The Dirtbag Diaries

“We biked through wind, rain, and snow. If lightning struck, we kept going. We only stopped if it got too close.  We outran tornadoes in Oklahoma. We waited out a storm in an old horse barn in Montana, huddled like penguins, our bikes cast carelessly aside in the mud,” writes John Flynn. After John lost…

Jeanie Adamson, a 50-something mom, decided to switch things up last year for spring break. When she told her son, Luke, she wanted to ski at every resort between Dallas and Lake Tahoe, he offered up his newly-renovated 1990 Dodge Ram van, Sherrod, for the job. The two of them threw in their skis, buckled…

After falling in love with John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Charlie Turnbull and Leon Morton set out to recreate the 1,615-mile journey described in the novel – but on bikes. In July. With camera gear and a few buddies in tow, they followed historic Route 66 from Oklahoma to Southern California. And along the way,…

“I’d built it up in my head a lot—being a professional climber. This felt like the consummation of those dreams. I found the valley, I envisioned the trip, I got the funding, made it happen, stood at the base, picked the line, climbed it, sent, we were at the top and it wasn’t feeling the…

“For better or for worse, ideas are infectious. They become our goals, and the struggle to realize them becomes memory, the story of our lives,” says Fitz Cahall. When Brian O’Dell decided it was time to stop driving his Honda Civic, he didn’t list in on Craigslist. Instead, he posted in to outdoor forums in…

What if you could hit pause on life? This last year, Fitz turned 40. Instead of buying a sports car, Fitz took a sabbatical. Today, he presents a story about mountain biking the Oregon Timber Trail, a 670-mile-long, mostly single track trail across the state’s deserts and forests. What’s the difference between a groove and…

Drew Hamilton makes a living by taking tourists out into the remote Alaskan wilderness to hang out with brown bears. No fences, no guns—just Drew, and the eight hundred pound, six and a half foot tall, Ursus arctos horribilis of southern Alaska. Most people call them grizzlies. These days, he does it, in large part, as a…

“Any time I ski a steep line, I’ve done it hundreds of times, and still every time for me there is that moment of fear on top, where I am like, ‘Do I really want to do this?’,” says Jason Hummel. “But, also, anytime you do anything scary, it really ties you down to the…

“I was certain I was paralyzed. My legs were totally limp, I was hanging upside down and the only thing stopping me from falling 160-feet headfirst into the talus below, was this rope that was wrapped around my foot,” remembers Craig Gorder. In November, 2016, Craig took a fall in Indian Creek that injured him…

“I have a pretty young grandfather, but he was starting to get old and knew he had one or two more big expeditions in him,” says Ethan Roebuck. “He wanted to put together a big trip, because he’s getting older, but also because I’m getting older, these are skills that he thinks are important, and…

For most of his adult life, Cam Fenton has fought against climate change–and particularly to protect the Arctic. “The funny thing was, for most of that time, I couldn’t tell you why,” says Cam. “Sure, I could recite, and often wrote, the talking points: to stop sea level rise, stand with small island nations and…

“The definition of kidnapping is moving someone from one point to another point against their will, and that’s exactly what had happened to us,” says Ben Stookesberry. “But, to me, the most noteworthy part of the day was that, for the first time in the entire trip, we were actually all working together as a…

There are a lot of serious problems in this world, but the solutions don’t always have to be serious. Fly fisherman and trail runner Andrew Todd channeled his concern for Colorado’s native trout and the watersheds that support them into the creation of a joyful, irreverent event: The Flyathlon. The rules: Run 10-miles Catch a…

“I was working this corporate job, and, every day, I looked out the window and thought, ‘Man, those mountains are so beautiful, I wish I was out there,’” remembers Perry Cohen. Growing up, Perry was an outdoorsy kid—hiking and cross-country skiing in rural New Hampshire. He was thrilled when, as a teenager, he got to…

“For me, it was a way to stay connected, literally: tied to my free-range daughter by a length of 10-millimeter climbing rope, and connected to my own dream of being an adventurer,” says David Altschul. “And that was how I found myself, a few days later, on a ledge, high above the Columbia River, in…

“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…

“It’s like being caught in a spiderweb. You’ll find yourself pushing with every part of your body, and no part of your body will be able to move. You’re totally trapped by–held by plants,” says Elsa Sebastian, describing what it’s like to bushwhack through a 25-year old clear cut in Southeast Alaska. It’s something the…

“I think the jack of all trades gets a bum rap. The jack is the master of none, but I think the jack probably has a lot of fun,” says Fitz Cahall. This year, The Dirtbag Diaries opens their annual The Year of Big Ideas with an ode to “mediocrity” from Fitz, then turns, as…

I’ve watched my friends and peers hopscotch across the world. Some of them have reached the top of their craft, authored ridiculous lines up mountains, followed rivers into wrinkles of the deepest canyons, found the edge of human endurance. If I look back on the last ten years, I’m often surprised that I didn’t end…

“It’s like the Iditarod with a chance of drowning,” says Jake Beatty, one of the organizers of a bizarre, crazy race called the Race to Alaska. The course traces 750 miles of Alaska’s Inside Passage through complicated currents and tides, busy shipping channels and bear-ridden coastlines from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska. In June.…

For our eighth annual Tales of Terror episode, we have not three, but five stories that span the range of things to fear—from angry men with shotguns, to bears and mountain lions, to things that really don’t have any explanation in the world of science. First, we visit an abandoned Pennsylvania town with Joe Shearer.…

Raising awareness. It seems like every day, someone embarks on a new project to ‘raise awareness’ about a particular issue, cause, disease, endangered species or threatened public land. But what separates the projects that cut through the noise and the ones that get drowned out in the static of issues competing for our attention? For…

“When we were living in a house, we were always compromising because we had the weight of a mortgage, of doing what we thought we should be doing,” remembers Kathy Holcombe. Until the day she, her husband Peter and their daughter Abby moved into a Winnebago to travel and work from the road. “I want…

“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…

“The reason that I was able to do it is because I was incredibly naive,” says Lucas St. Clair. “I had no idea how much work it was gonna be when I started. Not a clue.” The thing Lucas did: work to establish Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in the North Woods of Maine.…

When a bad breakup sent him spiraling into a deep depression, Tom Ireson fixated on an unconventional way to get his head straight. “I really needed something to focus my mind on to pull me out of that,” Tom says, “and about the biggest thing I could think of was to try and do a new…

“If you really want to have an adventure that’s not going to be sexy—it’s gonna be dirty and it’s gonna be rowdy—there’s a place out here for you,” says Josh Ewing. “It’s the chance to do something where you’re not going to see another climber.” In the beginning, Josh came to Bears Ears, Utah, in…

Loosely speaking, there are two kinds of fear. There’s the fear of external, objective hazards–like getting caught in an avalanche, or taking a bad fall climbing or getting mauled by a grizzly bear. Then, there’s the internal, more slippery kind of fear, like the fear of not being pretty enough, or not being popular enough…

If you travel down to Ushuaia, Argentina, you might just find a bus plastered with a massive photograph of Sam Evans-Brown. In that photo, he’s sprinting, shoulder to shoulder, with Olympic cross-country ski-racer Martin Bianchi in the final stretch of the 2008 national ski championship of Argentina. Today, Sam brings us the backstory to that…

No matter who they voted for, right now, a lot of people in this country would agree that things could be better. In the long term, if we want things to go well or if we want to move forward or to grow, then two, almost evenly divided, sides of this country can’t remain at…

Chad Kellogg. September 22, 1971 to February 14, 2014. Seattle climbing community legend. Dear friend to many. And the toughest guy around. “For Chad, not eating and shivering on ledges, that was like skiing powder for him. It was just that fun,” remembers Jens Holsten. Today, we take a look at what gets left behind…

“As a mom, you have no book that tells you the right way to take care of your kids through bad times,” says Bonnie Elozory, mother of four. For seven years, the Elozory family weathered a relentless streak of bad luck. With no instructions on how to pull her family out of the muck, Bonnie…

This is our seventh annual Tales of Terror episode. Over the past seven years, we’ve read a lot of stories about scary things that happen out in the woods. We’ve discovered that there are all kinds of frightening things that can happen out there, but there are two ingredients that, mixed together, seem to lead…

Ben Stookesberry and Chris Korbulic are the expedition kayakers. Over the past decade, the duo have made first descents of over 120 rivers in wildly remote locations across 36 countries and 6 continents. In 2016, Ben and Chris traveled to Myanmar to complete a source to sea descent of the Irrawaddy River. They both say…

“Over two weeks I went from pretty ‘fine’—I have to say ‘fine’ with air quotes and an eye roll, because it’s that kind of fine—so, I went from ‘fine’ to ‘I’m out!’ I just needed a life restart,” says Katie Crafts. For her thirtieth birthday, Katie gave herself a trip on a cruise to Antarctica.…

Jim Herson and Anne Smith live in the Bay Area. They’re in their fifties. Jim has worked the same computer science job since he graduated college in 1982, and he and Anne have been together nearly that long. They have two kids, a 17-year-old daughter and a 13-year-old son, who they shuttle around the city…