"I was looking for no less than a new way of living in this world for our entire society," says Clay Shank. "Like, 'What's the alternative to this capitalistic system that we have here'?" Today, we bring you "700," the story of Clay Shank's ambitious goal to find a new way of life and his unlikely method: skateboarding 700-miles through the state of California, hiking the 210-mile John Muir Trail, climbing Mt. Whitney and Half Dome and, all the while, capturing a video portrait of the people living in California. But, first, Clay had to learn to talk to strangers. You can find Clay's videos, including his newest film "Up To Us" and the trailer for his feature-length film "700-Miles" on his website: http://www.clayshank.com/

"All of my friends kayaked. All of the trips we went on were kayaking trips. When not kayaking, we talked about kayaking," writes Sarah Paul. In the four years since she left home, Sarah had constructed her whole identity around whitewater kayaking. Then, on the first day of a whitewater rafting guide course, she felt something shift inside her shoulder. In a bad way. As recovery dragged on, Sarah had to figure out who she was-- other than a kayaker.

In our fifth annual "Live from 5Point" Film Festival, we interviewed Frank Sanders and Tommy Caldwell. Frank spent his youth climbing on the East Coast. His path took a turn in 1972, when he hitchhiked west and saw Devil's Tower for the first time. Now, at 63, Frank owns and guides out of Devil's Tower Lodge. He shares the story of his journey and what it's like having found his place. Over the last seven years, Tommy has spent months at a time focused on climbing The Dawn Wall, the hardest big wall climb in history. On January 14th, he and his partner, Kevin Jorgenson, pulled over the top of El Capitan into a swarm of cameras and microphones. He talks to Fitz about what it's like to end a seven-year relationship with a project and how his life has changed now that people outside the climbing world recognize him.

"After a summer of bussing tables and lifeguarding, I had saved up enough and I was finally going to get it. My ticket to anywhere I wanted to be," writes Anya Miller. "I was a little worried about the money, but I was in complete realization that anything I actually wanted to do in life -- literally, anything -- depended on it." Today, Anya shares the story of her first sleeping bag, and the person she became with the help of the women's medium, right-hand zip cocoon. When you can sleep anywhere, you can go anywhere.

In the golden days, dirtbags lived to climb. They didn't work, have permanent addresses or sponsors. They ate leftovers off of tourists' plates and slept in beater cars or caves. They stayed in one place only as long as teh weather allowed for climbing. Now, our modern world of fees, time limits and locked dumpsters has made it nearly impossible to live that way anymore. Dirtbagging is dying-- or at least that's what some people claim. Join Matt Van Biene for a day on Yosemite's Camp 4 as he talks to climbers of all different ages, nationalities and backgrounds. Is dirtbagging dead or alive? And what does the modern dirtbag look like? Tune in.

"We opened my aunt's basement door and walked into the dusty room. Among cardboard boxes and carpentry tools stood a bright red bicycle. The frame had a few patches of rust. The components looked clunky and the gears grated roughly when I spun the pedals. It had no seat post or saddle. It was unrideable, but it had character," writes Graeme Lee Rowlands. He had a few months before he would move from Oakland, CA to start college in Squamish, BC. And he had decided that he would make the 1000-mile trip on a bicycle that he would build himself. He didn't know anything about building a bike, nor had he ever ridden more than 40-miles in a day. But he was determined.

"My first few days in Moab's red rock desert were like a blind date where everything went wrong," writes Hilary Oliver. "For one, it was August. My metal aviator sunglasses got so hot in the sun that I couldn't smile or they'd burn my cheeks." Four years later, Hilary and the desert got a second chance at their botched first encounter. Over the past ten years, they have developed a relationship with one another. Now, she has to learn how to share her place with all of the other people who have had their hearts stoled by the landscape of juniper trees and red and orange sandstone. You can find more of Hilary's writing at thegription.com

When Kevin Fedarko stepped through the door of the O.A.R.S. boathouse in Flagstaff, AZ, he didn't realize he had crossed a figurative threshold as well as a literal one. Kevin had planned on rafting the Grand Canyon for a wilderness medicine course. Then, he planned to go back to his life as a successful freelance writer. But what he saw in that first week on the Colorado River left him desperate to find a way to keep coming back. Kevin spent the next smelly, humiliating, beautiful and life-altering decade of his life developing a relationship with the Grand Canyon, writing about the Grand Canyon, and, ultimately, figting to protect it. To learn more about the current threats to the Grand Canyon and how you can help, visit Save the Confluence and Grand Canyon Trust. You can purchase Kevin's book, The Emerald Mile, here. Brendan Leonard wrote and narrated this episode. You can find more of his work at Semi-Rad.com.

"My future captain interviewed me with three questions," remembers Joe Aultman-Moore. "Had I ever sailed before? No. Did I get seasick? I don't know. And, could I leave tomorrow? Yes." As Joe learned to sail while hitchhiking a sailboat across the Atlantic Ocean, he also discovered the unexpected ways in which travel could explode his perceptions of normal. Check out "Going Into the Wild," another essay Joe wrote on hitchhiking--but this time thumbing cars, not boats, through Interior Alaska.

When Matt McKee first heard about the position forecasting avalanches for Minera Pimenton, a gold mine in the Chilean Andes, it sounded like the snow geek's dream job. But, mere hours after his plane touched down in Santiago, Matt started getting hints that maybe he had walked into a situation that more closely resembled a nightmare: a den of avalanche paths, a mine full of workers who didn't believe in avalanches and a country that looked for someone to blame if things went wrong. Today, we bring you Matt's story of trying to make it out alive.

"In the day to day tangle of life, it's easy to let go of the things that provide focus, and calm and perspective," writes Fitz Cahall. "I find that serenity so easily in wilderness. How do we carry that home?" While on a trip to Minnesota's Boundary Waters, Fitz resolved to do something back in "regular life" to try to tap into that quietness every day, for one year.

It's January. Time for our annual "Year of Big Ideas." This year, we talked to Alastair Humphreys, a 2012 National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. Among other things, Alastair has walked across India and 1000 miles through the largest sand desert in the world, cycled 46,000 miles around the world and rowed across the Atlantic. People often come up to him after his talks and tell him they wish they could go on the kinds of adventures that he does. Alastair believes that they can. Today, he explains what he's learned about what it takes to make an adventure happen. Here's to another year of big ideas, and committing to them. Happy 2015!

There comes a stage in a great athlete's career when the pursuit of the technical difficulty take a backseat. It gives way to simplicity, an aesthetic, and possibly to an iconic style that leaves an impression on a sport. Will Gadd is one of the most accomplished mountain athletes ever. Most people know him as a climbing legend, but he also holds that stature in the fringe sport of paragliding where he's won competitions and held the single flight distance record for a decade. Last year, Will and renowned pilot Gavin McClurg embarked on a truly incredible trip down the spine of the Canadian Rockies. The goal was to create a continuous line through the air. At night, they landed in the alpine, slept and repeated the process for 35 days. The trip changed Will's perspective, not just on the craft, but on how he pursues adventure.

"I'm thirty-year-old, and a complete and utter failure," writes Chris Kalman. "My mom is a PhD astrophysicist, my dad, a PhD mathematician, and my sister has a Master's in epidemiology. They all have jobs, children, houses. I, on the other hand, am a dirtbag." Earlier this fall, Chris moved away from his favorite climbing haunts toward something bigger and more intimidating than giant rock walls. As he helped care for an extended family member thousands of miles from the place he had called home, he had to figure out how to take a journey very different than an annual pilgrimage to climb in Patagonia: a journey within. You can find more of Chris Kalman's writing on his blog, Fringe's Folly, "for the purists, dirtbags and salty oldtimers who live climbing."

"Death-by-lightning-strike statistics kept swirling through my head, causing me to push my 13-year-old daughter to the very limits of her physical ability. We were on her Trip," writes Otto Gallaher. Today, we bring you the story of a rite-of-passage tradition in Otto's family simply known as 'The Trip'. What outdoor traditions does your family keep?

Regardless of how you choose to play outside, if someone gets hurt in the mountains, the first step on the checklist remains the same: "scene safety"--you make sure the thing that hurt your buddy isn't going to hurt you too. But there's no checklist for emotional safety when things go wrong. Today we bring you the story of a family, an accident and the repercussions they navigated for years afterwards.

Ghost stories. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, ghost stories have a way of seeping into your mind. And, if they're really good, suddenly, that soft rapping on the window or the flickering lights become more ominous--like we've primed out minds to seek another explanation. In part, that's the fun of ghost stories. But how do we explain those things we had no intention of seeing? Our Tales of Terror winners, Justin Gero and Melina Coogan, present tales of seeing something they really, really didn't want to.

"It's never encouraging to be awoken in a tent by headlights. I wanted to play possum--roll over, and pretend to sleep until they left," writes David Hanson. "But this was exactly why I was here, a few hundred miles into a 500-mile canoe float down Georgia's Chattahoochee. I came here to see the river, but I really came here to see its people. And here they were." Today, we bring you David's story of discovering a culture at once foreign and strangely familiar--and all within a day's drive of the place where he grew up.

"The reality of climbing is, if you climb long enough, you're bound to bail," writes Dean Fleming. "I've left rappel biners on sport bolted 5.8s. I've bailed from trees, chockstones, fixed cams, and Manzanita bushes. Sure, sometimes my pride gets a little dinged, but so far I've survived some pretty weird situations." We figured with that kind of experience, Dean could teach us a thing or two. Today, Dean presents another Lifestyle Tip for the Committed, with his five step guide to convinving your climbing partner to rig a retreat. Find more of Dean's words + photos at California Climber Magazine.

"Encouragement. Peer Pressure. Bullying. Call it what you like," writes Tom Ireson, "but the climbing community is full of it." We rely on our friends, mentors and coaches to push us past our own self-doubt--help us realize what we're capable of. And yet, we never actually know what someone is capable of ahead of time. Today, we bring you a story on searching for the line between pushing someone to succeed, and pushing them too far. You can hear more of Tom's stories if you visit him at The Olive Branch in El Chorro, Spain--a family run hostel for adventurers of all kinds--where he works as a chef.

"I remember really quickly going from, 'Wow, I'm home, this feels great', to 'Holy s***, what did I do to my mom'?" says alpinist Kyle Dempster. "And that was the first time I saw how truly difficult it is for mothers." Today, we bring you two stories--one from Hilary Oliver, and one from Kyle Dempster and his mother, Terry--about the struggle of loving an adventurer. The struggle between loving them so much that you don't want to see them hurt, and loving them so much that you want to support them in pursuing their dreams--in doing the things that make them tick. This story was originally inspired by one of Kyle's blog posts by the same title. You can find more of Kyle's writing at Through My Eyes. You can find Hilary's writing at TheGription.

"I was disoriented beneath the cold water. I kicked toward the surface, but the force of the water held me down. I twisted and hung underwater for a moment. A thought passed through my head--this is what it feels like to drown," writes Dan Gingold. Dan and three friends planned to raft the Musconetcong River into the larger Delaware River over three days. With the river running high with spring rains and little prior recon, their mellow trip became more than they bargained for as they navigated multiple dams.

"It's like you're scared to move forward-- you just need something to give you a little nudge," says Jonah Manning. "You can call it support, but, really it's just like a little bit of a shove forward. And I'll never forget it, because Widge was certainly that for me." Today, we bring you the story of Widge, the ultimate adventure partner. Sometimes when that metaphorical door of adventure opens, you need someone to walk through by your side.

"Standing up in my pedals, I dug so deep to make it to the top of the hill I wasn't positive that my butt could bear sitting back down on my bike seat when I got to the top," Hilary Oliver remembers. "I'd hardly said a word to another human being all day, and began to wonder: What the hell was I doing out there, anyway?" Hilary had driven that stretch of asphalt between Fort Collins and Denver many times, but she didn't know what it had to teach her about herself and where she came from until she got out from behind the windshield. You can find more of Hilary's writing at TheGription.com.

A month ago, we headed south for our annual pilgrimage to the 5 Point Film Festival and our live Dirtbag Diaries. Today, we share stories from two women, from two different generations who share a love for rivers. In 2013, Amber Valenti had the opportunity to paddle one of the last great free-flowing rivers in the world-- The Amur River. Amber, along with three other women paddlers, documented the river from its remote headwaters in Mongolia to the wide-ribboned channels in Russia. Amber wrote and produced the film, "Nobody's River," filled with hilarious antics and the soulful exploration of a new place and oneself. Our next guest, Katie Lee, was a force to have on stage. Feisty, poignant and ready to tell you what she thinkS, Katie is not your typical nonagenarian. Katie started her career as an actress in Hollywood, but soon left it behind after taking her first trip down the Grand Canyon. But it was Glen Canyon that she fell in love with. When it was flooded in 1963, Katie used her voice to write songs and books about the river and the west. And she's still using her voice as an activist for the environment. This episode contains strong language.