Leath Tonino is the author of two essay collections about the outdoors, most recently聽The West Will Swallow You. A freelance writer, his work appears in聽Orion,听The Sun,听High Country News,听国产吃瓜黑料 Journal, and elsewhere.
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Ed LaChapelle, a coinventor of the modern avalanche transceiver, has some strange, wonderful ideas about snow
As a brutal heat wave enveloped the country this summer, our writer packed up a cooler full of Gatorade and headed to the Mojave Desert
Right out of college, Leath Tonino traveled to Antarctica to experience the frozen landscape of his childhood exploration heroes. The daily routine was a bit dull鈥攕hoveling snow for the U.S. government鈥攗ntil a pair of skinny skis unlocked the potential of the vast snowy expanse.
鈥淚 really did spend 16-plus hours covering fewer than three miles鈥
Picking daisies with the Craighead bros
Why reaching outdoor nirvana means journeying far from the beaten path
In 2017, the Trump administration announced that it was shrinking the iconic Utah national monument by nearly 50 percent. Leath Tonino devised a sketchy 200-mile solo desert trek, following the path of the legendary cartographer who literally put these contentious canyons on the map.
The Jack Jumping World Championships鈥攚here competitors attach a single ski to a stool, then hang on as they hurtle down the slope鈥攈as been going strong for almost four decades. Mixing a bit of history with adrenaline and flipping a bird at the Big Ski establishment in the process, the event showcases ski culture at its very finest.
The most perilous road in America gets 300 inches of snow a year, features 70 named avalanche paths, and has almost no guardrails. Who would be bold enough to keep Colorado鈥檚 infamous Highway 550 clear in winter? Leath Tonino hopped into the cab of a Mack snowplow truck to find out.
Bernie Krause鈥檚 vast library of field recordings reveals a sad truth: wild sounds are quickly vanishing
The persistent water shortage in the West is changing the landscape not only in ways you can see, but ways you can hear