Deep in the wilds of British Columbia lies a rugged valley – cherished alpine backcountry that deserves permanent protection. At the headwaters of the Columbia River, Jumbo Creek cascades out of deep snowpack, past crumbling glacial ice, wildflowers, and grizzly tracks. The Jumbo Valley has long been revered for its beauty, and to the Ktunaxa Nation, it is known as Qat’muk, home of the grizzly bear spirit. Part of an important international wildlife corridor, t

In Spring 2015, The North Face team riders, Xavier De Le Rue, Sam Anthamatten and Ralph Backstrom completed their two-year exploration project, Degrees North. The team dove into the remotest corners of the world in Svalbard and Alaska over two seasons, in search of steep angles on virgin territory. The expedition is a project driven by the team’s will to explore – exploring places no one has ever seen before, exploring new ways

While hiking up the trail to Merak, my breathing becomes laboured. The shift in altitude is noticeable and suddenly the equipment strapped to my back feels heavier. I have been in Bhutan for a few weeks already, and I thought I had gotten used to the thin air. But now, we are higher and I am adjusting to the second wave of it. Not only are we at higher altitude, but it’s much colder. It’s also snowing and the further up the trail we get, the more snow I see on the ground. Merak is a small v

Kieran: Tell me how you came up with the idea for the Degrees North project. Xavier: I’d wanted to go there for a long time, but Ralph (Backstrom) was the one to find a lot of good stuff on Google Earth. Google Earth is great for finding new locations as you can really see all the mountains. So we were like, ‘Fuck, this will be amazing.’ We came up with the idea of really opening Alaska in a completely new way. Most of the pro productions that have gone there in the last 25 years have done

Wake up. You’ve just got to stay awake. These were the words echoing in the depths of my mind as I drifted in and out of consciousness, lying in the desert sands of an abandoned railway tunnel. Do not sleep – whatever happens do not close your eyes. I was lost, alone and out of water in the wastelands of Kazakhstan. A week spent camping in the docklands of Baku City, trying to hitch a lift across the Caspian Sea on a local cargo boat, had left me exhausted. I woke each night to the sounds o

Imagine a world where money is seemingly endless, and where life revolves around showcasing multi-million dollar yachts and all things gold and glistening. Where, when the European summer is imminent, you’re nobody unless you’re docked in a port somewhere along the French Riviera with It Girls hanging off your arm. In that environment, arrogance is both expected and tolerated. Perhaps not a place for a young Australian who grew up on a farm and studied outdoor education in the pristine envi

Grumbling slightly I wriggle out from the tent, trying not to dislodge the small puddles of last night’s rain on the fly. Descending to the stream I slide up a sleeve and fish for our dry-bag wedged between boulders, and fill the kettle for a brew. Inside, chilled overnight in this makeshift fridge, are some wild trout fillets. Though the hues of purple and green on the skin are a little faded now, the flesh still holds its rich pink colour, far removed from the paler shades of farmed trout.

It is a picture totally synonymous with Japan in winter: the snow monkey sheltering in a thermal hot pool from the snow that settles tens of metres deep in the Hakuba Alps near Nagano. There the all-seeing Zen monkey sits with a little cap of snow on his wise old head. On this day, however, the reality was somewhat different. It was raining lightly, and the hot pool – far from being the secret pristine gem imagined by those who seek it – was in a shit-covered grubby gorge, full of squabbling

‘Buna!’ my partner Tyler shouted cheerily in Romanian, greeting a pair of fellow bike tourists who were cycling toward us. As the four of us came to a halt on the riverside road we’d been pedalling, we smiled and began chatting in a motley mixture of French and English. And that’s how we met David and Oussman, the French cyclists. We spent some time talking about our routes, and how we all found ourselves cycling on this one winding Romanian road on this grey day, sandwiched between a craggy

My heart was racing as I first set eyes on the target, a giant, black wild boar. Taman Kala silently prepared the blowpipe constantly aware of every small sound or movement in the environment. In went a poison dart and silently he drew in a deep breath ready to fire. In an instant he shot, the dart flew through the air and was a direct hit straight through the eye of the wild boar. The boar fell straight to the ground and was quickly finished off. As I looked up at Taman Kala’s face he had t

There are rare moments when the drudgery of normal life spills from your thoughts, like water tumbling from a high fall. It’s in these moments, these fleeting glimpses we so infrequently see, that a life lusted after becomes reality. When our inner core screams out to the stars and beyond: ‘I’m here, I’m alive, I’m free!’ Now is one of those moments. I’m awake, truly awake, my senses heightened beyond fear, beyond reason. Fear left me this morning when I stepped onto the snow at the water’s

‘She has a big, brave heart,’ a concerned Sailou told me as he bent down to examine Ballipan, his beautiful golden eagle. It was the first time I had been hunting with this vibrant, 60-year-old Kazakh, out on the steppe in Western Mongolia. I had travelled all the way from Britain to experience the way these great hunters live; these men who still use the golden eagle to hunt and kill foxes, and even wolves in the winter time. The fur taken from their prey is still turned into much sought af

On the northern fringes of Alaska, only truly witnessed during a two-month window of warm weather, there is a land larger than dreams. Rolling green tundra, dominated by charcoal black mountain peaks carved from ice. A carpet of blue berries under foot and a collage of unique fauna only recently evolved from the Pleistocene. On any given day, the hills might be crawling with thousands of caribou on their ancient migration path, with wolves stalking them from the rear. Dall sheep and barren-g

It was exciting to be part of a world first. Even vicariously. Sipping cappuccino at the bottom of a sunny and deserted piste in the Val Veny, I was guilty of conflating adventure with superlatives; fastest, highest, first… I guess that’s what happens when you see human endeavours as a headline, a Facebook post, or a sensationalist snippet. I had no idea what visceral experience was being lived and felt under a storm cloud over the Col de la Seigne. I had only hopes of success and fears o

I notice a large flat rock kicking out from an escarpment. Naturally, I accept its free invitation to take a seat for a 180-degree view of Africa’s largest continuous mountain range, the Ethiopian Highlands. As I swing my legs over the edge of the rock, clouds hurry like the clappers underneath my feet, deceiving my senses and making me feel as if I’m flying on a gigantic, magic rock. It’s October and the rainy season has left behind an explosion of feathery flora. A panorama of dark-stepped

Suzy: You started climbing when you were 12. What sparked your interest? Matt: Behind my parent’s house in Wells, Somerset, there was a great cliff called Split Rock. I wasn’t very good at school, so instead of going to classes, I used to go and watch the climbers there. I learned how they tied the ropes and then managed to persuade my dad I knew what I was doing so that he would come and belay me. I didn’t have a harness, so I just used a belt from my jeans and tea-towels wrapped around m

Andrew: Where did your love of Russia, Mongolia and Central Asia come from? Tim: In 1998 I abandoned a Law degree in Australia to study to be a wilderness guide in Finland. The twelve-month course focused on traditional Finnish culture in the boreal forest zone and tundra of the Sub Arctic. The year entailed, among other things, three expeditions (by canoe, foot and ski) into nearby Russia. They were journeys that opened my eyes to a world that had been more myth than reality for someone l

“Brenva is good.” A simple, three-word text, but still it was sufficient catalyst for Enrico Karletto Mosetti to drive seven hours straight from the Italian-Slovenian border to Chamonix. A descent of the Brenva is a coveted run on the remote Italian side of Mont Blanc, first skied by the Tyrolean steep skier Heini Holzer in 1975. It was to be the first route of my Alpine Trilogy Project. The objective was simple – a considerable personal challenge to ski a trilogy of the biggest, baddest f

I’m standing in a bookshop searching for an English-Nepalese dictionary when suddenly the ground below me starts to shake violently. I contemplate diving under a table as the quake intensifies, book after book tumbling down from the shelves all around, but a stampede of people carry me out of the door instead. There is mad panic in Thamel, Kathmandu. The road ripples and bends before my very eyes, bricks rain down from rooftops and an adjacent street cracks right down the middle. Total panic

Megamoon is a film about a journey by bike where love and adventure come together. It’s Hannah Maia’s personal story of how she came to be pulling a heavy trailer across the world’s longest mountain bike trail. After tying the knot Patrick and Hannah bundled all their clothes and camping gear into two small trailers and hopped onto mountain bikes to travel some 2,500 miles along the Great Divide from New Mexico to Banff in Canada. They wanted to roughly follow the established Great Divide