Sept. 15, 2009 -- Just back from a three-day canyoneering course in Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. I learned how to tie an overwhelming number of knots (munter, anyone?), negotiate tricky down climbs, and use whatever happens to be lying around for an anchor. The canyons over there are endless and I've only barely scratched the surface. Very excited to spend some more time in Utah's chasms. Check out my photos here.

August 19, 2009 -- Deskbound in Durango, a welcome state after the year's travels. Besides, there are reasons why I live here. Like a day in which you hike through a crayola box of wildflowers to around 12,000 feet in the morning, head down into town, walk a block to go tubing in the river, then cruise the 50-pound Schwinn Hollywood downtown for some sushi in the evening. Hopefully all those East Coast city dwellers won't figure out our secret out here...

July 29, 2009 -- Spain photos are up! Here they are.

July 27, 2009 -- I'm back from checking out the newest and greatest gear at the Outdoor Retailer trade show, and I just posted my photos from China. Check 'em out here. Spain photos coming soon.

July 17, 2009 -- Just back from a two-week trip through Spain. I went to a gorgeous wedding in Barcelona, road tripped through Basque country and along the northern coast, and patrolled museums and cobblestoned neighborhoods in Madrid. The microscopic fishing villages and inviting sandy beaches of the coast were highlights. Now I'm back in Durango and I'm about to head to Outdoor Retailer, the big outdoor trade show in Salt Lake City. I'm ready to put in some desk time and catch up on some writing. While I was away, my story about the Grand Canyon ran on the front page of the Boston Globe's travel section. Check it out here. Photos to come soon!

June 14, 2009 -- I am just now emerging from the fog of jet lag after a great two-week trip to China. My dad and his Chinese wife, Angelia, built a house in Beijing and invited my brothers and me for a visit. Who am I to refuse a trip to China? The house, a traditional courtyard home situated in a historic hutong in the center of Beijing, was the perfect base from which to explore the city. I learned how to whip up spicy stir fries in a cooking school, got "thoroughly cleaned" (i.e. scrubbed silly) in a bathhouse, watched Peking opera, and caroused at a developing bar district. We also took a side trip to the Buddhist mountain town of Wutai Shan, where a few dozen temples, some as old as 2,000 years, stood amidst lush green mountains. Monks and nuns scurried around while vendors (new China) sold all sorts of schlock—Buddhas, incense, robes, books, postcards, nuts, fruit, jades, antiques, porcelain. We were the only Caucasians for hundreds of miles, it seemed, and the local pilgrims took photos of us as if we were zoo animals. We smiled in return. Why not?

April 23, 2009 -- It's taken me at least two weeks to emerge from the daydreamy haze of an 18-day, 226-mile raft journey through the Grand Canyon. It's hard to imagine a better trip. My boyfriend Andrew snagged a coveted private permit for March 21, and off we went with 16 people, four rafts, a dory, and three kayaks. We saw only three other groups throughout our trip, which meant we had the soaring cliffs, slot canyons, desert wildflowers, turquoise waters, and bluebird skies all to ourselves. In the rapids, only one boat flipped and another dump trucked all of its passengers. I happened to be on both, so I got some nice swimming experience. No other carnage and no injuries, thankfully. Now I'm at home in Durango, starting a garden, trying to get back in shape after three weeks of happily drinking beer and sitting on my rear, and working on some various stories. This May, I have stories out in Spa, Trail Runner, and Outside. Next up: a weekend trip to Capitol Reef National Park and Torrey, Utah. I am a desertphile.

January 22, 2009 -- The new year brought boringly snowless skies to Durango, so I spent the past week in southern Arizona working on a fastpacking story, also known as ultralight, ultrafast backpacking. Now I'm now on desk patrol, nursing an injured knee and catching up on some writing, such as a story on diving the U.S. Virgin Islands, which I visited in December. Highlights of the trip: spotting giant cobia and rare endangered elkhorn coral, listening to an impromptu reggae jam in a St. John alley, and nearly catapulting off a sailboat in 28-knot winds. I have a silly but (hopefully) amusing story about dating in mountain towns in Women's Adventure this month, and my feature on visiting the Huaorani tribe in Ecuador now appears on Away.com's home page. Check it out!

November 21, 2008 -- Things are pretty busy here in Kateland. On Monday, I returned from a quick trip to the Dominican Republic, where I hung out on the resorty eastern end—a change from my mountain-woman lifestyle in Durango. That was after a weekend spent backpacking in Utah's Bullet Canyon, where a small group of friends and I checked out Anasazi dwellings that were unexcavated. We found grinding stones, corn cobs and huge potsherds. It felt as if they hadn't been moved since they were dropped centuries ago. In other news, a story I wrote with ecotourism guru Costas Christ on 50 top ecolodges appears in the November issue of National Geographic Adventure. I also have a review of women's jackets and some brief profiles in the winter edition of the Outside Buyer's Guide. Next trip: a dive story in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

October 3, 2008 -- September may be my favorite month, and this year it was particularly great. I spent it in Ecuador, where I visited the Huaorani, a remote Amazonian tribe that recently built a small-scale ecolodge. I traveled by dugout canoe, learned how to hunt with a blowpipe (sorta), and visited tiny villages where the women painted their faces with red pigment from a local seed. I also visited the charming eco-minded Black Sheep Inn in the highlands, the Galapagos, and a community lodge in the cloud forest. To top off the month, I went backpacking in western Maine, where the leaves paraded their flashy fall costumes. I'll be home for most of October, enjoying the golden aspens around Durango and moving into my new house. P.S. Check out my story on diving in Fiji in this month's Sport Diver magazine.

July 29, 2008 -- Sometimes you just need a change of scene—and when you're a travel writer, you need a lot of scene changes. So in a bout of stir craziness and impulsiveness, I made reservations on Friday afternoon, and Andrew and I high-tailed it down to Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs in New Mexico. We were just in time to soak in a super-hot spring lit by a small wood fire. On Saturday we yoga-ed and drove through the desert to an eco-conscious spa, where we hot tubbed, drank wine, and did nothing productive whatsoever. On Sunday, we hiked down to the Rio Grande in the Taos Box canyon, happened upon some petroglyphs, and took a very refreshing dip without another soul around. Add to all of that some killer enchiladas and a cameo by a double rainbow and it wasn't a bad weekend. Now it's back to the grind. I just finished up work for the OR Daily and am now working on a big story for National Geographic Adventure as well as a number of short stories for Outside. As usual, I have no complaints.

June 10, 2008 -- I just got back from a successful climb of California's 14,162-foot Mt. Shasta, which benefited Big City Mountaineers, a non-profit that takes inner-city teens on wilderness trips. It was a wild adventure. We started at 1:30 am and climbed 5,000 vertical feet up the steep and frozen West Face with the help of crampons, axes, and ropes. At one point, an unroped climber who had lost his ice axe came sliding past us at top speed. He slid 2,000 vertical feet before coming to a halt in some rocks. Miraculously he wasn't seriously injured; nonetheless, an unnerving sight. By the time we topped out on the summit, it was sunny and clear, and we could see wide views of beautiful northern California. Two weeks ago, I returned from Iceland, where I watched minke whales, hiked in remote glacial valleys, scuba dived in the fissure between tectonic plates, caved in a lava tube, and got lost while locating fabulous wilderness hot springs. At some point, I'll post some photos. In other news, on Friday, my first piece for the Escapes section of the New York Times was published. Check out my tale of rafting Utah's San Juan River here. The next two weeks I go to a couple of weddings, then I'm moored at harbor working for the first portion of the summer.

April 28, 2008 -- To celebrate the close of a fantastic winter with a bang, my boyfriend Andrew and I splurged on three days of skiing in the Selkirks of British Columbia. We had a winning combination of powder snow, clear skies, and good company. To celebrate the arrival of spring, I recently went on a three-day raft trip on Utah's San Juan River, which has ancient dwellings, petroglyphs, fossils, and bizarre rock formations on its banks. Work goes well, and I have a few exciting stories in the works. At the moment, my reviews of women's hiking gear appear in the spring edition of the Outside Buyer's Guide and a review of lightweight jackets appears in the May issue of Runner's World. My story on high-end treks appears in Outside's Go, and I have a story on gelaterias in American Way, American Airlines' inflight magazine. Next trip: Iceland in May.

January 30, 2008 -- Last year my new year's resolution was to not make any more resolutions. I succeeded swimmingly, but if I were to have a resolution this year it would be to update this column of my website more often. Well, 2007 was a smashing year and so far so good for 2008. In the fall, I spent two weeks traveling and diving my way through Fiji. I encountered 9-foot-long bull sharks, schools of trevally, and sea turtles. I kayaked through mangroves, was wrapped in giant banana leaves at a spa, and tasted kava, the Fijians' pleasantly sedative and tongue-numbing beverage of choice. I tacked on another week in French Polynesia, where I visited a private island an hour boat ride from a tiny airstrip in Rangiroa, an atoll the middle of the nowhere. (About 90 minutes from Tahiti, to be exact.) The fruits of that trip will appear in the February/March issue of Outside's Go. I had a feature on how climate change is affecting recreation in the Northeast published in AMC Outdoors this fall. Other recent stories have appeared in National Geographic Adventure, Outside, Men's Journal, Plenty, Sunset, and Hemispheres, United Airlines' in-flight magazine. The best news of all, however, is the fact that the Durango is having the kick-assest winter in a long time. The snow gods are smiling—and so are we.

May 18, 2007 -- This spring was filled with lots of fun trips, from heliskiing in the Selkirks of British Columbia to kicking back on Martha's Vineyard. I have a few fun stories out right now as well. My account of learning to kiteboard with my friend Kelsey appears in the May issue of Women's Health, and a gargantuan service story on the new world of sustainable travel appears in the June/July issue of Plenty, to name a couple. In four days, I'm off on the next adventure: a three-week journey through Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa.

March 7, 2007 -- This month, my seven-page guide to adventures in the Southwest appears in National Geographic Adventure magazine. Happily, I have experienced some great trips in the Southwest myself recently. I went on a six-day hut-to-hut ski tour through the San Juans, during which I skied waist-deep powder and witnessed the Brocken spectre. I also went on a whirlwind road trip around southwestern New Mexico, stopping to eat chilis rellenos and bumbleberry pie in near-ghost towns, explore cliff dwellings, and meditate among white sand dunes. Other than losing one ski on a powder-filled slope while backcountry skiing, this winter has been thoroughly enjoyable. Next month, I'll have a story about environmentally friendly gear in Outside and one on exploratory adventures in Men's Journal. I'll also have an article on inspiring ecofriendly companies in Delicious Living.

January 15, 2007 -- 2006 proved to be a good year with many travels. During the summer I gallivanted around my home state of Colorado, spending time in national parks like Rocky Mountain and Great Sand Dunes. In September I completed a gonzo week-long backpacking trip through Wrangell-St. Elias National Park in Alaska; It involved glacier crossings, wading through icy streams, three passes, and an 18-mile tromp out of the wilderness on the last day. In October I traveled to the other side of the globe to trek, watch elaborate Buddhist festivals, and visit monasteries in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. And in December I learned to kiteboard in Florida. Already this winter has been fun, with a couple of big storms and lots of skiing in the backcountry, with San Juan Ski Company Snowcats, and at Silverton Mountain. Work is ongoing with Men's Journal, Outside, National Geographic Adventure and The New York Times. I have also had stories in Plenty, Skiing, and Parks, a new National Parks Foundation publication. Check out my story on Bhutan in the February/March issue of Plenty, which hits newsstands right about now. They actually made my photos look decent!