Ailsa Ross

Wildlife show us the need to protect wide tracts of land that support migration
If you’re like most people in North America, you likely travel by foot about two miles (3 km) a day. But the average grizzly bear? Its home range covers an area up to 1,500 square miles (3,885 km2). And it’s not the only species that travels such large distances in the Yellowstone to Yukon region.
A tale of two wolves
Back in the early 1990s, biologists started using improvements in radio collars, satellite transm...

Protecting habitat for grizzlies and other Montana wildlife
Picture rural Montana. Maybe you see small towns, big mountains, and lots of open space for wildlife to roam. But for grizzly bears and other wide-ranging species, the picture becomes a little more complex. Because of increased development and roads, there aren’t many viable wildlife corridors through the sea of humanity.
But now, thanks to your support, and together with Missoula-based Vital Ground Foundation, we’re making things a ...

Profile of the environmental scientist Rachel Ackerman

Profile of the environmental scientist Kirsten Reid

Outdoor experience article about mushing in the Yukon.

Three Peaks Challenge, UK
It was completely accidental. Growing up in north-east London, I’d never even heard of the Three Peaks Challenge – entailing people climbing the highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales within a 24-hour window. But a friend was doing it for charity and asked if I wanted to join him. Without hesitating, I said yes. I’d recently had a gun pulled on me which misfired – twice. That event helped me make a life-changing decision: to stop trying to fit in and do somethi...

“Do you want to finish eating before we start?” someone asks quietly, almost cautiously, from behind a maze of video equipment.
It’s 10.30 a.m. on a Tuesday, the morning after the Met Gala, and in between mouthfuls of granola and yogurt, Irina Shayk is being transformed by her hair and makeup team in a cramped room on the ground floor of a gilded Manhattan townhouse. Shayk’s long hair is tucked under a sleek wig, the same bob that ignited a media maelstrom after its debut at the Golden Globes...

Maybe you’ve always wanted to live in New York City, or perhaps Silicon Valley and its tech opportunities are calling. Wherever you’re thinking of moving to in the U.S., you’ll want to make your job search as smart as possible.
We spoke with Rick Dionisio from Ingenium recruitment about the skills U.S. companies are looking for currently. We also asked about the outlook for IT professionals (Hint: It’s great!).
Here’s everything you may need to know about job hunting in the States right now.
...

Ailsa Ross | Longreads | August 2019 | 22 minutes (6,062 words)
It’s the winter of 1923 and a five-foot tall woman is shooting at brigands in Tibet. She’s surviving a blizzard by eating boot leather. She’s accepting a maggot-dancing stew from a drug-addled butcher and having a face-off with a snow leopard.
This woman is Parisian opera singer-turned-anarchist Buddhist lama Alexandra David-Néel, and she’s kicking through Tibet’s wild hills and steppes as she strides on foot across the Himalayas...

The story of how a confectionary mishap helped Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reach the world's most famous summit
When Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summited Everest in May 1953, they weren’t fueled by carbohydrate cocktails and fancy gels or advised by a trained sports nutritionist. Instead, they were powered by intuition and an English candy experiment gone wrong.
In 1869, English confectioner Joseph Wiper was trying to make peppermint creams. At one point, he took his eyes off the ...

Travel writer Ailsa Ross has taken a break from her own travels to write a compendium of history’s most adventurous female trailblazers from 231 BC to today.
Win one of eight amazing holiday prizes... vote now in our Reader Travel Awards 2020!
'The Woman Who Rode a Shark: And 50 More Female Adventurers' (AA Publishing, out April 4) is an illustrated tribute to incredible women the history books left out.
Here, for International Women's Day, she picks seven of her favourite.
The Artist: Lady S...

A thousand years ago, an adventurous young woman revolutionized travel writing.
In the 11th century, a young girl journeyed from Kyoto to a province so remote it was beyond Japan’s Great East Road. Traveling in those days was uncomfortable and full of dangers. There were highway robbers to contend with and mountain ranges to cross. Yet twelve-year-old Sarashina didn’t see those issues. As she traveled with her father—who was taking up a new assistant governor posting—she just saw beauty.
Snow...

Maybe you’ve always wanted to live in New York City, or perhaps Silicon Valley and its tech opportunities are calling. Wherever you’re thinking of moving to in the U.S., you’ll want to make your job search as smart as possible.
We spoke with Rick Dionisio from Ingenium recruitment about the skills U.S. companies are looking for currently. We also asked about the outlook for IT professionals (Hint: It’s great!).
Here’s everything you may need to know about job hunting in the States right now.
...