From SURFER
Looking back at the last decade, SURFER has showcased shifts in the sport’s culture and its defining events, stories that Editor-in-Chief Todd Prodanovich says “helped us make sense of Andy Irons legacy, laugh at ourselves for falling into surf-hipster cliches, contextualize the sweeping changes to competitive surfing and feel genuinely awestruck at the kinds of off-grid adventure some surfers are still able to find in this ever-shrinking world.” However, for Prodanovich, it’s the definitive profile of Australian icon Mark Occhilupo that he ranks as his all-time favorite feature in SURFER‘s storied run, entering its 60th year in 2020.
“It’s unequivocally the greatest comeback story in the history of surfing,” Prodanovich says. “Sean Doherty perfectly captures the strange charisma of Mark Occhilupo and paints a picture of a life truly unlike any other in surfing or otherwise.” Read the 2015 story by Sean Doherty.
Beyond overlooked corners of surf culture on “the other North Shore” of Lake Superior, to tracking the rise in wave pools, Prodanovich points readers closer to home with a deep look into localism and its discontents with the attention-grabbing lawsuits from 2017 that embroiled Southern California’s Lunada Bay. Prodanovich calls it a “strange story of the downfall of one of California’s most notorious groups of local surfers, and what it could mean for the practice of localism as a whole.” Read the 2017 story by Ashtyn Douglas-Rosa.
The 10 Best Feature Stories of the Decade From SURFER Magazine
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From POWDER
Deadwood, S.D., would never be considered a ski town, unless you really considered the scene at nearby Torrey Peak. Courtesy Powder Magazine / Robin O’Neill
The 10 Best Feature Stories of the Decade From SURFER Magazine
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The 10 Best Feature Stories of the Decade From SURFER Magazine
For POWDER Editor-in-Chief Sierra Shafer, a decade that has divided attention by over-serving stories is best remembered with pieces that cast the spotlight on timeless quality that too often goes under-appreciated. That recognition means odes to tangible symbols of ski culture like the humble wire ticket wicket, or a deeper look at a color-blind Swiss ski photographer who captures mesmerizing drone imagery. In the case of destination coverage, Shafer selected colorful portraiture of ski hills from a private in-holding deep inside the heart of B.C.’s Cathedral Provincial Park to a pair of unlikely U.S. resorts in the Black Hills and the Catskills. Read the 2019 story on a small South Dakota ski community that hitches its wagons to mining, by Clare Menzel.
Once the roof of the New World, New York’s Catskill Mountains remain a skier’s escape. Read the 2019 story by Porter Fox
The other under-appreciated side of skiing that POWDER highlighted over the last 10 years were the undiscussed human ones. That goes for individuals with the launch of the title’s award-winning Human Factor series — exploring the psychological elements involved with decision-making when skiing in avalanche terrain — as well as the collective labor that powers the ski experience. That is, the thousands of J-1 visa workers employed at ski resorts around the U.S. each winter, bussing tables, bumping chairs, checking lift tickets. By shadowing the short-term foreign workers at Lake Tahoe’s Homewood resort, the magazine gave readers a deeper look at what, and who, make ski resorts go round. Read the 2018 story by Megan Michelson
From SNOWBOARDER
For SNOWBOARDER Editorial Director Pat Bridges, the choice of a story subject to memorialize was obvious: Jake Burton Carpenter, the man who Bridges says, “impacted the riding life more than any other.” After Burton Carpenter’s recent passing in November, Bridges described his pioneering role not as the first to step on a snowboard or found a company, but as “the first to define himself as a snowboarder,” and a man who made snowboarding his life’s work. In Bridges’ sprawling 2016 interview with Burton on the eve of his company’s 40th anniversary, the two candidly discuss how Burton Carpenter started making boards, being outlawed into bumming snowcat rides at night, his early partnership with Craig Kelly (and its legal fallout with Sims), developing highback bindings, as well as sensitive subjects like his bouts with cancer and Miller Fisher Syndrome and its devastating results: paralysis, suicidal thoughts, and open-heart surgery. Burton Carpenter’s outlook on his recovery and the fire that has sustained his company is certainly worth the longer look. Read the Sept. 2016 interview.
What Snowboarding Owes Jake Burton: A Remembrance
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From BIKE
What Snowboarding Owes Jake Burton: A Remembrance
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What Snowboarding Owes Jake Burton: A Remembrance
Uncovering trails has long been a tenet of BIKE‘s destination coverage. With the decade’s shift from print- to digital-first marquee content releases, Editor-in-Chief Nicole Formosa highlights HUAYHUASH as the piece where an epic ends-of-the-earth tale successfully met innovative digital-first storytelling formats. The interactive, four-chapter parallax scrolling feature incorporates words, photos, video clips of three Colorado-based friends who set out on a self-supported mountain bike circumnavigation of one of the world’s most wonderful and wicked mountain ranges — the Huayhuash of the Peruvian Andes. And the result is a lasting story (the accompanying film remains one of BIKE‘s most-viewed YouTube films of all time). See the 2014 story by Joey Schusler and Thomas Woodson.
Explorations to distant lands aren’t the only BIKE stories that stuck out to Formosa. There’s plenty of inspiration to be plumbed from profiles of eccentric riders — whether it’s Rage Against the Machine bassist Tim Commerford and the 12-year-old neighbor who got him into riding mountain bikes; or Peter Donner, a quirky Utah canyon-dweller who does the same seven-hour, 50-mile ride every day of the riding season — and ordinary places, like the football-crazed deep South, where Kristin Butcher documented the lasting impact of high school mountain biking leagues. However, few stories strike as many nerves as the powerful feature on Colin Meagher, one of the sport’s most respected photographers, documenting his gripping battle through ALS that continues after being handed what amounted to a death sentence with the diagnosis. Read Mike Ferrentino’s June 2019 feature.
No BIKE list would be complete without a nod to this feature on Casey Brown and how her wild upbringing (and suspect circumstances surrounding her brother’s death) have shaped her riding career. “She was just coming onto the scene,” Formosa says, “but is now one of the most recognizable women in the sport.” Read Formosa’s 2015 feature.
BIKE Magazine’s Top 9 Mountain Biking Features of the Last Decade
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From Canoe & Kayak
BIKE Magazine’s Top 9 Mountain Biking Features of the Last Decade
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BIKE Magazine’s Top 9 Mountain Biking Features of the Last Decade
As a longtime C&K contributor, Tyler Williams is used to penning tales from the annals of whitewater, like his 2018 feature on the life and legacy of Doug Tompkins, or his August 2012 classic on the historic Canoandes expedition by a group of Polish students who slipped the Iron Curtain and changed river-running forever. Two years ago, however, Williams inserted himself, inadvertently, in one of the most gripping tales in Canoe & Kayak‘s 46-year run. He recounts a harrowing run-in with an armed landowner in Arizona that led to shots fired and a 22.5-year prison sentence. Read Williams 2018 account.
This decade has seen plenty of extraordinary paddling feats, including: Aniol Serrasolses’s 2018 solo one-day run of the Stikine; Aleksander Doba crossing the Atlantic (again) in 2017; Erik Boomer and Jon Turk kayaking around Ellesmere Island in 2011; Freya Hoffmeister’s 2015 circumnavigation of South America; the 2015 first descent on Papua New Guinea’s Beriman River; the 24-hour distance padding world record speed descent set on Idaho’s Salmon River in 2017; as well as C&K’s exclusive on Knox Hammack and James Shimizu notching the third, fourth attempts on 189-foot Palouse Falls earlier this year (to name just a few).
From TransWorld SKATEboarding
Beyond their statement film release of last year’s DAEWON, a documentary feature covering the career highlights and uncertain life moments throughout the 30-year-career of skateboarding legend Daewon Song, as well as an interview series tracking skateboarding’s inclusion in the 2020 Summer Olympics, TransWorld SKATEboarding continues documenting the sport’s next innovators and influencers. TW SKATE Editor-in-Chief Jaime Owens was quick to highlight an opportunity he had last year to capture a potent mix of talent that is the Volcom Skate team taking on New York City. See Owens’ June photo essay here.
Nyjah Huston, Lacey Baker and Louie Lopez Among First-Ever USA Skateboarding Team
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Nyjah Huston, Lacey Baker and Louie Lopez Among First-Ever USA Skateboarding Team
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Nyjah Huston, Lacey Baker and Louie Lopez Among First-Ever USA Skateboarding Team
When it comes to an athlete of iconic GOAT stature like Tony Hawk, you can get buried in over-coverage, getting life advice from the legend, to his take on CTE and safety equipment, to how Hawk stayed in shape to land the 900, a defining trick of his career, decades later at age 48. Owens digs a bit deeper into the TW SKATE archive, suggesting a 2015 interview illuminating Hawk’s unfiltered take on the full story of the original 900. Read the story by Mackenzie Eisenhour.
Tony Hawk on His Favorite Gear and Why He Always Carries His Board
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From Newschoolers
Tony Hawk on His Favorite Gear and Why He Always Carries His Board
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Tony Hawk on His Favorite Gear and Why He Always Carries His Board
While a few notable interviews emerge atop Newschoolers’ best freestyle ski stories of the last decade — from the first with the ever-creative Eric Pollard in 2015 and its recent followup, to a 2014 conversation with the endlessly stylish Phil Casabon — Newschoolers Editor Twig Spensley highlights one that cuts a little deeper in ‘Unbuckling the Suicide Belt,’ as well as the curious consideration of the legendary Chad’s Gap, brought to life by Salt Lake City photographer Brent Benson, who witnessed nearly every session at the Utah backcountry ski jump of jumps, “from the very first kicker built by Chad Zurinskas to Tanner Hall’s redemption run in 2017.” Read the full story by Emma Renly.
Watch: Eric Pollard’s Epic New Ski Film ‘Drawn From Here’
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From SUP
Watch: Eric Pollard’s Epic New Ski Film ‘Drawn From Here’
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Watch: Eric Pollard’s Epic New Ski Film ‘Drawn From Here’
The last decade saw the explosive rise and then gradual contraction of a new segment of water sports as standup paddling spread quickly across the globe. SUP Magazine provided a voice for the burgeoning sport as a wave of brands, athletes, innovators, instructors, event organizers and acolytes alike embraced different disciplines of the sport, across open oceans, surf zones, lakes and rivers. At ever stop, the story remained the same: an exciting act of pioneering something new, or at least a new way to experience and understand bodies of water. Whether it was urban explorations and wild expeditions or first standup river descents and race divisions, the frontier feel permeated the coverage. Former Editor Will Taylor’s first-person take on one of the sport’s most sacred tests, the legendary Molokai 2 Oahu race, marked a high point, as did former Associate Editor Jack Haworth’s 2018 take on how Puerto Rican paddlers recovered in the wake of Hurricane Maria. For a single event marking a notable SUP first however, few rival the excitement of Chris Bertish’s solo and unsupported 93-day crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. Read Haworth’s 2017 coverage, from Bertish’s landing in Antigua.
Exclusive Gallery: Chris Bertish Completes Solo Transatlantic SUP Crossing
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The Boldest Adventures of the Last Decade
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The Must-Read Men’s Journal Stories of the Decade
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Exclusive Gallery: Chris Bertish Completes Solo Transatlantic SUP Crossing
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Exclusive Gallery: Chris Bertish Completes Solo Transatlantic SUP Crossing
The Boldest Adventures of the Last Decade
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The Boldest Adventures of the Last Decade
The Must-Read Men’s Journal Stories of the Decade
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The Must-Read Men’s Journal Stories of the Decade
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