The Dirtbag Diaries

Brody Leven applied for a climbing permit for Denali from a rented Subaru parked outside a closed cafe. In a blizzard. In Iceland. Weeks later, he would fly to Alaska to meet up with his team of overly accomplished athletes with the goal of climbing and skiing from Denali's summit. Determined not to be the weak link, he spent his two week layover in Salt Lake City obsessing over his gear. “I packed, unpacked, checked and repacked,” remembers Brody. “I read every online gear checklist I could find, packed my warmest clothes, and measured the length of my prussiks.” Yet, despite all of his careful planning, Brody made one dire miscalculation.  CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

There are two kinds of dreams. An honest dream. “The kind of dream,” writes Luke Mehall “that keeps you up at night, and wakes you up in the morning with a knot in your stomach that can only be untied with blood sweat and tears.” For Luke, climbing El Cap was that kind of dream. And then there’s the other kind of dream. The kind that starts out as a joke, then escalates to the level of the ridiculous. When Luke drove west towards Yosemite National Park, he was determined to realize one of each.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

We all know the feeling of remoteness. The stillness. The perspective. It's part of what keeps drawing us outside. But what does it feel like to be standing, literally, in the most remote place in a state? In the country? And what might those places reveal about the fate of our country's wild lands? In 2010, Ryan and Rebecca Means embarked upon Project Remote to find out.   CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

“With steely determination, I pointed my tips downhill and tried to power through the deep snow, but I was doomed,” remembers Julia Rosen. “I started to do the super slow splits as my skis drifted further and further apart under two piles of snow that felt like wet concrete. My feet stopped, but my body lurched forward and I was thrust into an unwelcome downward dog.” Anyone who’s skied powder remembers this fall. Anyone who, like Julia, learned to ski pow as an adult remembers it more clearly. But Julia did make it through the painful learning process—only to discover that, perhaps, the wisdom she had gained might just serve her in the horizontal world as well.  CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Plastic bags. They clog drawers, landfills, coastlines and trailheads. Recycling them is confusing and inefficient. But what if there was a way to turn the trash into something of value? Enter Industrial Designer Will Wells. Today, we bring you our annual Year of Big Ideas. We talked to contributors and friends about their goals for the coming year. Here's to going big, traveling to new places and trying something new. And here's to making something that will inspire others, even if it's small. Happy 2014.CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Powerful ideas often demand that we leave the comfort of a safety net. We quit a nine to five. We take out a second mortgage on our house. Along the way, we can expect to be called a crazy one day and brilliant the next. In the late 1990's, Jeff Pensiero had an idea--to build a backcountry ski lodge that catered to snowboarders. It was outlandish--targeting a market that barely existed—and yet perfect.  But, like any dream, it took years of sweat, worry, right people-right time connections, and damn good perseverance to make it all look seamless. From the shores of Lake Tahoe to the world renowned slopes of Baldface Lodge, we bring you one snowboarder’s journey to create his dream. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Significant life tumult propelled Nick Triolo to leave his home and move to Todos Santos, Baja earlier this year. As an ultra-runner, he instinctively explored the area on foot. As he settled into the town and its community, he became aware of a growing resistance to proposed mining in the area. And he knew he wanted to help. But how? It might have been easy for Nick to shrug off the feeling. Instead he thought big-- he would organize a protest run across the 70-mile wide stretch of the Baja Peninsula-- through the heart of where the mining was proposed. And he would run it in a day. Now, could he get anyone to join him? CLICK HERE TO LISTENSee Nick's photos from the run here and here. This story was adapted from Nick's post on The Jasmine DialoguesSpecial thanks to Montana Public Radio KUFM in Missoula and Sherie Newman for volunteering time to help with the recording. 

Is there something out there? It’s a question that lurks in the back of my mind. Probably in yours too.  It’s one of the very reasons why I love the outdoors: the unpredictability. Over the years, I’ve collected experiences. Moments, like bits of data, that, collectively guide my intuition. And yet. We’ve all had that moment where hairs stand up on the back of our neck. Was it heightened perception? Or did the wind just blow in just the right way? And if you convince yourself it was the wind, does some lump of doubt sit in your stomach? Because sometimes you just won’t believe something is out there. Until it’s right there.CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

"It's the unpredictable elements that throw our lives off course, for better or for worse," writes Niki Yoblonski. We leave a trailhead with some idea of what we're seeking, but on true adventures, what we walk away with is never what we expected. When Niki and her boyfriend, Jason, set out to climb Mt. Darwin one Labor Day weekend, they didn't take home a summit photo, or a bag of shiny coins, but, by a series of slim chances, they took home a treasure perhaps more valuable than anything they could have expected. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Walking into someone's apartment, house, van, tent or trailer for the first time can feel sort of like flipping open the first page of their journal. The places we choose to call home and the way we assemble them say a lot about who we are and where our priorities lie. But at some point, our environments can start to construct us as well. In the two months between the end of a semester of college and the beginning of a seasonal job, Ethan Newman loaded all of his belongings into his Saturn sedan "like a champion Tetris player," and drove to Bishop, California. He was thrilled to discover an alternative to pitching a tent every night or getting sand blown in his face while he slept. Until he woke up one morning to realize that the habitat he had constructed had started to change him. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN