My Great Awakening The powder snow of Japan is so light, so iconic, it has a name: Japow. Born of cold Siberian air streaming over relatively warm ocean water toward Hokkaido, Japow has inspired face-shot aficionados to fly halfway around the world for it. I have been to Niseko and, like the airborne snow crystals sent into a frenzy with...

　　Craig Kelly was snowboarding’s first true pro athlete. After a highly successful competitive career, he left the championship circuit behind in 1991 in favor of freeriding, the sidet of the sport he loved most. By the end of the decade, Kelly had decided to become a backcountry guide, a path that led him to an apprenticeship position at Selkirk Mountain...

　　Six years ago, Kevin Love, at the time a power forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers, published a now-famous essay in the Players’ Tribune titled “Everyone Is Going Through Something.” The piece describes an in-game panic attack that had blindsided Love earlier in the season, and his subsequent struggles to talk about what had happened. Love writes that he eventually started...

　　Monday, April 8, 2024, will be an epic day, when a total eclipse passes over North America. The moon will completely block out the sun, turning day to night across a wide swath of the United States from Texas to Maine. All of us in the nation, wherever we’re located, will experience at least a partial eclipse. If you’re in...

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　　Last year was a banner one for our national parks, with 325.5 million recreation visits in the books for 2023. Last week the National Park Service released its annual visitation statistics, detailing the total number of visitors to the 400 units—which include national seashores and historic sites—the park service manages. Overall, recreation visits increased by 13 million, an uptick of...

　　Since the shift to remote work that started during the COVID-19 pandemic, a growing percentage of employees are in the position to work and live wherever they want. For some, that has meant relocating to a place with better outdoor access. Hordes of geographically-liberated professionals have made their way to mountain towns across the country, exacerbating pre-existing issues of housing affordability,...

　　This story update is part of the Outside Classics, a series highlighting the best writing we’ve ever published, along with author interviews and other exclusive bonus materials. Read “We Dressed a Modern Man Like an Outdoor Dude from the 1970s and Set Him Loose in the Wild,” by Eric Hansen here. 　　The subhead read: “Outside was born into a far-out bicentennial world...

　　Laying out all of the gear I needed to road trip 6,000 miles from Montana to Baja Sur with my wife and three dogs, a thought struck me. Am I chronically over-prepared? Probably. But I figure the the least I can do for the friends (non-human and otherwise) I ask to tag along through remote, often dangerous adventures is to...

　　Flaco is dead. Long live Flaco. 　　In case you were unaware, one of the most whimsical and curious stories in the recent memory of New Yorkers came to an abrupt and sad end last Friday, February 23. A building superintendent on Manhattan’s Upper West Side discovered the body of Flaco, a massive Eurasian eagle owl who had escaped from the...

　　Running bras have come a long way since 1977, when Lisa Lindahl and Polly Smith stitched together a pair of jockstraps to create the original Jogbra. Current models aren’t just comfortable and supportive; they’re performance-enhancing. Studies have found that more supportive bras reduce oxygen consumption—a proxy for how much energy you’re burning at a given running pace—by 7 percent, perhaps...

　　Want to have a successful camping trip? Make good food. 　　But cooking in camp can involve challenges: weather, darkness, unfamiliar equipment, and sanitation can build a barricade between you and a full stomach. And that’s before you figure in fussy eaters or food allergies. But on a recent 1,000-mile camping trip through Mexico, I think I may have experienced a...