The Best Adventure Photography of 2017
Our top travel and adventure photography of the year
Scott Crady
At Michigan’s Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Bridalveil Falls pours over 150-foot-high sandstone cliffs into Lake Superior. In the winter it freezes, attracting climbers willing to risk sketchy ice and a possible plunge into the half-frozen waves below. Crady and fellow Northern Michigan University student Joe Thill decided to brave the conditions last February. They set up anchors and rappelled down the cliff to the base, with a third friend belaying. Then Crady jugged back up his rope, better positioning himself to shoot Thill, who was scaling ice so thin that when his pick went in he was often sprayed by the still flowing falls. “Climbing above Superior, you’re up against the elements and getting battered by snow and ice blowing off the lake,” says the 21-year-old photographer. “It’s an awesome place to climb.”
The Tools: Canon 7D Mark II, Tokina 11–16mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, f/4, 1/2,000 second
Crystal Sagan
The only way to get to backcountry outfitter CMH’s Galena Lodge, in British Columbia, is by boarding a helicopter at the end of a remote road in the Selkirk Mountains. Sagan, a writer and photographer in Boulder, Colorado, traveled there in March 2016 to send steep lines in the “mind-blowingly phenomenal” powder. Toward the end of a full day of laps, the warmer, stickier snow added a new challenge. Sagan captured her guide, Joshua Lavigne, as he made this steep section look effortless. “I never spend more than 30 seconds setting up a shot in the backcountry, because I want to ski,” she says. “But every turn and line at Galena was so stunningly beautiful that I couldn’t stop shooting.”
The Tools: Nikon D700, 20mm f/1.8 lens, ISO 800, f/10, 1/800 second
Matt Baldelli
Baldelli and his friend Matthew Holmes traveled to Moab, Utah, in March 2015 for a few days of hurling off giant rock features with a parachute on their backs. The two had met a week earlier at a BASE-jumping class in Twin Falls, Idaho, and were eager to follow it up with a visit to one of the sport’s meccas. During the trip they stopped at Looking Glass Rock, south of town. As Holmes climbed the arch to prepare, Baldelli tucked himself underneath it and captured his friend as he leaped from the edge. “I got back as far as I could to frame him in the arch,” Baldelli says. “It was a really cool perspective.”
The Tools: Nikon D800, 16mm fish-eye lens, ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/2,000 second
Big Wood River, Idaho
Photograph by Tal Roberts
Mary McIntyre
This cliff band in the Alta, Utah, backcountry is one of McIntyre’s favorite spots to shoot, but recent dry winters made it impossible to ski. In March, however, the powder returned. After a storm system dropped two feet of snow, McIntyre and skier Eric Balken, both Salt Lake City natives, spent a morning sending it. The 26-year-old photographer captured Balken as he did a backflip off a 60-foot cliff, landing with a poof. “It was a beautiful backdrop, but I wanted to simplify it to the rocks, the skier, and the sky,” she says. “I wanted to make people pause and be like, ‘Wait, what is this skier doing?’ ”
The Tools: Canon EOS 6D, 14mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 125, f/8, 1/1,000 second
Sergej Schatz
Earlier this year, Schatz, a photographer based in Hamburg, spent two months hiking and camping around Tasmania. He arrived at the Bay of Fires, on the island’s northeast coast, in March. Clear skies and a low tide allowed for an uncharacteristically calm evening on the second day. As the sun set, the bay’s rocky shoreline put on a show, and the 27-year-old photographer set his camera on a tripod to catch himself jumping across the lichen-covered granite boulders. “The colors were changing all the time, from reds to oranges,” Schatz says. “It was stunning.”
The Tools: Sony A7 II, 10–18mm f/4 lens, ISO 250, f/4, 1/50 second
Willamette National Forest, Oregon
Photograph by Nicole Truax
Geoff Coombs
On a chilly February day, Coombs traveled four hours north of his home in Toronto to a narrow spit of land between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay called the Bruce Peninsula. Though the water was frozen 50 yards out, that didn’t deter the Canadian freediver and his friend Andrew Ryzebol, who put on thick wetsuits and dove in. After swimming beneath the ice, Coombs took out his camera to capture Ryzebol observing its underside. “It almost looks like outer space,” says the 25-year-old photographer, which is why he rotated the image 90 degrees. “I was trying to create a photo that gives a feeling of wonder and peace.”
The Tools: Canon 6D, 24mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/400 second
Christin Healey
To capture this shot of Hamnoy, a small fishing village in Norway’s Lofoten Islands, Healey traveled with a collapsible kayak 6,000 miles from her home in Boulder, Colorado, in July 2016. After she arrived on the scenic archipelago, the 32-year-old photographer had to wait out a storm that had settled on the exposed landmass. When the weather system began to lift, her friend Matthew Eaton paddled out while Healey climbed up onto a nearby bridge to position herself. “I wanted to incorporate the landscape and show both old and new,” she says. “The kayak is subtle, but it makes the image a little different.”
The Tools: Canon 5D Mark III, 16–35mm lens, ISO 500, f/5.6, 1/200 second
Nozawa Onsen, Japan
Photograph by Grant Gunderson