When people talk about simplifying their lives, the conversation typically turns to automated payments, task management apps, and clutter-free desktops. But for Christopher Smith, co-director of , “simplifying”Ìęmeant shrinking his living quarters to just 124 square feet—smaller than a McMansion’s tool shed—and jettisoning most of his belongings.

With no prior construction experience and co-director/girlfriend Merete Mueller behind the camera, Smith set off to build a diminutive, eco-friendly abode near Hartsel, Colorado. Their outsized documentary is screening now and .

OUTSIDE: House sizes in America have doubled since the 1970s, even though family sizes have shrunk. What’s driving our appetite for square footage?
Smith: During the past few decades, people didn’t generally question the need to own a large home. It signified a better life and a better future for their kids. Striving toward a huge house is just what you did.

Mueller: It also has to do with building codes that date back to the 1950s. People were still reacting to the shanty towns that were common during the 1930s and it was an era when space and resources for new development seemed unlimited. So they established minimum sizes for structures considered “houses.”ÌęThere was never any maximum, so we just kept building—and filling the extra space with stuff.

Why do you think the small house movement has attracted so much attention?
Smith: The definition ofÌę“quality of life”Ìęseems to be shifting a bit, and some people—particularly millennials—are warming to the idea that you can live smaller to simplify your life. For me, it was buying some land in Colorado and trying to realize my dream of building my own home. I kept running into roadblocks. Going small started to make more and more sense.

Mueller: When we talk to other small house owners, we usually find that it came down to a financial equation: they wanted to start a business or get out of debt or open up some money to pursue a passion. The environmental benefit of living small is a bonus, but for us—we both have backgrounds in sustainability—it was one of the key drivers. We liked the idea of consuming less.

Christopher, you had no prior construction experience going into the project. Where did you start?
Smith: A lot people start out just like me—with no experience. First, I spent hours researching small houses online and looking for inspiration. There are guides and plans out there, but nothing like the resources for regular construction, so in a way it isn’t as overwhelming. I ended up breaking the project into about 15 stages and learning what I needed to know for each individual stage. From start to finish, the house took about a year to build.

Granted, you guys are working on opposite coasts right now on a few different projects. But when you come home, what’s the biggest challenge living together in your tiny house?
Smith: It’s actually very livable. We don’t feel cramped and we end up using a lot more of our outdoor space and the resources in our community. It just forces you to create your own personal space, whether it’s putting on headphones or going out for a walk.

Mueller: To me, it’s a lot like New York City where you use your apartment as a home base but spend more time in cafĂ©s, parks, and other public places. It’s kind of a suburban phenomenon that we spend so much time behind closed doors in these big houses with tons of rooms.

Any advice for readers who might be thinking about building a small house of their own?
Smith: If you’re just starting to think about building a small house, you could get creative and tape an outline on your floor to get a sense of the footprint. This won’t give you the same feeling of being inside but it can give you a rough idea, and that’s a start.

If you’re thinking about it seriously, visit a small house and spend time there before you commit to anything. Sleep there, wake up there. Make sure you can see yourself living in that kind of space.

More than anything, though, keep in mind that you don’t have to build a small house to downsize. You try on a more simplified life today, starting from right where you are. Get rid of a few things you don’t use and just see how far it takes you.

The post Tiny Houses: Smaller Than Life appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Unless you work for an airline, cheap tickets can be hard to come by. But don’t lose hope—you can book a great vacation without breaking the bank.

Search by Leg

When you’re booking flights on an online travel aggregator, search for each leg separately. Sometimes you can get better deals on one-way fares than by looking for the lowest-priced round-trip ticket.Ìę

Book Fully Refundable

Sounds counterintuitive, but if you know your travel plans far in advance, book the cheapest fully refundable flight you can find. Then, keep shopping for bargains up until the last possible moment. When a better deal comes along, you can jettison your refundable ticket.

Sign Up for Alerts

The best way to know when a travel deal is available is when the airlines notify you directly of their latest getaway deals. You might consider creating a separate email address to sign up for travel alerts from all of the major airlines. Check it a couple of times a week to see where the deals are—and if one includes your favorite destination.

Get Some Credit

Adding another credit card to your wallet isn’t an ideal situation, but airline-offered cards pay you back with some sweet deals. Just for enrolling, you often automatically receive 25,000 to 40,000 frequent-flier miles, which is already enough for a free domestic round-trip ticket. With most airline credit cards, you also accrue one or two miles for every $1 you spend with it—and there are other bonuses. The , for example, gives you an additional 30,000 miles if you spend $1,000 in the first thee months. The Ìęgives you two free companion tickets per year when you buy one ticket. And theÌę lets you check your first bag for free and gives you priority boarding and miles that don't expire.

Depart on a Wednesday

On average, Wednesday is the cheapest day to fly, according to many airline experts, such as CEO Rick Seaney.ÌęWednesdays and Tuesdays are also the best days to find cheap fares—with the best deals often found in the morning.

Use Those 24 Hours

If you absolutely must book a flight as soon as possible, know that U.S. airlines are required to allow you to cancel your reservation and refund your money—even if it’s a nonrefundable fare—during the first 24 hours after you book it. If the price drops the next day, cancel the reservation. If it doesn’t, hold onto it. If you plan to use this strategy, make sure you book directly through the airline, because it can be a hassle to cancel through a third party, regardless of the law.

Got a Student ID?

Some student-travel organizations still get bulk access to budget plane tickets. The most notable of these brokers is .

Use an Agent

Yes, even in the age of Internet pricing, travel agents can still sometimes find you better, unpublished deals.

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It took six pairs of boots, 240 horseshoes, and 24 months forÌęFilipe LeiteÌęto ride on horseback from Canada to Brazil. The cowboy traveled 10,000 miles through 10 countries to reach his home in South America, an epic journey that has earned him a spot in theÌęhistoricÌę,Ìęan international association of equestrian explorers that requires its members to ride at least 1,000 continuous miles.Ìę

We last caught up with Leite back in 2012, when he was only three states into his journey and about to cross the infamous and treacherous Million Dollar Highway in Colorado. Since then, the cowboy has snuck through jungles full of drug traffickers, ridden bulls, encountered endless bureaucratic obstacles, and experienced unending generosity on the trail. As he nears the final stretch of his journey, we asked him for an update.

OUTSIDE: Aside from countless miserable border crossings, what has been the most difficult part of the ride?
LEITE: Keeping my horses healthy. I have spent 24 hours a day, seven days a week with these animals for the past two years. As we made our way south, we created a bond only comparable to that of father and son. When I didn't have the basics to offer them, like water or a pasture to graze, it broke my heart. We crossed many countries where vets were extremely hard to find and medication for horses even more so. Keeping my animals healthy required me to work extremely hard and become a bit of a vet myself.

This Long Ride has also been full of dangers. We crossed paths with a grizzly in Montana. One of the horses (Bruiser) fell in a deep ditch in New Mexico. The other (Frenchie) was hit by a truck in Southern Mexico, and the third (Dude) walked into a cattle guard in Nicaragua—nearly breaking his leg. I remember having Dude's head on my lap after finally calming him down while he lay there with his front right hoof stuck in that cattle guard thinking I was going to lose him. These were by far the worst moments of the trip. These horses are an extension of my soul; they are my children, my heroes, my everything.

What type of schedule do you maintain to give the horses, and yourself, much-needed rest?
On a Long Ride like mine, there can be no set schedule. You must always listen to your horses and let them rest as they need it. I always try to ride no more than 30 kilometers [nearly 19 miles] daily and allow my ponies to rest for a day or two every four to five days of riding. This has been a good system for us. I have also stopped for a month at times in order to give them ample time to rest or recover from an injury.

Scariest moment of the ride?
Hearing a husband trying to kill his wife with five gunshots just outside my window in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I will never forget her yells of desperation as the gunfire silenced her pleas.

What about the loneliest moment of the trip?
The loneliest moment of the trip was crossing a mountain in southern Wyoming. I spent several days riding without seeing another human being. It was only the horses and I, and I had an extremely hard time finding water for them. I remember coming down that mountain into a town of 25 people, swallowing my tears. I ended up staying with an elderly gentleman who lives by himself in a ranch home. It's funny how life works out. It was one of the deepest connections I made on the journey.

You've traveled through jungles infested with drug traffickersÌęand passed through dangerous cities. Was there ever a time you've been afraid for your life or the life of your horses?
My entrance into Honduras from Guatemala was with the protection of a major Honduran drug lord. He not only rode with me but also hosted me in his fortress for two days. His house was in a little village in the mountains and sat behind high walls and a thick metal gate. His house was a mansion with plasma TVs, a home gym, and even a small petting zoo. While trying to sleep the first night, I kept imagining the shootouts and killings happening at the hands of the drug cartels in town nearby. Needless to say, it made it hard to get some shut-eye.

You've been posting video segments throughout your journey. Tell us how you film while riding alone, edit footage, and post updates while on the trail?
Filming my Long Ride has been extremely difficult! I have to get off my horse, set up the tripod and turn on the camera, get back on, ride by the camera, then go back to stop filming and fold up the tripod—all while making sure all three horses are watched after. My girlfriend, Emma Brazier, has helped me a lot in this aspect. The moments she has traveled with me, we have been able to capture moments I couldn't otherwise. The dispatches are edited in Nashville by OutWildTV. I'm very thankful for having such an amazing group of professionals behind me. It makes all the difference.

Most of your nights are spent camping in a tent. What key items have made this possible for two years?
My Leatherman is always on my belt. Other items include a one-burner stove for preparing dinner, my tent, sleeping bag, and peanut butter. I've also been carrying Naomi's ashes. In Colorado, a gentleman who hosted me asked if I would carry his sister's ashes to Brazil with me. He told me how she loved horses and adventure and had recently passed away. He felt as if faith brought me to his home and that Naomi had to go on one last ride. I have carried Naomi's ashes all the way to Brazil and will spread them in the field where the horses will be retired.

You're trying to pass through the largest rodeo in Latin America, the Festa do Peao de Barretos. Think you'll make it?
Definitely! Because I left from the largest rodeo in Canada, the Calgary Stampede, it has always been my goal to pass through Barretos. This past year, they began sponsoring my trip and are currently building a monument of the horses and I that will be forever in the rodeo grounds for people to visit. On August 23, I will ride into the rodeo's arena as more than 50,000 people watch from the stands. I imagine it will be a very emotional moment.

What are your plans for after you arrive?
I will retire my horses at my parents' farm in Espirito Santo do Pinhal, Sao Paulo, and work on a documentary on my ride. I will also be writing a book on my two-year journey from Canada to Brazil.

Can we expect to see a Journey America documentary from your travel?
Absolutely.

Catch all of Leite's Journey America videos at and follow along as he finishes his journey at @FilipeMasetti on and .

The post The Last of the True Cowboys? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On May 27, an Ohio teenager was found dead in his home, the . The tragedy could have fueled the energy drink debate, which has and rages on due to alleging drinks like Red Bull contain unsafe levels of stimulants. But no mention of these. That’s because the teenager, Logan Stiner, didn’t chug a Red Bull or a Monster Energy Drink before he died; he ingested caffeine powder.

Caffeine powder is your favorite stimulant in its purest form, either produced synthetically or extracted from foods that naturally contain caffeine, like coffee beans and kola nuts. It’s easy to buy the fine, white powder in bulk on the Internet. It’s completely legal, and there’s no age restriction. One hundred grams of the stuff costs just .

Why the heck would anybody buy pure caffeine? that it can “increase alertness, improve concentration, and enhance mood.” Caffeine has also been shown to improve athletic performance by warding off mental and physical fatigue, and reducing the perception of pain.

As , “energy-boosting foods racked up more than $1.6 billion in domestic retail sales” in 2012, up nearly 50 percent from 2007. But consumers know those are jacked-up prices, and some try to make their own. Enter caffeine powder.

Many people use the powder to make caffeinated beverages and foods on the cheap. But dosing is a huge concern. If you’re getting your caffeine from powder, it can be very difficult to mete out a proper amount without an electronic scale. And you can’t just mix the stuff into foods, or you risk spreading it unevenly throughout whatever you’re making. You need to .Ìę

As Popular Science writes, a pegs about five grams as the potentially lethal limit for caffeine ingestion. That would require drinking more than six gallons of McDonald’s coffee, but only 2.5 teaspoons of caffeine powder. This is likely why there have already been a handful ofÌę—including the Ohio teen. “Since it’s a powder, he probably [didn’t] know how much he was taking,” Stiner’s coroner .

Most powder manufacturers recommend taking in no more than 200 milligrams per day, or one-tenth of a teaspoon. As we’ve reported before, caffeine’s athletic benefits appear to top out at doses higher than three milligrams per kilogram of body weight (about 2.5 cups of coffee for a 150-pound person). After that there’s a plateau until you consume twice that amount, at which point negative effects emerge: jitters, headaches, and irregular heartbeat.Ìę

So choose your caffeine wisely. While there’s no doubt it can give you a nice boost, “it’s so lethal if taken in the wrong dose,” as coroner Nigel Chapman . “And here we see the consequences.”Ìę

The post What You Don’t Know About Caffeine Powder appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

That’s what the owners of this Finnish island getaway did. to build this project, which is designed around the outdoor rec opportunities in the area: fishing, swimming, hiking, and, uh, relaxing in a sauna.

Wood was used for both the interior and the exterior of the house—a smart choice, because it’s easy to work with and, when left untreated, weathers to a silvery grey. Corrugated sheet metal covers the single slope roof, another low-maintenance feature. The main house has two bedrooms that flank a glass entrance, a loft, an open space for living, dining, and eating—and a deck that’s larger than all of those rooms combined. Ìę

That deck stretches as close as it can to the sea. Angled walls along the sides protect you from winds and offer cubbies to store firewood, gear, and furniture. My favorite detail? The sunken central fire pit, which is covered with a wood hatch when not in use.Ìę

The post How to Build the Ultimate Deck appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Lost in a building whiteout on a frigid day in 1896, encrusted in ice, the two Norwegian brothers finally stopped skiing. Disoriented and directionless, Roald and Leon Amundsen decided to bivouac. They dropped their immense backpacks, stepped out of their ­seven-foot-long skis, and began burrowing into a snowdrift.

After digging two cramped holes side by side, like shallow graves, they crawled into reindeer-hide sleeping bags. They were shivering terribly. It was January in the mountains of southwestern Norway, when snow and wind, darkness and biting cold—the wolves of winter—conspire to kill the unprepared. Having skied for three weeks to traverse the 100-mile-wide Hardangervidda Plateau, wandering in blizzards and bivouacking repeatedly, they were thin and weak. Their stove was inoperable, and they hadn’t had food for two days.

During the night, blankets of snow piled up on them, at first muffling the sound of the roaring wind, eventually extinguishing it. The moisture from the brothers’ slow breathing iced the interiors of their snow holes. The snow’s weight nearly cemented their bodies in place. They were almost buried alive.

The next day, when 23-year-old Roald woke up, he found himself encased in ice, unable to move. But Leon, 25, having kicked off the snow through the night with berserk exertion, was able to escape. Only the tips of his brother’s boots were still visible. Leon dug frantically for more than an hour, pulling Roald out just before he asphyxiated.

Later that day, the brothers skied south off the Hardangervidda. Frozen and hungry, they found their way to Mogen, a cluster of log cabins on the northern edge of a body of water called Vinjefjorden.

“They were saved by a farmer just over there,” says Kjersti Wþllo, sliding homemade reindeer sausages onto my plate and pointing through a steamed window at the spot. Wþllo and her partner, Petter Martinsen, operate the cross-country ski hut at Mogen, which they’ve opened early, in March, just for us. My brother Steve and I have come to Norway to retrace the Amundsen brothers’ journey across the Hardangervidda, partly as a tribute to our heritage (our mother’s side of the family is Norwegian) and partly to better understand the courage and drive that made Amundsen unquestionably the greatest polar explorer of all time. Mogen is halfway along our ski route. For four days straight, we’ve been grinding into 60-mile-per-hour headwinds.

“Amundsen gave the farmer a compass for saving their lives,” says Wþllo, a classic Norwegian beauty in her thirties, whose hair is pulled back in a thick ponytail. “His great-grandson still has it.”

The attempt was Amundsen’s second at crossing the largest mountain plateau in Northern Europe; the first, in 1893, ended after a 40-below open bivouac in which he nearly froze to death. The Hardangervidda had turned out to be almost unconquerably cold and storm-whipped: the perfect polar prep school. Amundsen would later wryly recall that his ski traverse “was as strenuous and dangerous as any of my ­following trips.
 [T]he training proved ­severer than the experience for which it was preparation, and it well-nigh ended the ­career before it began.”

It is often the close calls of a man’s youth that set the course for his life. Ill equipped and ignorant, flush with youthful hubris, Amundsen would never again make such mistakes.

“șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű is just bad planning,” he would famously say. And yet it was by getting slam­med in his own backyard that Amundsen found the direction of his life.

One hundred years ago, in the fall of 1911, a team of five Norwegians led by the 39-year-old Amundsen began skiing south across Antarctica, the harshest continent on earth. They looked like Inuits, clothed entirely in furs, mushing 52 Greenland dogs pulling four sleds. Some 500 miles west, a team of 15, led by 43-year-old Robert Falcon Scott, a British naval captain, began setting out for precisely the same absurd location: the South Pole.

Scott’s team consisted of four men driving two motorized sledges, ten plodding behind sled-pulling ponies, and two on skis. As British author Roland Huntford recounted in his extraordinary 1979 double biography, Scott and Amundsen, this was the start of one of history’s last great adventure epics: a contest not simply between two men or two nations but between two philosophies.

Huntford was scathing in his critique of Scott, describing him variously as contradictory, confused, deluded, ­dramatic, irritable, and morose. Amundsen, on the other hand, drew his highest praise. “In the way an artist may be obsessed with his art,” Huntford concluded, “Amundsen was obsessed with exploration to the exclusion of all else.”

We all know how the contest ended. Amundsen got to the pole first and made it back safely with all his men. Scott also got to the pole—34 days after Amundsen—but didn’t make it back alive, dying of starvation with two other men in a forlorn tent 130 miles from base camp.

Having studied and experienced polar exploration throughout my adult life, I’m convinced that Huntford’s tough, controversial take on Scott got it right, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have respect for the Brit. Scott and Amundsen were both courageous men, equally committed to their cause. Both had larger-than-life egos that could lead other men to sublime achievements or bring them unimaginable suffering.‹But their styles couldn’t have been more different. Amundsen was a brilliant tactician and an exhaustive strategist, Scott a rigid officer and obdurate romantic who failed to understand that the strategies of travel and survival developed by the Inuit were the keys to success.

Both men served long apprenticeships en route to their destinies. Amundsen was born into a wealthy family of ship captains, the youngest of four brothers. He spent half his wild childhood skiing in the rugged fjords and deep forests around Christiania (now Oslo), the other half in shipyards and on the ocean. His father, a ship captain, died at sea when Amundsen was only 14. Amundsen ­attended university to appease his mother, but he had an intensely pragmatic, rational mind that was well suited to a life outdoors and incompatible with the classroom.

Scott was born into a wealthy family of ­naval officers, with four sisters and a ­brother. He was a sickly child, gently teased by his ­sisters, and at 13 he entered the Royal Navy as a cadet. An exceptional student, especially in mathematics, Scott went to sea for four years, returned to naval college, then went to sea again, sailing around Cape Horn.

Amundsen’s heroes included a fellow Norwegian, Fridtjof Nansen, a fabled explorer and the first man to ski across Greenland. Nansen was an ethnologist before the word existed and learned how to survive on the ice from the Inuit, almost reaching the North Pole in 1895.

Scott cast himself in the mold of the tragic British hero Sir John Franklin, a dogmatic, siege-style explorer who perished in the ­Arctic in 1848 with all 128 of his men, starving ­after his two ships became hopelessly trapped in ice. When Scott was made an ­officer, the Royal Navy had ruled the world’s seas for more than a century, but it had been gradually weakened by bureaucracy and nepotism. Scott wanted to be the man who restored that glory: he was known for his sly ambition, academic ability, and deep desire for promotion.

Amundsen decided as a teenager that he would become a polar explorer and never wavered, preparing himself in every way and signing on to a polar seal-hunting mission in 1894. He subsequently spent two years ­exploring the edges of Antarctica, then another three years, 1903–06, in the Arctic on a quest to become the first to sail from the ­Atlantic to the Pacific through the ice-choked Northwest Passage. He not only com­pleted this harrowing mission but became the second explorer to reach the magnetic North Pole.

It was during this expedition that Amundsen learned about dogsledding and igloo building from the Netsilik Inuits. What he saw impressed upon him the hard facts of polar travel: fresh meat could prevent ­scurvy (a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C), dogs and sleds were perfect for the poles, skis were fast and efficient over great distances.

In 1907, Amundsen published The North-West Passage, two unheralded volumes of straight, unadorned prose in which he under­plays risk, takes struggle in stride, and heralds the primitive winter survival skills of the ­Inuit as supreme. Like Nansen before him, Amundsen was far ahead of his time, having the ­genius and openness to master the indigenous ­culture’s ancient survival skills—an ability not simply ignored but often disdained by other explorers of the day.

Scott also spent three years, from 1901 to 1904, probing the edges of the Antarctic. Afterward, he wrote an adventure classic, The Voyage of the Discovery, a man-against-nature tale that became a critical and financial success. And yet, regarding polar travel, Scott’s national prejudices led him to conclude just the opposite of Amundsen: he insisted on the nobility of man-hauling sledges versus the efficiency of dogsledding, was convinced postholing on foot worked better than gliding on skis, and refused to believe that fresh meat prevented scurvy.

At the time, the South Pole was the last great prize for explorers. English captain James Cook had been the first to sail across the Antarctic Circle, in 1773; his countryman Edward Bransfield the first to set foot on the continent in 1820; and another English captain, James Ross, the first to chart some of its coast. Ernest Shackleton, who had been with Scott in the Antarctic on board the Discovery in 1901–04, led his own ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, getting within 97 miles in January 1909 before turning back and almost dying of starvation during his retreat.

Later, in the summer of 1909, the American Frederick Cook, thought to be dead, ­suddenly emerged from the Arctic, claiming to have reached the North Pole in April 1908. Two weeks after that, American Robert Peary claimed to have done the same in April 1909. Newspapers were abuzz for months.

Today it’s generally accepted that both Peary and Cook were lying, but at the time their claims changed the game completely. Scott and Amundsen, archrivals, immediately set their sights on the South Pole. The race was on.

At 845,595 acres, Hardangervidda National Park is the second-largest wilderness area in Europe. When the Amundsens tried to traverse it, they winter camped, spending only one night in a hut called Sandhaug. Today, thanks to the Norwegian Trekking Association, there are two dozen huts on the treeless, wind-scoured plateau.

Using Amundsen’s description of his ski trek and a topo of the Hardangervidda, Steve and I plotted a roughly 100-mile route from southeast to northwest, passing by eight huts. Two were staffed and served meals; the other six were self-service dwellings stocked with food, fuel, and blankets. Which meant that we could conceivably do a very light ski tour—no tent, no sleeping bags, no stove, no cookware, no food.

“But what if we get lost in a whiteout?” Steve asked. “Or get hurt, or move slow, or for whatever reason don’t make it to the next hut? We’ll freeze to death.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. Three weeks before we left, four Germans skiing hut to hut on another trail in Norway were found dead. Swallowed by a snowstorm, they froze within a mile of shelter. Four years earlier, two Scottish skiers attempting to cross the Hardangervidda hut to hut had been caught in a storm and died of exposure right on the marked ski track.

In the end, we each brought a foam pad and a paper-thin bivy sack, plus one ­shovel—just enough to dig in and survive a night out if necessary. Throughout the winter leading up to our trip, Steve, a headhunter in ­Denver and a former high school cross-country ski racer, hit the NordicTrack each morning at four; I skate-skied every day in Wyoming. Knowing that we had to be swift and smooth—or else—we toured together some weekends, through the worst conditions we could find, continuously testing and refining our gear choices.

Steve was expecting calamity and prepared for it. The Hardangervidda traverse didn’t strike me as any more difficult or danger­ous than some of my other trips—skiing across the heart of Greenland with a Norwegian and Swedish expedition, circumnavigating Yellow­stone for a month on skis—so I arrogantly expected an easy eight-day tour.

The first five minutes on the Hardangervidda disabused me of this. The wind was so fierce, it had stripped much of the snow off the tundra. What snow remained was ice, and we were obliged to immediately stretch on our skins to avoid being blown straight backward.

“What’d I tell you!” Steve screamed, grinning ear to ear.

The first hut, Helberghytta, was empty and cold when we arrived. The cabin is named after Norway’s most famous World War II ­resistance fighter, Claus Helberg, and its walls are lined with photographs from the secret mission he’d been part of to destroy a Nazi plant near Telemark that produced heavy water, an essential ingredient in the production of nuclear weapons. We fired up the woodstove, boiled canned reindeer meatballs we’d found in the pantry, burrowed under five layers of woolen blankets like kids in a fort, and felt deeply grateful not to be camping.

The next day, the headwind was preposterous. We were repeatedly knocked off our feet, as if we were being slugged by an invisible boxer. At lunch we had to sit on our packs, backs hunched against the wind, lest they be blown away.

“Can’t imagine having more fun,” Steve shouted through his hood.

It took us more than eight hours to cover 14 miles to the Kalhovd hut. There we found 16 Norwegians huddled around the woodstove, drinking tea and waiting out the storm. When our faces thawed enough for us to speak, they were shocked.

“Americans! Why woot you come here to Norvay?”

I mentioned my obsession with Amundsen, and Steve explained that our mother’s maiden name was Smebakken—“smith on a hill.” They nodded but still looked confused, clearly wondering why two people from the land of obesity would choose to ski through a storm in long, lean Norway.

The next day, the wind remained ridiculous. The Norwegians altered their plans and ended their trip, going downhill with the wind. Steve and I did the opposite, skiing due west across Kalhovdfjorden, directly into the gale, not speaking and stopping only once to wolf sandwiches and energy bars while hiding behind a boulder.

It took us seven hours to go 14 miles. Without skins, despite the fact that the terrain was flat, it would have been hard to reach the next hut, Stordalsbu.

“Amundsen would be proud,” Steve ­shouted as we arrived at the snug, clean, well-built Norwegian cottage. I made a fire while he cooked. My brother was lighthearted and talk­ative, unfazed by the unbelievable­ ­weather; I was both exhilarated and exhausted.

The next morning, we crossed a pass in the first couple hours and began sliding downhill into a roaring opaqueness. When the terrain leveled out, we guessed we were somewhere near Lake VrÄsjÄen but needed bearings. As I was holding the orienteering compass over the topo and trying to triangulate, the wind ripped both map and compass from my hands. They disappeared in the maelstrom. Only partially unnerved, Steve pulled out an extra compass and spare maps and we huddled together.

“We’re off course!” I yelled.

He looked worried. He knew that if we were really lost, we probably wouldn’t survive a night out.

Following a hunch, we made a 90-degree turn to the south. We’d skied half a mile when the clouds cleared just long enough for us to get our bearings, locate the trail again, and identify our next pass. I laughed with relief, and Steve spanked his ski poles over his head.

We ascended the pass slowly, cowering behind rock outcrops where we could. Dropping down the other side was lovely at first. We telemarked over icy meadows and along a wiggling creek. But soon the topography tipped and we found ourselves in a steep defile. For hours we carefully downclimbed frozen waterfalls, zigzagged through birch trees, plowed into snow up to our waists, and cursed the Norse gods.

We reached the Mogen hut deeply grateful not to have broken a leg but well aware that the remaining trip would be both dangerous and challenging. Though there was a trail on the map, there wasn’t one on the landscape: almost every day we were out, we had to navi­gate with map and compass through a howling white wilderness.

Amundsen and Scott arrived in the Antarctic in January of 1911, and each team knew that a historic contest was under way. Hundreds of miles apart, both teams built elaborate base camps on the Ross Ice Shelf and prepared to winter over. A single push to the South Pole—1,400-plus miles round-trip, with a dangerous haul over high passes through the Transantarctic Mountain—was impossible, so each team spent the Southern Hemisphere’s autumn ferrying supplies to depots along their respective routes. When winter set in—June through ­August—darkness descended, and temperatures dropped to 50 below.

Amundsen’s men, working in ­well-crafted snow caves, were urgently industrious through the dark season. They tested and altered their ski boots three times, each man cobbling his own boots to conform precisely to his feet to prevent frostbite and blisters. Their fur clothing was repeatedly evaluated on trial runs and then retailored by each member to fit perfectly, eliminating chafing. The men used a lightweight wind cloth to make tents that were nearly half the weight of canvas ones, then dyed them black with shoe polish and ink powder, for three reasons: to make it easier to find the tents in a whiteout; to provide rest for ­weary, snow-seared eyes; and to soak up warmth from ­solar radi­ation. In the snow-walled wood­shop, the team’s craftsman, Olav Bjaaland, redesigned their dog sleds, cutting the weight from 150 pounds each to 50. Bjaaland, a champion skier, fashioned custom skis for each team member.

Scott was satisfied with his wool-and-­cotton clothing and confident in his ponies’ ability to plow through snow pulling heavy sleds. The English expedition did not refine its systems. Scott believed courage trumped adversity and that character, not craft, would carry the day. In their base camp at McMurdo Sound, he and his men squandered the ­winter on esoteric academic lectures, amateur theater, soccer, and letter writing.

For Amundsen, nothing had been left to chance. Pemmican was weighed down to the gram, biscuits (more than 40,000) were counted individually, seal meat was laid in depot larders, sled compasses calibrated, dogs fattened. He had learned from the Inuit that deliberately courting danger was immature, if not immoral.

Scott was a big-picture man with visions of grandeur, and he left the details to others. Besides, for the first 400 miles he would literally be following in Shackleton’s footsteps. To set his farthest-south record, Shackleton and three companions had plodded on foot, man-hauling massive sleds. Scott intended to do the same after using ponies and dogs for part of the route.

From the start, Amundsen moved quickly and smoothly. He could barely control the exuberance of his dogs, and the men could sometimes ride on the sleds rather than ski. His teams typically covered 12 miles in five or six hours, then set up camp, devoting the rest of the day to rest and recuperation. If the weather was nasty they built igloos. In the fall, they had marked their depots with wide lines of flags in case they veered off course, so that even in storms they easily found their resupplies of food and fuel. For the Norwegians, all of whom were excellent cross-country skiers, it was a grand jaunt. A big ski tour.

Scott’s two prototype snowmobiles (a third fell through the ice while unloading) had not been properly tested during the winter, and few spare parts had been cached, so they broke down and were abandoned ­after five days. The ponies, sweating all over their bodies, suffered grotesquely, Huntford wrote, their backs and flanks often plated in ice. Naturally, their sharp hooves punched holes in the snow. They were often wading up to their trembling knees, sometimes up to their freezing, huffing chests. Halfway to the pole, their fodder gone, the ponies were shot. From that point on, man-hauling began.

It was a given on both expeditions that some of the draft animals would be killed en route. Amundsen put down any of the sled dogs that came into heat, wouldn’t pull, or became too belligerent, feeding them to the remaining dogs, his team, and himself. At one point, after slogging over the Transant­arctic Mountains—a massive east-west chain with peaks of up to 15,000 feet—Amundsen slaughtered half his remaining dogs to ­supply both men and animals with enough meat to survive the final push to the pole and the ­return trip. The journey back, when men and beasts were mentally, physically, and spiritually fatigued, was even more crucial than the push out.

Having determined on previous polar journeys the precise daily nutritional needs of both man and dog, Amundsen had ten times the reserves of food at each depot as Scott. By skiing only half a day, Amundsen’s team retained strength, vigor, and morale. Scott drove his team like he drove the ponies, his men pulling in harnesses 12 hours a day. They inevitably became weak, emaciated, and demoralized.

At Mogen, WĂžlloÌęand Martinsen fed us so well—and regaled us with so many remarkable stories about the pleasures of Norwegian life—that we might have given up our traverse right there. Thanks to a wealth of oil and natural gas, the government has accumulated the second-largest rainy-day fund on earth, more than $500 billion. Every citizen has guaranteed government health care for life and a full pension. Unemployment is low, and there’s essentially no poverty.

“I think I could live here,” Steve said dreamily as we were falling asleep in our bunks. Alas, the next day we had to ski away.

The wind had at last abated, replaced by below-zero temperatures. We pushed back up onto the central plateau, stopping only for lunch and swigs of hot cloudberry tea. The snow was brittle and the landscape bewilder­ingly featureless—in all directions, there were snow-clad hills of identical height and shape. We set a map bearing and followed it precisely, deviating only to avoid steep ­ascents or descents.

When we reached the LĂ„garos hut, in mid­afternoon, it was so buried we had to dig it out to get in the door. We assumed we would have it to ourselves, but soon we heard shouting. Peeking out the frosted windows, we couldn’t believe what we saw: three kite-skiers literally sailing in from nowhere. They dropped their packs beside the hut and then continued to kite-ski just for the fun of it, jumping and carving, sweeping in vast loops across the landscape.

When they finally came inside, they were jubilant. They were Norwegian, of course: two brothers and a woman. They’d skied 28 miles that day and still had energy enough to play. We’d come just 11 miles and were whipped. One was a soldier who had just ­returned from a year in Afghanistan; the other two were medical students. This was their third attempt to cross the Hardangervidda.

“The other times, the wind didn’t cooperate and we had to trudge along on skis,” one said with a knowing grin.

They’d spent three years testing different skis and kites and knew exactly what they were doing. They were also ­going with the prevailing winds rather than against them, as we were.

“Total traverse of the Hardangervidda will take us about three days,” the woman ­offered, almost ashamed to admit the efficiency of their trip to a couple of cross-country masochists who would ski for eight days to cover the same distance.

They slept in the next morning, knowing they could fly ­another 20 to 25 miles in a matter of hours. Meanwhile, Steve and I slogged on.

The snow was rough and the landscape burning white. It was like skiing across a desert of sand dunes. With the wind down and navigation unnecessary, we knocked off the 16 miles to Sandhaug, the next hut, in a few hours.

One hundred and fifteen years ago, the Amundsen brothers had spent a night in this very hut. Arriving early in the afternoon, we had time to catch up on our journals, sketch out our route on the maps, hoover an extra meal or two, and toast our toes over the stove.

“I’m not sure life gets much better than this,” Steve said before dozing off.

That night another storm blew in, and it ­began building drifts around the cabin. Just as we were turning in, five middle-aged, not particularly fit Norwegians burst through the door.

“Vat are you doing here?” one of them asked snootily. But they were more than happy to suck down all the snow we had melted and dry their soaked socks over the well-stoked stove.

The next day we were gone before they got up. It was snowing and blowing ­miserably. Within the first hour of skiing, visibility dropped until the sky and the earth fused into a single miasmic substance. At one point, looking down, I spotted two black dots far below me. Staring through depthlessness, I couldn’t tell how far away they were. Five yards? Five hundred? I backed away from the gaping abyss only to realize that the distant dots were the tips of my skis.

Without depth perception, it became difficult to balance and impossible to move in a straight line. We were blindfolded by the whiteout ten miles from our next hut. We had to stop.‹

“Have gone completely blind all day,” Amundsen recorded in his journal on ­Decem­ber 5, 1911. “[T]hick snowfall more ‹like home.” He and his team still skied 12.5 miles. The next day was no different, but Amundsen’s team made their standard distance no matter what.

Scott, materially and mentally unprepared for such conditions, either didn’t move on bad days or trudged moderate distances that required unconscionable suffering, his men straining to man-haul their monstrous sledges.

As Amundsen closed in on the pole, Scott was hundreds of miles behind. Neither knew of the other’s position, which caused Scott enormous anxiety. He pushed himself and his men sadistically. There were days when both Scott and Amundsen made the same mileage but Amundsen did it in half the time, economizing on effort and riding the sleds when possible. Scott all but killed himself and his men.

On December 14, 1911, Amundsen and his four teammates made it to the South Pole. “And so at last we reached our destination and planted our flag on the geographical South Pole … Thank God!” he wrote in his journal. His focus on his men, he stated that his teammates displayed the qualities he most admired: “courage and dauntlessness, without boasting or big words.” He and his skiers had been in the Antarctic almost a year and had been skiing toward the pole for more than 50 days, covering some 700 miles. Aware of the need for proof, the Norwegians spent three days mapping 24 sextant readings to make ­absolutely certain they were precisely at the bottom of the earth. They left a sled, a tent, and a cheeky note of welcome to Scott, then headed home.

Scott and four men (all the others having been sent back along the way, fortuitously) arrived at the South Pole more than a month later, cadaverous, malnourished, tired, and weak. They found Amundsen’s tent and his note. Wrote Scott: “Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority.”

“Do you have any idea where we are?” Steve yelled.

“No! But I know where we’re going,” I screamed back.

The evening before Steve and I got caught in this latest whiteout, at Sandhaug, I’d been listening to the snow beating against the windowpanes like the wings of a frightened bird. Concerned about the next day’s travel, I’d calculated four consecutive bearings in the warmth of the hut. There were three empty cabins between us and our next destination; the bearings shot like arrows from one to the next.

Abandoning any pretense of seeing where we were going, Steve and I set off in the ­dir­ection of the first bearing. After skiing blind for five minutes, we stopped, held the compass directly over our skis, and found that we were ten degrees off course. The wind was too strong to ski with­out both poles, so we resorted to rechecking our bearing every 50 paces. It was tediously slow going, but we hit the first intermediary cabin dead-on. A drink, an energy bar, and onward.

We made the next hut by lunch. It was half buried, so we dug out a hole under the eaves, laid down our foam pads, ate deliberately, and ignored the swirling snow. On the map we were halfway to our goal, although we had been trapped in clouds all morning and had seen nothing but white on white.

We never found our third landmark ­cabin—it must have been entirely buried. At one point, the clouds cleared and Steve pointed out a ridgeline.

“Maybe a click away?” he shouted. But the landscape was still playing tricks on us; it was three times that far.

At the end of the day, we were traveling along a steep hillside, beginning to ­question ourselves, when our destination—the Hadlaskard hut—appeared out of nowhere to our left.

It was our last hut on the Hardangervidda. We feasted on reindeer stew, crackers heaped with Nutella and cheese, and thick squares of Norwegian chocolate. Since we were the only people in the hut, we dragged blankets from the cold bunk rooms, lay down on the couches next to the woodstove, and slept so well we snored.

As if the Norse gods were finally convinced that we were worthy of our little dream, the wind stopped blowing the next day—our last—the sun came out, and Steve and I slid ­effortlessly along. We glided atop the snow-covered Veig River, dropping into pockets of birch trees with summer cabins sprinkled among them. As we marched up over our last pass, it ­started snowing lightly. Warm, big flakes and no wind. We slid north off the Hardanger­vidda hardly ­poling, completing the traverse in Garen.

But now it didn’t feel right to stop. After more than a week of abysmal weather, the conditions were suddenly straight out of a fairy tale, twinkling snow falling like goose down. We decided to do a big victory loop. Striding in rhythm, brothers in silent unison, we skied through the forest into the twilight.‹

As Roland Huntford clearly laid out in Scott and Amundsen, Scott was transformed into a hero by the English press when he should have been pilloried. On his expedition’s ignoble struggle from the South Pole back to camp, petty officer Edgar Evans was the first to die, pulling to the last, collapsing in his harness. Cavalry captain Lawrence Oates was next, his feet so frostbitten they were gangrenous. On the morning of his 32nd birthday, Oates crawled from the tent and limped into oblivion. Scott was still keeping his journal, writing for posterity, penning vainglorious letters of farewell. Marine lieutenant Henry Bowers, chief expedition scientist Edward Wilson, and captain Robert Falcon Scott, all skeletal and badly frostbitten, died in their tent in Antarctica sometime after March 21, 1911.

After reaching the South Pole, Amundsen and his team easily cruised back to base camp, covering 700 miles in just six weeks. In all, they had skied 1,400 miles in 99 days. No one had died; hardly anyone had been sick. There was some frostbite, but no one lost fingers or toes. Amundsen had done everything possible to remove drama and danger from his expeditions, and for that he was, in a strange but tangible way, punished. Despite the fact that his South Pole expedition was the apotheosis of elegance and efficiency, arguably the finest expedition ever accomplished by man, he would be all but forgotten outside of Norway in the decades after his death, which came in 1928, when he perished in a plane crash, probably over the Barents Sea.

Huntford, who did as much as anyone to restore Amundsen to the adventure pantheon, thought his death was both a waste and a fitting end. Amundsen had been on his way to help rescue an Italian polar explorer, Umberto Nobile, who had disappeared during an airship flight to the North Pole. Nobile was rescued by someone else, so Amundsen could have stayed home. But for Huntford, it was a strangely appropriate exit.

“His end was worthy of the old Norse sea kings who sought immolation when they knew their time had come,” he wrote. “It was the exit he would have chosen for himself.”

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THE WATER IS SO COLD that icebergs are floating in the middle. It's June in Wyoming, at 11,000 feet, and Lookout Lake is only half melted. The snow is still five feet deep along the shore, and chunks have calved into the water.

Mark Jenkins

Jenkins looks back, July 2006

Mike Moe

Mike Moe on the Niger River, Guinea, West Africa, 1991.

Ìę

Mike Moe and I have hiked in to climb the Diamond, a 600-foot quartzite face in the Medicine Bow Mountains. People rarely climb here it's too high, too harsh, too dangerous. There are often snow squalls, rockfalls, route-finding debacles. Mike and I have been climbing the Diamond for 20 years; it's where we train for epics. This summer, 1995, we're going on separate expeditions to Canada: Mike to attempt a ski-and-bike traverse of Baffin Island; me to try a new route on Mount Waddington. This is our last chance to climb together.

Scrambling through the jagged terrain down to Lookout Lake, I feel nimble and at ease. We've done this so many times before, it's as though I'm sliding back through time.

At the water's edge, Mike leaps out onto a flat rock and begins to strip. He stuffs his socks into his boots and plugs them, along with his shirt and trousers, inside his backpack. Then he stands there naked, stroking his short red beard, contemplating the still, black water.

The surface of the lake is a mirror, perfectly reflecting Medicine Bow Peak and its series of stone faces. Here, at the bottom of the mountain, we are still in night's shadow, but dawn is beginning to gild the summit. Long, pink clouds, like giant rainbow trout, suddenly appear in the water. Except everything's upside down, a surreal reflection as if we're looking at the other side of life.

“Last one to the other side …” Mike says, and dives into the lake.

It was the fall of 1991, on the Niger River. Diving in from the vine bridge, Mike was immediately swept out of sight. The huge brown river just took him. It had been pouring buckets in Guinea for months and the Niger was swollen fat as a snake that's swallowed a goat, and we couldn't tell how many trees had been pulled into the water that might trap us in our kayaks, so Mike said he'd swim the river to find out. Use his body as a proxy for us and our boats. “It's the only way to test it,” he'd insisted. His wife was pregnant and my wife was pregnant and Mike and I were in Africa hoping to pull off one last big expedition before life changed for good.

Mike's done this before, but it still stuns me. The water is so cold it would instantly paralyze anyone but him. Will alone keeps him warm.

I grab his pack and begin hopping boulder to boulder through the snowfield. This is our ritual. I'll hike around the lake, he'll swim across it. We'll meet on the far side, just north of the Diamond.

It's getting light now and the air is a cool violet. I can see Mike chopping through icy water, his feet fluttering. Unlike me, he is utterly unafraid of water. It is his natural element. In high school here in Wyoming he was a state-champion swimmer.

I meet him on the far shore. When he comes out of the water, he's so frozen his skin is a waxy, translucent blue and his movements are jerky. His jaw is clenched and he can't speak, but he's grinning. He fumbles putting his clothes back on; I have to tie his boot laces for him because his fingers are wooden. Heaving on our packs, we continue up through the talus, across a hard tongue of snow.

MIKE IS A WIT, peculiarly quick-minded. He has an ever-changing repertoire of voices, a dozen nicknames for me. We rarely get the chance to go into the mountains together anymore, so when we do, we gleefully revert to our younger selves.

At the base of the Diamond, Mike stacks the rope and, finally able to talk, says, “I suppose you think you're leading.”

We both want to lead it has been this way since the beginning but, eager beaver that I am, I already have my rock shoes on. I point to them.

“I see, Rhubarb the Black's got 'iz scuppers on already,” says Mike in his pirate's brogue. “Then the sharp end be yours.”

Mike and I gravitated to each other as teenagers. We both lived on the edge of Laramie, the boundless prairie our backyard. We were predetermined to be wild and became perfectly matched partners in misadventure. Climbing came naturally to us, and we scaled everything in sight. University buildings, boulders, smokestacks, mountain walls our adolescent enthusiasm and daring far exceeding our ability. Soon enough even wide-open Wyoming started feeling small. We lied about our ages, got jobs on the railroad, lived in a tent behind the Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow, banked the cash, then left high school to spend half a year hitchhiking through Europe, Africa, and Russia, climbing and chasing girls. We got arrested in Tunisia, Luxembourg, and Leningrad. We got robbed. We slept in the dirt.

Through college at the University of Wyoming, Mike and I double-dated, debated Nietzsche, and stood back to back defending atheism, dismembering our Christian attackers with rapier tongues. We ice-climbed and skied the backcountry and went on expeditions. Close calls were commonplace, and we thought nothing of them. We pushed each other but willingly stood in for the other whenever one of us was weak or scared or lost. We were outdoor brothers-in-arms. We would die for each other without flinching and almost did a dozen times.

“You're on,” Mike announces, and I start up a dihedral between the wall and a delicate pillar. The pillar ten feet wide, ten feet thick, and 200 feet tall leans precariously against the Diamond. We have used this route to gain the upper face multiple times, but it always feels dicey. We console ourselves with the fact that the pillar has stood here for thousands of years.

Today the crack is running with water and dangerously slippery. Halfway up I mention this fact.

“Is that whining I hear?” cries Mike in his Monty Python voice. “Courtesy slack coming your way.”

We were 16 and just learning how to climb and we made a pact that whining was prohibited. No matter how freaked you were, you had to keep your mouth shut. To enforce this rule Mike came up with a penalty called “courtesy slack”: The belayer fed out extra rope so you'd take a longer fall whenever even a whimper was heard. Over the years, this bred a black, Brit-like humor in Mike. The more desperate the situation, the more he made fun of it: “It's absolutely grand no handholds whatsoever” or “If the ice were only a wee bit thinner and more rotten I could actually enjoy myself.” We were ripe with hubris. As far as we could tell we were indestructible.

At the top of the pillar I move onto the wall and set up a belay, and Mike begins climbing. I notice that he moves more slowly than he used to, but then he doesn't climb so much anymore. He has other passions now.

After college, we both did big expeditions I went to Shishapangma and Everest; Mike walked the Continental Divide with his younger brother, Dan, then two years later mountain-biked it but our priorities were diverging. The year I went to Everest, 1986, Mike took an internship in Washington, D.C., working for the hunger-relief organization Bread for the World. In 1987, we both went to Africa. With my girlfriend, Sue Ibarra, I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya and traveled far and wide writing adventure stories. Mike went to Swaziland to work for CARE, teaching poor Swazis how to get small-business loans. He helped start a daycare center. His girlfriend, Diana Kocornik, was teaching in Swaziland for the Mennonite Central Committee. Mike started going to church.

We all moved back to Wyoming in 1990, bought houses, and started families. When I got married, Mike was my best man. At his wedding, I was a groomsman Dan was his best man. My daughter Addi and his son Justin were both born in January 1992; my daughter Teal and his twins, Carlie and Kevin, were born one month apart two years later. I kept writing stories; Mike took a job as the director of Wyoming Parent, a nonprofit family-advocate organization.

Halfway up the leaning pillar, he yells up to me, “Wish it were wetter in here!”

MIKE PULLS HIMSELF UP onto the top of the pillar and steps over to the belay.

“Mike, what if the pillar suddenly collapsed?” I ask.

“Won't,” he says. “It's been here forever.”

“But what if it did?”

“Buck, you'd catch me.”

Mike is the most optimistic person I know. He is sanguine, imperturbable.

“What if you lost your ice ax?” Mike asked one day in 1979. “Could you still climb the couloir?” We were training for McKinley by climbing the snowy chutes on either side of the Diamond. So we tried it without our axes, scraping little holds in the snow with our woolen mittens. What if you lost your ice ax and crampons? I asked. Could you still get up the couloir? We kicked tiny steps with our heavy leather boots and gouged mitten holes and climbed it. But what if you were descending? We practiced glissading with nothing to stop the death slide but a sharp rock in our hands.

Thus began our private game of what-if. What-if was meant to make us more resourceful, more capable of surviving desperate situations. And it did for a time.

We swap leads and Mike moves out onto a sheet of gray rock split by a pencil-thin crack.

“But, Mike, what if I couldn't and you were killed? Was it worth it?” I'm baiting him and he knows it.

“Yup. Right up until the moment I die … then it's completely not worth it.”

“That's not an answer and you know it.”

The crack has closed off and Mike is holding on by his fingertips. He uses this predicament not to respond.

Our game of what-if was good fun for more than a decade, but it changed after we had kids. Before, we always assumed we'd come home. That was the principle of what-if. What if this or that happened how would you get yourself out of the fix? But after kids, we both began to wonder what if … we didn't? What if we were killed? By a grizzly, by a river, by a collapsing pillar of stone. It's a natural thing to ask once you start thinking about someone besides yourself. We may be leaving on expeditions to Canada soon, but we are dads now, not Huck and Tom. Justin and Addi are three years old; Teal and Carlie and Kevin will turn one this summer. Our game of what-if has evolved into the fundamental conundrum of our lives: Is it morally possible to be a serious adventurer and a father?

For my part, I hide behind the hackneyed and sophistic excuse that it's who I am. That if I were to quit adventuring, I wouldn't be Mark Jenkins which I know is bullshit. People change all the time and don't lose their identity. They often become someone better. I just don't have the willpower.

Mike does. He's been trying to reform himself for years. He's weaning himself off adventure like a heavy drinker weans himself off Scotch. Slowly, with frequent relapses. He has promised Diana and himself he will do only one big trip every two years, but I think this expedition to Baffin will be his last. Inside, I know Mike believes serious adventure, expeditioning, is incompatible with being a father you are imperiling not simply your own life but the lives of your children, which is immoral. So he will have to give it up.

To calm his existential qualms, Mike has taken to putting more and more effort into planning the logistics of an expedition. This upcoming trip to Canada is a case in point. He's spent weeks testing gear, studying maps, developing contingencies. He told me he thinks he can bring the risk down to something acceptable. I told him he's in denial. Risk is integral to adventure. A freak accident, an unanticipatable rockslide, an avalanche. No risk, no adventure. He knows this, but he's torn between being the man he is and the man he believes he should be.

I FEEL A TUG on the rope and look up. Mike is far above his last piece of protection, and the crack has vanished. There are no handholds and nothing to stand on. Most climbers would back down.

“Watch me!” Mike yells, and dives for a thin ledge.

A letter arrived for me from Swaziland. It was 1989 and I was in Novosibirsk, crossing Siberia by bicycle. Mike wrote, “Dear Dostoyevsky the Big Legs expect you have saddle sores the size of rubles and lungs like a hippo but the KGB has no doubt caught you by now so I'll soon be mounting a daring rescue …” He went on for several paragraphs in his clumsy handwriting and terrible spelling, and between the lines I knew he was worried about me and that he was really saying he would do anything for me, march to the ends of the earth if I needed him. I missed him so much I reread the letter over and over, asking myself why I never told him how much he meant to me, why I never just told him I loved him.

Mike barely catches the lip of rock.

He belays me up and I lead the final pitch. We're 800 feet above Lookout Lake, but the climbing is relaxing and fun. Mike got the sketchy pitch, the bastard. I realize now that that's why he didn't argue for the first lead.

I reach the summit, lean against a warm slab of rock, bring Mike up, and we sit there side by side, staring out across Wyoming.”Mike, you remember Lhasa?”

He grins, but I can tell it's really a grimace.

We went to Tibet in 1993 to climb an unknown peak, and after two days in Lhasa Mike got pulmonary edema, just like he did when we were on McKinley, except there was no way to go down and his lungs filled up with fluid, and we went to the hospital, but they could only give him a Chinese army balloon of oxygen that he sucked on while we waited for the plane. His lungs were gurgling so badly he couldn't lie down, so he had to sit up all night, but even then he was still drowning from the inside. His face was bloated and gray, and if the plane didn't come in the morning he would die, but he was the funniest he'd ever been. He kept making me laugh, and I was so scared I was sick to my stomach, and when I heard the sound of the plane I began to weep.

Atop the Diamond, feet dangling in space, we are on the roof of our world. We eat the lunches our wives have packed for us and silently observe the landscape that made us: snow and ice and rock and sky. We sit there together for a long time, feeling as close as we ever have.

After a while we coil the rope and pack up the gear and begin discussing our upcoming expeditions. I'm going to Waddington with my friend John Harlin. It took a lot of persuading. His father died climbing the Eiger, and John has spent much of his adult life struggling with what that means. In his early twenties, John had a partner who died while they were descending from British Columbia's Mount Robson. After that, he promised his wife, Adele, and his mother that he would give up alpinism. Going to Waddington with me means he's breaking his promise.

Mike will attempt to ski and bike across the Barnes Ice Cap on Baffin Island with his brother, Dan, and two other good friends of ours, Brad Humphrey and Sharon Kava. I have tried to convince Sharon not to go I worry that she doesn't have the experience for an Arctic trip but Mike's enthusiasm is magnetic. It is something we disagree on. Mike believes that self-confidence and sangfroid both of which he has an abundance of are more valuable than technical ability. I don't.

I ask him what he fears most.

“Same as ever, bro.”

Years ago, Mike confided that his deepest fear was that something would happen to Dan while they were on a trip together. Dan, quiet and happy, the kid who fainted during sex-ed films in junior high, a man who has never said a bad word about anyone, has always looked up to Mike. Mike is the natural-born leader, Dan the disciple.

“I couldn't bear it,” Mike whispers.

TO DESCEND, WE WALK along the edge of the Diamond, passing right by where the plaque will be, but of course it's not there yet.

We mounted the plaque in the summer of 1996. Tim Banks and Keith Spenser and I Mike's closest friends climbed the Diamond at midnight in honor of Mike's motto, “Any real adventure begins and ends in the dark.” I led and Keith carried the engraved metal plaque, heavy as a headstone, in his pack, while Tim hiked around the back side to the summit. Halfway up, at about 3 a.m., Keith and I were shocked by little orange explosions all around us. Keith thought someone was using a night scope to shoot at us, and this seemed insane but the cracking was all around us, and then we smelled it and realized they were firecrackers. Tim was throwing bottle rockets down at us, hooting with laughter. We finished bolting the plaque to the summit block right as the sun came up.

On the hike down from the Diamond, Mike is talking about changing the world, as usual. He's been reading the research. Most kids with problems come from single-parent families. As director of Wyoming Parent, he plans to change this. He's got some ideas, but he needs state funding. He knows he can get it. He believes in legislation. He believes in laws that encourage citizens and companies to act in the best interest of the community. He believes in the basic goodness of people.

I'm listening, but I don't have Mike's faith. I used to, but I've spent too much time in screwed-up countries. I've spent too much time in places where evil things happen purely because of evil people.

In 1998 I awoke in a black, hot, locked room in northern Burma and realized I'd been dreaming about Mike every night for weeks. I desperately needed his companionship and judgment because things were getting perilous and if he'd been with me we would have balanced each other and I wouldn't have gone off the rails, or better yet I wouldn't have even come to Burma.

We've dropped down the back of the Diamond and swung around to Lake Marie and we're sloshing back through the snow to the car.

“What do you say we take Justin and Addi up here this winter?” Mike says. “Build a snow cave, teach them how to wipe with snow, howl with the wind.”

I tell Mike I'm in, of course.

IT WAS LATE AUGUST 1995 and Diana and the kids were over at our house for a backyard barbecue and we were all eagerly speculating about when Mike and Dan and Sharon and Brad would be home because it would be anytime now. Later that evening Diana called and her voice was so strange I didn't recognize it. She asked us to come over to her house, and when I walked in the door Perry and Greta, Mike and Dan's parents, were sitting stone still on the couch, and I knew immediately and my legs failed me and I dropped to my knees.

The telephone rang. It was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police out of Clyde River, Northwest Territories. Diana asked me to speak to them. I couldn't speak, so I just listened.

The team had successfully crossed Baffin Island, the expedition was over, and they were on their way home. They were coming back across Baffin Bay in a small aluminum motorboat with an Inuit guide named Jushua. They saw a pod of bowhead whales among the icebergs, and then the whales disappeared beneath the black water. Then one breached right under their boat and flipped it over. They were two miles from shore and couldn't right the craft because of the plywood steering shed. Jushua was wearing a marine survival suit, but the team had only life jackets.

On the way home from the Diamond, Mike drives. I shove in an old cassette tape I find on the passenger seat. Turns out to be Abbey Road. We know every song by heart. “Come Together,” “Here Comes the Sun,” “Golden Slumbers,” “The End.” We sing along like we have on so many road trips. I take bass and Mike sings tenor, slipping into falsetto just to make me laugh. We think we sound terrific. We sing at the top of our lungs. “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Jushua was found alive, washed ashore after 18 hours in the sea. He said they held hands across the hull of the boat for as long as they could, but the water was so cold. Mike was encouraging them all and cracking jokes and reassuring them that the mighty Mounties would be sending out a search flight any minute and to just hold on, just hold on. After a while Mike was the only one who could still talk.

First Sharon slipped away, face down in the water, then Brad. Dan and Mike held on to each other, hands clasped over the hull, for six hours. Then Dan began to slip away and Mike tried to grab him, tried to hold on to his brother, but he couldn't. Mike clung to the upturned boat for two more hours, talking to himself, going mad, before floating away into the Arctic. He was 37.

When the tape ends Mike and I stop singing and are quiet for a spell. Just driving across the high plains, antelope in the distance, wind combing the tall brown grass.

Then it was October that same year and snowing and we were below the Diamond, and I was trembling holding Justin's tiny hand as he threw the ashes. Perry would never accept the death of his sons and died of heartbreak three years later. I'd see Greta alone in the park and we'd just hold hands and cry.

Years later, none of us were the same or ever could be, and the shock and despair now blessedly came only in the middle of the night. And on one of those nights in the dead of winter the giant pillar leaning against the Diamond collapsed and shattered into a thousand pieces, but the plaque we'd mounted on the summit in Mike and Dan and Brad and Sharon's memories is still there.

Eleven years after they froze to death in the Arctic Ocean, I called Diana to tell her I was writing this story. She said Justin and Carlie and Kevin would have been such different people, and we both broke down on the phone. Then she said, “But, Mark, there are so many ways to lose your life besides dying.”

As we glide into Laramie we're talking about our kids. Mike and I have big plans. As soon as they're a little older we'll take them climbing at Devils Tower, like we did together when we were young. We'll take them cross-country skiing in Yellowstone so they can sit in the hot pools like we did. We'll teach them to climb Fear and Loathing, a face route that is all about balance, about deftly moving on invisible edges, never thinking about falling, and believing with all your heart that you can stand on air.

After seven years, this will be the last Hard Way column. It has been an incomparableÌęjourney, but it's time for me toÌęembark on other writing adventures. I must thank Hal Espen, șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű's editor from 1999 to 2006, for hiring me and providing masterly guidance. Katie Arnold, my editor, has gently and wisely tempered every story and sufferedÌęmy outrageous behavior with equipoise. Unrepayable thanks go to my wife, Sue, and my two daughters, Addi and Teal, for willingly allowing me to leave home over and over. Their love sustains me. And, finally, I'm grateful to you, the reader the reason I write.

The post Above and Beyond appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

We can't see them, but from the map we know there are four unclimbed 20,000-foot summits looming above us. We're hoping to climb just one, 20,059-foot Nyambo Konka.

A squall swoops in, hail rattling upon our helmets like gravel.

“Can't see a damn thing!” I shout.

But the higher we go on the mountain, the more sunshine begins to break through. Within an hour, the 4,000-foot visage of Nyambo is staring down on us. Blind to the terrain above, we've managed to climb right up beneath a deeply fractured, quarter-mile-long hanging glacier—something like wandering into a building that's about to be dynamited.

Ross and I make an abrupt right-angle turn, hustle across a vast, telltale fan of avalanche debris, and descend via a safer route on the north side of the cirque.

“Let's not do that again,” I say on the way down.

“Scratch Plan A,” Ross agrees.

In the morning we move our camp higher. Plan B is to climb the central couloir, which we discover, to our alarm, is running with avalanches. On to Plan C: Ascend another couloir farther north.

We dig out a tent platform we believe to be safe from avalanche. Erect the tiny tent, eat cubes of yak gristle, drink Chinese tea, load our packs for the morning attempt, scootch into our sleeping bags, talk.

Ross is regaling me with his ascent of Lurking Fear, a notorious route on Yosemite's El Cap, when an ominous roar drowns out his voice. Our tent is being pummeled and bashed in, and Ross and I are screaming and tearing at the tent zippers, diving out into the darkness clawing bare-handed and sock-footed to safety. After the avalanche passes, we find our tent partially flattened, a softball-size rock having sliced through the fly.

“Perhaps we should move camp,” Ross says in his calm drawl.

We spend the next two hours digging out a new tent platform by headlamp, only to have an avalanche sweep by on the opposite side the moment we're back in our bags.

“Busy place,” I say.

Neither of us sleep that night. We listen, like infantry soldiers in a trench, ears straining to interpret the portent of each explosion. We don't talk much; we wait. We wait to see if we survive. We wait for dawn and Plan D.

CLIMBING MOUNTAINS is an act I happen to love, but it is only one narrow version of adventure. There are thousands. In fact, there's one for every human with the passion to push personal boundaries.

Recognizing this, W. L. Gore & Associates, the manufacturer of Gore-Tex, began awarding grants in 1990 to “small, unencumbered teams of friends with daring and imaginative goals,” teams that would attempt their projects “in a self-propelled, environmentally sound, cost-effective way.” The Shipton/Tilman Grants, as the program is known, have supported a wide array of exploration—caving in Thailand, crossing the Gobi by foot, sea-kayaking around Tierra del Fuego, kite-skiing across the Yukon. Our plan to climb Nyambo Konka earned a grant as well, in part for its imaginative simplicity: one rope, two guys, three weeks, four ice tools, and an unclimbed peak in an unexplored amphitheater.

Eric Shipton and H. W. Tilman were two British mountaineers a half-century ahead of their time. From the 1930s into the 1960s, they explored mountains in Africa and Asia with an elegant, prescient style. While most expeditions of that era were enormous, nationalistic undertakings, Shipton and Tilman usually chose to move quick and light, low-cost and low-impact. Together they were the first to traverse the West Ridge of Mount Kenya, the first to break through the Rishi Gorge into Nepal's Nanda Devi Sanctuary, and the first to explore and survey the northern approaches to K2 and its subsidiary glaciers.

The duo epitomized the best of what adventure can be—exploratory, gallant, in search of higher truths—which, frankly, made them historical anomalies. Although it hasn't been a linear progression, exploration has evolved profoundly over the past half-millennium. In his encyclopedic Great șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍűs and Explorations (1947), Vilhjalmur Stefansson, twice president of the Explorers Club of New York and a legendary polar explorer in his own right, bluntly characterizes the “self-confessed greed for riches, lust for conquest, and bigotry in religion” that motivated many early explorers. Prior to the 1700s, expeditions were generally military forces with the dual purposes of imperialism and religious conversion. The Enlightenment, with its emphasis on knowledge, ethics, and aesthetics, profoundly changed the adventure landscape. By the 19th century, science—not merely gold, slaves, or converts—had become integral to most exploration. German geographer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) and British naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–82) were luminary examples.

At the turn of the 20th century, only the farthest corners of the earth were left unexplored. American naval officer Robert Peary reached the North Pole in 1909; Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen made the South Pole in 1911. Shipton climbed the first 7,000-meter peak, Kamet, in the Indian Himalayas, in 1931. A four-man American team made the first ascent of 24,790-foot Minya Konka, the highest peak in the Daxue Shan Range, a year later. Frenchman Maurice Herzog nabbed the first 8,000-meter peak, Annapurna, in 1950; Hillary and Norgay summited Everest in 1953.

In the past two generations, all 14 of the world's 8,000-meter peaks have been climbed. The Amazon, the Nile, the Niger, the Upper Tsangpo—all have been run. Everest has been skied, Angel Falls BASE-jumped, the sky itself surfed. So what's left?

Nothing, according to some fin de siùcle defeatists. You've likely heard the lament: Africa has the Internet, the Silk Road is a highway, the Inca Trail a tourist trap—time to play Dragon Quest VIII.

Columnist John Tierney, in a 1998 New York Times Magazine critique titled “Going Where a Lot of Other Dudes with Really Great Equipment Have Gone Before,” promoted this sort of fashionable jadedness by coining the word explornography: “the vicarious thrill of exploring when there is nothing left to explore.” According to Tierney, the “Age of Exploration has been succeeded by the Age of Explornography.” Even Italian alpinist Reinhold Messner, who should know better, declared last year in London's Guardian, “Mountaineering is over. Alpinism is dead. Maybe its spirit is still alive a little in Britain and America, but it will soon die out.”

They're both wrong.

It's self-evident that the age of grand geographical exploration—with the enormous exceptions of deep space, deep earth, and the deep sea—is over, but as I see it, the age of adventure has only just begun.

THE MOMENT THERE is even a semblance of light, Ross crawls out of the tent and through a monocular studies the wall of Nyambo above us.

During the night, using a Russian 1:200,000 topo, altimeter readings, and GPS coordinates, I pinpointed our location. But these are just numbers. They establish our position, but not the conditions—the hollowness or hardness of the ice, the depth or danger of the snow, our fatigue or faith. These, the actual exigencies of a mountain, can be ascertained only the old-fashioned way.

“Which couloir looks good?” I ask.

“None,” says Ross, handing me the monocular.

There is a 100-foot-deep cornice hanging over the breadth of the face. Our best option appears to be angling northward, crossing avalanche chutes, trying to climb largely on the rock ribs.

The first few hundred feet are a scramble, then the face steepens and we are confronted with the appalling insecurity of the rock—thousands of feet of sharp, irregular blocks stacked one on top of the other and held together only by the mortar of ice. Pulling out any chunk might bring down a million tons of rock.

Plan E: Forget the cornice, climb yet another couloir.

Had Nyambo been previously ascended, we would have already known what to do, and for me, much of the mountain's magnetism would have been lost. What enthralls me most about entering unknown country is that you have to make it up as you go. There's no rule book. Improvisation is imperative.

And yet there's something even deeper, something even more seductive, about exploring one of the millions of slivers of terra incognita left all across the planet: If no one has been where you're going, you have no idea whether what you want to do can be done. The reason to go is to find out. The reason to go is to find out whether you can do it. Whether you have the nerve and craft, the resilience and resourcefulness to think on your feet and dance on your fears.

Unroped, swinging ice tools, Ross and I gradually ascend a web of interconnected couloirs. It's sometime in the afternoon when we stop at a ridiculously insecure belay. Spindrift is flying around our faces.

“We're moving too slow!” I shout over the roar of the wind. Ross nods. Yelling back and forth, we discuss our options. Continuing upward, whether we reach the summit or not, will guarantee an exposed, bagless bivouac. Hypothermia certain, frostbite probable. I stab my finger downward, and we turn around.

We rap off several disconcertingly small rock fragments frozen into the wall before finding a gully we can downclimb. It's a long haul back to the tent, where we both collapse.

IT'S TRUE THAT the most obvious adventure icons, the Everests and the Amazons, have been done. But there's still so much left, and it's accessible to more of us than ever before. Airplanes and the Internet have democratized adventure. It took the 1932 Sikong Expedition three months to get to the Daxue Shan from the U.S.; it took Ross and me less than a week. You no longer need special contacts or sponsors to pull off a world-class trip. You need only a good partner, a few weeks, and a fistful of desire.

According to the International Union of Alpine Associations, there are 144 unclimbed 7,000-meter peaks (those falling between 22,965 and 26,246 feet). At a recent Alpine Club symposium in Penrith, England, Japan's Tomatsu Nakamura, the leading authority on the mountains of eastern Tibet, estimated that there are 200 to 250 unclimbed 20,000-foot peaks in this region alone. Even after all the peaks have been climbed, there will still be beautiful routes left to find.

“As technical standards continue to increase, people look at things with different eyes and see new possibilities,” says Kelly Cordes, 37, assistant editor of The American Alpine Journal. The Estes Park, Colorado, climber has put this theory to the test, making several unrepeated first ascents, most recently scaling the 7,500-foot face of Pakistan's Great Trango Tower in a stunning four-day sufferfest. “The potential for adventure is limited by your imagination, not by geography,” says Cordes.

This evolution—from planting the flag to a more subtle, primal focus on the personal how and why—is the future of adventure. “From a kayaker's point of view,” says Asheville, North Carolina, river rat Daniel DeLaVergne, “there's an endless supply of places to go get lost and get in trouble, an uncountable number of unrun rivers in Alaska, Canada, New Guinea, China.”

DeLaVergne, 28, should know. Last spring he and his pals did the first descent of Mosley Creek, in the Coast Range of British Columbia, a deadly three-day carnival of Class V+ rapids.

“But you know, it's not really all about first descents,” says DeLaVergne. “It's about how you paddle. It's about keeping your shit humble and making good decisions. You can do the same river everybody else has done but try to do it in better style. No matter what happens, every time, you learn something.”

And it's more than just technical prowess and physical risk. A friend of mine has journeyed to Nicaragua and El Salvador to monitor elections, and his tales match those of any adventurer.

Ecologist Michael Fay's 1999–2000 Megatransect, a 455-day foot traverse of Central Africa's Congo basin, is a perfect example of modern exploration at its best. Fay's goal was to “go as deep into the last wild place on earth as possible” in order to help conservationists and governments identify the most vital places to protect. He walked 1,243 miles, used 12 rolls of duct tape on his blistered feet, and filled 39 yellow waterproof notebooks with everything from accounts of thousands of elephant sightings to descriptions of plant species. In 2002, due in large measure to Fay's journey, the government of Gabon created 13 new national parks, setting aside more than 10 percent of the country's land area.

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, then, is no longer simply about exploitation or adulation; it's about the quest for understanding. You don't need a mountain or a river or a jungle—you need only an open mind. Your goal does not have to be a first; it need only be something that takes you to a new place and challenges you physically or mentally, emotionally or spiritually.

ROSS AND I BACK OFF all the way to base camp, sing Johnny Cash songs around the campfire for a couple of nights, then attempt Nyambo's south ridge.

The first 2,000 feet are an unbelievable briar patch of rosebush thorns and cactuslike stickers. It's so steep I fall backwards and smash my right forearm. When we finally emerge onto the alpine slopes above, we're so scratched and bloodied, we'll be pulling spines out of our hands for the next month.

We dig camp into the rocks at 15,000 feet. The wind is fierce, and we resort to lining the inside of the tent with brick-size rocks to keep it—and us—from being blown into the sky like Dorothy's house in The Wizard of Oz.

The next morning, our second summit bid is no less dicey. We dislodge boulders that career frightfully through space. We climb sideways and down and over and sometimes, when we're lucky, up. The weather is splendid and, despite my bruised arm and a nasty wind, I think we have it made.

Then, somewhere above 17,000 feet, Ross slumps to the ground. His legs refuse to go any farther.

I ask him to sit tight and rest while I recon above. I climb up the arĂȘte, crisscrossing through a maze of stone turrets, entranced by the terrain. My progress is eventually stopped by an overhanging stone face I can't scale without a rope. I climb back down to Ross, hoping he might have recovered his strength, but his face is ashen. We have no choice but to descend.

I don't say anything to Ross, but I'm burning with that agonizing, compulsive need to stand on the summit. I secretly, perhaps foolishly, decide I'll solo it.

Once Ross is safely back in the tent, I march off along various spurs to inventory my options. I sit in the buffeting wind and move the tiny, circular window of the monocular up and down every possible route. All the rock is rotten, the glacier a spiky ocean of seracs, the summit a minefield of hidden crevasses.

Ten years ago, little of this would have mattered. Ten years ago, my drive and ambition would have gotten the best of me and I would have gone on regardless. But something inside me has changed. I sit on a frozen promontory and study the lines of Nyambo Konka, and somehow the risks just don't seem worth it. Thoughts of my daughters and my wife, my friends and my community and my climbing partner, overlay my view of the mountain. This has happened to me before, but usually I've been able—for better or worse—to put these distractions aside. This time I can't. I seem to have lost my single-mindedness of purpose, and I feel disappointed in myself.

Right up until sundown, I desperately search the south side of the mountain for a route to the summit that I can justify soloing, but I find none. On my first visit to Tibet, in 1984, I was willing to do whatever it took to reach the top. Now, I've learned, I'm not.

But I'll be back. It's who I am. Nyambo Konka is not the hardest or the most dangerous mountain on the planet. It's just my peculiar challenge.

Striving for superlatives is part of human nature—the highest, the longest, the deepest. But now that many of these goals have been reached, the future of adventure lies in more subtle, more discriminating endeavors: the most beautiful, the most technical, the project accomplished with the most style. șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű will be less about simply surviving and more about performing with grace and virtuosity.ÌęMore personal, more internal, just you and your dream.

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű has always been about discovery, but because we and our world are constantly evolving, what we discover is, and forever will be, something new. The golden age of adventure is upon us. Now go.

The post Lost Horizons appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

I've read handwritten reports and obscure books and corresponded with one of the few people on earth who's been to the region of China's western Sichuan province where I'm going, 71-year-old Japanese explorer Tomatsu Nakamura. I've printed out the Landsat photos and managed to obtain the uncannily accurate Soviet topos that have guided me on so many trips before.

Before he died in 1995, along with his brother and two friends, when a bowhead whale capsized their boat in Baffin Bay on their way home from an expedition to the Barnes Ice Cap, my best friend, redheaded Mike Moe, told me that “half the joy of a journey is planning it; the other half is coming home and bragging about it.” I remember so many nights when Mike and I spread maps across his living-room floor and dreamed big about some distant place; three months afterwards we'd be giving a slide show about our adventure in that same living room, roasting each other to the hooting of close friends. Later, when everyone was gone, we'd stretch out on the rug and plan our next trip.

I have been going away and coming back since I was 16. I blew off my last semester of high school so Mike and I could escape to Europe and Africa and Russia. We traveled till our money ran out, then kept going, scrounging meals in university cafeterias from Seville to Stockholm. Eight months later we made it back to Wyoming to start college.

During my junior year, when I met Sue, the woman who would become my wife, the first thing she and I did was take off to the Grand Canyon for ten days. Two months later I left for three months to bicycle across the U.S. When I returned, we moved in together—Sue was the first woman I'd met who was secure enough to accept my wanderlust and not see it as a threat to our relationship. Several months later I left for a month to ski across Yellowstone, and Sue left to bicycle Europe for six weeks.

Here, gone. Back, gone again. I chose this recursive path, and it has been my life and livelihood for more than two decades. I can't get enough of the world: the stench of sweat on a Tanzanian bus, the sword of wind on an Andean pass, a little girl in the Sahel carrying her baby sister on her back and a bucket of brown river water on her stiff-necked head.

My gusto for journeying and writing about it has remained inextinguishable—and yet something else, something corded to travel like ligament to bone, has changed over the years: my connection to home.

In my twenties I hardly gave a thought to home. I was wild and self-centered and left without a look back. I remember standing around a campfire in the Tetons, snowflakes hooking together in midair and parachuting to the ground. One of our clan had just learned that his girlfriend was pregnant.

“I'm not going to let it change me or my life,” he declared. “I'm still going climbing and kayaking and skiing!”

“Here, here!” We all toasted his commitment to the heroic, self-absorbed dirtbag life.

In 1991, when Sue was pregnant with our first daughter, Addi, I was kayaking down the Niger River, running a gantlet of hippos and crocs. I'd left in the middle of the second trimester. When I'd expressed my misgivings, Sue had dismissed the issue. “Pregnancy isn't an injury, Mark,” she said. “I'll be just fine.”

And she was. She was focused on her passions—teaching Spanish at the university, volunteering in the community, working on our old house. I was back for the birth, but a part of me still wanted to believe that home was wherever I happened to lay my head.

I was forever stripped of the sophistry of this notion when Addi was 20 months old. I was leaving for Tibet with three friends to attempt an unclimbed 19,296-foot peak called Hkakabo Razi. It was a dangerous undertaking with an uncertain outcome. I didn't have to go—I wanted to.

Innocent of my imminent departure, Addi, a weeble-wobble toddler, helped me pack. She drummed the black camp pot with ice screws, waddled up and down the hall dragging my climbing slings and carabiners, flung her chubby, diapered body into my minus-40-degree down sleeping bag, pealing with delight. For her, it was just another game. But I was scraped raw by my duplicity. I didn't have the heart to tell her what was really happening: I was leaving.

At the airport, watching planes take off, Addi suddenly figured it out. “Daddy . . .” she hesitated, and her lip began to quiver.

The look of shock and hurt and betrayal in her huge brown eyes crushed me more than any avalanche ever could.

BY THE TIME I got home from Tibet two months later, Addi was potty-trained and speaking in full sentences. The mountain that I failed to climb is still there—ice-coated and indifferent. It would always be there, but the moment when Addi put her first sentence together was gone, and I'd missed it. Like any anguished father, I brought back a stuffed panda bear that was bigger than she was, and she's been sleeping with it ever since.

When Sue and I decided to have children, we already knew that the adventurous life wasn't enough for either of us; on the other hand, we weren't about to give it up. When feasible, we figured, we'd bring our kids along. Addi was six months old when Sue and I bicycled across Europe with her. We took her, at 13 months, to Costa Rica. When she was three and her new little sister, Teal, was six months, we went deep into the hinterlands of Mexico, staying in two-dollar-a-night village huts and eating the fiery cantina food. To this day, the girls love Latin culture.

We traveled as a family to Nepal, Russia, Australia, Spain, and Thailand—whenever schedules and finances jibed. It was our way of taking home with us. Eric Jackson, the 2005 world freestyle kayaking champion, and his wife, Kristine, who manages the family kayak business, did something even more extreme.

In 1997 the couple and their two kids, seven-year-old Emily and four-year-old Dane, were living in suburban D.C. Eric, now 41, was running a kayak school on the Potomac but training in Colorado and traveling to compete all over the country. “I just couldn't take it anymore,” Eric—E. J.—tells me by phone. “I wasn't seeing my kids or my wife, but my kayaking never suffered. I'm extremely selfish about my kayaking.

“Kristine suggested we move into an RV,” he says. “It saved our marriage.”

She placed a classified ad in The Washington Post, and in one weekend they sold everything they owned. “People came into our house and walked out with our TV, silverware, clothes, the sheets on our bed,” E. J. recalls. When it was all gone, the Jackson family drove off in an RV with their kayaks and $7,000 in cash, traveling across North America from one put-in to the next and kayaking at least 30 new rivers a year.

“One of the things that fascinates me most about American culture is the readiness to move,” observes Jonathan Raban, 63, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award for his 1996 Bad Land: An American Romance and a British expat who has lived in the States since 1990. “Americans have this inborn readiness to turn themselves into exiles. They have become accustomed to living the temporary life.”

For the Jacksons, the strategy worked. “It was a real breakthrough,” says E. J. “Every morning the kids were right there, Kristine was right there, we were all together, 24/7.”

Kristine home-schooled the kids, and E. J. competed and taught kayaking clinics to make ends meet. (“I went to the pawnshop plenty of times,” he says.) They lived in an RV for five years before settling along the Caney Fork River in central Tennessee and starting Jackson Kayaks, now the fourth-largest manufacturer of whitewater kayaks in the country.

“This place has everything we need,” E. J. says. “A high-volume river with year-round whitewater, warm weather, and a rural environment.”

Even with its gorgeous mountains and huge skies and our extended family nearby, Wyoming doesn't have everything we need. That's why Sue and I and the girls head off on a trip or two a year. The rest of the time, when I leave, I leave alone.

But I'm not gone for months anymore. I'm no longer bicycling across entire continents or climbing 8,000-meter peaks. I've already learned what these expeditions can teach; besides, they take too much time. I've become a master at moving fast. Mount Cook in one day rather than four, McKinley or Aconcagua in nine days rather than 24. I immerse myself in the sticky liquid of another culture, then hightail it back home.

I was there when both Addi and Teal learned to walk. I taught them both how to ride bikes, how to build a snow cave and use a map and compass, poop in the woods and wipe with snow, climb rocks and canoe rivers. Small skills. They taught me how to see the colors and ants, how to swing with my head thrown back, how to listen and believe.

The truth is, if your kids don't change your life, you—and they—are completely missing out. If you choose to bring them into the world, children are the biggest adventure there is. You only hope you can find the strength and courage and grit and love to live up to the opportunity.

AS I PREPARE TO LEAVE, I'm culpably conscious of what I will miss: Halloween, 11-year-old Teal's final soccer game of the year, 13-year-old Addi's first dance, Sue's mountain race. All the ordinary, miraculous breakfasts and dinners.

I've been off on assignment on Sue's birthday or our anniversary countless times; usually I remember to have flowers delivered in my absence, an act that I realize is corny and pathetic and somehow still meaningful. I've missed piano recitals and school plays, swim meets and weddings and funerals. Writing about crawling into a wet sleeping bag in Uganda meant I was not home to tuck my kids in and tell a story and then slip into bed with my wife. Perhaps I now bring home something better than a panda—an understanding that the world is full of choices, and it will someday be up to them to find their own way. They're already becoming writers and athletes themselves.

My daughters, like their mother, miss me, but they don't pine away while I'm gone. Sue says that they bond even tighter, knowing they must take care of one another. That's what I want to be doing.

This is my conundrum, the incurable disease of mountain guides, foreign correspondents, and all kinds of adventurers: We yearn to go, but we don't want to leave.

“I'm not sure I deal with it particularly well,” admits Barry Bearak, 56, a New York Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his coverage of life in war-torn Afghanistan. “I signed up to be the coach of my older boy's Little League team and missed every game. I felt awful.”

Bearak's wife, Celia Dugger, 47, is also a writer, reporting on global poverty issues for the Times. They live in Pelham, New York, with their two sons, Max, 15, and Sam, 10, but have been known to travel three or four months over the course of a year.

“Sometimes it is just really, really hard,” says Bearak. “I phone home every day. On Thanksgiving in 2001, I was in Afghanistan in the middle of a battle, bullets flying all around, and I called home.”

Did he wish he were with his family at that moment?

“No. I felt like I was in the right place for the story. I love my work. The work is important. It's why we all got into journalism: to try to make a difference.”

Dugger picks up the phone. “I feel extraordinarily privileged to do what I do,” she says. “To travel all over the world and write about something meaningful. But there is a sense of grieving when I leave, and after three to four weeks, I miss the boys so much I just have to come home.”

And how is it for Sam and Max?

“I think they've gained from this kind of life,” says Dugger. “They have an enormous curiosity about the wider world. But, yes, it's tough. In some sense it's irresolvable. You're always trying to not let it get to the point where you're paying too high a price for this drive you feel to be out in the world.”

ONE OF THE MOST iconic images of the Katrina disaster was an old, graceful New Orleans house being washed from its foundation, dragged into the tempest of brown water, and gradually torn apart—the roof collapsing, walls shearing off, the structure warping and then sinking like a ship.

To be rendered homeless—whether by hurricane, poverty, or choice—is to be deprived of not simply physical shelter but emotional refuge. Home is where we return to, where we stop and rest and think, where we piece together the new pictures in our minds and try to make sense of our planet. Without home, we are unmoored.

And it's a literary lie that you can never go home again. Somehow, like a boomerang, most of us do. It may take a lot of trying and time before we get there. It may be a different home, it may be a home we build or rebuild, but it is home nonetheless: a physical place, a family or friends or both, a community.

Which is not to say that the homecoming will be smooth. Reentry is inevitably bumpy. If you come in at the wrong angle, you can burn up. Contrary to the Hollywood happy ending, homecomings are usually jagged affairs. There's a period of cultural limbo before you regain your sense of place. Meanwhile, your family is struggling to reintegrate you into their lives. Whenever I come home, jet-lagged and weary, Sue and I cautiously circle each other for a couple of days before harmony returns.

Then the whole process starts all over again.

For better or worse, the warmth of the womb of home will eventually start to smother me. I will grow restless and irritable. I will crave, physically and emotionally, another big hit of travel. Sue's used to it. “Time for another trip,” she'll say. No sooner said than done.

“I have this terrible sense of regret every time I leave Wyoming,” says old friend and fellow Wyomingite Gretel Ehrlich. “It's like some sort of betrayal, as if I'm saying, ‘Things aren't good enough here,' although it's not about that at all. I have this great hunger to see and experience how people and animals and plants survive, even thrive, in other difficult places.”

Gretel, author of the 1985 classic The Solace of Open Space and, recently, The Future of Ice, lives half the year in a cabin in northwestern Wyoming.

“I believe home requires developing an intimacy with a place,” she says. “Intimacy takes time. Every morning I go for an old-fashioned Thoreauvian walk. I like to note how the antelope divide themselves into bands, the ravens doing tricks in the sky, the weeds, the rocks.”

Gretel pauses. “Home isn't my toaster and my toilet; it's the whole community of animals and birds and people and dogs. Home is like a great big tree. It provides shelter, but there are no walls. It doesn't separate you or isolate you from the world. Rather, it's a platform from which to launch.”

I'M LEAVING IN THREE DAYS, and the momentum is building now. That feverish thrill of the prospect of exploring new territory. That curiosity to see what's on the other side of the mountain, the continent, the ocean. The guilt of leaving Sue, Addi, and Teal for the hundredth time, and the fear of what would happen if I didn't come back.

I'm trying to be with them as much as I can. Friday night, a family movie and a bowl of homemade caramel corn. Saturday at Addi's state volleyball tournament, Sunday at Teal's soccer game. Last night Teal read to me from an adventure mystery I read at her age, The Haunted Treasure of the Espectros. Addi read me her latest story, “The Perfect Girl,” written from a boy's perspective.

When they get home from school, I just want to lie on the couch and listen to them practice piano, but I can't. I'm on deadline. Sometimes even when I'm home, I'm not.

The day before I leave, Teal knocks on my study door and wants me to come out and play. Pained, I tell her no.

“That's OK,” she says.

She comes close and peers over my shoulder at the computer screen.

“You know, when you're gone, before bed I come in here and sit in your chair just to be close to you,” she says.

I'm gutted.

Without my home, a place to leave from and return to, travel would be impossible for me. In the balancing scale of life, home is the antipodal counterweight to travel. It is the hand that holds the kite string—and, should the string snap, the kite will twist and fold and drop from the sky like a buckshot bird.

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