The Southwest has been getting hammered by rain, and it feels like El Niño is here to stay. The desert is soaked, the rock is unclimbable, and camping season just got a whole lot colder.

That didn’t stop us from packing up the family and heading to Capitol Reef National Park for the epic Muley Canyon hike. There’s something magical about the desert after a good soaking, even if you’re freezing your ass off at night.

Meanwhile, we’ve got plenty to keep you stoked: first descents in Patagonia, giant granite walls in Mozambique, wild whitewater in New Zealand, and a dog outrunning all the bikes. Plus, we’re introducing Destination Unknown—places you didn’t know you needed to go.

Stay dry, stay warm, and stay stoked!

All heart, Nico ❤️

🌊 Primates on the Zambezi!

📍 Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe 🇿🇼

River wizard Sam Bradford catches a beautiful river wave on the mighty Zambezi, just below Victoria Falls, while a baboon watches the action from a rock on the shore. World-class river surfing, one of Africa’s wildest rivers, and a front-row seat for the local wildlife. Does it get any better than this?

🎿 Home where the boys play

📍 Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Imagine growing up with Jackson Hole as your backyard and your best friends as your ski crew. This group of shredders have been together since they were kids, and now they’re all grown up and still sending it. This one will make you look back at your teenage years and wish you’d spent every damn day skiing.

⏱️ 8 min

🌊 Heli drop into class v rapids

📍 Kokatahi River, West Coast, New Zealand 🇳🇿

Heli-kayaking in New Zealand!? Remote wilderness and a full day of Class V whitewater and a short portage around some seriously gnarly river. The Kokatahi River is no place for the fainthearted. Big water, big consequences, and one hell of an adventure.

⏱️ 8 min

⚖️ 24hr on a slackline?

Some people run marathons. Others climb mountains. Davis Hermes decided he’d try to spend 24 hours straight on a slackline. Day and night balancing, exhaustion, and figuring out what to do when nature calls. He’s even prepared to shit his pants if that’s what it takes. Glad someone’s out there pushing the limits of human endurance. Glad it’s not me.

⏱️ 11 min

💥 Break yo neck!

📍 Alaska, USA

Sometimes a title says enough to make you stop scrolling. The Crash is one of those. Let Canadian pro freerider, Reece Wallace, and the footage do the talking.

⏱️ 16 min

🐕 A hella fast dog!

📍 Roswell, Georgia, USA 🇺🇸

Meet Sammy, a four-legged speed demon who can outrun even the e-bikes! Her owner, Joseph Karpus, isn't your average mountain biker either. He's a competitive bikejoring racer—a sport where dogs pull cyclists—and represented the USA at the 2025 Dryland World Championships.

Check out how Sammy's does all the work. Good boy, Sammy!

🗞️ Bonus News

🎿 $20 lift tickets? Utah’s newest ski area keeps it real. Snowland is bringing affordable skiing back. The resurrected ski hill in central Utah, originally opened in 1967, has unveiled a new trail map, plans to expand to 107 acres, and will charge just $20 for adults this winter. Kids 12 and under ski free!

🌵 Strong winds toppled a massive saguaro onto a woman hiker near Scottsdale, knocking her unconscious and leaving her with multiple injuries. Another hiker helped lift the several-hundred-pound cactus off her. Talk about a freak accident.

🎿 No-show at Alta? That’ll be $100. Alta is cracking down on skiers who reserve parking spots and never show up. Miss your weekend or holiday reservation and you’ll get a warning the first time, then a $100 fine for subsequent no-shows. Cancel before 8 a.m. and you’re in the clear.

🛶 He ran Twin Cities marathon carrying a canoe, finishing in just under six hours. His mission? Raise awareness about protecting the Boundary Waters from copper-nickel mining. Race organizers disqualified him, but Travis Meier is not stopping and plans to run a canoe-carrying marathon every week for a year. See more from Travis below on the nightly news!

(and btw, F·ck Trump for what his administration has done to threaten protections for the Boundary Waters Wilderness.) The Boundary Waters is especially vulnerable because its lakes, rivers, and streams are interconnected. Pollution originating upstream could travel through the watershed, potentially damaging aquatic ecosystems for generations.

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones (reading is fun!)

🌡️ Heat storms: today’s climate monsters

📍 Worldwide 🌍

The phrase heat wave no longer applies. Read about the ongoing enormous heat events that can engulf entire continents and last for months. In the 1960s, there were roughly five a year. Today, we’re averaging more than 100. One monster, dubbed Vera, lasted 367 days and affected 85% of the planet! This extraordinary investigation uses decades of climate data and powerful visuals to reveal an invisible threat that’s already reshaping our world.

📖 Read it on Reuters: The Age of Heat Storms

🌊 A first descent in 2026? Patagonia’s Río Cuervo

📍 Chilean Patagonia 🇨🇱

You don’t hear many first descents in 2026. Most of the world’s major whitewater rivers have already been paddled. But deep in Patagonia, the Río Cuervo remained unconquered—20 kilometers of steep, massive whitewater, monstrous rapids, and nearly impossible access. Last winter was unusually dry for Chile opening a window, and if anyone was going to pull this off, it was kayaking legend Dane Jackson and his crew. Five days on the river, rapids stretching three kilometers, and portages that look like expeditions in themselves.

This is exploration at its finest!

⏱️ 1hr 45mn

🐻 A Dead Hiker, an Aggressive Bear, and a National Park That Won’t Talk

📍 Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

Human remains were discovered deep in Shenandoah’s backcountry. Days later, a black bear terrorizes three backpackers, slashing their tent and repeatedly charging them. But here’s the disturbing part: the National Park Service waits three weeks to tell the public about the body and refuses to explain what happened. Was it a bear attack? Nobody knows. Journalist Earl Swift investigates the mystery, the park’s silence, and a troubling new federal policy restricting information about deaths and injuries on public lands.

📖 Read it on RePublic.Land: What Happened in Shenandoah?

Destination Unknown

“Places you didn't know you needed to go.”

🧗 A big adventure on Mozambique’s sky islands

📍 Nampula, Mozambique 🇲🇿

Northern Mozambique is home to some of the world's most spectacular granite inselbergs—massive rock islands rising hundreds of meters above the African plains. And hardly anyone climbs them!

Spanish climber Bosco Bonilla and American partners Dakota Waltz and Owen McGinness headed deep into Mozambique to establish a new route on a remote big wall that hadn’t seen climbers in over a decade. First came 10 days of negotiating with politicians, police, and tribal chiefs, who suspected the trio might be after mining riches. Then came the real adventure: opening Capulana (725m, 6c obligatory) on the striking Mt. Malema 1.

Endless train rides, guns, jungle camps, big-wall hauling, beautiful beaches, and plenty of beer. Now that’s a climbing trip!

🎶 Straight out of New Zealand, comes a little cinematic magic featuring the sounds of Austrian indie duo Cari Cari. Snow, mountains, music, and some creative filmmaking. A pretty sweet way to close out this week’s StokedAF.

❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

Now it’s Time to catch up on some adventure films and we have plenty to keep us stoked! There’s so much content out there these days that it’s nearly impossible to keep up. That’s why StokedAF is here: to sift through the noise and bring you the best of what’s happening in adventure, outdoor sports, and the natural world.

See you next week!

Nico in Moab

🚶 He walked home: 28 years & 50,000km

📍 United Kingdom

In 1998, British adventurer Karl Bushby set off from the southern tip of Chile with two rules: no transport to advance his journey, and no returning home until he got there on foot.

28 years later, after crossing the frozen Bering Strait, swimming the Caspian Sea, and walking through 29 countries, he’s finally back on British soil. But the real story is about everything he sacrificed along the way: a son who grew up without him, a granddaughter he learned about from afar, nieces and nephews he’d never met, and a mother he left at her garden gate nearly three decades ago.

This emotional interview, filmed after he swam the English Channel, is about the extraordinary price of pursuing a dream.

⏱️ 12 min

🧗 Zion: 6 big walls in sub 19 hours!

📍 Zion National Park, Utah

Nobody knows Zion’s big walls better than Connor Baty right now. But even by his standards, this is ridiculous. Teaming up with Max Krieger, the pair tackled six of Zion’s legendary walls in a single push: Monkey Finger, Lunar Ecstasy, Sheer Lunacy, Moonlight Buttress, Touchstone, and Prodigal Sun. That’s 54 pitches, 5,920ft of climbing, and a ton of rappelling.

They stopped the clock at 18 hours and 52 minutes, claiming a new six-wall FKT, along with four- and five-wall benchmarks along the way. An absolutely massive day in one of America’s great climbing playgrounds.

🚵 Mother nature rips up the Rampage

📍 Virgin, Utah

Just when Red Bull Rampage seemed to have dialed in its return to big-mountain freeriding, moving away from the slopestyle features of previous editions, Mother Nature had other plans. Tropical Storm Rachel brought relentless rain and wind, forcing organizers to cancel more than half of the men’s competition. A crushing disappointment for the riders, builders, and fans who had spent months preparing for the biggest event in freeride mountain biking.

And here’s our two cents: for an event this big, shouldn’t there be a backup day?

⏱️ 20 min

🏔️ Trango Towers… on a slackline

📍 Karakoram, Pakistan

German highliners, Antonia Rüede-Passul and Lukas Irmler, hauled a highline up Trango Nameless Tower in the Karakoram and rigged it at a dizzying 6,251m. The expedition, that took place a couple months back, involved acclimatizing on Great Trango Tower, climbing the legendary Eternal Flame route, and summiting twice to rig the line.

Antonia set a new women’s highline altitude record, while Lukas completed his first highline above 6,000m. Just getting up there would be a lifetime achievement for most climbers. These two decided are dedicated to slacklining.

🛹 All fire skate-stoke

📍 San Francisco, California

Sometimes you don’t need a world record, an expedition, or a 6,000-meter summit to get fired up. Sometimes all it takes is a good skate film. With a stacked roster and the streets of San Francisco as their playground, this full-length film delivers the ohhhs and awwws.

Watch a little now, save the rest for later. No filler, just incredible skating in one of the world’s most iconic skate cities.

⏱️ As long as you want it to be!

🧊 Ice in Australia? Gadd, Will hunting

📍 Australian Alps, Australia

Australia: kangaroos, beaches, scorching deserts... and ice climbing? Canadian climbing legend Will Gadd teams up with local climber Hugh Newall to find out whether there’s actually worthwhile ice to climb Down Under. With low expectations and plenty of stoke, the pair head into Australia’s snowy mountains in search of frozen waterfalls and real ice routes. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Gadd swinging his tools on an adventure like this, and it’s good to have him back.

⏱️ 15 min

🪂 465km by air; 147km by foot

📍 Pyrenees, Spain and France

From the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, the X-Pyr is one of the world’s toughest hike-and-fly paragliding races, challenging athletes to cross the Pyrenees using only their feet and their wings. This year, German flyer Elisa Deutschmann became the first woman to complete the race, covering an incredible 465 kilometers in the air and another 147 kilometers on foot. Her message to other women dreaming of taking on a challenge like this? “Just go for it and don’t be afraid.

⏱️ 15 min

⚡ Bonus News

🎿 Utah’s Moose Springs Ranch offers a glimpse of a different kind of ski resort: private backcountry terrain, away from the crowds and lift lines. The catch? It’s not open to the general public.

🌿 Should Nature Have Legal Rights? A European Citizens’ Initiative wants to give ecosystems legal rights, including the right to exist, regenerate, and be restored. The idea is to recognize nature as a legal entity, much like a corporation, rather than simply property to be owned and exploited.

🧗 History livestreamed: Jakob Schubert sends second route at 9c, completing the first repeat of DNA (9c/5.15d) in France’s Verdon Gorge. Shubert is now the first person to climb two routes graded 9c, the highest grade in sport climbing.

🚵 The 2026 Arizona Trail Race delivered another dose of desert suffering, unpredictable conditions, and lessons in what happens when even the best-laid bikepacking plans fall apart. A race wrap-up about the challenges that make ultra-endurance riding so compelling.

🌊 Hungarian Freediver Zsófia Törőcsik set the World Record in the Free Immersion discipline in Cyprus. With a single breath, she spent 4 minutes pulling herself down to 108m and back up a rope (without fins), and broke her previous record. Watch this amazing dive!

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

🧗 99% there: A big-wall adventure in Brazil

Four British climbers, an 800m granite wall, and one unclimbed line. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Veteran climbers Mike “Twid” Turner and Steve Long team up with younger crushers James Taylor and Angus Kille to establish a new route on Pedra Baiana’s massive main face.

Between a fuel crisis, swarms of wasps, sketchy sky-hook placements, and terrifying falls, the expedition becomes a test of endurance, ingenuity, and friendship. For Twid, it’s also a remarkable return to big-wall climbing after a devastating accident left him with a broken back.

After days on the wall, the team gets within 60m of the summit before running out of bolts and time. A reminder that adventure isn’t always about reaching the top.

⏱️ 48 min

⛷️ High-altitude ski adventure in Bolivia

Two French cousins, Valentin Gevaux and Jérémy Vuagnoux, head to Bolivia to discover the world of high-altitude ski mountaineering. Joined by Pierre-Louis Rey, they explore remote mountains, ski steep faces, and tackle new lines above 6,000m. Beautifully filmed, refreshingly unpretentious, and full of raw mountain adventure. It’s mostly in French, but there’s hardly any talking anyway. Just spectacular scenery, natural sounds, and three friends doing what they love with whatever gear and resources they have. Sometimes the best mountain films don’t need much explaining.

⏱️ 30 min

🎒 No Plastic, No Problem! A Backpacking Experiment

University of Oregon product design professor Tom Bonamici spent a year creating an almost entirely plastic-free backpacking kit using wool, silk, cotton, and other natural materials. From sewing his own merino wool underwear and commissioning hand-knitted socks to waterproofing a homemade silk tarp with linseed oil and turpentine, he went to extraordinary lengths to eliminate synthetic materials. His only concessions? Water filtration and first-aid supplies. But how does all this old-school gear actually perform in the backcountry? A fascinating experiment that challenges our dependence on plastic in the outdoors.

Try out reading, it’s fun!

📖 https://www.backpacker.com/gear/plastic-free-backpacking-kit/

🧗 Climbing through war: Ukraine’s wounded vets

Russia’s war in Ukraine has left an estimated 100,000 people with amputations. But even as the fighting continues, efforts to help wounded veterans rebuild their lives are underway.

This summer, Colorado-based nonprofit Paradox Sports traveled to western Ukraine to teach adaptive climbing techniques to veterans and local instructors, using specialized prosthetics, modified belay systems, and good old-fashioned climbing camaraderie.

A powerful story about resilience and the people helping Ukraine rebuild, even before the war is over.

📖 Read the story here!

One last check in with Luke Stone who was seen shredding the pow in Montana, this week!

❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

Another week, another ridiculous amount of adventure to sift through on the internet. We’ve got Redbull Rampage in our hands as we speak, Tommy Caldwell in Yosemite, big-mountain skiing, and a crew of runners ditching their phones and watches for five days in the Balkans.

Closer to home, last weekend, I took some high school friends out on the Moab Daily and saw a couple yard sales on Whites rapid! Here you can see a smooth line

Here is some of the action, my buddy Jeff puts his son in front and hits the waves! Nothing quite like a little river time to keep the stoke alive!

Enjoy this week’s sends, and get out there!

🚵‍♀️ 3 flips, 3 Rampage wins!

📍 Virgin, Utah

Robin Goomes has done it again! Yesterday, the Kiwi freerider claimed her third consecutive Red Bull Rampage victory, throwing down a run of beauty with, count them, THREE backflips. The progression in women’s freeride mountain biking is off the charts, and Goomes is leading the charge.

Don’t miss the men’s competition this Saturday!

🎿 The race is on: speed skiing

📍 The Tetons, Wyoming

Watch how a whole new kind of competition takes shape in the Teton backcountry: FKTs for skiing down couloirs. Jackson Hole ski duo, Jim Ryan and Madison Rose Ostergren take on the steep, exposed Ellingwood Couloir on the Middle Teton, aiming to set a Strava speed record. It’s a fascinating mix of ski mountaineering and then letting everything go over serious exposure in one of America’s most spectacular mountain ranges.

⏱ 10 minutes

🧗 When Tommy Caldwell texts, you say yes!

📍 Yosemite NP, California

Imagine getting a text from climbing legend Tommy Caldwell asking if you want to climb in Yosemite. Even if you haven’t climbed in two months, there’s only one answer. What follows is a 14-hour car-to-car adventure on Quarter Dome, featuring a 5.12 crux, ridiculously sandbagged pitches, ill-fitting climbing shoes, and Tommy casually cruising the hard stuff. A brilliant, unplanned climbing film that captures the pure joy of getting out on a big wall with a good partner.

⏱ 12 minutes

🏃‍♂️ 5 days, 3 countries, 0 screens

📍 Peaks of the Balkans Trail — Albania, Kosovo & Montenegro

What happens when you take a bunch of trail runners, strip away their phones, GPS watches, and Strava, and send them into the mountains for five days? An Arc’teryx crew finds out on the spectacular Peaks of the Balkans trail, navigating with paper maps, relying on locals, and rediscovering the joy of moving through the mountains without measuring every step. Beautifully filmed, refreshingly different, and a reminder that sometimes the best adventures are the ones you don’t track.

⏱ 13 minutes

⛷️ Big Lines in the Russian Caucasus

📍 Arkhyz, Russia

Big-mountain freeriding with Thibaud Duchosal and friends venture into the mountains around Arkhyz, Russia, hunting steep lines and deep snow in spectacular, unfamiliar terrain. This segment from Laurent Jamet’s ski film RISE is a reminder of just how much incredible skiing terrain is out there waiting to be explored.

⏱ 12 minutes

⚡ Bonus News

🐑 Where sheep outnumber people — In Scotland’s remote Shetland Islands, a sea kayaking company is turning its tours into rescue missions, paddling stranded sheep back to safer, level ground.

🏔️ Who should pay to keep the Maroon Bells open? — With federal funding stretched thin, the U.S. Forest Service is looking to hand management of Colorado's iconic Maroon Bells to local authorities. The proposal could mean higher visitor fees.

🌵 Arizona about to get a new national park! — Chiricahua National Monument, famous for its otherworldly, 27-million-year-old rock spires, is one presidential signature away from becoming America’s newest national park.

🦅 Saving the bearded vulture — Fewer than 400 bearded vultures remain in southern Africa, and conservationist Shannon Hoffman is fighting to save these remarkable birds, which mate for life and typically raise just one chick a year. From rappelling into remote cliffside nests to hand-raising chicks with a vulture puppet, Hoffman is giving them a fighting chance.

🚴‍♀️ Around the world in 75 days? — Sarah Ruggins only started cycling in 2023, but she’s already smashed records crossing Britain and Europe. Now the Canadian ultra-endurance cyclist wants to ride around the entire planet in just 75 days, averaging roughly 400 km (250 miles) per day and beating the men’s outright world record.

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

🥾 200 Miles Through Alaska’s Contested Wilderness

Adventurers Robert Lester and Ben Kaden set out on a 200-mile journey along the proposed Ambler Road corridor, deep in Alaska’s pristine Brooks Range.

The road is expected to open one of America’s wildest landscapes to large-scale mining, and the debate over its future has become fiercely political.

Rather than getting lost in the rhetoric, they go see the place for themselves, exploring what’s at stake for the wilderness, wildlife, and people who call this region home.

Try out reading, it’s fun!

📖 https://www.republic.land/a-long-long-walk-down-the-ambler-road/

🧗 A Different Kind of Summit: Trango Tower

Four climbing buddies from Sheffield take on one of the world’s most spectacular granite towers, nearly 6,300 meters above sea level. Jim Pope recounts the grueling approach, heavy loads, splitter cracks, freezing bivouacs, and the struggle between personal climbing ambitions and simply reaching the summit together. A beautifully honest account of a big Himalayan adventure, and a reminder that sometimes the best part of climbing isn’t how you get to the top, but who you share it with.

Jim’s Substack

Trango Tower

The towers of the Karakoram have always had a strange pull. These alien shapes, carved by wind and water, seem to defy gravity, with no obvious way to their summits. Of all of them, Trango Tower was the one that had lodged itself in our minds. The four of us—Pat Hill, Sam Harvie, Theo Elmer and I—are close friends from Sheffield, brought together by cli…

Read more

18 days ago · 55 likes · 7 comments · Jim Pope

🧗‍♂️ Metanoia: The Climb That Changed Jeff Lowe

Jeff Lowe’s legendary climbing film Metanoia is finally on YouTube. It begins with his extraordinary solo new route on the Eiger’s North Face and becomes something much bigger: a film about transformation, creativity, climbing, and mortality as Lowe looks back on the ascent that changed his life while confronting the progressive loss of his own physical abilities.

A powerful piece of mountaineering history and a must see for any climber.

⏱ 1hr 12m

🎿 Remembering Juliette Willmann: A Life Beyond Competition

French freeride skier Juliette Willmann tragically lost her life in an avalanche in the Andes this week. We look back at her beautiful film RISE, which follows her transition from the Freeride World Tour to big-mountain skiing, chasing remote summits, steep lines, and unforgettable images.

Through candid reflections on her fears, challenges, and ambitions, the film offers an intimate portrait of a skier finding her own path in the mountains. A moving tribute to a life cut far too short.

⏱ 20 minutes

Guess what…. this is the end of the newsletter!

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild.

❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

This week’s StokedAF is heavy on Chile. And I’m not going to say sorry!

I lived in Chile for many years, and it remains one of my favorite places on Earth—a ridiculously long country packed with ocean coastline, huge mountains, glaciers, rivers, granite walls and people who know how to have a good adventure.

So when this week’s haul turned up freeride skiing above Santiago, a crew of kayakers hucking a beautiful waterfall in Araucanía, and a 5.13+ big-wall free ascent in Cochamó, I wasn’t about to leave any of them out just for the sake of geographic balance.

Before the scrolling commences, let me say hi to you all from the White Rim in Canyonlands… I got a special invite last week for a night in erosion’s mansion. ❤️‍🔥 🤘

Scroll on!
Nico

⛷️ How to ski the Andes

📍 Santiago, Chile

Austrian freerider and Freeride World Tour skier Valentin Rainer shows us how it’s done in the Andes above Santiago, dropping the infamous cliffy sections (Santa Tere) of El Colorado and La Parva, ticking the giant cliff known as La Parva Classic.

La Parva resort was always my favorite place to ski when I lived in Chile, but I never quite had the courage to hit the Classic. This makes me want another shot.

⏱ 5 minutes

🦅 RIP Gabe Reilly

📍 Utah, USA

Utah BASE jumper and Salt Lake City firefighter Gabe Reilly, 27, died this week on a wingsuit jump in the northern Wasatch. A year before, Reilly had posted the exact same jump, making it his first wingsuit BASE jump in the Wasatch. At the end of an epic 2025—becoming a paramedic, graduating from fire department school, flying wingsuits around the West and learning to paraglide and speedfly—he wrote that “2026 is gonna be awesome.”

Tragically, it wasn’t the year he imagined. RIP Gabe, all heart!

Video Credit

⏱ 1 minute

🛶 Los cabros find a monster

📍 Salto del Quino, Araucanía, Chile

This is how good missions start: somebody searches #cascada on Instagram and finds something that looks runnable. The crew first scouted Salto del Quino in 2024, returned in August when it was raging too hard, then finally caught the window on September 26—with the right water, the right crew and just enough fear—to run one of the most beautiful waterfalls they’d found in Chile.

As they put it: ¿Qué mejor que ir a cagarse de miedo con tus mejores amigos? ❤️

⏱ 5 minutes

🧗‍♀️ Forty-five meters across the roof

📍 Rodellar, Spain

Last year, Ana Belén Argudo became the first woman to climb Gioconda, 9a, a 45-meter endurance monster that cuts through the enormous roof of El Museo in Rodellar. The new film gives us a proper look at the technical kneebars, upside-down movement and ridiculous endurance required to get through one of Spain’s great roof climbs.

⏱ 12 minutes

🚵 25 years of Rampage in 12 minutes

📍 Virgin, Utah

Before Red Bull Rampage celebrates its 25th anniversary, here’s a 12-minute primer on how we got from the wonderfully unhinged experiment of 2001 to what Rampage is today. It traces the evolution of the lines, building techniques and tricks, the riders who pushed the event forward, and how a bunch of people hucking themselves down cliffs in the Utah desert became one of mountain biking’s biggest spectacles.

⏱ 12 minutes

⚡ Bonus News

⚾ Major League Baseball has floated the idea of staging a game inside Grand Teton National Park, with potential sites reportedly examined in the park. People are unimpressed. America’s game should be in stadiums, not national parks!

⛷️ Colorado’s St. Mary’s Glacier—a perennial snowfield rather than a true glacier—has completely melted for the first time on record after an exceptionally dry winter and hot summer. The popular summer skiing spot is now a big pile of rocks.

🥾 A federal worker from Utah went on her dream hike in the Dolomites while collecting over $50,000 in disability payments, claiming her injuries left her unable to walk, climb or perform strenuous activity. Her social media posts landed her in federal court.

🐺 Researchers spent three years surveying roadkill through the heart of North Carolina’s red wolf territory. The data will help identify where wildlife crossings could protect one of the world’s rarest canids—as well as the bears, bobcats, deer and other animals sharing the road with them.

🤖 Investigative journalism exposed how bots game Recreation.gov, snatching up some of the hardest-to-get permits; a month later, N.M. Senator Heinrich cited the reporting while demanding action from the Forest Service. Now, in an unlikely bipartisan plot twist, a Trump executive order has directed the agency to reform its high-demand river lotteries and “prohibit the use of automatic computer entries into the lotteries.”

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

🚲 Alone in Liberia’s rainforest

Two days without seeing another person and a full day since his armed guide momentarily disappeared with his bike and money bag, Jude Kriwald finds himself deep in Liberia’s Gola rainforest. Alone Across Gola follows his unsupported journey through dense jungle, collapsed bridges and ravines while hauling a 53kg bicycle—a wild story about self-reliance, chasing childhood dreams and what happens when an adventure goes off script.

⏱ 21 minutes

Who gets to belong in the mountains?

Wyoming-based skiers and filmmakers Jr Rodriguez and Vanessa Chavarriaga take on a bigger question than where to find the next powder line: who gets to feel like they belong in ski culture? Follow the two Colombian immigrants as they explore skiing, identity, inclusion and climate change—and what protecting the culture and future of the sport might actually require.

⏱ 14 minutes

🧗 Aid route goes free in Cochamó

When Picaflor was first climbed on Cerro Capicua in 2016, the 1,000m route required aid—but its creators were convinced that one day it would go free. Eight years later, Hayden Jamieson, Jacob Cook and Will Sharp made it happen, freeing all 24 pitches at up to 5.13+ after weeks living and working on the wall, including a seriously cool dyno you’ll want to watch more than once. This 23-minute film tells that story—and since it takes place in Cochamó, one of those places every climber should see before they die, it absolutely belongs in the Main Sends.

⏱ 23 minutes

🏜️ 800 miles, no trail: The Hayduke

There are plenty of thru-hiking videos on YouTube. This is not just another one. Hayduke is exceptionally well told, beautifully shot and genuinely riveting, following four near-strangers into 800 miles of desert and canyon country just as one of the biggest snowpacks in decades begins to melt. This is part 1 of 3, and the kind of adventure film where you finish one episode and immediately want the next.

⏱ 35 minutes

Stoked playlist… the Chilean kayakers put this track on my stereo this week:

(RIP Oliver Tree!)

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild.

❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

Black bears have been wandering down from the La Sal Mountains and into the communities around Moab, cleaning out fruit trees and pretty much any other fruit they can find. After last winter’s drought, there simply wasn’t enough food for them higher in the mountains, so down they came.

While it’s fun to look out the window and see a bear going to town on some peaches, it’s also sad. They shouldn’t need to be here, and seeing them down in the valley feels like another small sign of just how dry our corner of the Southwest has become.

Let’s hope they get back to their mountain home… here’s what else is happening in the wild world this week.

Endless Light

📍 Narvik, Norway

Mtn bike magician Danny MacAskill shows us what is possible on a eMTB. Smooth as always, here you get giant granite slabs, boulder hopping, and narrow ridges. Five minutes of classic MacAskill opening up a lot of terrain on an e-bike powered with a Bosch system.

⏱️ 5 minutes

What keeps Kilian coming back?

If you’re interested in Jornet’s journey from childhood to now—and where his motivation comes from—this short film packs it all in, with an intimate look at one of the greatest mountain athletes of his generation. And after 20 years of racing, summits, records and world titles, what keeps pulling him back isn’t another record, but something much closer to what brought him to the mountains in the first place.

⏱️ 7 minutes

Skiing off Nanga Parbat

📍 Nanga Parbat, Pakistan

After making the world’s first full ski descent of Everest without supplemental oxygen, this time Andrzej Bargiel has does on 8,126-meter Nanga Parbat. Bargiel climbed the mountain without bottled oxygen, clicked into his skis on the summit and descended all the way to the end of continuous skiable snow below Camp I, completing a line no one had managed before and wrapping up the entire Base Camp-to-summit-to-Base Camp mission in just 2 days and 9 hours.

⏱️ 7 minutes

🪁 Still getting the butterflies

📍 Greece

After years at the top of kiteboarding, Brazilian rider Bruna Kajiya still gets butterflies. In this beautiful edit, she gets beyond tricks and competition to something more interesting: what it means to find a sport that becomes a way of expressing yourself, understanding yourself and moving through the world.

⏱ 5 minutes

Southern cone winter still going off

📍 Las Leñas, Argentina

Take 10 to see what you missed this winter in the Southern Cone. Dropping off Las Leñas’ famous Marte lift on a busy powder day, Hank Stowers somehow sniffs out an untouched chute—and gets the kind of primo snow conditions that explain why people obsess over this place.

⏱️ 9 minutes

⚡ Bonus News

♨️ List of crap people drop around Yellowstone’s geysers and pools include
AirPods, retainers, fake nails, rubber ducks, pacifiers and a McDonald’s toys. By early September, crews removed a record 20,100+ pieces of trash, 5,600 rocks and sticks and more than 280 hats.

🇮🇹 Austrian climbers linked five classic north-face routes across the Tre Cime di Lavaredo in a single push, climbing roughly 2,000 vertical meters in 14 hours—the equivalent of 56 pitches.

🧗 Climbers in Colorado Springs are being warned to inspect hardware after route bolts were smashed, mangled, chopped or missing at several crags. The damage was documented in the area of Old Stage Road.

🚲 Congolese cyclist tragically dies on 14,000-kilometer ride from Goma to Rabat, Morocco while carrying a message of peace for conflict-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. He died while traveling in a taxi.

🦧 Wildfire in Indonesia have burned to within just 200 meters of a research station in Gunung Palung National Park, home to hundreds of critically endangered Bornean orangutans and more than three decades of continuous research.

🌴 Want a glimpse of our dystopian future? Investigation into thousands of property records finds that 37 billionaires own at least 218,000 acres of Hawaii—about 11% of all privately owned land in the state.

The amount of weed smoked in the United States.

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

Chossrider: 2,300 Feet of Loose Rock on Baffin Island

A week in, 15 pitches up and two-thirds of the way up the 2,300-foot Beak, the climbers finally reached the headwall—and the rock was still terrifyingly loose. Proper expedition climbing storytelling: remote Arctic walls, gale-force winds, aiders flying around in the storm and the peculiar determination required to keep climbing when the mountain seems to be disintegrating around you.

📖 Long read: https://www.summitjournal.com/blogs/scree/chossrider

The man who built Black Diamond

You can’t tell the history of modern climbing without telling the history of Black Diamond—and you can’t tell the story of Black Diamond without Peter Metcalf. This film traces the life of the company’s co-founder, the vision that shaped one of climbing’s most influential brands, and a period when the people designing the gear were often the same people pushing it to its limits.

🎥 Long watch

Alaska to Patagonia—with 35 summits along the way

23 year-old mountain runner Tobias Renggli is attempting a 40,000-kilometer journey from Alaska to Patagonia by bike—which apparently wasn’t hard enough on its own. His plan is also to climb the highest peak in every one of the 35 countries he passes through, and 171 days into the journey, he’s made it as far as Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.

📖 Long read:

At the Edge of the Map

Cycling 40,000km from Alaska to Patagonia and Climbing 35 Country Highpoints

Former Swiss mountain runner, Tobias Renggli, 23, is 171 days into an ambitious 40,000km journey to cycle from Alaska to Patagonia, and climb the highest peak in all 35 countries he passes through. As of last week Renggli was in La Paz, a city in northwest Mexico on the Baja …

Read more

a month ago · 29 likes · 11 comments · Ash Routen

Japan killed 14,000 bears last year

Thirteen people were killed by bears in Japan last year, prompting an extraordinary response: more than 14,000 bears were killed, most of them Asiatic black bears, a species considered vulnerable to extinction. With the government planning another major cull this year, this piece asks a harder question largely missing from coverage of Japan’s bear problem: why haven’t more resources gone toward preventing human-bear conflict before the animals have to be killed?

📖 Long read: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/27/bears-killed-13-people-japan-14000-bears

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild. ❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

One More Thing…

Did you know this little potato is one of the elephant’s closest living relatives? Hyraxes look like rodents, but they share an ancient evolutionary ancestor with elephants and manatees—and once you know that, this video somehow gets even better.

Large amounts of mountain bike stoke in this week’s StokedAF. And we’re not sorry.

The Rampage is just a month away, fall riding season is kicking into gear, and everyone seems pretty damn stoked to get on a bike right now. So this week we’re leaning into it: Utah cliffs, bikes on glaciers, and that sweet Japanese loam—along with plenty of other reasons to spend less time scrolling and more time outside!!

Subscribe now

Fall is coming. Get stoked!

Speaking of mtn biking, the other day I was over in Telluride, cruising the Gentleman’s Loop and we decided to check out the via ferrata above town

🚵 A bike has no business at 6,000m

📍 Huayna Potosi, Bolivia

Kilian Bron returns to the high Andes to take on one of Bolivia’s most iconic peaks—6,088-meter Huayna Potosí. On his bike. After hauling it into the high alpine above La Paz, Bron points downhill, over glacier crevasses, through snow, ice and rock.

The clip is but a slice of his recent long-form, travel docu Mirage that follows him through Bolivia and northwestern Argentina.

🤸 Landing the barrel almighty

Some tricks require a prolonged campaign against gravity. This slackline send follows the process to land a two-person Barrel Almighty—the crashes, tiny adjustments, near-misses and eventual satisfaction of figuring out something that initially looks impossible. Featuring Clement Droy and his homey Tlaloc.

⏱ 10 minutes

🚵 Trading the trees for the desert

📍 Utah, USA

After 30 years riding and building in the forests of Northern California, Tyler McCaul traded the redwoods for the desert—and Desertion is his love letter to steep freeride.

Huge lines, digging, riding… all built around McCaul’s belief that monotony kills creativity and sometimes the cure is simply a change of scenery. As he puts it: “There is an innate purity in discomfort, and something to be said for the solace found in solitude.”

⏱ 6 minutes

⛷️ Consider this your winter warning

We don’t usually send movie trailers, but films by Matchstick Productions film are reliably bangers, and with winter around the corner, we’ll make an exception.

The Way Out, MSP’s 34th annual ski film, chases the good stuff around the planet—from huge Alaskan spines and Whistler backyard laps to the Swiss Alps and deep Japanese powder. Hoji, Chris Rubens, Mark Abma, Lucy Leishman and a stacked crew provide four minutes of evidence that ski season can’t get here soon enough.

⏱ 4 minutes

⚡ Bonus News

🌧️ California’s storms could start over 7,000 miles away on the Tibetan Plateau where unusually warm winter temperatures disrupt the jet stream, strengthening atmospheric rivers. The discovery could help forecasters see big West Coast storm seasons coming earlier.

🚵 Quadriplegic rider Pete Lloyd is still getting after it aboard a heavily modified Quadrix adaptive mountain bike that he controls with his chin. Impressive!

🐒 At Bangkok’s Chatuchak Market more and more Amazonian wildlife is turning up for sale. Marmosets, capuchins, macaws, coatis and even capybaras are making journeys of more than 10,000 miles, exposing a growing trade in exotic pets. Not cool.

🌲 New Hampshire’s Loon Mountain gets 272 acres of new glades, calling itself the state’s largest resort, with 675 skiable acres. No groomers or new lifts, just a big traverse to the East Coast freeride shan-gri-glades.

🏜️ What exactly is Red Bull Rampage? If your feed is suddenly full of mountain bikers launching themselves off enormous red cliffs, this illustrated explainer breaks it all down. Women drop October 8; the men, October 10.

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

🚵 Getting back to Rampage

One year after the crash that nearly ended his career, Tom van Steenbergen returns to the Utah desert and the event where everything went wrong. With fellow Rampage veteran Carson Storch alongside him, Episode 2 of A MILLION FOR ONE is about rebuilding confidence.

Filmed over five years, don’t sleep on this web series as it follows Tom’s long road back to Rampage—and asks whether becoming the rider he was before the crash is even the goal.

🔗 Watch: A MILLION FOR ONE — Episode 2

🐧 Does Your Work Align With Your Values?

Working in Antarctica sounds like the ultimate adventure job. But for some expedition guides, getting paid to experience one of the wildest places on Earth eventually came with an uncomfortable realization: their work was helping fuel the very tourism boom they worried was damaging it.

Adventure.com spoke with 25 former Antarctic guides who walked away from the industry, exploring what happens when the job you love no longer aligns with what you believe.

🔗 Read: Why these Antarctic guides quit their dream jobs

🌕 7 years, a unicycle, and a full moon

Inspired by the great Dean Potter, Aussie photographer Aidan Williams spent seven years fiddling with his camera to finally capture Gabriel Camolesi riding a unicycle on a highline, silhouetted against the full moon. The Lunar Line looks almost too perfectly composed to be real.

Also check out this behind the scenes read with Aiden here:

🧗 Honnold on the Black Circuit in Fontainebleau

Alex spent a few weeks with his family in the Bleau, where local climbers invited him to take on the classics: L’Éléphant’s Black Circuit. Established in 1972, the circuit strings together around 40 boulder problems from V2 to V6, including plenty of highballs where commitment still matters.

🔗 Watch:

🌍 Suffering the FOMO?

(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)

🧗+ 🇦🇷 Giant granite domes in Córdoba

Granite walls, high-country crags and seemingly endless places to climb. Córdoba is one of Argentina’s great climbing playgrounds, with everything from technical slabs and bouldering to long routes and steep sport climbing scattered through the Sierras.

The legendary Los Gigantes massif has around 400 equipped sport routes alone, while La Ola, Copina and Capilla del Monte add hundreds more—enough rock to turn a climbing trip into a very long stay. And judging by this short docu, that might not be such a bad problem to have.

Rock, wind, music, friendship and the particular culture that develops around a great climbing area. A nice reminder that sometimes the place and the people are what is really important.

🍂 Japow… but on a bike

Everyone knows Japan for powder. Far fewer people know what those mountains look like once the snow melts. Minakami, located in the mountains of central Japan, has quietly built a mtn biking scene, with steep forest trails, old charcoal tracks and deep, dark loam.

And the bike is only part of the trip. Minakami is one of Japan’s great outdoor playgrounds: raft the Tone River, go canyoning, hike Mount Tanigawa, then soak in a riverside onsen and sleep in a traditional ryokan. Come winter, those same mountains disappear beneath the powder that made Japan famous.

Best part? It’s only about 75 minutes by bullet train from Tokyo. Ride ridiculous loam, raft a river, soak in an onsen. That’ll do.

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild. ❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

See you on the next send! Going into the weekend be like….

There is an absurd amount of stuff being dumped onto the internet every day—films, edits, trip reports, news, documentaries, podcasts, reels and whatever else the algorithm decides we should see. Somewhere in that firehose is some genuinely incredible stuff. The problem is finding it.

Share

That’s the idea behind StokedAF. Nearly everything in this newsletter—from the Main Sends and Bonus News to most of the Long Reads—was published within the last two weeks. I spend the week digging through it all so you don’t have to, pulling out the sends that are worth your time.

Think of it as a filter for the good stuff: less scrolling, more stoke.

Enjoy.

Nico in Moab

Luna Dog in the La Sals!

🚵 Ze Catch: Squamish gets very steep

📍 British Columbia, Canada

There are double blacks, and then there’s Ze Catch. Rémy Métailler and OG trailbuilder Sylvain dissect one of Squamish’s seriously steep trails feature by feature—massive drops, ugly entrances and lines that look considerably worse once someone stands next to them. The best part is hearing elite riders talk through the nerves and calculations before committing.

Turns out while the pros are better at riding, they are also nervous and frightened.

⏱ 14 minutes

🏔️ Running through the clouds

📍 Dolomites, Italy

If you haven’t heard of skyrunning, consider this your five-minute introduction. Forget mellow trail running: this is racing across steep, technical mountain terrain where scrambling, brutal climbs and precipitous descents are part of the deal. 48km mountain movement at high speeds.

Was this sport designed for you?

⏱ 5 minutes

🏃 The Beast Runner

📍 Taiwan

Trail running with a higher purpose.

Czech athlete Petr Novotny, known as the Beast Runner, searches Taiwan’s rugged mountains for hikers who have disappeared—sometimes taking on cold cases. CNN joins him as he follows tiny clues through unforgiving terrain, trying to give families the answers they have been waiting for (the death certificate is a major motivation).

Don’t miss this one.

⏱ 8 minutes

🧗 Dancing with Doubt

📍 Red Rocks, Nevada, USA

Climbing is about getting to the top, but the stuff that keeps people coming back tends is much harder to quantify. This film follows a conversation between Amity and Rachel Ball about self-doubt, commitment, failure and why they keep choosing hard objectives. Thoughtful moment to reflect on climbing and quite a bit more!

“If I was always choosing easy things, I wouldn’t feel as satisfied” -Amity who got the FFA of the route Dreefeee (5.13d), followed by Rachel with a slight variation.

⏱ 7 minutes

⚡ Bonus News

🧊 Scientists have created a new map of the rock glacier tucked beneath Mt. Timpanogos, explaining how these little-known frozen reservoirs contribute to Utah’s mountain water supply as the climate warms.

🌊 Devastating first-person account from a journalist who helplessly saw the flood sweep away the Himalayan village where he grew up. Captures the disbelief of watching a flood reach a level no one had ever imagined.

🧗 Sintonia, a 800m 22-pitch, route up Pedra Baiana—becomes the first big wall in Brazil opened by an all-women team, led by the courageous Laura Pineau and Brazilian climber girl Gisely Souza. The women spent 15 days establishing the line, which could go free at 5.13+.

🔥 Boxed in by wildfires a group of 60 and 70-year-olds were seven days into a three-week canoe trip in Ontario when wildfires surrounded them. They spent a night dunking themselves in the water trees burned and heavy winds closed in. Hectic!

🎿 A huge snow year in Chile has pushed Valle Nevado, La Parva, Portillo and now El Colorado to extend their seasons into October. El Colorado alone has reportedly received around 285 inches of snow this winter—more than 23 feet.

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

🎿 What happened to Saudi Arabia’s desert ski resort?

This is all so unbelievable, but then again, this is 2026.

Saudi Arabia set out to build a ski resort in an arid mountain range where temperatures can dip below freezing but almost no snow falls—and somehow host the 2029 Asian Winter Games there. This WSJ investigation looks at how Trojena’s audacious plan to manufacture winter in the desert collided with spiraling costs, engineering challenges and the realities of building one of the strangest ski resorts ever conceived.

⏱ 11 minutes

🚲 Pedaling the never ending Uyuni salt flat

Three years into riding his bike from Alaska to Argentina, British bikepacker Dan Camp reaches one of the most surreal stretches of the entire journey: Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flat on Earth. Pedaling toward an impossibly distant horizon across a landscape unlike almost anywhere else on the planet—with a furry new companion joining him for part of the ride.

⏱ 30 minutes

🧗 Remarkable, hard work, and survivable

Earlier this year, Joe Evermore took his two sons Joey, 7, and Sylvan, 11, up El Capitan—prompting plenty of criticism about risk, parenting and whether ascending 3,000 feet on fixed ropes should really count as “climbing” El Cap.

Here, Evermore answers his critics at length and explains the unusual philosophy behind his family’s adventures: year-long preparation, knowing when to turn around, teaching kids to understand rather than ignore fear, and three rules for every mission: “It should be remarkable. It should require daily work. And you can’t die.”

Link: https://gripped.com/profiles/and-you-cant-die-father-of-kids-who-climb-el-capitan-responds-to-critics/

⏱ 12 minute read

Adieu, Auf Wiedersehen!

Before I go, one last hit of inspiration for achieving your mountain goals this weekend, courtesy of Canadian strong man Ethan Flynn-Pitcher

Tryin to keep it simple this week. We have what could be an entire film festival right here in your inbox… grab a tall boy, and dig into the amazing films and sends that are flooding the airwaves.

I pulled down the best for your perusal and joy. Be a good friend, and pass it on.

Here’s a video from a random Tuesday, peak bagging in the La Sals, Moab’s alpine backyard.

Saludos amigos!
Nico

🧗 Brad Gobright only had one hairstyle: BOLD

📍 Eldorado Canyon, Colorado

Cedar Wright just pulled some incredible footage out of the archives: Brad Gobright free soloing Hairstyles and Attitude, the Eldorado Canyon 5.12b/c classic. It’s vintage Brad—casual and terrifyingly comfortable on terrain where falling simply isn’t an option. Gobright died in a rappelling accident in Mexico in 2019, making this newly released footage a good reminder of the brilliant and humble climber the community lost. RIP Brad.

⏱ 5 min

🏔️ 3 days on Ranrapalca

📍 Cordillera Blanca, Peru

The Pou brothers and Peruvian climber Micher Quito spent three days opening Bonus Track (WI7/M6/6c, 1,060m) on Ranrapalca (6162m)—a mixed line the Pous call the hardest and most exposed alpine climb of their careers. After a sketchy bivouac, brutal cold, and serious terrain, they found themselves lost in the fog near 6000m. Then a bird appeared and, improbably, seemed to guide them toward the summit. Awesome little film.

⏱ 10 min

🚵 The wrong direction is the right way

📍 Squamish, British Columbia

Gouranga is a steep, technical, double-black trail that gives plenty of riders the jitters. Braydon Bringhurst decided he wanted to ride up it. The project involves repeated failure, some improbable uphill riding—and Bringhurst getting hurt in the process. A torn muscle is just another data point when your idea of fun is trying something that seems impossible.

⏱ 12 min

🧗 In the bubble of highballing

📍 Bishop, California

We used to have to wait for Reel Rock or the Banff Film Festival to get climbing films like this. Ross Fulkerson takes on some of Bishop’s most committing lines, including A Little Life (v14) and Terminus (v13)—two legendary Keenan Takahashi FAs perched high above the Buttermilks—and gives a raw look at the mentality required to keep climbing when the pads start looking very, very small.

⏱ 9 min

⚡ Bonus News

⚒️ A Colorado father and son say they beat a mining company to 19.88 acres in La Plata Canyon by using the same 1872 mining law that allows companies to stake claims on federal land. They raced to mark and record the “Russell Reserve Claim” first—not to mine it, but to protect it.

🐻 A 300-pound black bear died after getting itself trapped in an unlocked car in Colorado Springs while searching for food. Inside temperatures climbing above 130°F, so the bear tore apart the vehicle trying to escape.

🏔️ Nepal has proposed renaming Annapurna I after Nirmal “Nims” Purja, who recently died on Broad Peak. The 8,091m peak would be called Nimsdai Annapurna, an unusually monumental tribute to one of its most famous and controversial mountaineers.

🏂 Freeride skiing and snowboarding are officially headed to the Winter Olympics in the French Alps. Natural, ungroomed terrain, with riders judged on line choice, control, technique, style and fluidity. What could go wrong?

🪂 Spanish climber and BASE jumper Carlos Suárez, 52, died in a wingsuit accident while performing a stunt for a film about his own life.

Check out Suárez and Leo Houlding on the outrageous conglomerate walls of Riglos in Spain, climbing and jumping La Visera and El Pisón.
!QEPD Fiera!

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

🚵 Freeride without the circus

Zink International is Cam Zink’s homegrown answer to what a freeride mountain-bike event can look like: huge riding, a grassroots atmosphere and the spotlight pointed at riders who deserve more of it. Catch the highlights from a Nevada weekend built around progression, community and sending very large bicycles through the air.

⏱ 30 min

🎿 Ever dream about becoming this guy?

Ever dream about packing your ski bags, buying a ticket south and showing up in the Andes just as the snow starts dumping? After years of dreaming about skiing Chile, the creator of Rise & Alpine finally pulls the trigger—and lands at Valle Nevado, El Colorado and La Parva at the beginning of a storm cycle. Powder to ski, barely enough Wi-Fi to upload the footage, and apparently nowhere else he needs to be. Funny story, he also melted the insoles of his ski boots. What a hoot!

⏱ 38 min

🌊 Watersports, life in Slingshot

There are plenty of ways to get wet in Oregon, and apparently the correct answer is to try as many of them as possible. Twenty-two minutes of cold water and questionable decisions. Oh yeah, and a lot of wind.

⏱ 22 min

😂 The greatest climbing prank ever published

In 1959 and 1960, two climbers successfully tricked Summit Magazine into publishing completely fabricated climbing stories. More than six decades later, people are still citing the hoaxes as real ascents, proving that climbing’s longest-running joke may still be fooling people today.

🔗 https://www.summitjournal.com/blogs/scree/the-rest-of-the-story

⏱️ 8 minute read

Have a great week! 💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild.

We leave you with some training inspiration from none other than Sean Villanueva, going at it to a Rocky Balboa soundtrack.

This is what it means when you climb like its your job!

See you on the next send!

Summer is slowly disappearing in the rearview mirror, so my daughters and I squeezed in one more big day in the mountains before school: climbing to the top of Mount Tukuhnikivatz in the La Sals Mountains.

It’s hard to beat standing on a summit with your kids! And those clouds! Wow

It is even harder to believe they are back in the classroom while I load the weekly newsletter with rugged bike adventures, Patagonian volcanoes, and the people who are taking flight all around the world.

While it is hotter than a frying pan in Moab…this week we’ve got big sends, a little history, a lot of gravity, and plenty of reasons to add things to the bucket list.

Let’s send it.

Con mucho amor!

Nico in Moab

PS. Don´t forget to subscribe

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🏔️ New route up Volcán Burney—and a better way down

📍 Volcán Burney, Patagonia

Chilean charger Cristóbal Señoret keeps pulling off amazing things in the mountains, and this one comes with some history. British explorer Eric Shipton spent years trying to crack the remote Volcán Burney—once spending 16 days at its base without even seeing the summit—before finally making the first ascent in 1973.

More than half a century later, Señoret, Tomás Marusic and Felipe Bishara pulled off the first ascent of the north face and only the third known ascent. They launched paragliders from the upper glacier at sunset and flew off the mountain!

This is the definition of #StokedAF!

Watch Cristóbal Señoret's ascent and flight

⏱ Short and sweet

🪂 Hike up. Fly down. Repeat.

📍 The Alps

German paraglider Celine Lorenz took her first tandem flight at 11 years old and has been flying since. In this short film, she steps away from the competition scene to show another side of the sport: hike & fly—climbing into the mountains with a wing on your back, launching from wherever the adventure takes you.

⏱ 5 min

🚲 Bike surfing downtown

📍 San Francisco, California

Sometimes you don’t need an expedition to the other side of the planet and a 30 minute film. Brock Johnson needs only a San Francisco hill and apparently very little concern for rush hour. #BikeSurfing. That’s it. That’s the send.

⏱ Short and sweet

🚵 9000m vert, north of the Arctic Circle

📍 Tromsø → Lofoten, Norway

Bucket-list ride alert. Scotty Laughland and crew ride waaaay up there over nine days and a ridiculous 9,000 vertical meters of descent through some of Norway’s most spectacular terrain. Make sure to pay attention around minute four, when he points the bike down an absolutely enormous slab. Unbelievable.

⏱ 9 minutes

⚡ Bonus News

🌊 A new rapid is forming below Cataract Canyon. A newly exposed rock ledge near North Wash could eventually create an unrunnable rapid—or even a waterfall—and complicate the takeout for boaters running Cataract Canyon.

💧 This is what a drying world looks like. Reuters photographers document shrinking rivers, lakes and reservoirs around the world as drought and extreme heat leave landscapes increasingly short of water.

🐻 Colorado’s hungry bears are on the move. Bear reports have nearly doubled from the same point last year, with drought, low snowpack and wildfire reducing natural food and pushing bears toward towns in search of calories.

🏄 Fourteen years old, local knowledge—and a two-time world champ goes down. Tahitian teenager Kohai Fierro pulled off a massive upset at Teahupoʻo, beating two-time world champion Tyler Wright on one of surfing’s most intimidating waves.

🦈 Influencers + sharks: what could go wrong? At least three influencers have been bitten in less than a year while seeking close encounters with sharks. Is the social-media pursuit of content putting people and sharks at risk?

⛷️ A “Real Loser” just turned an insult into $30,000 for kids. Olympian Hunter Hess’s Real Loser Project has now donated $30,000 to STOKED (not our newsletter!), which helps underserved youth get into action sports—the project was born after President Trump called Hess a real loser.

🧗‍♀️ Mary Catherine Eden, the Trad Princess grades Autobahn at 5.14a and adds R rating. She sent on her fourth try, but says the combination of rope stretch and a concrete staircase lurking below puts the urban roof crack in risky territory.

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

🏄 The freedom found in the ocean

Born in 1993, just as apartheid was ending, this South African surfer grew up experiencing the ocean very differently from his father. Beaches had been segregated until only a few years earlier, and surfing was reserved for white South Africans. His dad nevertheless fell in love with it—and dreamed of one day bringing his own son into the water.

This beautiful short film is about surfing, but even more about a father, a son and what it means when a place that once excluded you becomes a place of freedom.

⏱ 16 minutes

🛶 Paddling Mada

📍 Madagascar

Big whitewater when you can find it, a lot of flat water when you can’t, and rivers that ranged from barely flowing to completely flooded. This kayaking trip delivers big emotions too—at times overwhelming, at others pure stoke. This is no polished expedition film, but a grassroots account of paddling through one of the wildest islands on Earth. Lakana means canoe in Malagasy.

⏱ 26 minutes

🧗 Climbing against the system

📍 Jakarta, Indonesia → Savoie, France

Twin brothers Raviandi and Ravianto Ramadhan learned to climb on the walls of Jakarta, then somehow fought their way onto the international stage with limited resources and little institutional support. Dissidence follows them from Indonesia to France, where they take on the 8c/5.14b route that gives the film its name. It’s partly a climbing film, but mostly a damn good story about two brothers stubborn enough to keep dreaming when the system gives them every reason not to.

⏱ 34 min

⛈️ And finally… check out this storm over the Atlantic!

Kevin from Cape May Astro caught Mother Nature putting on a show to send you into the weekend.

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild. See you on the next send!

Up, up and….. awaaaaaaaaaay

Throw in some thought-provoking long reads and a handful of stories you probably missed, and you've got everything you need to procrastinate productively.

But first, my new friend from the north coast of Spain wants to say hello!

See you next week!

Nico from Moab

🛹 Eclipse-flip

📍 Spain 🇪🇸

A total solar eclipse only lasts a few minutes, so you better get the shot! Danny Leon used those minutes to create one of the coolest skate shots ever, perfectly timing a trick as the eclipsed sun hangs behind him. Sometimes patience and planning pay off spectacularly… and of course, Michael Jackson.

Special shoutout to Chris Burkard and Chris Sharma for a close second!

🌊 Surfing on steroids

📍 Hawaii

If you still think wing foiling is just slow cruising with a sail, Cash Berzolla is about to change your mind. This five-minute edit showcases the explosive future of the sport, with huge airs, wave riding, and control that barely seems possible

⏱️ 5 mins

🏔️ A new take on the Denali traverse

📍 Alaska, USA

Four friends. One outrageous objective. Sam, Jack, Nicole, and Charles climb, ski, and packraft their way across Denali in a refreshingly homegrown expedition that feels like the adventure of a lifetime. And don’t miss the photo montage at the end—it’s pure gold

⏱️ 9 mins

🧗 America’s highest 5.14

📍 Mt. Blue Sky, Colorado, USA

Michaela Kiersch became the first woman to send Doubloons (5.14b), at 13,500 feet, one of the highest—and most spectacular—sport climbs around.

To give you a better idea, watch Tanner Bauer and Chris Deuto battle with altitude, weather, and the breathtaking golden arete high above the Colorado alpine.

⏱️ 16 mins

🥾 Greybeard’s final record?

📍 Appalachian Trail, USA

At 90 years old, legendary adventurer Dale “Greybeard” Sanders is attempting to reclaim the record as the oldest person to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail. A short but inspiring NYT documentary about grit, aging, and refusing to slow down

⏱️ 4 mins

⚡ Bonus News

🐅 After disappearing from Kazakhstan more than 70 years ago, tigers are officially back. The release is part of an ambitious effort to restore the species to Central Asia, with hopes of establishing a self-sustaining population in the coming decades.

🧗 Pete Whittaker has completed the first free ascent of Dzikie Historie, an 800-meter big wall on Norway’s iconic Kjerag massif. After soloing much of the route, he returned to free every pitch.

🚵 Why would anyone Everest a bike ride in the dead of winter? Aedan Skinner needed 27 laps, 126 kilometers, 31 hours, freezing rain, fresh snow, and 17 hours of darkness to climb the height of Everest.

🛶 After spending decades publishing canoe guidebooks, one author asks an uncomfortable question: Did I help love these places to death? Inspiring people to care about wild places is ultimately a conservation success—not a failure.

🚵 Matt Annabel didn’t just finish the legendary Colorado Trail Race—he finished fifth overall on a singlespeed. Covering nearly 500 miles of rugged Colorado backcountry in just 4 days, 21 hours, his minimalist setup is a reminder that sometimes one gear is all you need.

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

🚵 The story of Slickrock

Did you know that long before mountain bikes and motorbikes arrived, local mechanic Andy Anderson was exploring Moab’s “slickrock” on a homemade scooter powered by Maytag washing machine motors—one driving each wheel. “It’ll go anywhere on the slickrock,” he claimed.

That quirky machine helped reveal the incredible traction of the sandstone, setting the stage for what would eventually become the world’s most famous mountain bike trail and forever change the future of Moab.

⏱️ 37 min

🧗 Remembering Jake Whisenant

An obituary written by the person who knew him best.

Emma London remembers her partner Jake Whisenant through the life they built together. It’s a deeply personal tribute about love, adventure, grief, and what it means to lose someone whose greatest joy was exploring the mountains.

🔗 https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/california-climber-adventurous-life-tragically-150521043.html

⛰️ The route of a lifetime

Swiss-based German alpinist Michi Wohlleben returns again and again to the limestone walls of the Alpstein, dreaming of opening a bold new route from the ground up. What follows is a years-long struggle against blank rock, failed attempts, and doubt—culminating in Bodhichitta, a beautiful contribution to Switzerland’s alpine climbing.

⏱️ 24 min

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild. See you on the next send!

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❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

StokedAF is back.

I’ve got a backlog of incredible films, stories, and oddball outdoor news to catch up on, and I’m excited to get back into the rhythm of sharing the best adventure content I stumble across each week.

Thanks for sticking around while I was off making a few adventures of my own.

🧗 Climbing for the camera

📍Grand Capucin, French Alps

Being a professional climber sounds like freedom—until you realize every adventure has to become content. In FRAMED, pro climber Siebe Vanhee attempts to rope-solo, onsight the legendary 12-pitch Voie Petit (8a+) completely alone, juggling a selfy stick, sponsor obligations, and the mental weight of filming himself while rope soloing at 3,500 meters. A fascinating look at what happens when your dream job becomes... well, a job.

⏱️ 15 min

🚵 A poem for the mountains

📍Kyrgyzstan

A bike film steeped in towering mountains, forgotten mining roads, lonely yurts, and set to an old Kyrgyz poem narrated over stunning visuals. This Chris Burkard three minute creation shows us why we willingly suffer to spend time in wild places.

⏱️ 3 min

🧗 All gear on thin granite

📍Donner Summit, California

Jordan Cannon takes an already difficult sport climb and strips away the safety net. Same route, but instead of clipping bolts he protects it entirely with gear. The trad climbing film you will watch till the end.

⏱️ 8 min

🕺 Before it was cool

📍Peak District, England

Long before parkour, before ninja comps, before “movement culture,” there was Johnny Dawes dancing across gritstone. A strange mix of no hands climbing, dynos, and personal challenges, all set to George Michael. This week’s flashback.

⏱️ 3 min

🚲 The city is the terrain park

📍San Francisco, California

Former BMX legend Christian Rigal has traded pegs for pedals, using an eMTB to blur the line between mountain biking, street riding, trials, and urban freeride. San Francisco becomes one giant playground.

⏱️ 4 min

🚵 Fresh tracks in the Atacama

📍Atacama Desert, Chile

Tom van Steenbergen heads into the dry desert searching for untouched lines across one of the driest landscapes on Earth. Massive terrain, pumping and delivering salt water to the spines and jumps.

⏱️ 6 min

⚡ Bonus News

🥶 Imagine getting knocked off your paddle board in the Arctic... with your drysuit zipper wide open. That’s exactly how one solo attempt to paddle the Northwest Passage came to an abrupt end before a dramatic rescue.

🍺 Forget the highest peak, what’s the oldest bar in your state? Browse this list of saloons, taverns, and watering holes that have somehow survived wars, prohibition, and your uncle Dave.

⛰️ Colorado’s 14ers saw their lowest visitation in a decade last year, thanks in part to the closure of the Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway. Less traffic means a little more solitude—but it also means less funding and volunteer support for trail maintenance.

🐒 Scientists say a massive conflict has erupted among chimpanzees in Uganda, splitting one community into rival factions after decades of stability. Some researchers believe it’s the largest documented chimp conflict in centuries.

🦈 For the first time ever, researchers strapped cameras onto whale sharks and captured what it’s like to charge through clouds of krill with your mouth wide open. It’s oddly mesmerizing and a reminder that the world’s biggest fish is basically an oversized vacuum cleaner.

🧠 Long Reads & Watches

….take your time with these ones…

🏔️ The Rise and Fall of Nims Purja

📍Nepal

Few mountaineers have transformed high-altitude climbing like Nirmal “Nims” Purja. This obituary looks back at the former Gurkha and Special Boat Service soldier who later shattered records on the world’s 8,000-meter peaks and left behind one of the greatest legacies in high altitude alpinism.

🔗 https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/nirmal-purja-obituary-death-avalanche-dj9pffn0k

⏱️ 8 min read

🌊 Surfing the End of the World

📍Golfo de Penas, Chile

If you’re looking for pure cinematography, this is the film of the week. Patagonia Deep follows a surf expedition into one of the most remote corners of Chilean Patagonia. Almost no dialogue—just waves, glaciers, weather, and a reminder of why places like this deserve protecting.

⏱️ 28 min

🐟 Fishing the atolls

📍Palmyra Atoll, Pacific Ocean

The Trump administration wants to reopen some of the Pacific’s largest marine protected areas to commercial fishing. This beautifully reported interactive feature explains why many marine scientists argue those protected waters aren’t limiting the fishing industry—they’re helping sustain it by giving fish safe places to reproduce.

🔗 https://apps.npr.org/troubled-waters/

⏱️ 5 min read

💥 We leave you with a soundtrack for your next send!

Jamming in the wildflowers, The Skints are def bringing back the 90’s vibe!

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Stay stoked. Stay wild.

See you next week!

Nico

This week’s sends are a reminder that the best adventures and sometimes our favorite athletes are temporary... tying together the loss of the most respected and decorated athletes, Sketchy Andy Lewis, with a life well lived and worth living.

Before you scroll and feast, here’s a few shots from the deep water solo scene in June in Mallorca. Not the best season… but also not the worst. And still, a great place to bring the family and have something for everyone!

See you on the other side!

xoxox

Nico in Spain

🪂 The definition of Sketchy Andy (RIP)

📍Moab, Utah

The climbing and BASE community lost one of its most recognizable characters last week when Andy Lewis—better known as Sketchy Andy—died in a tandem BASE jumping accident. Long before he became famous for slacklining between impossible places, Andy was hucking himself off equally improbable cliffs around Moab.

For me, this triple jump through the Fisher Towers is a masterpiece: launching from Dragon’s Nest, flying to Kingfisher, then Ancient Art, before finally touching down on the desert floor. It’s absurd, creative, and just a little bit terrifying—pretty much the perfect summary of his approach to life.

⛷️ A line that only existed for a moment

📍 Cordillera Blanca, Peru

At over 6,000 meters in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca, Fay Manners and team spotted something local guides thought was impossible: a forgotten line between Ranrapalca and Ocshapalca that hadn’t seen a known ascent since a Swiss team climbed it in 1980. The line is called Acceso Momentáneo because mountain lines aren’t permanent. Glaciers shift, seracs collapse, and what seems unclimbable one decade can briefly open for those willing to look closer.

⛰️ An island, a climber, and a long gone friend

📍Yakushima, Japan

What starts as a climbing trip quickly goes deeper. Belgian climbing legend Sean Villanueva O’Driscoll follows local climber Jumbo to Japan’s wild island of Yakushima, where sandstone sea cliffs rise straight from the Pacific.

Part exploration film, part tribute to a friend who passed away, it’s the kind of adventure story that reminds you the best trips are about the people who show you the way!

⏱️ 16 min

🚵 Summer in the Alps, Kilian Style

📍La Clusaz, France

Most mountain bikers spend winter wishing they could ride more. Kilian Bron spends summer making the rest of us question our life choices. His latest edit from the French Alps turns a steep alpine ridgeline with exposed traverses, and perfectly sculpted terrain into a giant playground.

📸 The guy behind the lens

📍Colorado to Alaska

When Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell set out on a 2,500-mile expedition to Alaska’s legendary Devil’s Thumb, photographer Taylor Schaffer came along to document the journey.

This behind-the-scenes film reveals what outdoor storytelling actually looks like when the cameras stop rolling: long days, uncertain logistics, local connections, and the challenge of creating meaningful images in places that refuse to cooperate.

⏱️ 22 min

⚡ Bonus News

🤖 A humanoid robot successfully climbed Ecuador’s highest volcano, Cotopaxi, reaching over 5,800 meters with the help of a human support team. The future is weird, and apparently it wears hiking boots.

🛶 British endurance paddler Charlie Head completed 3,700 km, the entire length of the Mississippi River, in just 34 days, averaging nearly 110 kilometers a day. That’s a lot of time alone with your thoughts and a paddle.

🌊 The Caspian Sea has lost an area roughly the size of Croatia since 2005 as water levels continue to fall. Scientists warn the shrinking shoreline could have major consequences for ecosystems, fisheries, and millions of people who live around it.

🪐 New research suggests Mars’ tiny moon Phobos is being ripped apart by the planet’s gravity and may eventually become a ring around Mars. Somewhere in the solar system, Saturn is feeling smug.

🚵 French rider, Kimi Viardot, won this year’s Mountain of Hell after launching down a mass-start descent that begins on a glacier and quickly devolves into absolute chaos. If you’ve never seen hundreds of mountain bikers sprinting downhill at the same time, you’re in for a treat.

🧠 Long Reads & Opinions

Heads up, take your time with these ones…

🪂 Sketchy Andy on life, death, and living fully

Before his death this month, Andy Lewis sat down for a surprisingly thoughtful conversation about fear, friendship, risk, and why he believed the opposite of life wasn’t death—it was not living. It’s a powerful watch from one of the most influential characters outdoor sports has ever produced.

⏱️ 15 min

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🧗 Imagine livestreaming the hardest thing you’ve ever done

Most climbers hide the failures and show you the send. Jakob Schubert did the opposite, broadcasting his attempts on B.I.G., one of the hardest sport climbs in the world. The result is a fascinating look at what happens when world-class performance meets complete transparency.

⏱️ 54 min

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🥾 Building the Colorado Trail

The Colorado Trail is one of America’s great long-distance adventures, but it didn’t just appear out of thin air. This documentary tells the decades-long story of volunteers, dreamers, and trail builders who stitched together nearly 500 miles of mountains, forests, and high-alpine terrain into one continuous route.

⏱️ 27 minutes

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⛰️ Climbing Marmolejo in the Central Andes

If you need a dose of mountain stoke, this is it. Part travel film and part love letter to the Andes, it delivers stunning landscapes, good vibes, and the kind of panoramic views that make you immediately start checking flight prices.

⏱️ 33 minutes

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🚵 Tiny bikes, giant mountains

Two dads, two kids, tiny bikes, and six days crossing the Swiss Alps. What starts as a family bikepacking trip becomes a surprisingly honest look at adventure, patience, parenting, and why the best trips rarely go according to plan.

⏱️ 22 minutes

Muchisimas gracias a todos!

Nos vemos pronto

xoxox

Nico

Out here in the high desert, we are shifting to summer, and most of us will be spending less time in the desert canyons and more time on the river!

This week starts with a trip to the Amazon and then 13.8 billion years of cosmic history stretched across a desert and ends with climbers, surfers, and paddlers disappearing into corners of the map most people will never visit.

Never forget, whether you’re looking up at the universe or down a remote river canyon, there’s still plenty left to explore!

See you this summer?

Saludos!!
Nico in Moab!

🧗 The granite dome in the Amazon

📍 Cerro Pajarito, Mavecure Domes, Colombia

For generations, the Puinave people have climbed the granite domes of Mavecure to gather medicinal plants, seek refuge, and connect with the landscape. Now, with support from Colombian climber Ivan Macías and the Colombian climbing community, the combo of ancestral knowledge and climbing is building a movement in this corner of the Amazon.

The goal goes far beyond sport. By equipping routes and training new climbers, the Puinave hope to support scientific expeditions, document unique summit ecosystems, and create new opportunities for indigenous-led exploration in one of the most remote corners of the Amazon.

Macías is not new to the community, for the past two years he has repeated old lines and put up new ones on Cerro Pajarito (see below), the largest of the domes. Pajarito was first climbed by a German team in the 90s and has only seen a handful of ascents since.

In September, he is planning a trip to improve the bolting of the original German route, to proivde the community an easier way to reach the summit of Pajarito.

Here is a place you can donate to the bolt fund.

Check out this approach and the views!!

You can learn more at Colombia Oculta!

⏳ Humans: a brief blip on the cosmic scale

📍 Mojave Desert, USA

On a dry lakebed in the Mojave, a group of humans build out two physical scale models. One covers humans on earth, the other covers time itself: 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution stretched out across the desert.

This is a science film that meets existential crisis, tracing everything from the birth of the universe to the tiny sliver of time humans have occupied it. Watch this one on the biggest screen you can find.

📊 Full scale model:
https://www.toscaleseries.com/time

⏱️ 10 minutes

🌊 One of the planet’s strangest waves

📍 Kimberley Region, Western Australia

Dylan Graves and Anthony Walsh head deep into the remote Kimberley in search of a tidal rapid that may have never been surfed before. These tidal waves are among the rarest and most intimidating on Earth, formed by massive ocean surges squeezing through narrow river systems with terrifying force.

The crew pushes into croc country, huge tides, and unpredictable water in what feels less like a surf trip and more like a proper expedition.

⏱️ 20 minutes

🧗 Wild Granites of wild Nevada

📍 Nevada, USA

A granite paradise called the Wild Granites? Hello, why is this place not better known? Go on a van trip with Alex Honnold and a few days climbing with Tommy Caldwell to be reminded that chasing first ascents in the middle of nowhere can still be done in the lower 48.

Add sand dunes, donkeys, locals, and Honnold’s energy, and you get something uniquely American.

⏱️ 22 min

🚣 Into the wild on a packraft

📍 Oregon

Big water, long carries, remote camps, and the kind of terrain that only really makes sense once you’re fully committed to it. This packrafting mission feels less like a sport edit and more like modern exploration — messy, exposed, and deeply rewarding.

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧗 Climbers vs. Mexico’s hardest route

📍 El Salto, Mexico

On the towering limestone walls of El Salto, Matt Segal and Emily Harrington attempt to free climb one of Mexico’s hardest routes in a single push. The film balances huge exposure and brutally technical climbing with something quieter: two elite climbers trying to stay in sync under pressure. Emily Harrington especially shines here, moving with the kind of precision and composure that makes impossible terrain look almost casual.

⏱️ 15 minutes

⚡ Bonus News

⛰️ American trail runner Tyler Andrews climbed from Everest Base Camp to the summit in just 9 hours 55 minutes, smashing the previous oxygen-assisted speed record by more than an hour. If verified, it’s one of the most impressive endurance performances ever seen on the world’s highest mountain.

🧗 One of the weirdest climbing gyms in America is back. Oklahoma City’s legendary 90-foot grain silo climbing walls have reopened under new ownership, giving an iconic piece of climbing history a fresh lease on life.

🔗 Yosemite scrapped its reservation system for Memorial Day weekend and immediately got a reminder why it existed. Visitors reported multi-hour traffic jams, packed parking lots, and long lines just to enter the park.

🎿 U.S. ski visits dropped 14% this season as weak snowfall hammered many Western resorts. The numbers are a reminder that even an industry built around powder isn’t immune to increasingly inconsistent winters.

🚁 A father and his two-year-old toddler became stranded near the summit of Freel Peak (10k ft) in the Sierra Nevada and required a helicopter rescue. Is this kid sure to have daddy issues?

🏕️ Canada is making all national parks and historic sites free this summer to encourage more people to get outside. The bad news: campsites are about to become an absolute bloodbath to book.

🧗 Heir to the Mango fashion empire was arrested in connection with the death of his father after a fatal hiking accident in Montserrat, Spain last year. The billionaire suspiciously slipped and fell 300 feet while the two were hiking together.

🧠 Long Reads & Opinions

Heads up, take your time with these ones…

🧗 El Cap solo you’ve never heard of

Everyone knows Alex Honnold. Far fewer know Russel Mitrovich, a climber who unceremoniously soloed the aid route Zodiac on El Cap back in 1999, decades before free soloing became an aspirational hobby.

With no partner and no rope, Mitrovich had to back clean every piece of pro he used to get himself up the 16-pitch climb.

It’s one of Yosemite’s most fascinating forgotten stories. Turns out, he was just trying to impress a girl!

https://www.mountainlifemedia.ca/2019/07/the-solo-of-el-cap-you-probably-havent-heard-of/

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🏔️ Beneath the perfect pyramid

Alpamayo, in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca is often called the most beautiful mountain in the world. The 19,500ft (5950m) peak is like a blade of ice and granite. This film, shot in the moment by Chilean mountaineer Michael Millan, documents the climb as he moves from the valley to the top, across icy exposure and up the steep finish.

Enjoy the staggering scenery on one of alpinism’s most aesthetic objectives!

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🏞️ The valley America chose to drown

Before it became a reservoir supplying water to San Francisco, Hetch Hetchy was considered one of the most beautiful valleys in the Sierra Nevada — a near twin of Yosemite itself. This documentary dives into the bitter fight between John Muir and the rising conservation movement against politicians and engineers who believed flooding the valley was a necessary sacrifice for a growing California.

More than a century later, the debate still hasn’t disappeared. Between the history, politics, dam construction, and modern restoration efforts, the film becomes a fascinating look at the moment America decided wilderness could be both sacred and expendable at the same time.

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🧗 The blind leading the sea stack

We saw a new film was released about blind Brit climber, Jesse Dufton, who was born with only 20% central vision.

And we thought it is worth revisiting this award-winning climbing film that follows Dufton on an astonishing lead ascent of the Old Man of Hoy, a towering sea stack off Scotland’s coast, where route-finding, commitment, and trust matter as much as climbing ability.

🌍 Suffering the FOMO?

(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)

🚵 The Black Hills of France

Forget manicured bike parks! The Terres Noires (”Black Hills”) near Digne-les-Bains look like someone dropped a slice of Utah into France’s Provence region: black shale ridges, endless natural lines, and surreal badlands terrain that has become one of Europe’s most iconic freeride and enduro destinations.

The sweet spot is spring and fall, when temperatures are cool and the famous black dirt delivers absurd traction.

🎥 Stoke

🏄 Surf capital of Europe

While you are in Europe, head down to Ericeira, Portugal which has everything: beginner beaches, heavy reef breaks, cliffside viewpoints, seafood restaurants, and enough surf history to keep you entertained between sessions.

Spend a week here and you’ll understand why surfers from across the continent keep coming back.

• 40 minutes from Lisbon

• One of Europe’s most famous surf zones

• Home to the Ericeira World Surfing Reserve, the only World Surfing Reserve in Europe

• Dozens of established breaks, from beginner beaches to world-class reef waves like Coxos and Ribeira d’Ilhas

🎥 Stoke

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild. See you on the next send!

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❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

Greetings from the canyon life!

I was out scrambling with my daughter, and we came across this beauty. A reminder of how lucky we are to see and live among these magnificent creatures!

Before we get to this week’s send, let’s say HI from the canyon rim!!

Stay Stoked! Always AF!

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🎿 The greatest ski mountaineer you’ve never heard of

📍 Lhotse, Nepal

Polis ski mountaineer, Bartek Ziemski, has skied from the summit of Lhotse all the way to base camp without supplemental oxygen or personal Sherpa support, the first person to do it.

Lhotse is his eighth 8,000m ski descent, nonchalantly cementing him as one of the most accomplished high-altitude ski mountaineers alive.

Somehow, almost nobody knows his name

⏱️ 2 minutes

🪂 Mexico to Canada by paraglider

📍 Rocky Mountains, North America

Paraglider Antoine Girard follows the spine of the Rockies over 3,000km, from Mexico to Canada with nothing but wind, thermals, and the unavoidable long stretches on foot.

Exposure, solitude, and a journey of scale! Girard plans to drop all the deets in a full docu soon.

⏱️ 2 minutes

🎥 Another GoPro winter off the chain

How was your winter? If anything like this GoPro winter reel, it meant huge ski lines, brutal crashes, deep powder, close calls, and speed, speed and more speed.

A reminder that if it weren’t for that tiny box on your head, everything would be different!

⏱️ 3 minutes

🌍 Around the world on one wheel

📍 From New Zealand to Everywhere

Norm Joe is 57 years old and currently attempting to ride a unicycle around the world. The mission covers nearly 30,000 kilometers across New Zealand, North America, Europe, and Asia.

The ride is self-supported and has a purpose to raise money for WaterAid. The best part? He only picked up unicycling during COVID after finding a discarded unicycle.

🗺️ Track Norm Joe here. He is currently in the great state of Montana! https://unicyclecircumnavigationoftheglobe.maprogress.com/

Read more about Norm https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/584935/taranaki-man-hopes-to-break-a-guiness-world-record-by-unicycling-around-the-world

🎨 Riding through the spectrum

Brandon Semenek pops up every now and then to remind us why he’s one of the best! In this edit, he shreds the full spectrum from red hot to slow-mo green to a quite blue.

The riding is smooth, stylish, and cinematic, and the mood lands.

⏱️ 4 minutes

🐋 Surfing with orcas

📍 Bering Sea, Alaska

Cold water and majestic orcas cruising straight through the lineup. What starts as a surf session slowly turns into one of those surreal wildlife encounters that feels impossible even while you’re watching it.

The ocean is always the wildest place on Earth.

⏱️ 4 minutes

⚡ Bonus News

☠️ The Trump administration is bringing back M-44 cyanide bombs on public lands across the American West. Wildlife groups say the predator-killing devices are indiscriminate nightmares that have previously poisoned pets, wolves, foxes, and other animals.

🐅 India’s tiger reserves are starting to ban smartphone photography after tourists turned safaris into full-blown content circuses. Rangers say too many people were more focused on filming tigers than actually experiencing them.

📱 A pilot who crashed deep in the Nevada wilderness survived for days before rescuers found him thanks to a random phone notification sent from the wreckage. Modern technology is weird and often life-saving.

❄️ Alta managed one of its worst winters and best spring seasons ever. Check out the balance sheet here as Alta looks back on a forgettable yet wild winter.

🔥 Wildfire on Channel Islands was accidentally started by a stranded sailor who fired a flare after crashing his boat. Rescue crews later found “SOS” burned into the grasslands beside the wreck after the man spent the night alone on Santa Rosa Island.

🧠 Long Reads & Opinions

Heads up, take your time with these ones…

🏛️ Why does a cybersecurity contractor control access to America’s public lands?

This deep dive into Recreation.gov unpacks how booking campsites and wilderness permits has turned into a digital arms race dominated by bots, impossible odds, and a government contractor making millions off public land reservations.

Somewhere between empty campgrounds, frustrated hikers, and automated permit-grabbing scripts lies a bigger question: who actually gets access to the outdoors now?

https://www.republic.land/wreck-dot-gov/

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🏄 Colorado’s strangest surf town

Deep in the Rockies, hundreds of miles from the ocean, Salida built one of the best river surfing waves in the country.

This documentary traces how kayakers, wave shapers, and river obsessives transformed a stretch of the Arkansas River into the unlikely center of Colorado surf culture.

Put this on your summer itinerary!

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🚣 The river queen

Back in 1979, Patricia “Patso” Stow stepped into California’s rafting scene as one of the few women guiding rivers in a deeply male world. Decades later, she’s still charging—learning to kayak at 58, running whitewater with her sons, and becoming what friends call the “rock of Gibraltar” of the boating community.

This short film is part river history, part love letter to a life built around the current, community, and showing up for adventure at every age.

🌍 Suffering the FOMO?

(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)

🧗 Rocklands season is here

Every southern winter, climbers migrate toward South Africa for cold temps, perfect friction, and endless orange sandstone boulders scattered across the Cederberg mountains.

Peak season runs from June through August, nights get genuinely cold, and the place is far more remote than first-timers expect — bring layers, a good headlamp, and enough skin care to survive weeks of sharp rock and dry air.

🎿 Chile’s hidden ski paradise

The Andes are just around the corner. You should already be organizing your ski trip!

While most skiers will flock to Portillo (Chile) or Las Leñas (Argentina), Nevados de Chillán quietly delivers tree skiing, volcanic terrain, natural hot springs, and some of the best storm skiing in South America.

The season fires up in late June and runs through September, but storms can get heavy and roads occasionally close, so rent a 4x4, expect slower mountain logistics, and leave time for weather windows!

If you are lucky, you’ll get these kinds of vibes!

Signing off, we leave you with some original tunes straight from the Alabama Hills!

Half Hour Late, another type of craggin’ vibe!

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild. See you on the next send!

Share with somebody who needs stoke

❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

Last week I had the opportunity to get my daughter on her first desert tower, the much loved and very solid, Owl Rock, in Arches NP.

Now on to this week’s send… you’re gonna see some wild shiiiiiizzzz. From ski-BASE to speed records on Rainier, secret surf in India, and jazz-inspired freeriding in B.C., this week’s sends are all about style under pressure.

Spring is fully awake now, and people everywhere are getting creative with the terrain.

All Heart!

Nico in Moab

🪂 Ski-BASE off the Sphinx

📍 Montana, USA

There’s being stoked and then there’s standing on top of a 10,840-foot peak debating whether to ski into a ginormous BASE jump. That’s exactly what Van “legend” Ledger just pulled off on Sphinx Mountain, linking turns into what he says is likely the first-ever ski-BASE exit off the face.

Between swirling winds, exposure, and commitment butterflies, he spent longer on this exit than any other jump of his life.

The result? One of the wildest hybrid mountain sends we’ve seen this spring.

Keep your eyes on Van. He’s pushing limits.

⏱️ 2 minutes

🎷 Free riding is like a jazz solo

📍 Mt Seymour, B.C. , Canada

This week’s MTN bike banger is set to jazz riffs and soaked in BC weather vibes. Stripped down to rhythm, improvisation, and flow, Bas van Steenbergen heads into the forests of Vancouver’s North Shore—the birthplace of freeride—to ride the loam.

The comparison to jazz works wonders for this short cut, fast sections explode into chaos, mistakes become style, and every trail feature feels like a riff instead of a script.

Don’t skip this one.

⏱️ 2 minutes

🏃 Mount Rainier’s FKT gets 30 mins faster

📍 Mount Rainier, Washington, USA

3:43:50… on foot… round trip.

After abandoning plans for a ski descent because of terrible snow conditions, this all mountain crusher Simon Kearns pivoted to the foot-speed record on Mount Rainier, and absolutely detonated it. The summit push alone took just 2 hours and 34 minutes.

His post is a victory lap and a tribute, shouting out previous record holders and the tight-knit world of speed mountaineering.

Still… moving that fast on Rainier is deeply difficult to comprehend.

🌊 The “secret” surf wave in India

📍 Secret spot, India

Nothing stays secret in surfing anymore.

Nole Cossart and Anna Gudauskas head to India chasing a remote wave that was once whispered about among traveling surfers. Add a cameo from Chris Burkard and a film crew, and yeah… safe to say the secret’s out.

The real draw here is the atmosphere: fishing villages, warm water, chaotic roads, and the feeling that surfing’s frontier spirit still exists if you’re willing to travel far enough.

⏱️ 7 minutes

🥵 The Grand Canyon’s scariest hikes ranked

📍 Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona

Millions visit the Grand Canyon every year. A much smaller number decide it would be fun to descend into it during triple-digit heat, exposed cliffs, sketchy water access, and trails with consequences.

This ranking breaks down the canyon’s most dangerous hikes—from famous sufferfests like Rim-to-Rim to lesser-known routes where route-finding, dehydration, and exposure are for real.

Planing a backpacking trip to the Grand Canyon? Make sure you surival skills are on lock.

🔗 https://www.mygrandcanyonpark.com/things-to-do/hiking-trails/most-dangerous-grand-canyon-trails-ranked/

⚡ Bonus News ⚡

🧗 Adam Ondra climbed 5.14b in Saxony ground-up, with no chalk—following the region’s old-school ethics. See more below in Long Reads about his trip to Der Sächsische Schweiz!

🐻 Hiker killed by a grizzly in Glacier National Park on a day hike in dense terrain. The first bear attack fatality in the park since 1998.

🌏 Desertification right before our eyes. Western Australia is edging toward desertification as climate change, land clearing, and declining rainfall push ecosystems past their limits.

🏔️ Sherpa teams reached the summit of Mount Everest yesterday, finally opening the route after unprecedented delays this season. With ropes fixed, the climbing masses are expected to begin summit pushes.

🎿 Brundage Mountain Resort in Idaho launched childcare program to make ski life a little more realistic for families and traveling parents.

🐩 In southern Utah, a man and his poodle survived a rappelling accident while canyoneering and were rescued.

⏱️ Look back at a strange mtb bike record for the world’s longest wooden mountain bike trail, Top Chief Trail, in Scotland.

🧠 Long Reads & Opinions

Heads up, take your time with these ones…

🚐 When the #vanlife is mandatory

Every winter, tens of thousands of people migrate to public lands in the Arizona desert. For some it’s adventure and freedom—but for a growing number of Americans, it’s also their best option for housing. Josh Jackson writes for Re:Public, exploring the strange and increasingly important world of long-term desert camping, where a $180 permit can legally provide seven months of living on public land.

At places like La Posa near Quartzsite, that permit includes trash collection, vault toilets, and a dump station. The math is true: less than the price of one hotel night in many U.S. cities buys an entire season of survival, community, and mobility in the desert.

🔗 https://www.republic.land/a-new-kind-of-van-life/

⏱️ 20 minute read

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🧗 Ondra vs. Saxon sandstone ethics

No chalk. No rehearsal. Massive runouts. In Saxony climbing is all about composure under pressure, and you better not get sweaty hands lol. Adam Ondra steps into that world attempting Die Vertreibung der letzten Idealisten (8c/XIIa), battling sweaty hands, sketchy protection, and a climbing culture that honors age old ethics.

What makes this film so good is that Ondra—usually portrayed as nearly superhuman—looks genuinely rattled. The route forces him to slow down, adapt, and respect a tradition far older than modern sport climbing.

⏱️ 31 minutes

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The first boulderers?

Before crash pads, climbing gyms, and V-grades, there was Oscar Eckenstein: eccentric alpinist, gear innovator, and possibly the first person to argue that climbing on boulders was worthwhile on its own. Even stranger? One of his protégés was everyone’s favorite occultist, Aleister Crowley.

This deep dive into climbing history explores how modern bouldering may have started with a group of oddball intellectuals scrambling around rocks in the late 1800s—and how ideas that seemed ridiculous at the time eventually reshaped climbing forever.

⏱️ 36 minutes

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🏔️ Big walls and wet cracks on Fitz Roy

If you’ve been craving more Patagonia climbing films, this one absolutely delivers. A team of local climbers takes on Royal Flush on Fitz Roy’s east face: 1,250 meters of vertical climbing, 43 pitches, difficulties up to 7b/A0, and endless crack systems split by running water, storms, and classic Patagonian uncertainty.

What stands out most is how real the expedition feels. Long approaches, logistical chaos, hanging belays, and soaked gear.

Turn subtitles on for English—the storytelling is worth it.

⏱️ 38 minutes

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🌍 Suffering the FOMO?

(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)

🥾 Backpacking across the Pyrenees?

If you’ve been dreaming about a long-distance trek this year, put the Pyrenees high on your list.

The Haute Route des Pyrénées (HRP) stretches from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic through rugged alpine terrain, remote huts, wild camping zones, and tiny mountain villages split between France and Spain. Expect huge elevation days, dramatic weather swings, and endless ridge walking.

The prime season runs from late June through September, but now is the perfect time to start planning permits, huts, and logistics. You can commit to the full crossing or just tackle a section for a week or two. Either way, this is one of Europe’s great mountain journeys.

Check out how this intrepid hiker, Mathieu, did the 730km hike in 27 days and still managed to make a cool 12 minute vid.

Respect and inspiration!

🧗 Sea cliff trad climbing in Wales

If you want a climbing trip that feels adventurous from the moment you leave the parking lot, look to the sea cliffs of Pembrokeshire.

The limestone walls rise straight out of the Atlantic, with routes that begin by rappelling into hidden coves, traversing above crashing waves, or timing approaches with the tides. The climbing itself ranges from friendly classics to seriously bold trad, but the real draw is the atmosphere: salty air, huge exposure, and the feeling that every pitch is a little expedition.

Finish the day in tiny coastal pubs instead of crowded climbing camps.

May is prime season: longer days, cooler temps, and more stable weather before summer tourism ramps up.

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild. See you on the next send!

Share with somebody who needs stoke

❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

“Look mom, I just skied off that cliff”

From climbing to paragliding… This week’s send captures big mountain encounters, creative flying, and full-send river laps!

With longer days, the conditions are shifting, and the energy is rising!

For us living in Moab, it means every day is different, climbing, biking, and floating… May delivers, open your hearts!

Enjoy the send, live up the stoke!

❤️ — Nico in Moab

🪂 Dancing on air with Jean-Baptiste

📍 The friendly skies

Jean-Baptiste Chandelier plays with the sky. Tight proximity lines, wagga madness, and total control inches off the ground. It’s one of those films that hits a nerve… makes you want to dust off the wing, upgrade the kit, and get back up there!

What are you weighting for!?

⏱️ 5 min

🦌 Frozen in the high country: a bull elk’s final mistake

📍 Rocky Mountains, USA

Aaron Mulkey carries out an unexpected mission... deep in elk country, he finds a massive bull buried in a high alpine valley, taken down by a simple misstep in unforgiving terrain.

He documents the recovery and long haul out in four parts on the ‘gram, turning the moment into both tribute and reminder: in the mountains, one mistake is all it takes.

🔗

🚵 Man’s best trail partner

Is there anything better than chasing your dog down a bike trail?

Jason Lucas flips the script and lets his dog Maya steal the show. Pure joy, dirt, speed, and that bond you can’t fake.

⏱️ 3 min

🌊 Full throttle at Dinkey Creek

📍 Sierra Nevada, California

Cameron Garrison goes into whitewater send mode on Dinkey Creek—stacking drops, charging lines, and making big water look way too casual.

This is spring boating at its rowdiest!

🧗 Projecting the impossible

📍 Rocky Mountains, Colorado

Dope climbing short, where Keenan Griscom steps up to do one thing: unlock the Double Helix. Years in the making, countless attempts, and one final breakthrough. The first ascent, earned the hard way.

⏱️ 10 min

🚵 A bikepack thru Armenia’s high passes

📍 Syunik Province, Armenia

This glimpse into a bikepacking adventure delivers the full spectrum. Starting above 3,000m on hard-packed snow, the descent seems unlikely down steep white slopes

By the time they roll into town, nobody can believe they actually came over the Ishats Pass.

⚡ Bonus News

🏔️ Some mountains are still unclimbed because of politics, danger, or sheer impossibility. From sacred summits to remote spires, these are the lines that remain out of reach.

📸 Ty Lekki Q&A. Read about the legendary photographer and how he went from trade work to capturing some of the most iconic images in the outdoor world.

🦛 Escobar’s hippos are out of control and is now a full-blown ecological problem. Pablo Escobar’s escaped hippos have multiplied across Colombia and officials are now planning a controversial cull.

🐻 California grizzly bear once ruled the state, now a bold reintroduction proposal is back on the table. Supporters see ecosystem revival, critics see risk.

🏔️ Ski mountaineers reset the bar on Europe’s highest peak, linking ascent and descent in new record time. Fast and ruthless, they shaved 2 minutes, after covering 30km and climbing 3,700m of elevation in the high Alps.

🧠 Long Reads & Opinions

Heads up, take your time with these ones…

🎨 The lost art of drawing rocks

Before apps and beta videos, climbers sketched their routes by hand, turning crags into works of art. This piece, published at UKhillwalking.com, dives into the craft, nostalgia, and precision behind old-school crag drawings.

🔗https://www.ukhillwalking.com/articles/in_focus/the_lost_art_of_crag_drawing-16847

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🌎 Obit for Ted Turner, the conservationist

Media mogul turned conservationist, Turner has spent decades trying to repair the land. It’s a complicated legacy of wealth, wildlife, and the question of what it really means to give back to the planet.

🔗 https://news.mongabay.com/2026/05/ted-turner-a-media-mogul-who-tried-to-repair-the-land/

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🏂 The splitboard origin story

Before splitboarding was everywhere, it was a hacked-together idea from riders who just wanted to go further. This piece dives into the roots of the splitboard and how one simple innovation unlocked access to backcountry terrain. It’s a historical look at the garage-born ingenuity that has led to backcountry adventures all over the world!

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🐦 This is what makes ravens so cool

Ravens mate for life, play together, socialize, and fly for the sheer thrill of it. After four years observing them, filmmaker Vance Crofoot captures a surprisingly emotional look into one of the most intelligent animals on Earth.

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🪂 When Dogs Fly (Dean Potter & Whisper)

For all the darkness that’s been unpacked about Dean Potter in the recent docu, in When Dogs Fly, Potter sets out to wingsuit BASE jump with his dog, Whisper, turning obsession into something oddly tender.

Goggles on, ears wrapped, flying side by side. It’s wild, controversial, and undeniably human. Legends like Potter have left behind so many moments of pure light.

🌍 Suffering the FOMO?

(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)

🧗 Rock trip: volcanic tuff, cracks, and wild lines in Central Oregon

If there was ever a moment to go full dirtbag, it’s now! Central Oregon is in season. Here’s a quick itinerary that will satisfy your vertical hankering…

Most well-known: Smith Rock State Park
Best crack climbing: Trout Creek
Multipitch gem: Cougar Buttress

And just outside Bend, some of the state’s best bouldering rounds out the trip.

Late spring (May–early June) is prime in Central Oregon: warm days, cool nights, and dry high desert conditions. Expect big temperature swings, splitter friction, and wide-open landscapes—perfect for long climbing days and campfire nights between zones.

🌊 Powerful swell, empty lineups in Southland, NZ

At the bottom of the world, Southland delivers raw, wind-blown surf with barely anyone out. It’s cold, remote, and wildly beautiful—long beaches, heavy water, and the kind of sessions you earn. Bring a thick wetsuit and a sense of adventure.

Southland faces straight into the Southern Ocean—no island chains, no protection. That means consistent, powerful swell rolling in from Antarctica. When it’s on, it’s serious water.

• Water temps: ~8–12°C (46–54°F)

• You’ll need a 4/3 wetsuit, boots, maybe hood

This is one of the least crowded surf regions in New Zealand. You’ll often surf alone or with a handful of locals—and an angry sea lion or two…

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild. See you on the next send!

Share with somebody who needs stoke

❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

I spent the weekend riding in Richfield, Utah—home of the legendary Spinal Tap Trail. Eighteen miles of pure flow, desert drops, and big features.

Spring temps are firing, and this week’s send is leaning heavy into climbing—everyone’s getting after it!

🚣‍♂️ A packraft mission thru Jasper

📍 Jasper National Park, Canada

This is the kind of mission that makes you start planning summer immediately. Alpine landscapes, remote travel, and a wild ride down the Fraser River—stitched together into a proper expedition. Jeffrey Creamer shows what modern adventure really looks like: moving light, going deep, and committing to the unknown.

Based out of Mancos, Colorado, Creamer came into packrafting as a beginner and has since pushed into full-on expedition Class V terrain.

If you don’t like the music, mute it!

⏱️ 4 min

🧗‍♂️ Remembering Stanhope

📍 Waddington Range

Let us honor one of trad climbing’s boldest, Will Stanhope, who recently lost his life in a climbing accident. This one hits deep. Alongside Tim Emmett, Stanhope completes the first free ascent of the South Ridge of Mt. Combatant—4,500 feet of sustained, committing climbing up to 5.12+.

Big wall scale meets pure trad headspace in one of Canada’s wildest ranges. Add in stunning drone footage and you’ve got a massive line—and a Stanhope legacy that won’t be forgotten.

⏱️ 5 min

🎿 Schirmer’s season: POV from the steeps

📍 Norway

Think of this as Nikolai Schirmer’s 2025–26 highlight reel—uncut, unedited, and straight from the mountains. Sunrise missions, powder chases, and a full season spent hunting the perfect line, all captured from the skier’s perspective.

Schirmer has built a reputation on steep, technical descents in remote terrain, accessed only by foot—and this is what that life actually looks like. No filters, no edits, just the grind and the glory of modern ski mountaineering.

⏱️ 11 min

🚵 Big mountain freeride dream

📍 British Columbia, Canada

Big lines. Big effort.

Graham Agassiz and Eric “Lornny” Lawrenuk head deep into the mountains chasing raw freeride terrain. What they find is exactly what you want it to be—loose, steep, and just barely rideable.

⏱️ 12 min

🧗 The Mayo King

📍 Missoula, Montana??

Roof cracks your thing? Get into this one. A crew of young crushers throwing down on steep, burly lines just outside Missoula, where the “Mayo King” gets crowned.

A couple of dudes, techno beats, dance party energy, and pure good vibes baked in. It’s guaranteed to make you miss days at the crag with your crew.

⏱️ 7 min

🧗‍♀️ A first ascent on Baffin

📍 Baffin Island, Canada

This is your chance to watch a three-woman team take on a true Arctic first ascent. Led by the unstoppable Pachi Ibarra, the crew faces brutal weather and total uncertainty during a fully self-supported expedition—ultimately claiming the first ascent of Mini Asgard.

“Not easy and wet!”, says Pachi.

⏱️ 7 min

⚡ Bonus News

🎿 The crew at Teton Gravity Research break down the Epic vs Ikon debate, laying out which pass makes sense depending on how (and where) you ski.

🏔️ Chimborazo just got a new route on Ecuador’s highest peak and one of the farthest points from Earth’s center. Colombian climbers add a new chapter to high-altitude climbing in the Andes.

🐻 Economists are at it again—this time putting a price on the Grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park, showing each bear can generate significant economic value through tourism and ecosystem benefits. It’s a wild reminder that apex predators aren’t just iconic—they’re financially and ecologically powerful players in the landscape.

🎿 Winter did not wait in New Zealand where the Hamner Springs ski area opened thanks to an early-season storm—weeks ahead of the usual June start.

🏜️ Fatal falls in Zion National Park happen every year, often on exposed trails and viewpoints where one mistake is all it takes. Even in one of the most visited parks in the U.S., the desert’s vertical terrain demands respect.

🧠 Long Reads & Opinions

Heads up, take your time with these ones…

🏔️ Apa Sherpa: beyond Everest

Everest gets the headlines. The Sherpa carry the weight. This half hour film follows Apa Sherpa, starting as a child porter, risking everything so others can stand on top of the world. Since 2014, over 30 high-altitude workers have died on Everest.

Through the Apa Sherpa Foundation, he’s trying to rewrite that story—education over exposure, future over survival. Heavy, real, and necessary.

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🧗 Spider Web Wall, the mini ‘big wall’

Josh Wharton heads deep into Wyoming’s backcountry to take on Mixed Signals (5.13c-ish), a multi-day push on an obscure “mini big wall.” Tight weather windows, grass-choked cracks, and complex routefinding turn it into a full-value alpine experience. More than a gear test, it’s about systems, partnership, and the grind that makes long routes matter.

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🌊 A river system under pressure

What happens upstream doesn’t stay upstream. This investigation tracks how Myanmar’s mining boom is pushing toxic runoff into rivers flowing into Thailand—reshaping ecosystems and communities far beyond the source.

A heavy, important read on environmental spillover in a connected world!

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🏔️ The business of Everest

Climbing Mount Everest is a full-blown industry. This deep dive breaks down how guided trips now average around $66,000, while newer Nepali operators have dropped prices closer to $38,000, opening the door to a rising wave of middle-class climbers from China and India. Here’s an excerpt:

“In the last 5 years, a young generation of Sherpas, tired of playing the middlemen, have launched their own expedition companies and undercut the Western guides.

“They stood up and said, ‘Why are we working for the man? We have the ability to do all of this for ourselves, and they blew up the business model.”

These Nepali-run companies charge around $38k (40% less than a Western guide). This lower price point has attracted a whole new market: emerging middle-class climbers in China and India.”

🌍 Suffering the FOMO?

(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)

🧗 Chiapas is calling

Southern Mexico isn’t on most climbing radars—and that’s exactly the point. Jungle walls, steep limestone, and zero crowds. Chiapas is raw, humid, and still wide open for exploration. If you’re looking to trade packed crags for something wilder, this is your zone.

Rock climbing in Chiapas, Mexico, centers around high-quality limestone sport climbing near San Cristóbal de las Casas and big-wall adventures in the Cañón del Sumidero…key spots like Arcotete offer 30-meter limestone tufas, while the area generally caters to all levels with a growing, yet uncrowded, reputation.

🥾 Backpacking 150km across La Réunion

Ready for a full island traverse through one of the wildest landscapes on Earth?

The GR-R2 cuts coast to coast across La Réunion—through jungle, volcanic ridgelines, and massive cirques. It’s long, humid, remote, and relentless— testing endurance.

These hikes change you experience a place. Need an operator? Check with these guys.

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild. See you on the next send! Share with somebody who needs stoke!!!

❤️‍🔥 Your StokedAF fam 🤘

PD: Looks like a Minecraft world…

I’m sure many of you caught episode 2 from the Dean Potter documentary series (HBO) last night… amiright?

If you remember the 2007 film Sharp End, then you saw Potter free solo a route high up on the Eiger with a BASE rig on his back- the first time the world was introduced to Freebase! Last night, the world also got the story about what went down a few days before… and it is frightening!

This week’s lineup doesn’t quite go that far… but it gets close. From precision-built mtn bike lines in Germany and a surf playground in Puerto Rico to Connor Herson throwing down in Norway, Alaskan lines and the flow zone, this lineup is all about movement at its sharpest.

🚵 German precision on 2 wheels

📍 Germany

Deep in the woods, Lukas “Sheeper” Schäfer is building lines in the forest and sending them with absurd smoothness. The features are wild: perfectly shaped lips, creative transfers, and heavy woodwork, engineered like a pro! It’s freeride distilled into craft.

Don´t blink or you’ll miss half of the line.

🔗

⏱️ 8 minutes

🏄 A welcome to Crash Boat

📍 Puerto Rico

Dylan Graves brings out his fam on one of Puerto Rico’s most unique waves: Crash Boat. He calls it a “novelty wave” but really it is a surf playground and it’s full of that borricua energy. Dale brodel!

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧗 Connor Herson vs. Norway

📍 Jøssingfjord, Norway

One of climbing’s most incredible athletes, Connor Herson, locks into Pete Whittaker’s Crown Royale (5.14c), then sets his sights on The Recovery Drink—a 35-meter overhanging gear line established by Nico Favresse. No bolts, no shortcuts—just pure power, precision, and one of the wildest trad testpieces on the planet.

⏱️ 14 minutes

🎿 Harmony in the state of Alaska

📍 Valdez, Alaska, USA

Winter is all but over, so take a few minutes and watch Sammy Carlson’s HARMONY, about that feeling when everything clicks and the mountains take over. Big lines, deep exposure, and a reminder that even at the highest level, it’s still about flow. This is the highlight reel that sticks.

⏱️ 6 minutes

🏃 Chasing the flow state

What does the perfect run actually feel like? Jazmine Lowther teams up with a performance psychologist to break down “flow state”—that elusive zone where movement feels effortless and fully locked in.

Short, thoughtful, and surprisingly applicable next time you go out!

⏱️ 4 minutes

⚡ Bonus News ⚡

🚵 A 32” wheel just won its first downhill race. The “mega mullet” setup (32” front, 29” rear) took the top step at Sea Otter proving bigger wheels might not just be for XC anymore.

🏜️ Golf vs. water reality check in the Colorado River Basin. A new study challenges the narrative that golf’s economic value outweighs its impact—especially in arid regions like St. George, Utah where courses consume significant local water while pointing fingers at agriculture.

🧗 Petzl officially stepped into the cam game, taking on legacy players in one of climbing’s most dialed gear categories. Expectations are high for precision engineering and a serious shake-up in trad racks everywhere.

🐎 Riding the Americas—25,000 km, one horse at a time. A solo rider is taking on the full length of the Pan-American route, moving north to south across continents in a months-long expedition. An equine connection to landscapes, cultures, and the rhythm of travel at animal pace.

🏔️ Drones are changing the game on Everest. They ferry loads through the Khumbu Icefall—one of the most dangerous sections of the climb—reducing Sherpa exposure to objective hazards like collapsing seracs.

🧠 Long Reads & Opinions

Heads up, take your time with these ones…

🌨️ One man, one cabin, decades of data

Billy Barr has been quietly recording snowfall and weather patterns from a tiny cabin in Gothic since the 1970s—no models, no satellites, just obsessive daily logs. Decades later, his handwritten data has become some of the most valuable long-term climate records in the Rockies, offering a rare ground-level view of how winters are shifting in real time. It’s part mountain story, part climate archive, and entirely one-of-a-kind.

🔗 https://coloradosun.com/2026/03/15/billy-barr-colorado-gothic-climatologist-winter-weather-reports-climate-change/

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🧗 Grigri, unconfidential, an op-ed

Speaking of Petzl… Andy Kirkpatrick goes deep on the GriGri—and what it’s done to climbing. What starts as a breakdown of one of the sport’s most iconic devices quickly spirals into how convenience shapes habits, how risk tolerance shifts, and how gear quietly rewrites culture. It’s part history, part critique, and very much a wake-up call.

Kirkpatrick's Climbing Notes

GriGri Unconfidential

I’m seeing a lot about the new Petzl GriGri+ this week, which looks very nice. It’s always good to see the kit being Toyota Corolla’d (incrementally improved over decades)—over a disappointing revolution (DeLorean DMC-12). But seeing GriGris everywhere has also been the kick up the arse I needed to finish this short GriGri confessional…

Read more

6 months ago · 55 likes · 2 comments · Andy Kirkpatrick

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🐾 Africa’s most elusive predator, holding on

African wild dog numbers are still dangerously low—just 6,000–7,000 left across the continent—but Zambia remains one of their last strongholds. This piece dives into where and when to actually find them in the wild, unpacking a fragile comeback story shaped by conservation wins, uneven distribution, and the reality that even when populations grow, survival is never guaranteed.

🔗 https://www.classiczambiasafaris.com/post/african-wild-dog-in-zambia-where-and-when-to-see-africa-s-most-elusive-predator

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🚵 Burnout, bikes, and starting over

After 15 years of racing, stepping away isn’t failure—it’s recalibration. This self-funded film follows two riders pulling back from the circuit to reconnect with why they started in the first place. No sponsors dictating pace, no pressure to perform—just bikes, waves, friends, and the messy process of finding direction again. One of the most honest pieces in the lineup.

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🌍 Suffering the FOMO?

(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)

🚣 Skip the rafting permits—a wild canyon is calling!

📍 Pilcomayo River, Bolivia

While the Colorado gets crowded, the Pilcomayo is still wide open. This 14-day, 280-mile expedition drops into a remote canyon system with whitewater, side hikes into slot canyons, and a final push deep into jungle. No dams. No permits. Just unfiltered river travel—and the kind of expedition feel that’s getting harder to find.

Timing is everything here. The window typically lines up with the late rainy season (roughly January–May) when flows are high enough to keep things moving but not completely blown out. Go too early and it’s flood-stage chaos—too late and you’re scraping over rocks.

Hook up with river conservation organization, SierraRios for more info!

🚵 Lima’s desert freeride zone

📍 El Morro, Lima, Peru

Right on the edge of Lima, El Morro delivers something you don’t expect from a capital city—raw desert freeride lines dropping toward the Pacific. Sculpted jumps, fast flow, and big-air features built by a dialed local scene make this one of South America’s most underrated bike zones. Dry, dusty, and rideable year-round, it’s the kind of place where urban meets wild in the best way.

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild.

Before you hit “Next”… Send this newsletter to your outdoor partner and even to that guy who you know shouldn’t be following you into the backcountry!!

❤️‍🔥 The StokedAF fam 🤘

You might’ve noticed we went quiet for a few weeks. Spring break hit, we reset, and now we’re back with fresh energy and a stacked lineup of sends.

Dive into this week’s curated mix of stories, lines, and wild moments… but first a message from Nico in Moab!

On my last Sunday ride, I saw this beauty in the hills above Moab!

🎬 The Dean Potter myth, unfiltered

Dean Potter was never just a climber—he was something far harder to pin down. The Dark Wizard, dives into the full spectrum: visionary, rebel, partner, and a deeply complex human chasing the edge between obsession and consequence.

Three years in the making, the Sender Films crew assembled a four-part, four-hour deep dive into his life—working closely with Potter’s family, accessing his personal journals, and interviewing those who knew him best to piece together what truly kept his fire burning.

Want more? Check out this podcast with Peter Mortimer on the Nugget, talking about how he sourced materials and the Potter-Honnold rivalry in the Valley.

Click here » https://thenuggetclimbing.com/episodes/peter-mortimer

🚵 The Portal still abides

📍 Moab, Utah

The Portal isn’t getting any easier…. One of Moab’s most infamous lines, turning already exposed moves into no-fall territory that demands total focus, even from riders who’ve been here for years.

Pro rider, Nate Hills, drops in for a top-to-bottom tour to reminds everyone why this trail still commands respect… and why sometimes walking a move is wise.

Length: 8 minutes

🌊 Surfing against the current

📍 Dakar, Senegal

In Dakar, the ocean isn’t just waves—it’s a crossroads. For Pape Fode and Baye Seydi, it’s also a way out that doesn’t require leaving.

Their surf school is building something deeper than technique: a sense of belonging strong enough to counter the pull of dangerous migration routes, turning the Atlantic into a space for future instead of escape.

This beautiful documentary film captures the drive and optimism that connects Pape and Seydi to the ocean. Don’t miss it.

Length: 9 minutes

🛶 Pinned above the void

📍 Río Claro, Chile

Everything was fine—until it wasn’t. A clean line into La Leona turned into a full-on nightmare: pinned, solo, and staring down an 80-foot waterfall just around the corner.

What follows is pure survival mode—ditch the boat, fight for an eddy, and somehow claw back from the edge. One of those stories where luck, grit, and a friend on a rope are the only reasons it doesn’t end differently.

🧗 Herson in the proving grounds

📍 Norway

Connor Herson had never climbed outside the U.S.—so when he finally did, he went straight to one of the hardest trad arenas on the planet.

Norway’s Profile Wall packs two of the world’s most demanding lines side by side, a place where there’s no soft entry, just raw testing ground. No shortcuts here—just commitment, history, and the kind of climbing that decides if you belong.

Length: 16 minutes

🎿 Ocean miles, life lines

📍 Australia

Fifty-five-year-old Heli Murray doesn’t separate life phases—she stacks them. Motherhood, divorce, menopause, endurance racing… all threaded together by the ocean.

As a birth doula and ultra athlete, she uses the sea as both proving ground and refuge, pushing limits in a way that feels less about performance and more about survival, identity, and staying wildly, stubbornly alive.

Length: 6 minutes

⚡ Bonus News ⚡

🏔️ The Arctic expedition season is delivering close calls, including a fatal crevasse fall and a polar bear encounter in separate incidents. Going solo carries its risk!

🧗 Kalymnos just hit pause on climbing—temporarily closing 10 crags for maintenance and safety work following tragic accident.

🚵 Do you like vintage mountain bikes? The 3rd annual Vintage Mountain Bike Show in Toronto celebrates the bikes and culture that once made the sport. It’s a reminder of what there was before carbon and suspension, and you just might your old bike in the photo gallery! Don’t miss this one.

🛶 Trapped under ice with no clear exit—one Michigan kayaker found himself in a full nightmare scenario after flipping in freezing conditions and got a brutal lesson in cold-water survival.

🎿 Cody Townsend, Tommy Caldwell, and Bjarne Salen scored the first-ever winter ski traverse of Norman’s 13, a link of the highest peaks in California’s Sierra Nevada. Eight days, big terrain, no shortcuts.

🧠 Long Reads & Opinions

Heads up, take your time with these ones…

🧗 Climbing Greece, one crag at a time

The duo behind The Crag Journal are methodical, road-tripping climbers who dig deep into every destination they visit. Their 11-week journey across Greece blends detailed beta, local insight, and a love for the process, painting a full picture of a country where limestone, mountains, and the coastline collide.

https://thecragjournal.com/2026/03/01/climbing-in-greece-a-mediterranean-road-trip/

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🎿 Can freeride stay wild?

Freeride skiing was born as a rejection of rules—built by icons like Shane McConkey on creativity, freedom, and doing it your own way. Now, with the Olympics on the horizon, the sport is evolving fast—bringing bigger exposure, bigger money, and bigger questions about what gets lost along the way.

The question is can it grow this big without losing its soul?

https://www.powder.com/news/can-freeride-stay-wild

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🐊 Face to face with apex predators

Wildlife rangers in Australia’s north are out in the wet season, tracking, trapping, and relocating massive Saltwater crocs in remote, high-risk environments where things can go sideways fast.

The film follows a live operation to move two giants from a fast-moving creek, showing the precision, teamwork, and nerves it takes to manage one of the planet’s most dangerous animals—day in, day out.

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🐒 The forest coming back to life in Nigeria

Deep in the wilderness, rare chimpanzees are being seen on camera traps after years of war and silence. With conservation teams returning and protection ramping up, this is a rare story of a wild place—and a species—getting a second chance.

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild.

Before you hit “Next”… Send this newsletter to your outdoor partner and even to that guy who you know shouldn’t be following you into the backcountry!!

See you on the next send!

❤️‍🔥 The StokedAF fam 🤘

P.S. We’re gonna throw an awesome track your way… check it out!

Winter has faded… snow season is a distant memory!

Moab’s already feeling like early summer, and we’ve been chasing shade like it’s June, sneaking in climbs on cool mornings. We got on Sorcerer’s Apprentice (right side)—a proper little Navajo sandstone adventure with some magic spice!

Held this one for Sunday. Feels like the moment to flip the switch—spring is here, and it’s go time.

All heart,
Nico

🎿 Candide skis the bones of winter

📍 Tignes, France

Candide Thovex is back in Tignes, this time threading Les Tufs, terrain that to the naked eye does not look skiable. The piece leans into the starkness of a rough winter and turns thin conditions into pure style—fast, weird, creative, and very Candide.

Admit it, you always have time for a Candide video!

Length: 4 minutes

🚵 Sedona’s Hardline turns one

📍 Sedona, Arizona, USA

It’s been a year since Hardline landed in Sedona and the thing still looks outrageous: exposed slickrock, a signature 60-foot vertical drop, and almost no room for hesitation. The bigger story is that this is one of the country’s hardest Forest Service-sanctioned trails—a serious milestone for advanced riding on public land.

Length: 20 minutes

Or if you want…just skip straight to Braydon Bringhurst who makes the terrifying terrain look bouncy, loose, and almost casual.

🧗 The Quiet Crusher goes full dirtbag mode

📍 “Out West”, USA

Have you ever wondered about the dirtbags who win funds through Cedar Wright’s Dirtbag Fund?

Meet Kyle Higby, one of the 2025 Dirtbag Fund recipients, who took the support and absolutely ran with it. This short profile follows a year packed with hard sport and trad climbing across the American West, and it hits that sweet spot between humble stoke and full-blown crusher energy.

Length: 7 minutes

🤯 Biggest double backflip on a MTB bike?

This one is pure spectacle. Austrian freeride mountain bike rider, Elias Ruso, says “I went to war against every single demon inside of me & landed the biggest double flip to ever be done on a bicycle! ⚔️.” And that he dedicated it to Adolf Silva gives it an extra layer of heart beneath the insanity.

Even by modern freeride standards, it feels like one of those clips that makes you pause and immediately replay.

🎿 Massive cliff send at Crystal Mountain

📍 Crystal Mountain, Washington, USA

Inti Fernandez steps up on Silver King, one of Crystal’s most iconic zones and he goes absolutely massive. Big exposure, clean commitment, and the kind of hit that makes even seasoned locals pause.

This one’s pure energy from the Pacific Northwest.

⚡ Bonus News ⚡

🚵 A new bikepacking route cuts through the Andes, stitching together remote terrain across South America with massive elevation, weather exposure, and almost no bailout options.

🎿 Eileen Gu and Luke Harrold crowned the first-ever Snow League freeski world champions, marking a new chapter for the competition scene.

🎿 Aspen Snowmass unveils new master development plan that includes lift upgrades and potential terrain expansion across its resorts.

🐍 Mountain biker dies after rattlesnake bite in California after being bitten by a rattlesnake while riding at a local trail system, a rare but serious reminder of the risks in wild terrain.

🧗 After 240 days of effort, a potential “world’s hardest rock climb” was sent by Spanish crusher Jorge Díaz-Rullo. The route Café Colombia in Margalef might be a 5.15d. If it holds, this could push the absolute ceiling of sport climbing even higher. Here is a peak into the process:

🧠 Long Reads & Opinions

🧗 Oak Flat AZ on the edge

A mining company is moving forward with exploratory drilling at Oak Flat, a sacred Indigenous site that also happens to host thousands of world-class climbing routes. As you guessed, there is tension between land use, culture, and access—and asks what gets lost when places like this are treated as expendable.

🎿 Are “nerds” ruining backcountry skiing?

This opinion piece takes aim at the rise of hyper-optimized backcountry culture—apps, data, gear, and decision-making reduced to metrics. It’s a sharp (and controversial) take on whether we’re losing intuition, risk tolerance, and the soul of moving through the mountains.

🧭 Living the expedition life

In this interview, long distance adventurer Justin Barbour talks about building a life around long, unsupported journeys—where logistics, patience, and resilience matter more than speed. It’s a grounded look at exploration that strips away the hype and gets back to fundamentals.

🧗 What even is the next grade?

As new climbs push the grades, Chris Sharma dives into the question everyone’s quietly asking: how do you actually know when you’ve climbed a new grade like 5.16? It’s a thoughtful look at progression, ego, and the blurry line between personal achievement and consensus in climbing’s upper limits.

🌍 Suffering the FOMO?

(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)

🧗 Steep limestone and jungle vibes in Brazil

Just outside Belo Horizonte, Serra do Cipó delivers steep limestone, tufas, and pockets in a wild, jungle-lined setting that feels far from the typical South American circuit. Even in the wetter months, the overhanging sectors stay climbable, and the whole zone has that raw, exploratory energy—fewer crowds, big potential, and the kind of place where you find your own project.

And while you’re in Brazil, hit the granite domes of Rio de Janeiro at Pão de Açúcar for the trad multipitch and ocean views!

🌊 Barrels without the crowds in Sri Lanka

March is prime on Sri Lanka’s south coast (Ahangama & Hiriketiya), consistent swell, warm water, and a mix of punchy beach breaks and clean reef setups. It’s not exactly unknown, but compared to Bali, it still feels like you’ve found something, especially if you drift between breaks and chase conditions day by day.

👉 Why it hits:

✅ Peak season (Dec–April)

✅ Variety of waves (beginner → legit barrels)

✅ Tropical, easy, and still a bit under the radar

Wait for the next newsletter… or just book the flight now.

💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild.

Before you hit “Next”… Send this newsletter to your outdoor partner and even to that guy who you know shouldn’t be following you into the backcountry!!

See you on the next send!

❤️‍🔥 The StokedAF fam 🤘