Ryan is a freelance journalist and climber. His favorite climbs are the random, unaesthetic snow- and ice-covered heaps in the middle of nowhere that require a weeklong scree-choked slog to maybe climb. Don’t ask him why. Follow his latest mission @ryanclimbs. REI member since 2017.
Your hands are everything in the winter: your anchors to the ice pitch, balance points while slashing powder, tools while setting up camp and utensils to help y... Read More...
We’ll be the first to admit: Winter camping is a little bit masochistic. But these new pieces of gear are designed to make it a little more bearable, if not dow... Read More...
Vermont isn’t exactly known for its city life. The tiny state is much more famous for its year-round adventures: Ski hills dot the mountains, peaks beg to be ba... Read More...
A version of this story appeared in the winter 2020 issue of Uncommon Path.
Skis and snowboards are big. The decision about which car-top carrier is right f... Read More...
Adirondack Park is more difficult to define than most state—or even national—parks. For starters, it’s massive: The greenspace, codified in the state constituti... Read More...
The last thing you might expect to see driving across the flat plains of Oklahoma are the bouldery, 1000-foot-tall Wichita Mountains. They bubble out of the pra... Read More...
The biggest piece of lifesaving gear you carry into the backcountry might not be something you even know you have. It doesn’t need batteries or a subscription. ... Read More...
The Problem
Headlamp packaging has a lot of tough-to-decipher numbers and icons, but there are two specs that really matter: lumens and run time. Most headlamp... Read More...
At the dawn of the computer age, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore looked at the already-rampant advances in the microprocessor and theorized that going forward, th... Read More...
For most climbers and ski mountaineers, a trip to the top of Denali takes about a month, door to door. Typically, the travel to Anchorage is the easy part—one f... Read More...
We scoured the massive show floor of last week’s Outdoor Retailer trade show in Denver in search of the most exciting pieces of backpacking gear hitting shelves... Read More...
The last time I went trad climbing—more than a year ago now—it didn’t end dramatically. I didn’t whip and injure myself. I didn’t get spooked 100 feet up a pitc... Read More...
