Almost any hiking area has some sort of history tied to it, but sometimes a historical connection makes a hike even more special. When we walk over old trails, we see what others saw and get a sense for their universe.History is never far from ...
Whether you’re in the woods, on the trail, or camping in your backyard, summer insects are a fact of the outdoor life. They can range from mildly annoying to seriously dangerous, but with proper care, it’s relatively easy to reduce the risk. While a ...
To hike on a battlefield is to hike through history. The artillery pieces used for bombardments are silent now, either used as decoration or removed entirely. In many places, in fact, the signs of the bygone conflict are hard to see.Hiking is a ...
The heat hits me like a solid hand, buffeting my entire body as I open the door of the cabin, stepping out of the air-conditioned interior of the ferry and onto the deck. It’s hot enough to suck the air from my lungs. I start sweating almost ...
Three years and five months spent in the Malayan jungle battling typhus, pneumonia, blackwater fever, cerebral malaria — two weeks of which was spent in a coma — represent half of the battles British commando Freddy Spencer Chapman faced during his ...
If the journey Benjamin Breckheimer begins today is successful, he’ll be the first Purple Heart recipient to have climbed all of the famed Seven Summits. Alaska’s Denali, with a summit elevation of 20,310 feet above sea level, is the highest mountain ...
From April 12 to 14, 2019, 54 two-man teams competed in the 36th annual David E. Grange Best Ranger Competition for 60 continuous hours of running, shooting, ruck marches, and climbing. The teams came from across the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and ...
Sometimes a day hike or a weekend backpacking trip isn’t enough. If you’re feeling the call of the wild — that urge to be outside and survive in the elements for an extended period of time — you’ll want to consider long trails meant for ...
Donnie Vincent isn’t your typical hunter. The biologist turned hunter-conservationist turned filmmaker has traveled the world to stalk and kill dangerous big-game animals, often after spending weeks in austere environments to earn the opportunity. ...
Look, we get it. You have an unquenchable thirst — a yearning for the trumpets and cannon-fire, but the kids have soccer practice on Tuesdays and you have bowling league on Thursdays. What is a would-be operator to do?High-end training is seeing ...
Americans celebrate all races, religions, cultures, and creeds in order to remember, reflect, and learn from our ancestors’ trials and tribulations. Since 1976, every U.S. President has recognized the month of February as Black History Month, an ode ...
When the days get short and cold, many people take that as an excuse to hunker down in the comfort of their homes. But a harsh winter often opens up new outdoor experiences, and there’s nothing quite as beautiful as a snow-covered landscape under the ...
After more than two months alone on a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, Tim Crockett, 47, was two miles from the finish line of the Talisker Whisky Challenge when he considered abandoning ship.“I had to clear the headland right in front of the harbor ...
When the days grow cold and short, a lot of people use that as an excuse to stay indoors. But with a little bit of preparation and forethought, you can hike and backpack all through the winter without an issue.The Boy Scouts of America keep a ...
Sometimes things go wrong. Horribly wrong. But whatever the scale of the disaster, we have to find a way to overcome it in the long run. A lot of people focus on gear — which is of utmost importance in an emergency — but instead of nitpicking ...
The forest of mostly dead trees sits near the highway in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Syringes and broken bottles litter the landscape. On occasion, you might catch a vagrant cooking some food or a junkie getting his fix. You might also see master ...
Three years after ISIS declared a caliphate in Raqqa, Syria, its ability to take more territory had crumbled. With constant coalition airstrikes and special operations forces weakening the jihadist group, its capability to effectively fight back was ...
In the legendary 1818 poem “Ozymandias,” Percy Shelley wrote about a statue of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II, who once ruled a great empire. My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside ...
At 6-foot-3, 19-year-old Elder Ostler stood a head taller than most of the people he saw walking down the street in Krasnodar, Russia. He wore a white dress shirt with a black name tag, a paisley tie, and a pair of slacks. His companion, Elder Dance, ...
We heard the danger before we saw it. A whitewater creek in a narrow valley. My uncle and I stood there on the bank, within sight of the road but blocked by this uncrossable water. Over the snowy ridge to the northwest, the sun was almost down, and ...
Lauren McGough and her Kazakh mentor rode on horseback through the Altai Mountains until they caught up to their golden eagle, who was removing the fur from the fox it had just caught. Because of their language barrier, the two recreated the ...
We’d just crossed a nameless, murky Amazonian river and were moving toward our objective on foot. The two-star general accompanying our motley crew of misfit medics through the Peruvian jungle informed us the advanced security element, just ahead of ...
Have you ever fucked up so bad that time stops, giving some great ethereal fist the opportunity to slip past your teeth, punch down your throat, and choke stop the conversion of oxygen in your lungs’ alveoli? That’s how bad I messed up on my first ...
