Tag Way Out There

Want to Go Remote? Try to Top This Adventure

Reg Spittle 3 Comments


You and three friends take two flights, including a small-plane charter deep inside America’s most remote and largest national park, within the Arctic Circle. You, your buddies, and your backpacks plan to travel back to civilization..

It is 1992. No cell phones. No GPS. Gates of the Arctic National Park has no trails. But there are grizzly bears and the river you follow and cross regularly starts out at three feet wide but changes character drastically.

Accompanied by photographs, J. Robert Harris narrates his story on a Parks Channel video. Check it out to meet an extraordinary man. He tells many more stories in Way Out There, one of the best adventure books I have been fortunate to read. I mention it again here in case you missed my review.

An Adventurer Explores His Passion to be Way Out There

Reg Spittle 2 Comments

A warning: Read Way Out There and you may find yourself buying an old VW Beetle, driving to Alaska and discovering magic while camping in the wild. At 22, J. Robert Harris drove solo across Canada on his way to Alaska and as I read the opening chapter, his words delivered his unbridled sense of adventure.

Now 75, Harris writes about his favorite backpacking journeys that many would not consider, even with expert guides. The Arctic National Park and Preserve, Baffin Island, Tasmania, the northern reaches of Canada, Switzerland and Australia are among his destinations. One chapter takes readers for a gripping canoe adventure.

He packs impressive courage and finds a sense of peace miles from civilization, in the home territories of polar bears, grizzlies and wolves. He is often alone, but never lonely. Danger follows him, but it only succeeds in making his stories impossible to put aside.

Read Way Out There, if you dare.