New sport alert, for me! This weekend I put in some quiet miles on cross-country skis in Moab’s La Sal Mountains. It felt like the right way to frame this issue.
No rush, no agenda — just forward motion in winter terrain.
This week’s stories bring first ascents, new mountains, unfinished routes, and a historic conversations before a historic free solo.
These stories all orbit the same idea: show up, put in the work, and see what the day gives back.
Put your BFF’s email in the box. Spread the Stoke!
🧭 Embracing the Unknown — Odyssea Borealis 🚣🏽♀️
📍 Greenland — Drøneren Wall
1 Italian, 2 Swiss, and 1 French, one wild idea, and zero shortcuts. They set off on a 300 km human-powered journey across Arctic waters to reach and climb the 1,200-meter Drøneren Wall.
Expedition storytelling at its best — multi-disciplinary, uncertain, and entirely self-driven. Everything about this challenge is hard: the travel, the cold, the commitment, the unknowns. That’s exactly why it matters.
🎥 Watch:
Length: 43 minutes
🧠 Before Taipei 101, Honnold speaks to the OG Alain Robert
📍 Taipei, Taiwan
Before stepping into what will likely be the most viewed climbing-related stunt ever, live-streamed, Alex Honnold sits down with the original spiderman: Alain Robert. In this rare, grounded conversation, two generations of high-consequence climbers unpack all of Alain’s hardest free solos on French limestone, his foray into climbing buildings, getting arrested more than 170 times, and everything in between.
It’s not a hype piece or a victory lap — it’s a reasonable look at how experience gets passed down, how mental systems are built, and why respect for consequence never fades. Alain’s tick list from back then features routes Alex wouldn’t dare to touch today.
🎧 Watch / Listen:
🧗♂️ Have you heard of Adrian Montaño? Not yet!
📍 Cochise Stronghold, Arizona — USA
The extension of Old School Executioner (5.12c), which goes to the summit of the Tombstone Wall was left open for nearly a decade. Enter Adrian Montaño, Southern AZ climber, who takes on the 40m battle of tiny gear and even smaller crimps followed by long run outs on a blank face. This engrossing film really makes you feel like you are there — snow falling, a couple of friends on their proj, warming hands with a hot rock stuffed in the chalk bag.
Isn’t this your ideal winter climbing trip?
🎥 Watch:
Length: 22 minutes
🎿 Rolling with Jeremy Jones
📍 United States — On the Road
From shop kid to icon — and still learning, Jeremy Jones reflects on a lifetime shaped by snowboarding: lunch-break laps, injuries, clip addiction, and staying inspired as the culture evolves. An honest, grounded conversation about aging in action sports — and why the next generation keeps the fire burning.
🎥 Watch:
Length: 5 minutes
🏔️ Tiger Lily Buttress: A first ascent
📍 Yashkuk Sar I, Pakistan
In a place where avalanches fall like rain, these three climbers make the first ascent of Tiger Lily Buttress, on the 6,667m Yashkuk Sar, look easy! Get a front row seat for this quick, stripped down look at a Piloet de’Or worthy expedition. Filmed entirely on an iPhone — this is modern alpinism stripped down to trust, chaos, and commitment.
🐾 RIP Rupestre, who lived an exceptionally long life for a wild puma — reaching 13–15 years — and died naturally from old age in Torres del Paine. Known to guides, trackers, and filmmakers as the Queen of Patagonia, she was a powerful mother whose legacy lives on through her cubs now roaming the same valleys. You may recognize her from Predators (Netflix) or Dynasties II (BBC), where her story captured the beauty and brutality of survival.
A national infrastructure crisis is unfolding far from highways and headlines. This deeply reported piece traces how climate change, wildfire, chronic underfunding, and collapsing agency staffing have turned thousands of miles of public trails into ghosts — still alive in databases and USGS maps, but long gone on the ground. It’s a sobering look at what happens when access, stewardship, and policy quietly fall apart.
A reflective look at the life and legacy of Stane Kranjc, a pioneer who helped redefine what was possible in flight and freefall. Decades later, his influence still ripples through modern progression — a reminder that today’s breakthroughs rest on quiet risks taken long before the cameras arrived.
From deep forests to unexplored waters, scientists identified dozens of new species in 2025 — proof that Earth still holds vast unknowns. Featuring the guitar shark, the “James Bond” lizard, and a newly documented fairy lantern plant that lives mostly underground, this Mongabay collection reminds us that discovery and extinction are happening side by side — and the window to protect what we don’t yet fully understand is closing fast.
Before snowboarding had halfpipes, media deals, or Olympic medals, it had a rope, a plank, and a frozen hill in Michigan. This piece looks back at the Snurfer’s unlikely origins and the Midwest roots of a culture that would eventually change winter forever.
🌍 Suffering the FOMO?
(Pssst, this is where you should be right now!)
🧗 Measuring Las Ánimas — El Salto, Mexico
📍 El Salto — Nuevo León, Mexico
El Salto is famous for massive walls and world-class sport climbing just outside Monterrey, but the wall Las Ánimas stands apart. This zone is all about extreme continuity, three-dimensional tufa formations, long routes, and a level of sustained difficulty rarely found in Mexico.
Instead of opinions, this team chose measurement — applying the same criteria used to evaluate major climbing walls all over Mexico to decide if Las Ánima was indeed the best crag in the whole country? 🎥 Watch:
🎿 Kamchatka Awakens — Record Snow & Wild Terrain
📍 Kamchatka Peninsula — Russia
The Kamchatka Peninsula was just hit by historic, record-breaking snowfall — buildings were buried by snowdrifts, blocking roads, and transforming daily life into a deep white world. Meteorological stations say this winter is the heaviest in decades, creating phenomenal powder and massive drifts across one of the planet’s most remote ski and freeride hubs. Reuters
Between volcano slopes, backcountry chutes, and untouched terrain that only a few wind‐scarred heli-skiers have seen, Kamchatka’s wild terrain is now buried deep — a snowpack worth both admiration and caution.
Would you head to the wilds of eastern Russia?
💥 Stay Stoked. Stay Wild.
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See you on the next send!
❤️🔥 The StokedAF fam 🤘
PS: Here is your banger of the week, get these two together, it’s always gold!
