🔥 Blue bombs, big wall solos, and a new take on skateboarding
The newsletter for people who'd rather be outside!
What’s shakin’ STOKEDaf tribe!
Take your time to sample some of the finest sends and stories from the outdoor world… from a solo mission on Eternal Flame to a legendary sport climb proj going down in France.
We bring you the life on the prow, deep in the pow, and skateboarding wow from the streets of Paris, from one of the most creative skaters out there! (Don’t sleep on Andy! And I’m all for the helmet)
Before you get into all that… I want to send some love from the top of Adrenaline Circus, a strange tower around the corner from Moab!
🧗 A 35-year proj goes down!
📍 Buoux, France
One of sport climbing’s longest-standing unsolved puzzles was finally cracked. French climber Erwan Legrand made the first ascent of Le Bombé Bleu, a fierce pocket line bolted by Marc Le Menestrel back in 1991.
For three decades, legends like Ben Moon, Chris Sharma, Alexander Megos and others tried — and failed — to unlock the brutal 16-move crux across the massive bulge above La Plage.
Legrand did it barefoot, and just like that the mystery is gone.
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🛹 The art of skateboarding
📍 Paris, France
Take a break from the mountains for a minute and drop into the city… of Paris.
The result is a glimpse into the wildly creative mind of Andy Anderson, one of skateboarding’s most unconventional riders. Watching Andy skate feels a bit like figure skating on concrete — flowing lines, improbable tricks, and a style that blurs the sport. If you’ve never seen him, this vid explains why he’s become one of the most fascinating skaters on the scene.
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Length: 8 minutes
🧗 Solo on Eternal Flame
📍 Trango Massif, Pakistan
The Eternal Flame on Nameless Tower is one of the Karakoram’s most iconic granite lines — 650 meters of steep, flawless rock above 6,000m. Since its 1989 first ascent, only a handful of teams have climbed it.
In Eternal Solo, Stefano Ragazzo takes the stakes to another level: a full solo ascent of the route, where every move happens alone and the consequences are absolute. Big wall mastery, stripped to its purest form.
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Length: 30 minutes
🧗 A battle on South Island
📍 South Island, New Zealand
At the Little Babylon crag, deep in the fjords of New Zealand’s South Island, NZ climber, Aurel Gelot and Keith Eddy lock into an endurance test on The Giving Tree (5.13d), a route that delivers a relentless fight before a pumpy finish.
The vid features some local culture, swimming, carnivoring, and even a cameo from the local troublemakers — kea, the world’s only alpine parrots — notorious for their intelligence, curiosity, and habit of dismantling gear left unattended.
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Length: 7 minutes
🎿 When probability finally catches up
📍 Mont Blanc, France/Italy
For nearly 30 years, Ross Hewitt has been synonymous with precision in steep skiing around Chamonix — a guide known for treating risk management like an exact science. In January 2026, a violent avalanche near the Monte Bianco Skyway shattered his pelvis and brought his long run of calculated survival to an abrupt halt. Check it out in his words!
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📸 The Dark Side of the Perfect Shot
📍 Global
The chase for the perfect photo has quietly reshaped travel across the planet. Once-wild locations become crowded stages for identical social media images — sometimes degrading the very places people came to admire.
This short film explores how tourism, photography, and crowd behavior collide, raising uncomfortable questions about how we experience places and the outdoors in the age of viral images.
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Length: 20 minutes
🎿 Bottomless pow off the cat
📍 Lesser Caucasus, Georgia
No lifts. Just deep snow and long days in the mountains.
This crew spent a week in the remote Lesser Caucasus skiing untouched terrain accessed by snowcat: 8-hour days chasing faces, bowls, and forests buried under the powder. The soundtrack may be questionable, but the terrain absolutely delivers.
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Length: 7 minutes
⚡ Bonus News ⚡
🌊 A 13-year-old became the unlikely hero of a family paddling trip after their boat capsized. The teen swam to shore and hiked for help, ultimately leading rescuers back to the stranded group.
🧗 This year the climbing world lost one of its boldest characters: Free-solo pioneer Greg Cameron, known for audacious ascents in Yosemite and Squamish, died at age 70 after a five-decade career of pushing limits.
🎿 A snowboarder whose avalanche incident went viral recently issued a public apology, acknowledging that poor decision-making triggered the slide. The video has become a cautionary example of how quickly small mistakes can escalate in avalanche terrain.
🏔️ A Polish adventurer just climbed one of the coldest mountains on Earth in winter, alone. Maciej Besta summited Mount Pobeda in Siberia as part of a personal project to climb the planet’s coldest peaks during the harshest season.
🦈 Shark bites return to near-average levels worldwide. According to the 2025 International Shark Attack File report, 65 unprovoked shark bites were recorded globally, slightly below the decade average of 72, with nine fatalities compared to the ten-year average of six.
The United States still leads in total incidents, accounting for 38% of bites worldwide in 2025 — though that share has declined from previous years when it exceeded 50%. Australia followed with 32% of global bites and 56% of shark-related fatalities, highlighting how geography and ocean conditions shape where encounters are most likely.
📚 Long Reads & Watches
🎥 A Guide’s Book — inside the mind
While ski films celebrate the send, this piece looks at everything that happens before it. A Guide’s Book takes viewers into the high-stakes world of alpine guiding in Chamonix, where every decision carries real consequences. The film dives into the preparation, risk assessment, and responsibility that define leadership in the mountains—far beyond just skiing the line.
🏆 The film earned the Deep Award for Best Documentary at the TGR Dream Factory Film Festival.
🎥 Watch:
🐹 Don’t call it a comeback
The Vancouver Island marmot once hovered on the edge of extinction. By the early 2000s, fewer than 30 remained in the wild—one bad winter away from disappearing forever. What followed became one of North America’s most remarkable conservation turnarounds. Biologists, zoos, and volunteers launched an ambitious captive-breeding and rewilding program, releasing marmots back into alpine meadows where they once thrived.
Proof that sometimes conservation actually works.
📚 Read: https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/mammals/saving-vancouver-island-marmots
🎿 Skiing’s fearless edge
#Freeride skiing exists somewhere between artistry and consequence! This profile follows a Swiss freerider who has pushed the sport past what once seemed possible—steeper faces, bigger exposure, and the mindset to ski them when most people would turn around. Check it out!
📚 Read: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/jan/30/precipice-of-fear-the-freerider-who-took-skiing-to-its-limits
🌊 Betting on a drying river
The Zambezi powers some of Africa’s largest dams. But climate change is shrinking the river that feeds them. Now Zambia and Zimbabwe are pushing ahead with another massive hydroelectric project—even as scientists warn that falling water levels could make the system unreliable within decades. The global energy dilemma is how do developing countries build power infrastructure when the climate itself is shifting?
💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild.
Before you hit “Next”… Send this newsletter to your outdoor partner and most trusted tentmate!!
I will see you on the next send
❤️🔥 The StokedAF fam 🤘
PS. If Weird Al were a backcountry skier, this would surely be on his album:
