Outside Fall Long Reads

In her latest book, 'Plastic Shaman: The True Story of a Deadly Self-Help Retreat and America’s Misguided Quest for Wellness,’ author Annette McGivney investigates a sweat lodge ceremony that turned fatal.

Kamryn Renae's Instagram account exploded after she began posting flirty videos from the PCT, clad in pink booty shorts and matching nail polish. She knows what she is doing.

When a routine hunting trip turned into a fight for survival, one Montana man learned exactly what happens when you come face-to-face with a grizzly bear, and what it takes to live through the ultimate apex predator encounter.

She was the only hiker ever to die while seeking the summit of central Colorado’s most famous 14er. A member of the successful search team investigates who she was, how her death, and her recovery 19 years later, impacted her family, and what we all need to consider before heading into the alpine.

When I was a kid, I was fascinated by a traditional katana my grandfather had brought home from Japan in 1945. Years later, I decided it was time to find the heirloom’s rightful owner.

My wife decided we needed an active outdoor getaway, a romantic ramble across moors and fells and three national parks. I knew it’d be hard. I’ve never been happier.

As part of a long struggle with alcoholism, I decided to jump-start my recovery with a serious physical challenge: hiking 100 miles of the Appalachian Trail

Austin Howell soloed harder and more often than almost anyone else in the country, documenting his exploits on Instagram and a podcast. But behind the scenes his mental health was faltering.

Brian Boland was a prolific creator of handcrafted hot-air balloons who set distance and altitude records all over the world. But on July 15, 2021, during a routine outing with a family in Vermont, things went dramatically wrong. Sarah Schweitzer examines Boland’s eccentric and adventurous life, and finds out what happened on his fateful last flight.

Mark Jenkins chose to skip a risky adventure with his friends. Twenty-five years later, he’s still haunted by what happened in his absence.

After losing his bear spray, Colin Dowler was caught with nothing but a tiny Buck knife

In the fall of 2018, the 26-year-old American missionary traveled to a remote speck of sand and jungle in the Indian Ocean, attempting to convert one of the planet's last uncontacted tribes to Christianity. The islanders killed him, and Chau was pilloried around the world as a deluded Christian supremacist who deserved to die. Alex Perry pieces together the life and death of a young adventurer driven to extremes by unshakable faith.

The harrowing story of a too-close encounter with a Canadian black bear

Charlie Finlayson was on the ultimate climbing adventure with his dad, David, when a loose boulder forced him to make a daunting rescue

Richard Carr, a retired psychologist who had long dreamed of sailing around the world, was in the middle of the Pacific when he started sending frantic messages that said pirates were boarding his boat. Two thousand miles away in Los Angeles, his family woke up to a nightmare: he might be dying alone, and there was almost nothing they could do about it.

Last September, a trekking company's guided trip through the wilds of Papua New Guinea was shattered when machete-wielding men attacked the native porters, killing two on the spot and injuring many more. The motive appeared to be robbery, but Carl Hoffman knew something else was at work, ancient tribal patterns of violence that, he knew, would inevitably be avenged

Through interviews with family, colleagues, and the lone survivor, a former hotshot pieces together their final hours—and the fatal choices that will haunt firefighting forever.

The Deschutes River fly-fishing guide called Stealhead Joe was an angling master with a long list of devoted clients. But as Ian Frazier, who fished with Joe last fall, learned, off the water, Joe’s life was a tangle of troubles that ultimately overwhelmed him.

Sixteen years ago, the man who helped raise Megan Michelson was shot to death at a remote kayaking lodge in Northern California. Michelson embarks on a painful search to find out what happened, and why.

When Pete Absolon, the Rocky Mountain director of NOLS, set out for a climb in Wyoming's Wind River Range, life couldn't have been better. A deadly mistake by another man ended it all in an instant, and started a nightmare that's never going to stop.