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Snowboarder Travis Rice
Photograph by Mark Gallup, Red Bull Photo Pool
Snowboarder Travis Rice flies off a cliff in the Kootenay Mountains, British Columbia, Canada, while making The Art of Flight, which brought terrain park tricks to big-mountain descents around the world.
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Snowboarder Travis Rice
Photograph by Scott Serfas, Red Bull Photo Pool
Snowboarders Travis Rice, John Jackson, and Mark Landvik watch a daring helicopter maneuver in Alaska.
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Snowboarder Travis Rice
Photograph by Danny Zapalac Photography, Red Bull Photo Pool
Travis Rice snowboards in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Rice grew up skiing at Jackson Hole, where his dad was on the ski patrol.
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The Ultimate Descent: Sano Babu Sunuwar, Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa
Photograph by Sano Babu Sunuwar
Sano Babu Sunuwar and Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa took a tandem paraglider flight off Mount Everest and set a new record for the longest flight from the mountain's summit.
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The Ultimate Descent: Sano Babu Sunuwar, Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa
Photograph by Sano Babu Sunuwar
After climbing Everest, summitting it, and paragliding down, Sano Babu Sunuwar and Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa kayaked the Ganges River all the way to the sea.
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Climber Cory Richards
Photograph by Cory Richards
Climber-photographer Cory Richards takes a photo of Simone Moro (right) and Denis Urubko in the light of the setting sun on 26,360-foot Gasherbrum II, in the Karakoram of Pakistan. During the climb Richards became the first American to summit an 8,000-meter peak in winter.
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Climber Cory Richards
Photograph by Cory Richards
During the first successful winter climb of an 8,000-meter-peak in Pakistan, Cory Richards took this photo of Kazak climber Denis Urubko as he climbed the last several meters to the summit on February 2, 2011. The climbers were hit by a Class 4 avalanche on their descent. All survived.
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Climber Cory Richards
Photograph by Cory Richards
Climber-photographer Cory Richards documented his fellow climbers in the first light on summit day at 7,500 meters—the last good weather of the trip. The team faced minus 50ºF temperatures, storms, and even an avalanche on their historic climb, the subject of the documentary Cold.
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Surfer Carissa Moore
Photograph by Simon Williams, Red Bull Photo Pool
Nineteen-year-old surfer Carissa Moore cuts back at the Quiksilver Pro and Roxy Pro on the Gold Coast, Australia, in March 2011. She took first place.
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Surfer Carissa Moore
Photograph by Alex Laurel, Red Bull Photo Pool
Surfer Carissa Moore goes vertical off the top of a wave during the Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Tour Roxy Pro in Biarritz, France, in July 2011. Moore became the youngest person to win the world title this year at 19 years old.
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Kayakers Jon Turk, Erik Boomer
Photograph by Jon Turk
On the first attempted and completed circumnavigation of Ellesmere Island, Jon Turk and Erik Boomer dragged their kayaks for 800 miles across the sea ice, past glacial icebergs and North Pole pressure ridges, before reaching open water. The expedition took 104 days to complete.
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Kayakers Jon Turk, Erik Boomer
Photograph by Erik Boomer
For Ellesmere explorers Jon Turk and Erik Boomer, hot tea, soup, and rest were necessary tonics to the rigors of dragging kayaks across the sea ice. They completed the 1,485-day circumnavigation by kayak, skis, and foot on August 19, 2011.
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Kayakers Jon Turk, Erik Boomer
Photograph by Jon Turk
Pro kayaker Erik Boomer kayaks near glaciers on the east coast of Ellesmere Island. In this world of ice, Turk and Boomer paddled past hundreds of miles of tidewater glaciers. The stark beauty of the ice cliffs was offset by the danger that there were few places to land should a storm develop.
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Rider Danny MacAskill
Photograph courtesy MTBcut.tv
Street trials bike rider Danny MacAskill's 2011 film Industrial Revolutions, shot in Scotland, became an instant Internet hit.
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Rider Danny MacAskill
Photograph courtesy MTBcut.tv
Danny MacAskill rides on a metal rope during the Industrial Revolutions video.
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Skier Nick Waggoner
Photograph by Jay Beyer
Skier Nick Waggoner and his team spent two years shooting Solitaire along the jagged spine of the Andes. On their human-powered ski survey, paragliders were used for the aerial shots.
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Skier Nick Waggoner
Photograph by Jay Beyer
During the filming of Solitaire, directed by Nick Wagonner, skier Chris Erickson enjoyed sunrise after a 3 a.m. tour to the top of the ancient rock spires of Las Lenas, Argentina.
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Skier Nick Waggoner
Photograph by Jay Beyer
During the filming to make Solitaire, Nick Wagonner and his crew dealt with unusually grueling conditions in South America's Andes. However, at this location, they got a bit of powder luck. The annual Santa Rosa system brought three meters of snow in three days to Bariloche, Argentina. Skier Will Cardamone reaped the rewards of weathering the storm.
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Mountaineer Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner
Photograph by Darius Zaluski
In 2011, Austrian mountaineer Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner completed her 14-year quest to climb the world's tallest mountains—the 14 8,000-meter peaks—without supplemental oxygen or porters, making her the first women to do it in alpine style. Here she is just below Camp II on K2, her final peak. Gerlinde and her husband, Ralf, carried very heavy backpacks.
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Mountaineer Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner
Photograph by Darius Zaluski
Mountaineer Gerlinde Kaltenbrunner heads to Camp II in 2011. For this expedition, she climbed the mountain's north side to avoid the deadly Bottleneck, where she lost her friend, ski mountaineer Fredrik Ericsson, in 2010.
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Hiker Jennifer Pharr Davis
Photograph by Maureen Robinson
In 2011, speed hiker Jennifer Pharr Davis broke the overall record on the Appalachian Trail. Pharr Davis did it by hiking, not running—an innovation all her own. The 2,181-mile trail took her 46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes. That's an average of 47 miles a day.
Davis tried to travel as light and fast as possible. If the section was less than five miles, she would carry just one or two hiking sticks and load up on food and water at the next road crossing.
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Hiker Jennifer Pharr Davis
Photograph by Melissa Dobbins
A typical roadside stop for Jennifer Pharr Davis lasted about ten minutes and included icing shins, checking out the Appalachian Trail databook, and trying to ingest 1,000 calories.
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Adventurer Alastair Humphreys
Photograph by Alastair Humphreys
Seasoned adventurer Alastair Humphreys has traveled the world. But in 2011, he didn't leave his native U.K. Instead he took a series of microadventures close to home and started a movement to encourage people to explore their own backyards.
Here, on a microadventure of his own devising, Humphreys cycled the length of the Shetland Islands on a commuter's folding bicycle and paddled between the islands in the folding boat on his back.
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Adventurer Alastair Humphreys
Photograph by Alastair Humphreys
During one of his microadventures, Alastair Humphreys sits at dawn, alone in the Scottish Highlands near Torridon.
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Adventurer Alastair Humphreys
Photograph by Alastair Humphreys
Alastair Humphreys snorkels to catch spider crabs to cook for dinner on a backyard adventure in nearby Pembrokeshire, Wales.
Features
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Meet the People's Choice
Your votes—nearly 72,000 of them—were counted. Presenting the 2012 Adventurers of the Year: Sano Babu Sunuwar and Lakpa Tsheri Sherpa of the Ultimate Descent.
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Photo Gallery
See photos of our Adventurers of the Year in action, from summiting an 8,000-meter peak in winter to biking industrial Scotland and more.
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View Your Fellow Adventurers' Photos and Submit Your Own
See our fans best adventure photos, and share your own. Tag them #adventure and they could appear in an upcoming gallery.
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Ten Inspiring Adventures
They are 2011's most exciting adventurers: a young surfer breaking boundaries; a snowboarder redefining big-mountain descents; and eight more incredible feats.
