested: Nano Storm, M10 Jacket, R1 Hoody, Rain Shadow JacketTested By: Dave Campbell, Patagonia Pro Sales There’s a saying in China: If you’re ‘one in a million’,…
“You’re such a redneck navigator,” Lizzy tells me. I’m in charge of getting us to a place in the South Platte where neither of us had been, and it’s dark, and I’m sitting in the passenger seat with a crooked map in one hand and a yuppie-Nalgene in the other – one of those steel…
Patagonia Running Ambassador Krissy Moehl took top honors at the recently held Shinetsu Five Mountains Trail 110K in Japan’s Shinetsu Highlands. This year marks the second running of the race, a labor of love born from the vision of another Patagonia Running Ambassador, Hiroki Ishikawa. Takayuki Kakihara, of Patagonia Japan, offers this introduction to the…
Summer left for fall the week before, and my super long shot goal slipped away. So it goes, I told myself, I had an awesome summer and am still months-to-a-year ahead of rehab schedule. Besides, climbing means nothing. OK, OK, let me get this straight: so there’s this hunk of rock – what, is there…
In the dank and smoky Fairview bar in Talkeetna, Alaska, 2003, I learned the simple secret to hard climbing. Jonny Copp and I had just come out of the Range, and we swilled beers with a couple of rowdy Brits. As usual, Jonny had been the driving force in our climbing. Everyone, it seemed, wavered…
This is it. Tracing the Edge concludes today with our final episode featuring ultrarunner Krissy Moehl. Kick back and enjoy. You can catch all 10 episodes of Tracing the Edge at patagonia.com/tracingtheedge or on YouTube via the Tracing the Edge playlist. A lot of hard work happens behind the scenes of a series like this.…
[Kelly trail running in Glacier National Park, MT. Photo: Cordes collection] You won’t run again. I don’t really set concrete goals. In fact, I find it best to have no goals whatsoever; that way I won’t be disappointed if I don’t reach them. Hopefully some hiking by mid-summer, and some easy climbs by fall. Seriously,…
Happy first day of fall everyone. We'll say farewell to summer with some south-swell shots of Keith Malloy dropping into a bomb at the Wedge in Newport Beach. Keith went down to body surf, but was able to get a few on his surfboard before the black ball. There's even some video. For more from…
Colin Haley used the Cascades as a springboard onto the world’s hardest-to-reach summits. The range’s fickle weather, arduous approaches and complex glaciers were perfect tests. Summit by summit Haley connected the dots until multi-day outings like Mount Shuksan and Mount Slesse became day trips. Stay tuned for the series finale next week. You can catch…
We’ve been reporting on Tommy Caldwell and crew’s trip to northern China’s Keketuohai National Geological Park, rumored to be a granite wonderland – but with challenging access (see parts one and two). Well, it turns out, both rumors proved true. But hopefully the latter will fade away with time and good behavior (like getting early…
Whether he's on glassy Indonesian waves or fresh Bachelor powder, 61-year-old Gerry Lopez understands the ins and outs of carving. How did the Pipeline master end up landlocked in Oregons high dessert? It's a family thing. The next episode of Tracing the Edge revists Colin Haley and will air on September 22. To catch up…
Details emerge in our second update on Granite China. Did the crew get to climb? Our inside informant (me) uncovered a few details. The reason for the previously spotty details is that, while there, our team had poor phone reception and couldn’t access the World Wide Web. Even if they had web access, China blocks…
The other day we got a voice message from the man himself, Tommy Caldwell, calling from China with an update on their rock scramblin’ explorations. It’s a great crew: Tommy and his wife, Becca; young phenom Hayden “Wu Tang!” Kennedy; master artist, climber and person Jer Collins; top writer, all-around go-for-it adventurer and climber Mark…
Is it possible to live an entire life in a single day? Ultrarunner Krissy Moehl has while racing. Massive 100-mile courses contain a lifetime of joy, tedium and wonder concentrated into 24 hours. For Krissy, her biggest races are touchstones in her life, a moment to process life's ups and downs. The next episode of…
[Ed Note: Kelly lets us write the title, so of course we're going to take a chance to tease him. And it goes without saying, but we'll say it anyways for all those bone-heads out there who are too-cool for school: there's nothing yella-bellied about protecting your skull. Wearing a helmet is more than a…
Colin Haley used the Cascades as a springboard onto the world's hardest-to-reach summits. The range's fickle weather, arduous approaches and complex glaciers were perfect tests. Summit by summit Haley connected the dots until multi-day outings like Mount Shuksan and Mount Slesse became day trips. The next episode, with Krissy Moehl, airs September 8. To catch…
Editor's note: Between the floods in Pakistan, the Gulf oil spill and the anniversary of Katrina it's easy to forget about the 8.8 earthquake and tsunami that brutalized Chile in February. Our Friends at Save the Waves Coalition haven't forgotten and continue their relief efforts in the hard to reach coastal areas of the country.…
There’s a great saying that goes, “If you don’t travel, you stagnate.” I think the idea also applies to engaging ourselves with people beyond our usual crowd. We can so easily get stuck in our own little circles, which also breeds stagnation and ignorance. And so two weekends ago I went with my ultraunner friends…
[Tracing the Edge playlist, kick back and watch episodes 1-5. Video: Fitz Cahall & Bryan Smith] Our friend Fitz Cahall, who you know from The Dirtbag Diaries, and his partner Bryan Smith have created a new 10-part video series, Tracing the Edge, that peers into the lives of three Patagonia ambassadors. You saw the first…
The Fall Alpine catalog just came out – or will be out soon – and has a theme of near-misses. Those climbs where we gave all we had but came up short. Anybody who’s thrown themselves to the alpine knows the story, and in the catalog we share some of those specific tales. I wrote…
We love the escape. Sometimes climbing is just climbing, and everything doesn’t need to symbolize anything more. I read that Hemingway said there was no symbolism in The Old Man and the Sea (my all-time favorite book), and that “The old man is an old man. The sea is the sea.” We can draw our…
Last week I wandered around the Outdoor Retailer trade show, where companies in the outdoor industry show off their new products and do business. Personally, it’s mostly a chance to see friends, drink beer, b.s. with friends, and drink beer. Er, I mean, “network.” Fun times, but it’s great to be home and climbing again.…
“Dude, what happened to your face?” That’s the most common email subject line from my friends recently. Editor’s note: It’s my distinct pleasure to introduce The Cleanest Line’s newest contributor, Kelly Cordes. Most of you know Kelly from his photos and field reports in Patagonia catalogs, his ambassador bio, or his video Somethin Bout Nothin.…
[Update 4/18/11 via Save the Waves & Surfer's Path: The fight continues to save Doolin Point and Crab Island. Despite the recent approval by the Clare County Council to build a pier that threatens the world-class waves of Crab Island and Doolin Point, the project now must acquire a foreshore license by the Department of…