The Cleanest Line

Africa-Americas Rowing Voyage – Four Guys in a 29-Foot Boat Rowing from Senegal to Miami

By Hillary Fleming and the crew of the James Robert Hanssen



When Patrick first called to tell me he’d been asked by his good friend Jordan to join the Africa-Americas rowing voyage I knew there was no way he would turn it down. Though he spent a few weeks mulling it over, he wasn’t fooling me. His biggest concern was missing out on his 5th season of Ski Patrol and the guarantee of fresh powder and the chance to throw dynamite across mountain tops.

Patrick is not a waterman. Even though he spent years’ worth of mornings on the Long Island and Puget sounds as a competitive rower he always remained more tied to the mountains. During prep for the trip he would call me and talk about his crash courses in ocean weather, marine charts and nautical tools. I don’t think he ever spent a night at sea before this trip! I knew he’d be a pro in no time, he guided whitewater rafting trips with no previous experience, guided backpacking trips, was on ski patrol at Crystal Mountain for four seasons.

I don’t know whether this trip will turn him into a salty dog looking for a live-aboard sailboat or make him run back to the mountains as fast as he can, but I know either way he’ll be glad he had the chance to be on the Oar Northwest team. And, as his protective older sister, I couldn’t ask for a better group of guys for him to be out there with. Sometimes I look at their location on the map, think, “they are literally a tiny dot in the middle of the ocean,” and then remember the great crew. Then, I’m just stoked to live vicariously through their adventure.

Long Treks China – Skateboarding Through Tibet (Xining to Chengdu)

Words, photos and videos by Adam Colton



My name is Adam Richard Colton and on August 30th, 2012 I set out on a solo self-supported journey to see what the outskirts of Tibet had to offer. I did not speak any Mandarin, I did not speak Tibetan but I am an expert at facial expressions and hand signals. Below is a bit of a recap of the trip. And videos after the jump. --Ed.

[Above: Skating at 15,000' and stoked, just over the big pass.]

I hit the ground running after a 25-hour flight from LAX to XINING, CHINA, elevation 7,000 feet. I felt like a wreck (hahah) and I knew this was going to be a hard trip. It was like waking up from a horrible sleep and rushing outside to run a marathon with no training or warm up. First day, right off the plane, I started skating. I was already being bombarded by big trucks, nasty smoke, and mountains to climb. Towards the end of the day I was so exhausted, I found shelter from all the stares and people in a gutter on the side of the road. When you are tired, gutters are comfortable.

Don’t Wait for Good, Go Find It – Full Circle

by Laurel Winterbourne



The world needs GOOD stories. Fortunately there are people like Trevor Clark who put it all on the line, travel thousands of miles and spend countless hours, days and months to get these stories out there. Trevor is an outdoor adventure photographer and friend of Patagonia who decided that he wanted to tell stories that mattered to him.

After meeting Jessie Stone and hearing her story, there was no question in Trevor’s mind that this story needed to be told. Jessie is a professional whitewater kayaker and medical doctor who went to Uganda to paddle the Nile, but what she saw, changed the course of her life and the lives of many others.

[Above: Dr. Jessie Stone is a member of the US Freestyle Kayak Team and a Medical Doctor. In 2004, she founded Soft Power Health to provide malaria education, prevention and control for the people of Uganda. Video frame: Trevor Clark]

What We Do For a Living - An Excerpt from "The Responsible Company"

by Yvon Chouinard & Vincent Stanley

We are still in the earliest stages of learning how what we do for a living both threatens nature and fails to meet our deepest human needs. The impoverishment of our world and the devaluing of the priceless undermine our physical and economic well-being.

Yet the depth and breadth of technological innovation of the past few decades shows that we have not lost our most useful gifts: humans are ingenious, adaptive, clever. We also have moral capacity, compassion for life, and an appetite for justice. We now need to more fully engage these gifts to make economic life more socially just and environmentally responsible, and less destructive to nature and the commons that sustain us.

This book aims to sketch, in light of our environmental crisis and economic sea change, the elements of business responsibility for our time, when everyone in business at every level has to deal with the unintended consequences of a 200-year-old industrial model that can no longer be sustained ecologically, socially, or financially.

Dirtbag Diaries: Live From 5Point Vol. 3

by Fitz & Becca Cahall

5Point Film Festival invited us back for another live Dirtbag Diaries. And of course, we said, "Yes!" We invited four people up on stage to to talk about a moment in their lives when it all seemed to go wrong. And where those moments have led them, as the effects have rippled through their lives. Today we present the first two stories. At 23, free skier Josh Dueck overshot the landing of a jump and fell 100 feet out of the air. He returned to skiing the following winter in a sit ski. And he rips! You owe it to yourself to watch The Freedom Chair and Josh hucking a backflip.

Kayaker Chris Korbulic was nearing the end of a 7 week trip through central Africa with Ben Stookesberry and Hendri Coetzee. After paddling the difficult stretch of the Lacuga River, a crocodile pulled Hendri underwater. The film Kadoma (full version available on iTunes) tells the story of their trip. Chris has continued to return to Africa pursuing the rivers that brought him together with Hendri.

Listen to "Live From 5Point Vol. 3"
(mp3 - right-click to download - contains some expletives)

Visit dirtbagdiaries.com for links to download the music from "Live From 5Point Vol. 3" or to hear past episodes of the podcast. You can subscribe to the show via iTunes and RSS, or connect with the Dirtbag Diaries community on Facebook and Twitter.

[Graphic by Walker Cahall]

Dirtbag Diaries: Origins

by Fitz & Becca Cahall

Editor's note: Hard to believe it's been five years since The Dirtbag Diaries was born onto the Internet. There have been so many good stories, so many inspiring people. Now, we can't imagine an Internet (or this blog) without them. Thank you Fitz and Becca for all your hard work. And thank you to the fans of the show for your passionate support. Here's Fitz and here's to five more years:

The Dirtbag Diaries turns five. This also happens to be our 100th episode. To celebrate the occasion, we reached out to our collaborators, our contributors and our friends and asked for ideas. I pitched them a bunch of ideas. They shook their heads. Their response was resounding. "We want to hear your story, the story of the Diaries," they said. Our intern, Austin Siadak, stepped forward to do the interview and relay the story. The tables were turned. By nature, we like our creation stories simple. An idea appears in the void.  A light bulb goes off. The apple hits Sir Isaac Newton on the head. In reality, creation stories are messier, more complicated and more interesting than abbreviated elevator pitches. They are a sum of parts. So here goes.

Listen to "Origins"
(mp3 - right-click to download)

Visit dirtbagdiaries.com for links to download the music from "Origins" or to hear past episodes of the podcast. You can subscribe to the show via iTunes and RSS, or connect with the Dirtbag Diaries community on Facebook and Twitter.

[Graphic by Walker Cahall]

A Look Back: Following the Devastation of Tohoku Region Pacific Coast Earthquake

by Takayuki Tsujii



One year ago today, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake occurred at 14:46 off the Sanriku coast in the Tohoku Region of Japan. It exceeded that of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and the Hokkaido Toho-oki Earthquake of 1994 making it the biggest earthquake recorded in Japan’s history. Following the earthquake, Patagonia Japan’s General Manager, Takayuki Tsujii, set out to Sendai City, where our Sendai Store is located, and to Ishinomaki City, located Northeast of Sendai, for three days from March 27th to 29th to assess the specific support Patagonia Japan could provide to the disaster relief efforts. The following is Taka’s report. It was originally published by The Cleanest Line Japan on April 7,2011.

Since it was close to sunset when I arrived at Sendai Station via Yamagata Airport, I visited our Sendai Store and spent my first evening there talking to the store staff, exchanging information. Although we had confirmed the safety of all staff a couple of days after the earthquake, I felt that listening closely to what they had experienced in the 2 weeks since would be very meaningful in trying to gain an accurate understanding of what we as a company can do to help. There were few cracks in the paint of the wall within the store but the building itself seemed to be solid and undamaged.

[Above: Tsujii visiting the sites, near Sendai New Port. All photos: Patagonia Japan]

High Five - Celebrating the Fifth Anniversary of The Cleanest Line [Updated]

by Fitz Cahall

Over five years things change. And yet they don’t.

That was the thought that ran through my head. I sat on top of a spare tire in the back of my truck that I used to call home. Becca sat in the front seat calming our six-week-old child. We were still dressed in our touring gear. It was nuking two inches of snow an hour.

Behind us sat our 13-foot, 1976 Scamp travel trailer that we painstakingly refurbished over the last year and a half. The carbon monoxide alarm had triggered minutes earlier. Three feet of snow covered the propane safety valve. Gas leaked into the cramped space. We fled into the night and the relative comfort of the truck. We couldn’t move the trailer or the truck if we wanted to. There was simply too much snow. I drank a beer because there didn’t seem to be anything I could really do in the situation. We were safe. Rattled, but safe. Five years earlier I couldn’t have imagined this moment.

[Above: The maiden voyage of the Scamp. Photo: Becca Cahall]

The idea was simple. When it snowed we would simply migrate our small family to the mountains so we could be the people we wanted to be – skiers and climbers. We were carving out our vision of life in the mountains. This is our version of the cleanest line. At the moment, it wasn’t pretty. We were cold. We were wet. We were tired. It’s the story of my mountain life. The only thing that was different was that we were three instead of two. That’s a monumental change and yet it isn’t. The only path forward for us is remaining true to our core DNA.

The Labyrinth - an excerpt from Best Women's Travel Writing 2011

From The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011 - an excerpt from “The Labyrinth,” a story about surviving Costa Rican heartbreak and whitewater by Bridget Crocker, Patagonia copy writer. Bridget and fellow BWTW11 contributors will be reading at Diesel, A Bookstore in Malibu on Sun., Dec. 4 at 3p.m.


[Author and river guide, Bridget Crocker. Photo by Tony Demin.]

“This upper section is called ‘The Labyrinth,’” Roland says, cinching down his frayed lifejacket. “It’s been run maybe three or four times before today. I’ve seen it a couple times and I’d say it’s pretty solid Class V. Lots of steep drops through tight chutes. There are a few slots we have to make—it’s not an option to miss them. I think I can remember them all, but we’ll have to scout as we go. There’s no way out of the gorge once we start.”

Normally I would be anxious about taking a flaccid shredder down a little-run Class V boulder garden without the safety of other boaters along or even an evacuation route. Plus, Roland forgot his helmet and we have no throw bag. Oddly, I couldn’t care less. I feel no hint of the usual Class V jitters or concern for our lack of preparedness. It occurs to me that I may be spared a trip to Cathedral Point, as our little daytrip down the Labyrinth is suicidal enough.

Opening Night at the Tin Shed on Broadway

- By Jeff DiNunzio


[The crowd gathers at opening night of the Tin Shed on Broadway. All photos: Anthony Garcia]

The crowd arrived Friday to join us in welcoming Jon Swift. He had been touring steadily, and this was his last performance before a much needed break. He had flown east to help celebrate the opening of Patagonia’s Tin Shed on Broadway—one of two interim stores we opened in New York for the holiday season. Two-hundred people had come, some by accident, to join Swift in the party. The experiment was underway.

The Broadway Tin Shed sits smack between West 99th and 100th Streets, with Columbia University to the north, another Patagonia store 20 blocks south, Central Park to the east, the Hudson at its west, and a logjam of baby strollers right out front. “Tin Shed” is a reference to the days Yvon Chouinard first built rock climbing tools in his blacksmith shop in Ventura, CA. To see the structure in person is to recognize the connection immediately – a small corrugated shack, it looks like something a couple of the guys might throw together in an afternoon to keep the drizzle out of their beer while they tinkered around with their toys. A carcass of retail space on the Upper West Side was reincarnated in about a month. The Broadway store opened two weeks ago, followed by the Upper East Side this past Sunday.