Sublime

John Muir is remembered primarily as a no-nonsense conservationist and the founding president of the Sierra Club, but he was also a bold adventurer, a fearless scrambler of peaks, glaciers, and waterfalls whose best-known essay includes a riveting account of nearly falling to his death, in 1872, while ascending California’s Mt. Ritter.

John Muir liked to limit his “supplies” to a tin cup, a loaf of stale bread, and an overcoat.

The world reveals itself to those who walk

— Werner Herzog

prime minister,

Nobody was admired more than so-called free soloists: visionaries who ascended alone, without rope or hardware.

Up to that point in his life, Sam hadn’t led much of anything or even been vaguely responsible for other people. He’d managed puzzle hunts out of his parents’ home in high school. He’d spent a year as “Commander” of a twenty-five-person living group at MIT. It crossed his mind, now that he was starting his own business, that he should read up on ho

Late in the month Mugs Stump crossed paths with Waterman on the upper Ruth Glacier. Stump, an alpinist of world renown who died on Denali in 1992, had just completed a difficult new route on a nearby peak, the Mooses Tooth.

Rosellini’s “experiment” stretched on for more than a decade, but eventually he felt the question that inspired it had been answered. In a letter to a friend he wrote, I began my adult life with the hypothesis that it would be possible to become a Stone Age native. For over 30 years, I programmed and conditioned myself to this end. In the last 10 o

His unconventional method of exploring was to travel light and fast.