National Geographic ADVENTURE

Lost Outward Bound Kids Found in California Backcounty

Text by Editor John Rasmus

Update:  The Associated Press just reported that the nine kids and two guides lost in the Sierra Nevada have been found! Details of what exactly happened are unknown at this point.

This case of the missing Outward Bound group in California is baffling. I can't remember an instance when such a large group—nearly a dozen teenage kids and their two guides—simply disappeared in the backcountry. By the time you read this they will probably be safe and sound, with some simple explanation along the lines of "we got really, really lost."  But in the meantime, there are a lot of kids wandering around somewhere in the Sierra Nevada backcountry. 

There are two ways of looking at the fact of such a large group being lost. On the one hand, whatever happened—bad falls, extreme conditions, etc.—they have each other to help, and they will be more visible to search parties. On the other hand, when things go bad in such large numbers, they can go really bad—the kind of "accident cascade" that our Deep Survival columnist, Laurence Gonzales, writes about: someone gets lost; others go out to find them, and they get lost. Before long, if good judgement doesn't prevail quickly, things are spiraling downward. If you add in things like hypothermia, dehydration, or other conditions that can affect the judgement of more than one person, it can be a huge challenge for the leaders in charge.

I'm not going to speculate—I have no idea what really happened. I may just feel a little jittery because 1) we ran a story, "A Death at Outward Bound," about what can go wrong in just such situations in Adventure last year. And 2) my 15-year-old daughter is about to embark on a backpacking trip with a dozen kids and fairly young leaders in the Colorado Rockies in a couple of weeks.

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Gear Review: Hobie ATR Standup Paddleboard

Text by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro
Photo by Joshua Scott

Five years ago the only guys who knew what “stand-up paddleboarding” meant were pro surfers like Laird Hamilton and Dave Kalama. Since then the sport has invaded beach scenes from coast to coast, attracting converts from outside the surfing world. Fitness fanatics have latched on to stand-up’s full-body workout—you stand facing forward, feet shoulder-width apart, and paddle canoe-style—while hydro-explorers have started using the boards to access hard-to-reach shorelines. The first time I tried it, I enjoyed tooling around my Southern California harbor, but the excitement wasn’t worth the hassle of schlepping an unwieldy, 30-plus-pound beast.

Now comes the Hobie ATR ($1,350). Using molded construction similar to windsurf rigs, the board weighs as little as 22 pounds. For carrying, there’s an inset handhold in the middle: easy peasy. I grabbed it with one arm, zipped across the sand, and in seconds the ATR was blasting through the water as if motorized. If you have decent balance, stability on mellow H2O should be no problem, thanks to the ATR’s lengthy, 11-foot deck (stand-up paddle surfing takes a bit more practice). Give it ten minutes—plus or minus a fall or two—and you’ll be walking on water your very first day.

We're also big fans of the Werner Spanker Paddle ($339; pictured).

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Another Roadside Attraction: Montezuma Valley, California

Photo by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

The Best New Surf Movie Not About Surfing

Text by Assistant Editor Ryan Bradley
Photograph courtesy Magnolia Pictures

Surfwise is not a documentary film about surfing. For this reason, it’s the best movie about surfing to come out in a good long while. Confused? Fair enough. Let me try to explain.

Continue reading this story>>

The Adventure Life with Steve CasimiroSurf and Ye Shall Be Asked: The Curiously Interrogative World of Gabe Sullivan

Text by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro. Photographs by Sierra Sullivan, Tom Servais (top, bottom)

Flipping through Surfer Magazine goes something like this: blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, shocking lime green, blue, blue, blue.

There in each issue, jumping out from Surfer’s sea of epic waves and countless board short ads, is a rusty but glowing, chartreuse 1972 VW camper van, the icon and motorized doppleganger of Curious Gabe, Gabe Sullivan, who, every month, poses to ten complete strangers the kind of existential questions you’d expect to be asked in the pages of The Atlantic Monthly or in a dorm room at 1 a.m. Questions like, Does surfing improve with age? Would you rather be an East- or West-Coast surfer? And, a real brain scrambler, What’s worse—being a hoser or a poser?

Continue reading this story and see more photos>>

The Adventure Life With Steve Casimiro: Into the Wild Flowers

Text and photographs by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

The desert in bloom is a terrestrial Milky Way, the bright blossoms standing in sharp contrast to the dry vacuum surrounding them. Across the Southwest, last winter’s consistent rains have created one of the best wild flower seasons in years. And while flower sniffing has always seemed a soft pursuit to me, it makes one heck of a good reason to throw on a backpack and get out there. So, last weekend, we did.

See more photos and discover seven great places to see springtime flowers in California and Arizona >>