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In the past week two different men died in avalanches in the Utah backcountry; the first two this season, and hopefully the last.   As always in these daze of social media, there were the standard RIPs and “died doing what he loved” comments, and as per normal in fatalities in activities that some people think are extreme there were the righteous comments along the lines of  “what are they doing out there!?  They should…

Being on a recent river trip reminded me of another trip that happened pretty long ago, where we had a memorable incident.  It may be that it’s more memorable to me because I’ve told the story so many times – so many, in fact, that Ashley can tell the tale as well as I can – but I’ve never written it down, and it’s kind of a fun tale.  In about nineteen hundred and ninety…

As published in Cycling West’s Fall 2024 edition It’s no secret that Colorado has more than its share of great riding, from many long road passes that go high into the mountains to a big chunk of the Great Divide Route to a lot of great singletrack. Crested Butte (CB) – partly as the town credited with the origin of mountain biking, and partly as a famous destination for a zillion miles of beautiful, high…

We’ve had plenty of bike tours in really fun, somewhat far flung places, but the truth is that southern Utah has some of the best riding anywhere; thanks to the proliferation of old roads that – for better or worse, depending on your perspective – were hewn in the quest for oil and uranium back in the day.  Their industriousness – again, for better or worse – enables our ability to do surprisingly-big rides in…

With all the buzz of the Olympics and the very impressive performance of the Americans in track and field, and not only in the typical sprint events, but this time even the US distance runners had some very impressive results with bold, gutsy, and powerful finishes.  Watching the amazing finish by Kenneth Rooks in the steeplechase to take the silver (the video is very much worth watching!) – I was reminded of an equally-fun and…

Recently I was digging through some of my archives and happened upon a copy of the Gloucester, Massachusetts “Summer Sun” from July, 1994, and it reminded me of a story that I had just recently told someone, and it’s just kooky enough to create a short(ish) blog post. I had recently moved to the Boston area to take a job developing shoes for Saucony and didn’t know anyone and was trying hard to make my…

Last year a crew of us were able to do what we felt was one of our “best trips ever” (mostly due to only having short term memories!) in the Nahanni region of northwestern Canada. Between the beauty, scale, remoteness, weather, challenge, whitewater, weather, and crew it was pretty amazing, and as such it was a bit of a challenge to follow it up with another one this year, especially because two of our five…

Some years ago famed packrafter Mike Curiak went out to southern Oregon for yet another descent of the fabled Chetco River and when I asked him how it was afterwards he memorably told me “If there’s a more beautiful wilderness river out there than the Chetco I really want to be able to find and paddle that too.” The Chetco is tucked deep in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in the Siskiyou Mountains of SW Oregon and…