I was traveling in Germany with a girlfriend a long time ago and I’ll never forget the time she held up a huge guidebook in the town square, looked at me through foggy glasses, and said, “This book shows us how to blend in like locals,” while she was wearing a massive backpack and crying [ more... ]

There’ll be plenty of room for new shanty towns in this recession with the passage of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which will grant protected wilderness status to two million acres across nine states. The protected land amounts to largest acreage since a few million acres of California desert were protected in 1994 before [ more... ]

If kayakers would take a break from grooming their beards to do a little material science research we could have one of these on top of every Subaru by now. The Wave Sport Project 54Cx play boat features a full carbon fiber hull that weighs about as much as a boat made from egg shells [ more... ]

Here’s some POV footage from Backcountry.com athlete Sage Cattabriga-Alosa’s helmet cam while in the Retallack BC during the 2009 Red Bull Cold Rush. Remember to look at the white spaces between the trees and not to stare directly into the tree wells or you’ll make him crash. At least these are nice pine trees have [ more... ]

A New Zealander completed a global circumnavigation this week when he returned on the last of three skateboards to Christchurch, New Zealand. The 28-year-old Rob Thomson managed to spend only about $16k on his 2.5 year journey and says he’ll write a book about it now that he’s home. Let me guess: Lots of sore [ more... ]

Outlier is coming out with a waxed cotton hat that’s made for year-round riding, provided, of course, that you don’t live somewhere too cold and don’t mind not wearing a helmet to catch your brains during crashes. The Outlier Waxed Cotton Cap sells for about $60, though the designers say it’ll last for ages, form [ more... ]

Sixty-two miles into a 700-mile death march to the North Pole with a useless GPS and spinning compass, the Catlin Arctic Survey team looked to a pair of lacy undies tied to a ski pole to check the wind and get their north-bound bearings. It begs the question: Why didn’t they pack better? Or hell, [ more... ]

Employees at the South Pole Research Station won’t be able to stand six months of darkness (nor their colleague’s repeated references to the movie Predator vs. Alien) without easy access to mind-altering beverages. And if there’s one thing egghead scientists need help with it must be accessorizing their houndstooth hats-otherwise why would Outdoor Research affix [ more... ]

I thought the first ‘green’ wading boots would have been made with recycled pool table felt soles. Instead Simms has come up with this new rubber sole that’s designed so you don’t transport mud snails and didymo among different watersheds and destroy fish populations. It’s a bit odd that over-manufactured rubber is coming back to [ more... ]

Specialized came out with one of these folding locks about 10 years ago, but it disappeared pretty quickly after someone figured out that you could break it by using a center punch to knock out a joint. Now Abus locks is back with this Bordo Granit X-Plus folding lock and claiming it offers the same [ more... ]