Page 2 - Outside Classics News Today

The Maui surfer girls love each other's hair. It is awesome hair, long and bleached by the sun, and it falls over their shoulders straight, like water, or in squiggles, like seaweed, or in waves.

Freezing to death. Heatstroke. The excruciatingly painful sting of a box jellyfish, which can kill a person in under a minute. After writing the classic 1997 story “Frozen Alive,” Peter Stark became an expert on what it feels like to die in the wild. We asked him why people are so interested in reading about gruesome ways to go—and about his own close calls.

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.

Last February, when a 12,000-pound orca named Tilikum dragged his SeaWorld trainer into the pool and drowned her, it was the third time the big killer whale had been involved in a death. Many observers wondered why the animal was still working. But some experts, knowing the psychological toll of a life spent in captivity, have posed a darker question: Was it human error, or can a killer whale choose to kill?

Six young men set out on a dead-calm sea to seek their fortunes. Suddenly they were hit by the worst gale in a century, and there wasn't even time to shout.

What happens when an African American woman decides to solo-hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine during a summer of bitter political upheaval? Everything you can imagine, from scary moments of racism to new friendships to soaring epiphanies about the timeless value of America’s most storied trekking route.

Tim Cahill's stories and rollicking misadventures around the world have made this publication what it is today. Here he talks about his role in the creation of Outside magazine, choking down snake blood and gallbladder cocktails in the name of journalism, and how he came back from the dead after a frigid swim in the Grand Canyon's biggest rapid.

His life’s grand pursuit has killed his closest companions. His bride-to-be is his best friend’s widow. His exploding fame owes as much to happenstance (stumbling upon Mallory’s body on Everest) and luck (escaping an avalanche in Tibet) as it does to his great skill as a mountaineer. An intimate look at the serendipitous, tumultuous, and nearly unbearable success of Conrad Anker.

Rahawa Haile set out on the AT during one of the most tumultuous periods in our political history. The story she wrote about it for Outside in 2017 hit a nerve, and encouraged many others to get out on the trail. We followed up with her to find out what scared her the most, the one piece of gear she couldn’t live without, and why thru-hiking is always worth it in the end.