Every week I read half a dozen��reports on search-and-rescue missions to save lost skiers, errant rock climbers, and the occasional stranded dog. Often these stories are sad tales of adventurers suffering injuries or losing their lives. But every so often, I come across a rescue story that makes me slap my forehead in amazement.

That was my reaction when I read about the fortuitous fate of a man named Julian Hernandez and his 12-year-old son. The two went missing this past Sunday, February 16, while hiking in , which is located just outside Saint George, Utah. The sun went down, temperatures began to plummet, and the two began to fear for their lives. And that’s when fate, or a miracle, or dumb luck stepped in.

While searching for shelter in a darkened ravine, they stumbled across a green backpack just sitting there on a rock ledge. They opened the pack to find a wilderness survival kit that would make Ranger Rick proud: Pop-Tarts, Clif Bars, a jug of water, an emergency tent, and first-aid supplies.

The gear helped the two to stay warm, fed, and hydrated overnight. Eventually rescuers equipped with night vision goggle hoisted them into a helicopter and flew them to safety. They were out in the elements for about 22 hours.

“The moment we found the backpack—it was lovely,” Julian Hernandez told TV . “We found some food in there so that kept us pretty well. It kept us pretty well into the morning.”

Hernandez’ quotes made me laugh. I envisioned a scene from the Netflix survival show Outlast where a half-starved contestant finds a cache of food and survival gear dropped into the wilderness by producers. Lovely, indeed.

I love this story from . A father-son duo got stranded overnight hiking in Southern Utah recently and found a backpack stocked with survival supplies. Turns out a teen had lost it 45 days ago and it’s being credited for saving them.

— Lindsay Aerts (@LindsayOnAir)

Now here’s the forehead-slapping part of the story: the lucky backpack had belonged to another hiker who had been rescued in the same spot more than a month ago.

On January 4, a 15-year-old boy named Levi Dittmanm from nearby Ivins, Utah, went for a hike in Snow Canyon with his green backpack. Like Hernandez, Dittman got lost and stuck in the ravine. He spent the night in the canyon, and at some point during the ordeal he tossed his backpack onto an adjacent ledge, but he was unable to climb up and retrieve it.

Eventually a SAR volunteer located Dittmann and brought to safety, but his survival backpack remained in the canyon. Nobody knew that, 45 days later, this pack would help a lost father and son weather a cold and lonely night.

“I’m really glad that it could help people, because that’s what the pack was intended for,” Dittman .

It turns out Dittmann had spent several months collecting survival supplies and cramming them into his backpack prior to the hike. Losing it was a total bummer, he told media. “I kinda just had to leave it there, which was a bit frustrating because I think at the time it was 200 to 300 bucks worth of stuff,” Levi Dittmann told ABC4. Apparently the SAR team gave��Dittmann back his pack.

Are there survival lessons to be learned from this story? It’s tough to say. I’ve hiked in Snow Canyon State Park a few times, and I’d never thought you could get lost on the well-marked trail system.�� But once the sun goes down, even familiar territory can become alien. I don’t believe any seasoned SAR volunteer would recommend tossing backpacks filled with Pop-Tarts into random gullies or canyons.

Perhaps the best conclusion from this one is that the will always help in the wilderness, no matter if they belong to you or someone else.

Of course, no story with this amount of serendipitous coincidence could exist without someone offering a different takeaway. Levi Dittman’s mom, Gretchen Dittmann, is convinced that there was a higher power at play. She called the ordeal a “miracle.”

“You really have to have faith that God’s working. Sometimes he’s using a backpack that sat for a month and a half for some guy that needed help in that moment,” she told ABC4.

Her explanation works for me.

The post A “Miracle” Lost Backpack Saved Two Hikers in Southern Utah appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

By now you’ve probably heard about the staffing crisis gripping Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the nation’s other national parks.

On February 14, the National Park Service (NPS) , or about five percent of its total workforce. The move generated headlines in and , and over the weekend, dozens of recently fired NPS workers penned heartfelt essays on social media about losing the jobs they loved.

“I am the toilet scrubber and soap dispenser,” a fired NPS ranger named Brian Gibbs . “I am the open trail hiked by people from all walks of life. I am the highlight of your child’s school day.”

���ϳԹ��� reached out to the NPS for comment, but did not hear back by the time this story published. The ��“The NPS is assessing our most critical staffing needs for park operations for the coming season and is working to hire key positions. The NPS is committed to protecting public lands, infrastructure, and communities while ensuring public access.”

The workforce upheaval stems from the Trump Administration’s��, which in 2024 employed approximately 3 million people (not including the military). In January, the administration announced a hiring freeze on all federal agencies, and offered buyouts to government workers willing to resign. Since then, almost every wing of the U.S. government has been impacted by the belt tightening.

But the Park Service cuts are the ones that will impact the summer vacation plans of millions of Americans. ���ϳԹ��� spoke to NPS experts and former employees about the staff changes to see how they will impact daily life at America’s favorite vacation destinations. We asked these experts whether park visitors will be able to see a difference when they hike on trails, arrive at visitor centers, or use the restroom.

The answer? You bet.

“Expect fewer services, less help, and fewer projects like trails or construction getting fixed,” says Kristen Brengel, the senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA),��a non-profit advocacy group for the NPS. “You’ll need to lower your expectations.”

Which NPS Workers Were Cut?

Over the weekend, the NPCA tracked the layoffs and spoke to NPS staffers who lost their jobs. According to Brengel, the current cuts impacted all 63 U.S. national parks and all 433 areas managed by the Park Service. The cuts did not target specific jobs, she said, but were “indiscriminate.”

“We’ve heard from wildlife biologists, archaeologists, even wastewater treatment operators who were let go,” Brengel said. “We’re talking about people with incredible expertise losing jobs. It will throw some parks into a tailspin.”

Rather than target specific positions, the cuts impacted employees with “probationary” status, a designation given to federal employees for the first year of their employment in a position. the New York Times, the strategy was in-line with the Trump Administrations’ plan to dismiss the 200,000 or so federal workers with this designation.

The letter sent to laid-off employees read like a termination notice for low performance, according to the Times. “The department determined that you have failed to demonstrate fitness or qualifications for continued employment because your subject matter knowledge, skills, and abilities do not meet the department’s current needs,” read the letter distributed to some NPS staff.

Brengel points out that not every probationary worker is new or unqualified. Some veteran NPS workers were given the status after they were promoted to managerial positions; it was also given to seasonal NPS employees who had recently been hired to year-round positions.

“The ripple effect of these firings will be felt immediately,” she said. “It’s going to be a huge brain drain to lose a lot of these positions.”

Gibbs, 41, is one such employee. Prior to taking a full-time position at Iowa’s Effigy Mounds National Monument, which is managed by the NPS, he had spent four years working as a seasonal interpretive ranger at Glacier National Park. Interpretive rangers help visitors understand the cultural significance of an area.

Gibbs took that expertise to his job at Effigy Mounds, where he managed educational programs for kids, among other jobs. “At such a small monument I wore many hats,” he told ���ϳԹ���. “On the day I got fired I was creating a program to take kids snowshoeing in the park.”

What Services Will Be Lost?

It may take several weeks to determine which services will be eliminated at each park. Brengel and others have told visitors to expect to encounter long lines, overflowing trash cans, unkempt bathrooms, and other drop-offs in service caused by a lack of manpower. One anonymous NPS employee told Politico to . Brengel said that major construction projects started in 2024, such as trail maintenance or road paving, are likely to be left unfinished.

In the days since the layoffs, fired NPS employees have shared their stories—and the jobs the NPS is losing—with local and national media.

A worker named Olek Chmura told that he’d no longer pick up trash and scoop up feces at Yosemite National Park.

The New York Times interviewed multiple NPS workers impacted by the cuts, among them Helen Dhue, a park guide at Palo Alto Battlefield National Historic Park in Brownsville, Texas, and Stacy Ramsey, a river ranger in Arkansas’ Buffalo National River. that she writes warnings for the general public when parts of the river are dangerous. “If no one is there to educate, it increases the risk of someone getting hurt on the river,” Ramsey told the Times.

an anonymous NPS ranger in California who wrote about his termination on Facebook. “I honestly can’t imagine how the parks will operate without my position,” he said. “I am the only EMT at my park and the first responder for any emergency.”

, 16 of the 17 supervisor positions at Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park were axed. At Shenandoah National Park, trail maintenance workers and fee collectors lost their jobs.

Gibbs’s job at Effigy Mounds was focused on education. He developed classroom programs, took schools on tours of the area when they arrived on field trips, and also visited local schools to discuss the cultural significance of the park.

Effigy Mounds preserves 200 or so prehistoric earthworks that were built by pre-Columbian people. Some of the mounds are in the shapes of birds and bears.

Gibbs was one of two employees at Effigy Mounds to be let go. Just seven rangers remain, he said.

“Educating kids about the cultural resources at Effigy Mounds will come to a stop, and schools visiting will have to self-guide at the park,” Gibbs told ���ܳٲ������.��“Kids and families are the ones who are going to lose out.”

What About the NPS Hiring Freeze?

Not all of the NPS news on Friday was bad. The Trump Administration published a memo from the federal hiring freeze to bring back some seasonal workers for the spring and summer.

The move allows the NPS to hire back 5,000 or so seasonal employees, whose jobs were rescinded in January when the freeze was announced across all federal agencies.��Most parks rely heavily on seasonal workers, and each year the NPS hires between 7,000 and 8,000 of them to help during the busiest periods.

The reaction to the news was mixed.

“Exempting National Park Service seasonal staff from the federal hiring freeze means parks can fill some visitor services positions,” said Theresa Pierno, CEO of the NPCA, in a statement. “But with peak season just weeks away, the decision to slash 1,000 permanent, full-time jobs from national parks is reckless and could have serious public safety and health consequences.”

The timeline for hiring back seasonal workers has not been made public. According to Politico, had been granted exemptions as of February 18.

Brengal pointed out that seasonal workers might not be able to replace the full-time NPS employees who were lost in the layoffs. Some of the cut NPS workers who spoke to the NPCA were coordinators of seasonal labor, she said. For example, the 16 managers who lost their jobs at Grand Teton National Park help oversee seasonal workers.

“Seasonal workers can’t replace full-time positions,” she said.

Which Parks Have Been Hit the Hardest?

It may take until the busy summer months to assess the true impact of by Friday’s cuts on individual national parks and monuments. Brengel said that small parks with tiny staffs may suffer the worst, and that cuts there would force remaining employees to make tough choices.

“They may have to choose between keeping the visitor center open and the campground open,” she said. “These are the choices that smaller parks are going to have to make.”

But other parks are already feeling the pinch caused by the hiring freeze, layoffs, and other policy changes. , Yosemite National Park will abandon its reservation system, which was made permanent earlier this year.��Sources told the outlet that the park tabled the plan after the Trump Administration asked to review it.

What’s the Human Cost?

Like all mass-layoffs, the NPS cuts have upended lives and forced thousands to seek new livelihoods. Ramsey told the��Times that she lost her job after spending three years working a contract position with the NPS just to get her foot in the door.

Gibbs echoed this sentiment when he spoke to�����ܳٲ������.��He called his position at Effigy Mounds National Monument a “dream job,” and said that losing the position has forced his family into a dire financial situation. “We’re sad and frightened, and feel like we’ve had the rug pulled out from under us,” he said. Gibbs and his wife have a four-year-old son, and they are expecting a second child this year.��Gibbs said that his wife had to skip a monitoring appointment with her doctor after the family’s health insurance was terminated. “We feel frozen about what our next steps are,” he said.

The cuts have prompted action in some communities. Over the weekend, at Joshua Tree and Yosemite National Parks. On Tuesday, February 18, NPS workers and their friends and families just outside Rocky Mountain National Park, to protest.

Should You Visit a National Park this Summer?

The sources we spoke to still encouraged Americans to��visit National Parks this summer, despite the cuts. Yes, trails may be closed, parking lots may be messy, and lines may be longer than normal.

Instead, Gibbs said NPS visitors should do advanced homework before traveling to see which trails closed, and which services are limited. Reconsider trips deep into the backcountry, since manpower for lifesaving or rescues may be diminished. And stay on the trails.

“Know that there’s probably going to be a disruption in safety and resource protection,” Gibbs said.

Gibbs and Brengel urged visitors to have patience and understanding with the NPS employees who are manning the parks. Brengel said visitors should consider saying “thank you” to NPS rangers.

“Think about what a difficult time it must be for them, knowing that they may be next on the chopping block,” Brengel said. “They are going to be stretched thin, but they are the heroes for sticking it out.”

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Standup comedian didn’t set out to make fun of mountain biking, snowboarding, and other recreational activities on his Instagram feed. Like many professional comics, Losse, 44, spent several years recording videos of his observational humor to see what resonated with his audience.

He mused on the banalities of middle-aged life, weather in Seattle, and shopping at Costco. But then, about year ago, Losse posted a from his local mountain biking park, Duthie Hill. In the video, Losse showed viewers the park’s gnarly jumps and massive drop offs, and then pointed out the easy trails that he uses to circumnavigate the hard stuff. “The fire road is running really good—super loamy,” Losse says in his trademark sardonic, dry tone.

A few months later, Losse published another video about the absurdity of snowboarding. “Do you enjoy nature but wish it was more stressful? Try snowboarding at a resort on the weekend,” Losse said into camera.

Both videos generated tens of thousands of likes, as the Instagram algorithm distributed them throughout the outdoor community. After that, Losse began in his standup routine, and also in his videos on Instagram. His angle: joke about the very specific and very absurd elements of cycling, snowboarding, and getting outdoors.

We caught up with Losse to understand why cyclists, snowboarders, and other lovers of outdoor activities enjoy his jokes.

OUTSIDE: How did you decide to start making fun of outdoor recreation culture?
Losse: I’d been doing standup for 12 years and had posted videos of my comedy shows forever without getting much traction. A few years ago I started posting videos of me just talking into the camera—observational stuff. I posted one about the absurdity of Microsoft Excel, and how if you want to get ahead in corporate America you just need to know a few excel formulas. That one was a hit,��and for a while I thought I was going to be the office comedy guy. But it never took off.

Then last spring I got back into mountain biking after a few years off, and I realized that the actual media around mountain biking—trail reviews, especially—leaned so heavily into the gnarliest and most extreme terrain. It’s all just rock rolls and huge gaps and features that felt so unattainable. I thought it would be funny to make fun of those. It’s like, I don’t want to ride the trail named “Predator” at Tiger Mountain, I want to know how to ride around that trail without hurting myself.

I made the video about going around the gnarly trails. Honestly, I just thought it was stupid and only funny to me. I didn’t think anybody else would like it. But it turns out a lot of people who love mountain biking aren’t trying to attain mastery. My video struck a chord within the community and got distributed by the algorithm, and it got huge pickup. My buddy joked that I picked up a mountain bike and became an influencer within 60 days.

What elements of outdoor recreation are inherently funny?
There’s a super-obsessive part of biking culture that people don’t really talk about. There’s gear obsession, Strava obsession, and a fixation on parts upgrades and how they will make you better. It’s ridiculous, and all of know it is, but nobody acknowledges it. If anything, I’m shedding light on this collective mental illness we all share. You don’t find that in snow sports quite as much, but in cycling it is very apparent. You buy a new bike and the first thing you do is upgrade the parts. I need new handlebars and new grips. There’s an entire industry built around people being insecure about what they are riding.

Your humor is very much focused at the core audience of these sports, and not at casual followers of outdoor rec. What’s the challenge in reaching hardcore groups?
I feel like it would be easy to make videos where I make jokes about mountain biking in such broad terms that anybody could like it. But that would be boring to me. I just don’t think it’s as funny as being super specific to the things that people obsess about in these sports. Because those are things that I am guilty of. I don’t want to talk shit about activities that I’m not also doing. For instance, I made a video where I joked about gravel biking. I did it because at the time I was building up a gravel bike.

I do think it’s what makes my comedy different. It’s reverential. I am making fun of hyper-specific actions done by people in a group that appeals to people in that sport. And I’m trying not to be corny.

How do you straddle the line between joking and being mean?
My comedic sensibility is that I won’t make fun of something that isn’t part of myself. I don’t seek out communities to make fun of that I’m not part of. That helps. I think that when you make fun of a community you’re not part of, it’s easier to be mean. It’s less reverential, and people can tell.

But not everyone knows that I’m making fun of activities I love. I made a joke about gravel biking—do you like mountain biking but wish it were less fun? Try gravel cycling!—and people were pretty fired up. A lot of folks didn’t appreciate that one. There are very specific communities within cycling, and some of them take themselves way more seriously than others. Most people who get upset don’t see that it’s satire, or they aren’t familiar with me and don’t know that I also do it. So I try to always nod my cap that I love the sport I’m making fun of. I want the community to be clear that they’re not being attacked by an outsider.

What’s the difference between telling jokes in front of a live audience and telling them on Instagram?
My stand-up humor is more autobiographical and observational. It’s a lot about stories growing up in Washington State, being married, and other normal topics. I tell stories about riding my mountain bike, but they are longer, and tend to take weird twists.

Making jokes online that connect with people is hard. I explain that it’s like trying to get struck by��lightning. It’s pure luck. Luck and repetition. I’ve found that, since getting a bigger audience, you find your lane and stick with it. And mountain biking and snowboarding became my lane in a very unexpected turn of events.

This interview was edited for space and clarity.��

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Ben Schuck spends most of his day in pain.

The aches in his hips, feet, and knees are caused by chronic arthritis, and Schuck, who will turn 80 next month, must avoid painkillers due to his history of kidney disease.

Instead, Schuck seeks treatment in a certain kind of homeopathy. Every day, Schuck drives from his home in Ventura, California, to the local beach, where he dons a wetsuit and steps into the Pacific Ocean with his kiteboarding gear. For an hour or two, he zips through the breaking waves, pulled along by the offshore breeze.

“I never think about the pain out there,” Schuck told�����ܳٲ������.��“I feel the presence of God Almighty when I’m in the water. I always have.”

Schuck speeds along the coastline, over whitecaps and sand bars. He then returns toward the shore and rides breakers as they tumble toward the beach. From the shoreline, you’d never guess that he was born during the final months of World War II.

“It’s exhilarating and it’s a bit scary,” he says. “So you get that pleasure that comes from doing things that are fast and also are a little bit dangerous.”

Schuck has no idea if he’s the oldest kiteboarder in California, but he’s pretty sure he’s the most senior rider in Ventura. Last year he retired from his longtime career as a real estate lawyer, and since then he’s been able to kiteboard four or five days a week, depending on conditions. Some of his kiteboarder buddies are in their mid-sixties, he says. Yep, they’re just whippersnappers.

He found the sport later in life, at the tender age of 68. Schuck grew up surfing, and spent 56 years riding waves along the California coast. But hip surgery and a shoulder replacement left him unable to paddle his board through the choppy water. After his shoulder operation, he spent several months feeling discouraged and depressed.

From the back window of his house, Schuck can gaze down at Ventura’s famed Surfer’s Point at Seaside Park. And on breezy days after his operation, he’d see kites flitting in the sky. He was intrigued by the scene, and spent a few afternoons at the beach, chatting up local kiteboarders. They told him that it was never too late to learn.

“Some were very encouraging to me,” Schuck says. “So in my late sixties I decided to take a lesson.”

It took Schuck a few months to get the hang of flying a kite, and a few years to feel confident riding a board. Over time, kiteboarding became his passion. He traveled to Maui, Mexico, Florida, and all across California to hunt for the best breeze.

The sport filled the void in Schuck’s life that was once taken up by surfing. kiteboarding, he says, has several advantages over surfing. You never have to wait for a ride, or deal with bad vibes in the lineup.

“When you go surfing, you’re competing with the other surfers for a wave. That sucks,” he says. “When you get old and there are young guys out there, the chances of you being able to compete with them for the waves gets a lot harder.”

“With kiteboarding you go fast the whole time,” he added.

He also learned that his new sport alleviated the aches in his hips and legs. When the flying kite tugs his body upward, it lessens the force of his body on his joints. The upward force—when combined with the thrill of the ride—makes the daily discomfort melt into the background.

But flitting across the water on a kiteboard also brings dangers that are not present in surfing. Over the years, Schuck has crashed into sunken rocks and sandbars, and been dragged like a rag doll across the ocean. He’s yet to break a bone riding his kiteboard, but he also knows that a wrong move could lead to a hospital visit. Since his shoulder operation, he’s also had his back fused and had a knee replaced.

“I know that if I fall and tear up my knee, that’s the end of kiteboarding for me,” he says. “I have to be extremely careful.”

So Schuck lives by a rigid set of guidelines that govern his kiteboarding. He goes out around midday, before the after-work crowds hit the ocean. If the surf is pounding, he stays home. He rarely attempts to jump when riding his board.

He lifts weights every day to strengthen his core muscles and legs. He maintains a strict diet, and tries to keep his body weight around 150 pounds. When wind speed surpass 25 miles per hour, he watches other riders from the safety of the beach.

“Other guys love it when the wind is that strong,” he says. “It might be great for them.”

And Schuck never takes a single ride for granted. Toward the end of each kiteboarding session, the aches and paints��return to his feet and legs. That’s when he knows it’s time to get out of the water, peel off of his wetsuit, and head home. Sometimes, Schuck says, he’s so sore at the end of a ride that he can barely walk out of the ocean.

“I don’t care,” he says. “I know it was worth it.”

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Things are not going well for Woody.

The 50-year-old retired cop is thirsty and exhausted, and his attempts to spark a campfire using a ferro rod have failed miserably. Now, Woody can’t boil his drinking water. He stands in his barren campsite and raises a canteen filled with untreated pond water to his lips. “Lord, please don’t let me get sick,” he says into a camera.

The shot cuts to the cozy confines of a television studio. Woody’s son, Blake, and his nephew, Colin watch him gulp down the nasty beverage on a massive television screen. Colin shakes his head and buries his face in his palms.

And, cut!

This scene is the climax of episode 1 of Extracted,��a new outdoor survival show that debuted on Fox this past Monday. I recently watched the opening episode, as well as advanced screeners for episodes two and three, with my mouth agape. As a longtime fan of wilderness survival shows—you know, programs like Alone, Naked and Afraid, and Man vs. Wild—Extracted marks a stark turning point for the genre. Apparently, TV producers are now shipping everyday schmoes with zero wilderness training into the backwoods and filming them as they contract Giardia. And they’re doing this for our entertainment.

This element isn’t even the weirdest part of Extraction—not by a long shot. The show’s central premise is like an psychological experiment.

Twelve “survivalists”—yes I use this term lightly—are plucked from small-town American and shipped off to a forested lake somewhere in British Columbia. They must stay there as long as possible, and the last one to remain wins $250,000. Producers have affixed dozens of surveillance cameras to the trees, rocks, and stumps in the area so we can spy on the 12 as they go about their business of building shelter, procuring food, going to the bathroom, and screaming into the void.

But here’s the real twist. A short distance away, producers have erected a TV studio, and each survivalist’s family members are stationed there, where they watch the action unfold 24 hours a day. At random points throughout the show, the family members are able to pack up survival gear—knives, cans of beans, bear spray—which are then delivered via flying drone to their loved one.

The survivalists themselves cannot tap out. That job can only be done by the family members in the studio. A family member must march to the center of the studio and push a big and ridiculous red button that says EXTRACT.

I won’t spoil the show, other than to say that this single rule creates the tension at the heart of��Extracted.��Contestants beg to be removed, but their loved ones don’t always comply.

While watching��Extracted I often thought about Blair Braverman’s recent column about our collective affection for survival TV. Braverman, herself a former contestant on��Naked and Afraid,��makes more than a few pointed conclusions about why the TV genre is so beloved: watching people in nature is relaxing; survival connects us to our hunter-gatherer roots; we love cheering for and against characters; watching the battle to survive is inherently relatable to everyday people.

“Negotiating jobs, health insurance, child and elder care, housing? That’s all survival, viscerally so,” Braverman wrote.

Alas, I fear that the survival genre is quickly moving away from the themes Braverman adores. Extracted comes on the heels of Netflix releasing its first two seasons of its own survival game show Outlast.��Both shows tap into emotions that are more sinister, and psychological reflexes inside us that are more ominous.

In��Outlast, the survivalists wage psychological war on each other throughout the season by switching teams, stealing gear, and destroying shelters, all for a chance at cash. The cameras focus on this drama, and it triggers some lobe inside our lizard brains.

Extracted isn’t quite as extreme, but the format of the show makes it feel dramatically different from Alone or��Naked and Afraid. In��Extracted,��the audience views everyday people as they watch their loved ones suffer in nature. The tension created by these relationship drives our intrigue. We see caring mothers and fathers fail to deliver the survival goods that their cold and hungry son requires. We watch a divorced couple argue and question their parenting decisions as their teenage��son acts like a toddler in the woods.

Sure, there are moments of joy and triumph as well. But Extracted is still a voyeuristic look into a person watching a loved one in peril. As I watched it, I felt as though I was the scientist staring through reflective glass at a psychological experiment. It’s no wonder that the frames linger on the black surveillance cameras dotting the forest.

That said,��Extracted has something that Outlast lacks—at least through its first three episodes. By choosing novice (or downright inept) survivalists, the show is legitimately funny, and more relatable than other survival shows. In episode one, we meet the contestants, and quickly learn that all of them will be fish out of water in the Canadian wilderness.

One woman, Davina, 41, is described as a hairdresser and a professional clown. “I think she’s lost her mind,” her sister, Devin, says into the camera.”She’s been given everything her entire life by my parents and now her husband. He probably wipes her ass.” A few scenes later we see Davina sitting by the lake, bemoaning her experience outdoors. By this point, she’s been in the woods for a little more than a day. “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she wails.

I’ll admit,��Extracted��made me laugh more than a few times, and that’s why I plan to complete the series. I have no clue whether watching it will change my relationship with the outdoors, or with my loved ones.

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Search and rescue crews in Las Vegas continue to have a busy start to 2025.

On Wednesday, February 6, members of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s search and rescue squad saved a woman who had fallen from a climbing area in Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.

According to a , the woman, who was not named, had fallen while climbing near the White Rock Hills hiking and climbing area. She landed in a boulder field and was unable to hike out.

“The victim fell while climbing and was unable to move due to a back injury,” read a statement from the department.

White Rock Hills is located in a remote corner of the park, approximately 6 miles past the park entrance, down a dirt road. The area is ringed by a four-mile trail that takes climbers to several different climbing routes.

Rangers from the Bureau of Land Management hiked in to the area and made contact with the victim, but they were unable to bring her to safety on foot. Officials decided to send an emergency helicopter to the area. According to the release, three search and rescue officials flew in on the helicopter and helped the ground crews move her to a suitable extraction point.

Dramatic photos showed the helicopter removing the injured climber. According to the release, she was taken to a ground ambulance.

The rescue was the third major lifesaving mission in Red Rock Canyon this year involving rock climbers. On Saturday, January 18, crews responded to near the Pine Creek area of the park.

One rescue involved four climbers who became stranded on the “Cat in the Hat” climbing route after their ropes became entwined. The four were preparing to rappel the route when the incident happened, and they retreated to a ledge. One of the climbers, Joe De Luca, was able to call rescuers from his cell phone.

As De Luca was waiting for rescue crews to reach his party, he witnessed the other incident 100 or so yards away. A climber named Micah Manalese, 30, fell from a route and hit the rocks approximately 130 feet below.

“It was evident to me that the chance of life was zero, or at least very low, if we didn’t do something quickly,” De Luca told Climbing.

De Luca called rescuers after the fall occurred, but they were unable to save Manalese.

Her partner, Robert Hiett, for��Climbing.��

“With her training, she somehow still managed to squeeze in time with her family and friends. She could do it all,” Hiett wrote.

Red Rock Canyon is one of the most popular outdoor destinations in the Southwestern U.S., and climbers and hikers flock to the destination in the winter and early spring, before temperatures begin to soar in late April. The canyon’s famed Navajo Sandstone formations are traversed by several dozen climbing routes.

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Earlier this year, a PR rep from Fox News asked if I’d want to review the conservative network’s upcoming docuseries on the history of Yosemite National Park. Called Yellowstone to Yosemite with Kevin Costner, the three-part series is the brainchild of the Academy Award-winning actor, and the follow up to his 2022 series . As I stared at the email, I wondered: What can Fox News teach me about the importance of the national parks? As it turns out, a lot. But their approach delivered a few surprises.

Yellowstone to Yosemite, which airs Saturday, February 8 on Fox’s streaming service, Fox Nation, tells the often-repeated story of a 1903 camping trip that then-U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt took with naturalist John Muir through Yosemite. Over four days and three nights, the��two men yukked it up around the campfire, admired the soaring monoliths and waterfalls, and became friends. Similarly, Costner, now 70, embarks on his own camping trip within Yosemite as he narrates the story.

In the first episode, Costner quickly establishes the significance of Roosevelt and Muir’s campout. It’s May, 1903, more than 30 years since Yellowstone was established as the first national park. Five other parcels of land have become national parks, but the designation has done little to actually protect their ecosystems. Loggers are plundering giant sequoias in Yosemite and poachers are decimating bison herds in Yellowstone. The federal government, meanwhile, lacks the teeth to stop them. “Congress saw the national parks as a zero-cost initiative. Each park has an unpaid superintendent responsible for enforcing regulations,” Costner says. “It’s not working at all.”

Muir, the famed naturalist, believes the only way to save America’s parklands is by harnessing the power of the president. He invites Roosevelt to Yosemite to show him the wonders of the park up-close, before pitching him on the bold idea of actually protecting the six natural wonders.

And we’re off—over three 45-minute episodes Costner tells the story of the camping trip while weaving in other historic anecdotes and ecological tidbits about Yosemite National Park. Yep, there’s a heroic mini-biography of Teddy Roosevelt. There are Nature Channel-worthy segments about the lifecycle of a Sequoia and the geologic forces that carved the valley. Costner name drops Lynn Hill as the first rock climber to free climb the Nose of El Capitan. There’s even a reenactment of the massacre of Miwok tribespeople that preempted their forced removal from Yosemite in 1851.

But as the docuseries unfolds, Costner also performs some rhetorical jiujitsu that muddies the current political divide around a few topics. He frames the conservation movement as inherently patriotic, and funding the national parks as part of our American heritage. He presents the corporate interests of industry as evil, and the seizing of land from Tribes as cruel. He even tells the viewer that the reintroduction of grey wolves—a wedge issue in many Western states—is something that Roosevelt, a Republican icon, would have supported.

Costner presents these perspectives with a sincere tone that lacks any hint of cynicism or moral superiority. After praising John Muir for advocating on behalf of Yosemite’s trees and rivers, Costner lays down in his sleeping bag as the temperature plummets. “God I love this country,” he says. “Everything about it. Even the cold.”

Costner’s melding of these concepts—patriotism, conservation, American heritage, and honoring Indigenous tribes—helps him sell a contemporary vision to his audience: national parks are worthy of our protection and our tax dollars.

Sure, Costner’s sincerity and mythical retelling of a camping trip may inspire some eye rolls. Still,��I couldn’t help but admire his approach. Perhaps somewhere in Yellowstone to Yosemite is a playbook for bridging the political divide when we debate protecting National Monuments from drilling, or the reintroduction of apex predators, or why we should save endangered species. I don’t watch Fox News, but my parents do, and I firmly believe that they would love Yellowstone to Yosemite, even though it’s essentially a three-hour pitch for the environmental movement.

Costner’s story concludes on a high note. Roosevelt is inspired by Muir, and after he’s reelected he signs the Antiquities Act of 1906, which grants him the power to protect federal lands. He sends the U.S. military to defend the national parks, and he establishes a series of national monuments to honor the legacies of indigenous tribes.

I recently asked Costner about the balancing act in Yellowstone to Yosemite, and whether it was challenging to blend so many disparate socio-political themes in an hour-and-a-half program�� He brushed the question aside with a laugh. You can read my interview below.

Why Kevin Costner Wanted to Tell the Story of Yosemite National Park

OUTSIDE: Why did you want to tell this story in 2025?
Costner: I was not waiting for the right year to tell this story. I recently did the film Horizon and I thought of it back in 1988. With Yellowstone: One Fifty, I realized that we just don’t know our history and the intricacies of the routes we drive and the mountains we look at. With Yosemite, we all think we know the park. But I knew there was a story to tell about Roosevelt and Muir. In this 30-year span after the creation of Yellowstone, there was nobody who could actually protect the parks. Nobody took into account that it would would take manpower and a governmental body to actually protect them. I like these parts of history that seem obvious, but aren’t. And this story had plenty of these elements, so I had a sense that I wanted to share it. I wanted to start with the Native Americans—even if we’re going to highlight Roosevelt and Muir, it was important for me to go that distance and to talk about original inhabitants. I wanted to tell viewers just how tragic things were for them. They’re always in our history and we somehow forget them. They are a part of Yosemite as much as any story we tell.

But I also wanted to show how these two men, of like minds, each had a level of poetry in them that helped them understand that saving the parks was the right thing. I wanted to tell this story without beating people on the the head. I wanted to educate them.

Your story navigates more than a few political topics that are still debated today, such as funding the NPS, reintroducing apex predators, and the constant tug-of-war between protecting federal lands and opening them to drilling or logging. How did you navigate these without seeming partisan?
Ha. I don’t care where the chips fall, and I’m honestly not that careful. I’m not looking to present a side here, I’m just looking to tell the story of who was doing what, who was saying what, and what actually happened. This project isn’t catered to any crowd. It had to get above my bar in terms of its intellectual literature. And I felt like we told the version of the story that I set out to tell. I don’t talk down to my audience or around them. I honestly don’t see the world as being dangerous when I’m telling historical truth. You have to tell the story with all of its warts. Other people might be worried about what I’m going to say. But I didn’t ever worry about it. I never had a single thought about this.

This is your second project around the U.S. National Parks. What about the Parks has attracted your interest in storytelling?
I’m really pleased that national parks are an American idea. Today there are like 1400 national parks around the world, but we set the tone. We came up with the idea that the land could have a higher economic use than just exploiting it—that some day, people would come and visit. But when I think of environmentalism, it isn’t just about the fish in the streams, and the trees. It’s also about the connection to the past. That I can walk where other people walked 100 years ago. And also, to know that a place like Yosemite will be the same forever. And to know that these places aren’t just enjoyed by the wealthy, that everyone can enjoy them. Setting aside land for a national park is such a simple idea, but in reality it takes a fierce attitude to move an idea to being practical, especially when money is at stake.

You’ve spent several decades telling stories about the American West, from��Dances With Wolves to��Yellowstone.��What is it about the West that continually sparks your imagination?
I stumble on these stories, and I know that I’m only going to be able to tell so many of the in my lifetime. Right now I’m flirting with a very historical project that I’ll probably do, and it’s right in the vein of what you’re talking about, but I can’t discuss it here. As Americans, we think we know our history, but you never really know that much about it until you dig down. We read about the Native Americans somewhere in the fourth grade, like one chapter in one book, and that’s it. All of Yosemite was on the backs of people who were exterminated. This great park came on the heels of shipping them off to a river where they would die in anonymity. And they’re not even on a sign anywhere.

We rarely get down to what is human about them. I think that Yosemite gets down to what is human about John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt. People can be touched by the truth. They can be affected by lies, but they can be truly touched by the truth.

This interview was edited for space and clarity.��

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Tanner Bean stepped over the cliff edge and rappelled down a slope of crumbling rock, as other members of Colorado’s Mesa County Search and Rescue team watched him descend.

After lowering 300 feet, Bean reached a ledge no bigger than a dinner table, jutting from the sheer precipice several hundred feet above the valley floor.

That’s where Bean found Tiny the dog.

“She looked at me like ‘oh my god, oh my god, a human!'” Bean told ���ܳٲ������.��“She started wagging her tail and running back and forth. She just seemed so excited.”

Bean, 40, was ecstatic but also worried by the reaction.

“I was like ‘No no no, please don’t fall off this cliff, not now!” Bean added.

It had taken Bean and his SAR teammates six hours to reach Tiny on this cliff edge in a remote corner of the state, several miles outside of the community of Collbran. The group had set out early on the morning of January 2 after receiving an SOS call from Tiny’s owner, a local hunter. The previous day, Tiny, a 20-pound hunting hound, had been tracking a mountain lion across a series of peaks when she had descended the cliff face and become stranded on the ledge. She couldn’t ascend the loose rock, and trying to navigate the descent would be fatal.

SAR officials said that Tiny was wearing a GPS tracker on her collar, which showed her approximate location within the dizzying terrain. Tiny’s owner could see the stranded dog from below with his eyes.��Night fell, and the owner realized that Tiny would have to spend the evening on the precipice. The following morning, he called rescuers.

Mesa Search and Rescue, which is based out of Grand Junction, oversees a huge swath of Colorado’s western quarter, and its area of operation includes popular hiking and biking trails outside of Fruita, the Colorado National Monument, and a stretch of the Colorado River that’s beloved by river runners. During the spring and summer, the team fields numerous calls from hikers, cyclists, and boaters.

“Most of our calls are lost hikers or swiftwater rescues,” said Nick Ingalls, 30, one of the other rescuers. “But we will get maybe two or three dog calls each year.”

Fifteen SAR members met at a trailhead near Collbran that morning. Due to the tricky terrain, the group split into two groups to see if they could find the best route to the top of the cliff. The hike in took far longer than they anticipated, as the teams had to trudge through knee-deep snow drifts and navigate tight gullies and washes.

“We were hiking over these ridges that felt like they were made of Frosted Flakes,” Bean said. “You’d take a few steps up and then slide back down.”

It was nearly 4 P.M. when Bean and Ingalls finally located the bluffs above Tiny. Several miles away, SAR members set up a spotting lens to watch the operation unfold. After fixing anchors, Bean descended the cliff, found Tiny, attached her to a specialty dog harness, and lifted her to safety.

Ingalls said that Tiny’s enthusiasm quickly wore off once she got to the top of the mountain. The pads of her feet were bloody and scarred, and she seemed exhausted.

“She acted a lot like a human patient who had been out in the elements,” he said. “So happy at first, and then after the adrenaline wears off, she just laid down.”

They gave Tiny water, but nobody in the rescuing party had brought dog food. Ingalls said he had a single bar of cell service and he texted a friend who is a veterinarian to ask whether the food they had in their packs was safe to feed a dog. In the end, they opened a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli and meat sauce and spooned some out for Tiny. She gulped the meal down.

“I’ve never seen a dog happier to eat human food,” Ingalls said.

But the rescue mission wasn’t over yet—the team still had to get Tiny back to their vehicles. At first, Tiny walked beside the rescuers, but she quickly sat down with fatigue. So Bean, Ingalls, and the other SAR team members took turns carrying the 20-pound dog as they rappelled down cliffs, climbed through dense brush, and trudged through snow drifts. After several hours, Tiny’s owner met them on the trail with his horses, and they finished the journey on horseback. It took them four hours to return to their vehicles.

It was dark when Bean and Ingalls finally reached their vehicles and completed the rescue. The total time for the mission was 13 hours—a grueling day of long hikes, technical climbing, and route-finding in the backcountry. Rescue missions for stranded humans often take a fraction of the time—and this one had been to save a 20-pound pooch. But neither Ingalls nor Bean complained about the outing when I spoke to them on a video call in late January.

Bean told me he’d “100 percent” go through the ordeal to save Tiny again. Ingalls agreed.

“I think we try to always try to have empathy and to put ourselves in their situation,” Ingalls said. “Whether it’s a human or a dog, they’re having the worst day of their life, and we get a chance to help them.”

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An icy wind stings my cheeks as I sprint from my warm Subaru to the front porch of a stranger’s home in my suburban��neighborhood. I look between the milk delivery box and a patio chair and locate my prize, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag.

Back in my car, I pull up my phone, open Venmo, and send $30 to someone named Julia. I unwrap the bag and marvel at my loot: a purple and pink pair of girls rubber snow boots, dotted with a stylish flower print, in child’s size 12.

These are no ordinary boots—they are a pair of . Parents everywhere, including yours truly, have come to appreciate the brand for keeping our kids’ feet cozy and dry on the coldest winter days. We also love Bogs’ extreme, eye-popping durability. In my experience, Bogs rubber-soled winter boots are virtually impervious to the highly destructive forces that a typical child can muster. Bogs can survive the harshest sandbox grit and cheese-grater-like playground equipment. Take a belt sander to the sole of your kid’s Bogs and the vulcanized rubber may still grip icy pavement.

I want to stress how unusual this is to all of the child-free readers out there. Should you someday welcome a small human into your life, then you—like me—may marvel at your child’s ability to immediately transform new apparel or footwear into thread-bare rags.

Bogs’ extreme durability creates a dynamic that fans of the boots know well.�� Your kid will outgrow his or her Bogs long before the boots wear out. Thus, you can sell them online when they no longer fit your kid’s feet and fetch a good price.

A thriving secondary market exists for Bogs on websites like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. If you check out the “Kids’ Bogs” page on the , you will scroll past hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of used pairs for sale.

My wife and I began buying and selling our daughter’s used Bogs on Facebook Marketplace a few years ago. Our five-year-old is on her fifth pair. Here’s the thing: we’ve only purchased one pair new. The MSRP on a pair of Bogs kids winter boots is $85, but you can easily score a set with plenty of life left in them online in the $30-50 range.

For years I wondered whether this dynamic was hurting the company’s bottom line, since so many customers, like me, simply buy them from other parents.

I posed this question (does Bogs’ extreme durability hurt sales?) to Megan Vinton, Bogs’ senior director of product, during a recent phone call, and I got a murky answer: probably not, but honestly, who knows?

“We’ve never really analyzed the secondary marketplace that way,” she told me. “But the price that people can command for a used pair is pretty impressive.”

Vinton told me that the company has long known that used Bogs are sought-after items online. A few years back, she said, there was an internal conversation among company officials about creating Bogs’ own re-selling marketplace for used boots. But employees struggled to find the right e-commerce infrastructure and model to pursue. Plus, there was a decent argument that Bogs’ popularity on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace actually boosted the brand’s popularity. So the whole project was scrapped.

“We’re content and happy to let the online community of used sellers thrive,” she said. “So many people’s entrance to our brand is from word-of-mouth and community purchasing.”

Bogs Neo-Classic Solid Kids’ Boots

Instead, Vinton said, Bogs has found ways to lean into its reputation for longevity. Each pair of Bogs kids’ boots comes with a name tag inside that has room for three different names. And a few years ago, Bogs started a program called . The company will cover the shipping cost for customers to mail their used boots to the Portland, Oregon headquarters. Employees will then freshen up the footwear and donate them to outdoor kids’ programs and preschools.

“We want to keep them out of landfills,” says Chris Enlow, the company’s head of sustainability. “Creating a plug-and-play method to give them to a charity is how we prefer to engage in re-circulating boots.”

So, why do these kids boots last so long, when a typical child may only wear them for one or two seasons? Vinton said that, years ago, the company committed to using the same durability standards for a toddler’s boot as for the ones it manufactured for ranchers and dairy hands. Employees lay vulcanized rubber strips by hand over a neoprene sock to construct the waterproof lower. The company seeks out the strongest rubber compounds that won’t crack after a year spent in the sun, wind, and rain.

The company applies its latest technology to all of its boots, not just the ones made for lumberjacks or ranch hands. The newest models are made from vulcanized rubber that’s injected into a hard mold to create a seamless sole and lower area. And yeah, your three-year-old nephew can stomp through puddles in rocket ship-emblazoned boots that are made this way

“You don’t want people saying ‘Oh, these boots used to last longer,’” Enlow said.

The lifespan of the pink and purple Bogs are far from my mind as I park in my driveway and hurry indoors. I find my daughter scribbling in a coloring book, and I slip her feet into the new boots to make sure they fit.

Then I step out of the way and let her gaze at the color scheme and the fancy flower print. It’s somewhat similar to the design of her older pair, which sit near near our front door, ready for me to post online.

“Good,” she says, and then returns to coloring.

Fred was the editor-in-chief at VeloNews from 2016 to 2021. Prior to that he was a regular contributor to The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and The New York Times. Fred is the proud father of his five-year-old daughter, Magnolia, whose feet are growing like weeds.��

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The Eureka Valley Sand Dunes on first mention��in Death Valley National Park are a photographer’s playground. The golden mounds that rise 600 feet from the valley floor are framed by the red-and-white stratified sandstone of the Last Chance Mountains. Green lumps of prickly shrubs, called Eureka dunegrass, sprout up from the sand.

“People are in we the first time they see them,” says , a guide who leads photography hikes within the park. “They are downright incredible to photograph. It’s not an experience that’s easily forgotten.”

But the remote dunes are currently crisscrossed by a series of scars, the unmistakable marks of automobile tires. On Monday, January 13, the National Park Service revealed that a motorist had illegally driven onto the dunes sometime in late December or early January. A photograph distributed by the NPS showed the tire marks starting near the parking lot before going through a patch of dunegrass and then higher onto the sand.

In the news release, Death Valley superintendent Mike Reynolds asked the public to help rangers identify the culprit.

“I urge the public to come forward with any information that could help identify those responsible for driving on Eureka Dunes,” said Superintendent Mike Reynolds. “I’m saddened that someone would disregard the survival of a rare species for a few minutes of joyriding.”

The park expressly forbids anyone from driving off marked roads. It also prevents visitors from sliding down the Eureka Sand Dunes on sandboards or sleds—popular activities at other dunes like White Sands and Great Sand Dunes national parks. That’s because the sand is the only known habitat of the Eureka dunegrass, which is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. According to the NPS, the driver damaged or destroyed��eight different Eureka dunegrass plants.

Gordon, 56, was at his home in Long Beach, California, when he saw the news. “It’s frustrating, maddening, angering,” he said. “There’s no way to claim ignorance because there are signs everywhere.”

Like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, Death Valley National Park must occasionally grapple with vandals and visitors who break the rules. On May 13, an irresponsible driver destroyed a 113-year old salt tram tower in Saline Valley while attempting to free his vehicle from mud.

In 2016, two and fences guarding Devils Hole, a water-filled cavern that is off-limits to visitors. One man proceeded to swim in the water.

Gordon first visited the Eureka Dunes in the late eighties, and he began leading guided photography tours inside the park two decades ago. These days, he takes small groups to snap shots of the park’s iconic salt flats and red rocks from mid-October until the temperatures begin soaring in April.

Many visitors stop and see the popular sand dunes at Mesquite Flat, which is located right off of Highway��190, the main road inside the park. But few ever venture to the park’s northwestern corner to see the Eureka dunes.

“I used to be able to show up and not even see another person,” Gordon says. “Still, just a fraction of visitors ever go to Eureka Dunes because the dirt road keeps them away.”

But Gordon has seen more signs of bad behavior at Eureka in recent years: people playing in the dunes with plastic toys, and the occasional tire marks in the sane. “I’ve chastised people and tried to educate them about the rules,” he says. “There’s a clear sign next to the bathroom explaining what they can and can’t do.”

Even more maddening, Gordon says, is the relatively close proximity of sand dunes that do allow off-road access. Nevada’s Big Dune Recreation Area, which does allow vehicles to drive on sand dunes, is located just 62 miles from Death Valley’s Furnace Creek Visitor Center.

The tire tracks in the Eureka Dunes will quickly disappear amid the shifting sands, and within a few weeks the golden mounts are likely to appear as they did before. But Gordon says he will continue to call out bad behavior when he sees it in the sand.

“Those of us who spend a lot of time in the park take it personally. It’s like you’re damaging my park,”��he says.

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