Accomplished Polar Explorer Community Defends Nat Geo Expose on Colin O’Brady

Some of the most respected explorers on the planet support Nat Geo takedown of Colin O'Brady.

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The First Canoe Self-Support Of Grand Canyon Just Happened, And It Was A Ball

280 miles. 26 days. No portages. Hell yeah.

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You Don’t Need a Surfboard When You Can Levitate

The only thing cooler than a surfboard is surfing with no board.

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Sanmao, the Desert Writer, Inspired Millions of Asian Women to Adventure

Sanmao made good on her lifelong dream to travel the Sahara and in so doing inspired millions of Asian women to expand their worlds.

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Skiing at 101? Sure, if You’re George ‘The Optimist’ Jedenoff

Wanna ski at 101? Pull up a chair.

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Expedition Ice Skating in the Arctic Circle

Skating 125 miles through the Arctic Circle? Heck yes.

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Update: BLM Withdraws Plans to Sell Mining Leases Near Utah’s Slickrock Trail

Public outcry and pressure from Moab officials keeps energy leases out of the Slickrock area.

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What, You Think Gear Testing Is Easy?

A gear tester's life ain't all free stuff and photo trips. There's coffee and beer drinking too.

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Sometimes the Humble Sit Pad Is the Most Luxurious Bit of Backcountry Gear

The real multitool you need.

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How to Choose the Best Ultralight Backpacking Tent for You

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The Pros and Cons of Various Forms of Snow Travel

In which we take a probing look at the implements of winter stoke

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You Know That Feeling of Freedom You Get From Alpine Outings? It Has a Name

Ataraxia is a state of being when immersed and exhausted in the wildest places.

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Native Species or Invasive? The Distinction Blurs as the World Warms

Some scientists say the dichotomy between native and alien species has become an outdated concept.

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5 Expert Tips For Buying a Backpacking Tent

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Here’s What You Need to Know About the Appalachian Trail Case Before SCOTUS

SCOTUS weighs in on controversial pipeline that would cross the AT—but what would a ruling mean for trail management?

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Do You Fret Over Declining Performance As You Age?

We all get older. Well, except for Kelly Slater.

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Climbing a Mountain Isn’t Just a Metaphor For These Recovering Addicts

Climbing Mt. Rainier as therapy.

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The 12 Best Hikes in Utah’s National Parks

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The Ultimate Family Tour of Yellowstone

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Writer’s Rock

The Writer's Studio Of Our Dreams

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Big Mammals May Once Again Roam America’s Prairies—If We Give Them a Chance

We pushed big animals out of America's heartland but we can push them back, too.

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Does Riding 750 Miles Tandem Actually Count as 1,500 Miles?

The couple that tandems together, well, have a whole lot of fun.

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How Much Snowy Beauty Can You Handle in Nine Minutes?

My God, it's full of snow...

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These Mushroom-Stuffed Grits Are Like Breakfast Risotto

Risotto for breakfast—you got a problem with that?

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Gertrude Benham Couldn’t Stop Climbing Mountains and Walking Entire Continents

Meet the little-known climber and wanderer who bagged more peaks and miles than almost anyone who's ever lived.

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What’s the Best Big City for Adventure?

I write about living in San Francisco often. Not the city itself, but the proximity to amazing outdoor thrills. This afternoon I’ll hop in the water for a quick surf. Probably squeeze in a mountain bike ride in the early evening across the bridge in Marin County. World-class trail running abounds in redwood forests just […]

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The Starry Night Speeding By at the Speed of Wow

The photography wizard behind this short film is Michael Shainblum. It’s “simply” a blend of hundreds of long exposure images. The result is practically hallucinogenic. Here’s looking forward to some starry night skies in your future.

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A Letter to All the Tents I’ve Loved

They met, shared a night or two (or more) together, and went their separate ways?notes to shelters gone but not forgotten.

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Remembering Cody Roman, An Adventurer’s Son Lost

New book chronicles a father and son relationship that began in adventure and ended in tragedy.

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An Epic Race Has Ended, its Epic Trails Live On—Epically

What happens when a race ends? Sometimes, a beautiful thing.

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Your Homework This Week Is Watching to See if These Eagle Chicks Hatch

Must-see internet TV.

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US Wildlife Policy Is Misguided and Outdated—Let’s Fix It

A ton of money for wildlife conservation comes from hunting—this wildlife ecologist says it's time to change that.

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Alex Honnold and Renan Ozturk Dive Deep Into Life’s Biggest Questions

Alex Honnold on Renan Ozturk—Literally

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National Geographic Exposé Slams Colin O’Brady Antarctic ‘Crossing’

New reporting reorients O'Brady's 2018 effort in the harsh context of exaggerations, omissions, and disputed claims.

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Welcome to Orogonia—No, Not, Oregonia

Enter the mythical land, or maybe state of being, of Orogonia.

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Best of Yosemite, Part 2: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite

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My Belated Praise for Trekking Poles

When the need for a new piece of gear makes itself known through your knees.

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Enid Michael, Yosemite’s First Woman Naturalist, Was a Badass Climber Too

Enid and her husband Charles climbed Yosemite without ropes because, she said, "they'd be an insult to the mountain."

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A Reminder That Utah’s Uinta-Wasatch-Cache Is Absolutely Holding

We'll meet you there.

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Long Live Small-Town Ski Hills—Even if it Means Saving ‘Em Yourself

In a time of massive ski resort conglomerates, locals at this small hill stand firm for their community.

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5 Expert Tips For Buying the Right Backpacking Pack

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This Former Prison Transport Van Is Now a Roaming Couple’s ‘Freedom Van’

This van's second life is a whole lot more fun than its first.

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The Time a Search and Rescue Member Was ‘Rescued By’ Her Own Team

When her satellite messenger device called for help by mistake, this SAR volunteer learned just how valuable the device really was.

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The 12 Best Things About National Parks

When Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan titled their 2009 documentary and book project “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea,” it was pretty hard to argue. I mean, yes, there’s the internet and the bacon cheeseburger, but come on – Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Glacier, et cetera, et cetera? They were definitely a pretty damn good […]

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Here’s What Happens to Your Suspension When It’s Freezing Out

Think winter riding is hard? Maybe it's your suspension.

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There’s Magic in the River

No matter the season, the river holds.

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The Best 5-Day Hike in Spain’s Picos de Europa Mountains

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Would You Support Opening Private Land to Responsible Public Access?

Scotland allows public access to any private property, within reason. Would that ever work here?

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The Dystopian Experience of Skiing in New Jersey’s ‘American Dream’ Mall

Was anybody asking for indoor skiing?

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Scotland’s Right to Roam Grants Adventure Freedom to the Landless

Scotland has thrown open the doors of land access to everyone—here's what it looks like in practice.

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Why I Endanger My Kids in the Wilderness (Even Though It Scares the Sh!t Out of Me)

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Backcountry Skiing, Views, and, Yes, Some Luxe

Who says there's something wrong with the occasional niceties in the backcountry?

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The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther

Tracking the Florida Panther’s Tenuous Comeback.

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This Delightful Short Reminds: Who Cares How Light Your Bike Is? Just Ride

It's not about Spandex. It's not about wool pants. It's not about spoke nipples. Just ride the damn bike.

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Review: Scarpa Mescalito Hiking Shoes

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Understanding Envato’s commitment to diversity and inclusion

We are now in our fifth year of reporting on Envato’s approaches to boosting diversity and inclusion across the business – you can catch up on last year’s report here – and in doing so, outline how we rise to the challenge of improving our workplace for everyone, every year. 

While we are pleased with the improvements we made in these past 12 months, much of which can be attributed to the passion, advocacy and commitment of people across the business, we appreciate that delivering better diversity and inclusion outcomes is not a challenge that is ever ‘solved’. Rather, it’s a process we have committed to, knowing that every year we will need to take stock, respond and adjust our plans to ensure we’re delivering positively for all our employees. 

Our Out@Envato committee is an excellent example of demonstrating what a passionate group is capable of achieving in a small amount of time. From changing our gender options in our HR system, to petitioning the annual Great Place to Work Australia study to change their global demographic metrics to be more inclusive, the volunteers at Out did an amazing job to ensure we’re inclusive to non-binary folk. Their energy and momentum have inspired others across the business to see the same advocacy achieved for mental health inclusion, aiming to educate and support Envato folk in mental health-related topics.

Pleasingly, over the last 12 months, we saw further improvements in our gender balance across all position types across the business, while also introducing non-binary reporting metrics for the first time. Along the way we also adjusted our gender pay gap analysis reporting process,  meaning we can now report and act on any misalignments every quarter. And in our commitment to striving for gender equity, we’ve excitedly cheered on our third successfully graduating apprentice developer and have welcomed two more apprentices into the Envato Apprentice Developer Program.

Gender Equity

Headcount

Our gender balance increased 6% on 2018 figures, making it the fourth year in a row we’ve improved on this measure.  In the knowledge that individuals may identify as a gender other than the sex they were assigned at birth, or may not identify as exclusively male or female, we have changed our reporting demographics to man or woman. We’re also reporting on non-binary stats for the first time, with the inclusion of trans/gender diverse demographics. 

Since we started reporting on these figures, our overall split across the company has improved by 37% on 2016 figures.

We’ve improved the equity in our technical roles by more than 100% over the last four years.

Our improvement in non-technical roles continues to be steady, now up 10% in the last four years.

Leadership roles were the only category where we took a slight step back on 2018 figures.

 

Note: for the purposes of our graphs above, the term trans/gender diverse includes those who choose to identify as trans, those with a trans history, and those who identify as gender diverse, bigender, agender, gender fluid, genderqueer, non-binary or other.

Industry Measures

For the fourth year in a row, we submitted Envato to the Australian Workplace Equality Index (AWEI), a non-profit organization who provide a benchmark and survey in relation to inclusion for the LGBTI community. With a revamp of the Out@Envato steering committee and its renewed focus on LGBTI inclusion initiatives, we saw an 8 point increase in our score this year. 

Code Like a Girl Sponsorship

Envato continues to be a Gold Partner for Code Like a Girl. It remains one of our longest-standing business-wide sponsorships and we’re extremely proud to be able to support Code Like a Girl in their efforts to empower more women to embark on a successful coding career. 

International Women’s Day

This year’s IWD theme was all about #balanceforbetter; inspiring action to forge a more gender-balanced world.

Our guest speaker Kerryn Harvey shared her incredible story of courage and resilience after a horrific bike accident resulted in a full arm amputation. Kerryn inspired many of us to focus on what’s important and how to set goals to keep us progressing. 

LBGTI inclusion events

Our Out@Envato team hosted a number of events over the last 12 months, including : 

• International Trans Day of Visibility. An annual international celebration of trans pride and awareness, recognising trans and gender diverse experiences and achievements. 
• Wear it Purple Day:  A national day to raise awareness for LGBTI people – especially young people, across Australia with a simple message: you have the right to be proud of who you are 
• Two Out Tech meetups, which aim to bring together Melbourne tech industry workers who identify as LGBTI or Allies, with more meetups planned over the next year.

Our Out@Envato team also created our new look Envato Pride t-shirts which are now a staple wardrobe piece for many of our team, from Melbourne to Mexico!

Some of the Envato team flying the flag for International Trans Day of Visibility

 

Envato staff rockin’ our new pride tees!

Mental Health Inclusion Events

As part of World Autism Acceptance Month in April, we took part in the “Hoodies Up for Autism” campaign. We asked people to wear their hoodies to work to show a little more understanding of how we can support and embrace people with autism and celebrate the diversity autism brings to our world. Why hoodies?  Some people with autism experience sensory sensitivities and can become overloaded by stimuli in their environment; wearing their hoodie up means they can block out bright lights and busy environments which helps calm them.

The Envato team at our Melbourne HQ donned hoodies for autism awareness.

And in October we celebrated Mental Health Week with a Health and Wellness Expo in our Melbourne HQ, which included a workshop on Mindfulness and Meditation including a practical session using Muse headsets, a mental health panel run by our Mental Health Inclusion group, and a Recognition BBQ acknowledging all the positive work our peers do to make Envato such a great place to work.

Improving our Parental Leave practices

We have been reflecting on how we support employees and managers through times of parental leave, acknowledging it’s an area we can continue to make positive improvements in. In the last 12 months, this has meant tangible changes to leave allowances, while setting clearer expectations internally around how we support individuals and their managers to ensure that everyone who takes parental leave has the best experience possible. As part of this, we are continuing to improve how we provide support, clarity and career development in the lead-up, throughout and after an individual’s parental leave.

Some of the improvements we’ve made so far include:

1. Primary carer leave has increased from 18 weeks to 20 weeks at full pay
2. Partner Leave has increased to 2 to 3 weeks, full pay
3. Formally including adoption and stillbirth leave into our policies 
4. Two professional coaching sessions offered to all those taking primary carer leave.
5. Superannuation will now be paid on the unpaid portion of parental leave for all primary caregivers up to 12 months

Equity and Inclusion Officers

We rolled out our Equity and Inclusion Officer program, providing all Envato employees with a number of trained employees who they can talk to about anything they need support with. This is something we’ve been aiming to achieve for some time now, as it goes a long way to ensuring that Envato can provide a genuinely safe space for people to have difficult conversations. Equity and Inclusion Officers provide this by offering Envato’s staff community another friendly face to talk to when they need support, on top of their Manager, People Partner and our EAP service. 

Indigenous education skills development 

The Envato Foundation continues to support Australia’s young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population through partnerships with organisations that focus on opportunity creation, education and skills development. This year we donated $255,000 to our foundation partners, with the money supporting everything from new books for children in remote communities, education, training and employment programs for school-aged children, as well as fully funded secondary school scholarships. In late 2019 we were excited to announce a new partner, Indigitek, which focuses on increasing the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in tech roles. 

In Mexico, our donation efforts have focused on supporting Cres Estipac, a high school focussed on educating indigenous youth in a way that will assist them to support and transform their communities. Our donations this year helped to expand the girl’s dorm of the school. 

A Look Ahead 

There’s plenty more to be done building on our most recent diversity and inclusion roadmap, from, building out internal resources with a dedicated D&I intranet page to focussing on the initiatives that have been guided by our AWEI and WGEA submissions.

While our focus inside Envato continues to be primarily on gender, LGBTI and mental health, we remain committed to  improving any practices that maintain an inclusive workplace, be it training, reporting or other activities that help to foster an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive.

The post Understanding Envato’s commitment to diversity and inclusion appeared first on Envato.

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Summertime Hike in the Alps, Anyone?

We love winter but summer, we're ready for ya.

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Kayaker Lars Holbek Pioneered Sierra Rivers and Wrote Whitewater’s Bible

Meet the man who led the charge on many of the Sierra's wildest first descents.

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Mercedes Beats VW to the Conversion Van Market in the States

Mercedes tells VW if you're not gonna jump into this market, we will, thanks.

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Sen. Tom Udall: It’s Past Time We Confront the Climate and Nature Crises

The New Mexico senator on why the time to act to preserve nature is not simply now, it is always.

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The 8 Things You Should—No, Must—Do Before A Thru-Hike

There's more to thru-hike prep than route planning and packing. Here, learn from our mistakes.

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Chasing the Northern Lights—For a Living

Nobody knows the northern lights more intimately than this man.

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Specialized’s New Superlight E-MTB Will Drive Performance and Debate

An e-mtb that's barely distinguishable from its traditional cousins—so, what does this mean for the debate?

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10 Ways to Make that Chairlift Ride More Awkward

Ski season is here, and you’ll be spending anywhere from three to 15 minutes sharing chairlifts with people you may or may not know. It’s enough time to get to know someone a little bit, or have a brief conversation about snow conditions, or how busy or not busy the mountain is. Or, you can […]

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When Life Gives You One Last Run

Herm Hoops is nearing the end of his days. So he's spending them doing what he loves best—running the Green River.

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The 10 Best National Park Backpacking Trips

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What Would It Take For You to Push That ‘SOS’ Button in the Backcountry?

Not pleasant to think about, but surely you've thought about it.

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Nature’s Answers to Your Kid’s Difficult Questions

"Daddy—where do babies come from?"

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A Quick Rinse in the Surf Greases the Gears of the NYC Daily Grind

NYC, full of people, skyscrapers, and waves?

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Thru-Hiking the John Muir Trail: The Ultimate, 10-day, Ultralight Plan

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