Dean Potter on Flying Like a Bird, the Art of Not Falling, and His Nat Geo Show (Airing 2/12 at 8 p.m.)

Photograph by Mikey Schafer, learn how he got the shot in our Extreme Photo of the Week gallery

Adventure: What were you thinking at this moment?

Dean Potter: On the highline my thoughts are simple and clear. Fundamental needs shine through the mental clutter. I focus completely on my breath, my connection with the line, and making it safely to the other side.

A: Where exactly are you and what are you doing? How high up are you?

D.P.: This highline was set up on the summit of Cathedral Peak, in Yosemite National Park, at an elevation of 10,911 feet.

A: Did the moon look like it does in the photo with the naked eye?

D.P.: Photographer Mikey Schaefer was taking the photographs from approximately 1.2 miles west of the highline. For him, the moon and myself looked exactly like you see it in this picture. From my vantage point on the summit of the Cathedral Peak, the moon was higher in the sky and it looked as the moon always looks to us mortals on the ground.

A: Looks like you don't have any protection. What would you have done if you had fallen?

D.P.: I’ve always been a "free soloist." Whatever I do, I long to be untethered and free. This desire for freedom goes far beyond the highline to every facet of life. Freedom is our most fundamental right. I am completely confident with my ability to catch the line if I were to fall. I’ve practiced this catch move successfully for the past 19 years.

Best U.S. Hiking Cities: Los Angeles, California

By Kate Siber

Sandstone Peak

Hollywood’s star power easily mesmerizes most of Los Angeles’s visitors, which is good news for hikers. For a big city, trails can be relatively unfrequented, and with a dramatic seaside locale, several mountain ranges, and canyons, L.A. has a surprising menu of scenic hikes, like those in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, about 40 miles from downtown.

Get Hiking: One must-do hike, the six-mile Mishe Mokwa loop, climbs 1,400 vertical feet to the top of Sandstone Peak, the highest point in the Santa Monica Mountains, where hikers gaze over the Pacific Coast, the Channel Islands, and the sparkle of Los Angeles far below.

Après Hike: Heading straight south on Yerba Buena Road, you’ll eventually dead-end at the beach. After a cool-off dip, sidle up to Neptune’s Net, a beloved local joint that has served Pacific oysters, lobster, and other seafood to surfers since 1958.

More Info: Santa Catalina Mountains National Recreation Area (http://nps.gov/samo) and Neptune’s Net (neptunesnet.com)

See all our featured Best U.S. Hiking Cities>>

Photograph by Tim Hauf

Best U.S. Hiking Cities: San Francisco, California

By Kate Siber

Mount Tamalpais State Park
Perhaps it’s the mild climate, the scenery, or something in the drinking water that makes San Francisco such a hub for urban kayakers, sailors, mountain bikers, climbers, and hikers. Or maybe it’s areas like Mount Tamalpais State Park, 6,300 acres of wild grasslands, chaparral, redwoods, and wildflowers only 20 miles north of the city.

Get Hiking: Even though it’s within biking distance of the city, parts of the seven-mile loop on the Matt Davis, Steep Ravine, and Dipsea trails can feel nearly as pristine as they must have felt when Miwok Indians walked here centuries ago. That is, of course, until you get to the panoramic views of the coast, city, bay, and beaches from the top of the 2,571-foot namesake peak.

Après Hike: On the way back to San Francisco, head to Muir Beach for a picnic or for a meal at the Pelican Inn’s pub, which serves English specialties such as beef Wellington and ale-steamed mussels.

More Info: Mount Tamalpais State Park (parks.ca.gov) and The Pelican Inn (pelicaninn.com)

See all our featured Best U.S. Hiking Cities>>

Photograph by Edgar Callaert

Best Hikes in the Parks: Yosemite's Half Dome Hike

Photograph by Michael Maloney, San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis

Celebrating Great Outdoors Month With 35 Great Hikes

Half Dome Hike

When to Go: April to October

Round-Trip: 17.2 Miles

Level: Challenging Day Hike

See the Trail Map

This is the hike you’ll talk about as all the others fade into pleasant memories. Not only do you climb 4,800 feet out of Yosemite Valley and past Vernal and Nevada Falls, but the last 900 feet are right up the granite face of fabled Half Dome. Luckily, you get a hand from well-placed steel cables on your way top of the dome. It’s a heart-thumping, insanely wonderful feeling to be hanging in space until you top out—and then the view takes over.

Insider Tip: Break it up by staying the night in Little Yosemite Valley campground, about halfway to Half Dome. This gives you a huge head start on the legions of hikers who do the dome every day.

See All 20 Best Parks Hikes, Photos, and Maps >>

Best New Trips in the World: Hiking California's Sierra High Route

For our annual Adventure Travel issue, we scoured the globe to find the 25 Best New Trips in the World for 2010, complete with a Best Trips photo gallery. Today, we present California. The world's far corners are now well within reach.

CALIFORNIA: Thru-Hike the Sierra

“What makes the Sierra High Route so unique,” says Ian Elman, owner of Southern Yosemite Mountain Guides, “is that it’s not a trail, it’s a concept.” That concept—invented in the 1970s by a guy named Steve Roper, who wrote The Sierra High Route: Traversing Timberline Country—is to trace the highest points across the Sierra while staying above tree line and away from other hikers. The thing is, it’s exceedingly difficult to execute this concept on your own: Only a handful of people complete it each year. Lucky for you, Andrew Skurka will lead the inaugural Sierra High Route outfitted crossing for Southern Yosemite Mountain Guides in 2010. The trekker extraordinaire (and our 2008 Adventurer of the Year) completed the hike in just eight days last year. Starting in Kings Canyon National Park, you’ll hoof it 195 miles north, passing through the John Muir Wilderness, the Ansel Adams Wilderness, and Yosemite National Park.

Click here to continue reading "Best New Trips in the World: California"

El Nino Dumps Two Feet of Snow on Tahoe, Launching an Early Ski Season

Need a Halloween costume? Try a snowsuit. With as-predicted El Niño weather patterns already bringing in the powder, Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe is slated to open as early as October 31. Two storms have covered Lake Tahoe with almost two feet of snow in the past week, and forecasts for the rest of the season are promising: Cold temperatures and big snow could keep the season raging through July. If this season measures up to the Little Boy's Sierra tour in 1998, snowfall could surpass 50 ft!

Check out early season deals on skilaketahoe.com.

—Greer Schott; Photograph courtesy of Ski Lake Tahoe

Hiking to "See" Methuselah, the World's Oldest Tree

Text by Christian Camerota

If you're barking up this tree, it's probably a story it's heard before. That's because Methuselah, an ancient bristlecone pine, is 4,768 years old.

You could make the argument that Inyo National Forest, the home of Methuselah and its relatives, belongs on any wonders of the world list, and certainly merits a visit if you're in or around California's White Mountains (or even if you're not). These trees have had plenty of time to drink in the view from their 10,000 to 11,000 foot perches, as every single one of them has been around for at least 4,000 years. Methuselah is the elder statesman of the bunch and officially the oldest tree in the world according to the Guiness Book of Records.

The real adventure, though, is trying to track this living relic down. To protect it from the overenthused and chainsawed trophy hunters, park officials keep Methuselah's identity a secret, revealing only that it is one of the trees directly along the 4.5-mile hiking loop. Of course, it figures that a tree that predates Stonehenge by 600 years, survived through the rise and fall of the Mayan civilization, and was already 2,600 years old when Jesus was born, is likely to have a few tricks up its sleeve if you do attempt any monkey business.

And if you're feeling particularly lissome after meeting trees more than 130 times your age, Inyo National Forest has over 650,000 acres of land for you to peruse, including two major ski resorts (Mammoth and June mountains), several lakes, and Mount Whitney. No wonder Methuselah put down roots here for eternity.

A Look at Schwarzenegger's Plan to Terminate State Parks

Text by Christian Camerota

Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has a plan to help remedy California's budget debacle: terminate state parks.

With the state in dire financial straits--partially as a result of private and commercial property values run amok and a slew of bad mortgages--it seems only fair to focus on shutting down what little public land remains. A report in the San Jose Mercury News in May indicated that Schwarzenegger's initial proposal was to close 80 percent of California's state parks (220 out of 279), with an estimated savings of about $143 million, or far less than 1 percent of the state's $24 billion budget shortfall (mercurynews.com).

If you're looking for irony here, there's plenty of it. Just consider the fact, as an LA Times article points out, that keeping an eye on unmanned wilderness is actually pretty pricey. When parks close, they become havens for criminal activity that must be closely monitored. Because their verdure is unmaintained, it also means that wildfire potential skyrockets. The cost of fighting and extinguishing one large-scale fire could potentially wipe out all the money saved by closing the parks.

So, it turns out that this is as bad an idea as, say, putting an Austrian-born bodybuilding action movie star in charge of one of the largest states in the union.

No, we jest. Kind of.

But it is testament to the idea's absurdity that Schwarzenegger sees fit to peel funds off an agency with a total budget of only $387 million. It's hard to believe that there's not more wiggle room in the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's $10 billion dollar spending, or maybe the Department of Business, Transportation & Housing's $12 billion in expenditures. Heck, how about lopping some limbs off the $40 billion dollar K-12 Education expense tree and telling the kids to just go out and play in the park, instead?

The good news, if that's what you want to call it, is that the federal government has vowed to step in and seize six of the parks, should they be closed, according to an AP report released yesterday. And we all know how effective the federal government is at managing things (see: economic stimulus plan). So, that's good. Maybe there's hope in some of the parks being "too big to fail."

For more information on efforts to save the parks, you can visit this website, which is updated frequently with related news: savestateparks.org

Headliners: Adventure in 60 Seconds

A roundup of the latest adventure news, by Mindy Zacharjasz

Father-son bonding, Adventure style: John and Ryan Dahlem added Himalaya’s Cho Oyu to their résumé after their latest summit of the world’s sixth highest peak. It’s just another notch on the father-son team’s climbing belt, which already includes the highest peak on five of seven continents.

Triathlete Chrissie Wellington won Kona, Hawaii’s Ironman competition women’s division, after overcoming a ten-minute flat tire delay. The still-undefeated Brit finished the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike and 26.2-mile run in just over nine hours, a full 15 minutes faster than the runner up.

BMW's going electric, Fiat’s offering hypermiling help, but how about finding your car fuel from your pantry? A canola oil-powered car hit 72 mph and beat out all the other fuels at the 600-mile race, Escape from Berkeley (by any non-petroleum means necessary).

Looking for a bright way to save some big bucks and help the environment? Switch you regular light bulbs to LEDs and CFLs, save hundreds of dollars and help Unscrew America. 

Steve Fossett's Wreck Location Suggests Overlooked Clue

Text by Contributing Editor James Vlahos

The first time I looked for Steve Fossett, in September 2007, search and rescue crews were despondent—the desert was large, Fossett was small, and how could he ever be found? The second time, however, nearly a year later, the searchers I met were seriously pumped. As documented in “Zeroing In On Fossett” (ADVENTURE, November 2008), three new volunteer teams were scouring the desert and mountains, the unaffiliated searchers united by a common belief: Fossett’s wreck would be found, and soon.

And they were right. On September 29 ski shop owner Preston Morrow, not affiliated with any search group, stumbled upon Fossett’s Federal Aviation Administration identification while hiking off trail in the wilderness west of Mammoth Lakes, California. Two days later, searchers found the remains of his Bellanca Super Decathlon, which apparently had been flown into a mountainside of rock. The engine was thrown several hundred feet from the disintegrated fuselage. At the time of this writing, Fossett’s remains had not been found.

Over the past year, thousands of people have been involved in the quest to find Fossett, and they fell into two camps.

Continue reading this story >>