At midnight Mountain Time on January 30, the public comment period closed for two proposals from the National Park Service (NPS) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) that would ban fixed anchors (bolts, pitons, snow pickets, slings) in America’s Designated Wilderness areas. 　　I’ve written a lot about and around this subject; so if you want a full treatment, read “New Wilderness...

　　Poop it out, pack it down. 　　Thats the new directive for climbers on Mount Everest this year. On Thursday, February 9, Nepali officials told the BBC that mountaineers ascending the worlds highest peak will have to bring their feces down to Base Camp using plastic wag bags. The rule was instated by the Pasang Lhamu municipality, the local government that...

　　Editor’s note: New details about the fatal incident have been added to this report as of Feb. 15. 　　Renowned telemark, big mountain, and expedition skier Katherine “Kasha” Rigby, aged 54, is confirmed dead in an avalanche in Kosovo during her #tourdepiste project. Euro News Albania reported on Feb.13 that a 54-year-old foreign citizen lost her life in an avalanche at...

　　The wall of snow struck Loren Ennis on his heelside, punched his snowboard forward, and sent him sliding down the mountain on his back. The impact happened so suddenly that Ennis struggled to understand what was going on, even as his body began to sink into the churning debris. 　　“I thought that maybe somebody had run into me,” Ennis, 32,...

　　Talon Vance, 13, lived in an apartment complex in suburban Colorado Springs with his mom and Aunt. Other relatives lived nearby. Typically, he spent much of the week with his father, half brother, half sister, and grandparents, all of whom lived together not far away in a different town. All of that would change in August 2022: Talon’s mother, Rebecca...

　　Earlier today, a federal jury found Charles Barrett, an accomplished Northern California climber and a guidebook author, guilty of three charges of sexual assault. 　　The verdict follows a weeklong trial held at the U.S. District Court in Sacramento. A 12-member jury composed of eight men and four women found Barrett, 39, guilty of two counts of aggravated sexual abuse and...

　　Pizza. At an Italian restaurant in a strip mall just outside an idyllic town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, seven teenage mountain-bike racers and two coaches crowd around a table. It was a busy Saturday in May 2022 at Virginia’s interscholastic mountain-biking series, known as VAHS. 　　The team, the Richmond Cycling Corps (RCC), consists of sixth-to-twelfth-graders who attend a variety...

　　I often joke that thru-hikers are total fearmongers. Alone on a trail with nothing but a few friends, a cell phone that has no service, and all our thoughts, we dwell on the challenge posed by upcoming terrain, and we then spread these worries to one another like a common cold. 　　Oh, man, you think Tennessee is tough? I heard...

　　Vivek Puri first noticed the symptoms in 2012. Instead of hanging or swinging by his side as he walked, his arm curled inward and up, his wrist hanging right around his belt buckle. It was strange, he remembers, but subtle enough that he simply adjusted his stance and moved on. 　　But then the 38-year-old Northern Virginia-based businessman began experiencing more...

　　I read a lot of search and rescue reports. 　　These brief accounts, often published on Facebook or on government agency websites, are windows into dramatic lifesaving missions that sometimes involve helicopters and dozens of personnel. No, the writing isnt exactly Shakespeare, and the photos are often grainy and of poor compositional quality. But I still find these statements to be...

　　Ahead of the 2024 season, the International Federation of Sport Climbing has released a policy to prevent eating disorders among competition climbers. The policy, developed by scientific experts based on the findings of an International Olympic Committee, marks the first time any international federation has taken an active step to limit the pervasiveness of Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport. Ultimately,...

　　Last week I spent six hours skiing in the Vermont rain, and it actually didn’t suck–largely because I was swaddled in invisible toxic chemicals, known as PFAS or “forever chemicals.” I’m speaking of the key ingredient found on and in nearly every piece of outerwear with any kind of water repellency: the chemicals that keep us dry through any weather....