He was the best alpinist of his generation, a quiet, unassuming Canadian known for bold ascents of some of the world’s most iconic peaks. Four months ago, at the age of 25, he traveled to Alaska to join climber Ryan Johnson for a first ascent outside Juneau. They never came back, and a frantic nine-day search left more questions than answers.

Emergency workers were trying to transport the injured person out of the park, about 150 miles east of San Francisco.

Don't try this!

There is a heated debate in the mountaineering community about the morality of risking more lives to retrieve bodies from one of the most unforgiving places on Earth.

The mountain rises glistening from an encasement of glaciers in the far reaches of the Karakoram. Pyramid-shaped, an austere link to eternity, K2 yields only to Everest in height and is deadlier. Its walls are vertiginous no matter the approach. Only the most experienced climbers attempt ascents, and for every four who crawl to its peak, one dies.

The wildest rock-climbing event in the world happens annually in the Ozarks of Arkansas, in a u-shaped canyon with enough routes for 24 straight hours of nonstop ascents. They call it Horseshoe Hell, but don't be fooled: for outdoor athletes who love physical challenges with some partying thrown in, it's heaven.

A plan for a drive-up climbing center on the North side of the mountain also includes the mainstays of a modern resort: lodging, restaurants, and a museum. Is this the future of the world’s highest peak? By Grayson Schaffer.

David Roberts, a major figure in modern adventure literature, has explored risk, death, and loss for more than 50 years. Now he’s fighting cancer while producing new writing—including a series of reflections on his disease—that friends and colleagues believe is his best work yet. By Brad Rassler.

Confronting the true danger on top of the world's tallest mountain. By Gabriel Filippi and Brett Popplewell.

We’re usually comfortable deciding whether or not an athlete is doping. Lance Armstrong was definitely doping by using erythropoietin. Tennis player Novak Djokovic, on the other hand, was definitely not doping when he slept in an egg-shaped barometric chamber. We tell one from the other by a kind of cultural gestalt, sorting out those who dope and those who don’t. Then we take that one step farther and reason: Those who don’t, compete cleanly—those that do, cheat. But what if a substance is both performance-enhancing and a benefit to an athlete’s health? What if that substance is oxygen?

Alex Honnold has his own verb. “To honnold”—usually written as “honnolding”—is to stand in some high, precarious place with your back to the wall, looking straight into the abyss. To face fear, literally. The verb was inspired by photographs of Honnold in precisely that position on Thank God Ledge, located 1,800 feet off the deck in Yosemite National Park. Honnold side-shuffled across this narrow sill of stone, heels to the wall, toes touching the void, when, in 2008, he became the first rock climber ever to scale the sheer granite face of Half Dome alone and without a rope.

Outside profiled County Donegal in the April 2016 issue and called it the 'end of the rainbow' for adventure seekers.

Our greatest daredevil stares down middle age. By Katherine Laidlaw.

After two years of unimaginable tragedy, everyone from outfitters and Sherpas to would-be climbers and the Nepalese government is questioning the future of commercial mountaineering. And then there’s David Morton, a veteran guide who spent the past year asking: What happens when you try to leave the world’s most lucrative mountain forever? By Abe Streep.

Film-maker Jennifer Peedom and the son of history’s most famous Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, on how his people are stuck between a rock and a hard place. By Luke Buckmaster.

The solid, geometric rock produced from Panama’s last volcanic eruption makes the district of Boquete an ideal destination for rock climbers.

On January 16, 2012, mountaineering history was made. The actors in the drama were two of the best young alpinists alive—a 21-year-old Coloradan, Hayden Kennedy, and a 24-year-old from British Colu…

An expedition team set out to explore Hkakabo Razi. What they found was a treacherous journey that challenged their bodies and gear.

Mountaineers risk avalanches, storms, conflicts, and a curse when they attempt to summit the peak.