Midcurrent photo contributor Aaron Otto just released the third “issue” of his online magazine “Sleeping InThe Dirt.”

Contributors include Brian O’Keefe, Alex Landeen, Jay Morr, Rich Schaaff, Brian Schiele (who writes about his favorite camera, the plastic Holga), and Bob White.

Effluent carp, “Chrome Corner,” and some excellent work by a few of the industry’s icons as well as some of the newer image makers.

Described as “sharp-edged” and “fetishistically detailed,” the biking world’s most “acerbic” blogger–the Bike Snob–is finally revealed as 36-year-old New Yorker Eben Weiss–a former bike messenger and veteran of the publishing industry. His new book, Bike Snob: Systematically and Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling, will be published by Chronicle Books in May.

“Over his nearly three years of obsessing over, satirizing and deftly puncturing the sport of cycling, the anonymous blogger Bike Snob has made his worldview clear. He loves to ride his bike. He wants you to ride, too. Just maybe not on those florescent wheel rims. Or pedal against traffic. Or with your helmet on the handlebars. And even if it’s not fashionable, he’d like you to consider using brakes,” writes Jason Gay of The Wall Street Journal.

Royal Robbins, the 75-year-old rock-climbing pioneer from Modesto, California and founder of the outdoor apparel company of the same name, recently released the first in a series of autobiographies entitled To Be Brave, My Life: Volume One (Pink Moment Press; $19.95).

Sam Whiting of The San Francisco Chronicle interviews Royal about supporting his climbing habit, a biographical movie? and the craft of writing: “Writing is as hard as climbing. I like things that are hard.”

Travis Rice, professional snowboarder from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, talks with Nate Deschenes of Snowboard Magazine about camping in Glacier Bay National Park for 25 days, his latest film project Neverland, and the risks and rewards of exploring Alaska’s backcountry.

“Honestly, the craziest part of it all was the hiking and stuff that you are under without your board on. Clawing your way up chutes and climbing around crags and stuff was WAY scarier than the actual riding, that’s for sure. So that was a big part of the trip, the hiking aspect. But it was a great experience. Being on a slope for two hours versus just getting dropped off on top and riding something for a few minutes was really cool. It’s such a longer experience.”

Produced by Absinthe Films

Climbers Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson spent nearly two months last fall in Yosemite “attempting to free a line” on El Capitan’s southeast face.

“I fully realize that free climbing the Dawn Wall of El Capitan is improbable. Miles of blank steep granite—no true weaknesses to follow… I’ve spent parts of two years either rope soloing up or rapping down from the top, swinging around, searching and trying the moves. I’m trying to force a paradigm shift with this route, and the prospect of linking together at least seven pitches of 5.14 to 5.14+ and another ten in the 5.13 range is daunting,” Tommy Caldwell.

Produced by Black Diamond

Photographer/noboarder (snowboarding without bindings) Jenna Low’s slideshow submitted to Kootenay Mountain Culture Magazine’s photo face-off. KMC describes Jenna’s documentary work this way: “She lives up in the tiny outpost settlement of Trout Lake, where noboarders inhabit turn of the century hotels and shred some of the deepest, character-laden powder in the Kootenays.”

Produced by Mitchell Scott

Fall pickerel: Tyler Hughen, documentary photographer, and Kahlil Hudson, filmmaker and cinematographer, of Finback Films spend some time in northern Wisconsin compiling footage for an upcoming fly fishing documentary.

Produced by Finback Films

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, American essayist, and longtime New Yorker contributer John McPhee delves into the outdoors–among other subjects–with a welcome splash of personal personal history in his new book of collected essays: Silk Parachute (Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 228 pp., $25). For readers familiar with McPhee’s exhaustive work on subjects ranging from oranges to shad to geology, this foray into private observations will register as a nice change of pace.

“In a recent, beautiful piece for the New Yorker, he combined an essay on pickerel with memories of his father’s death and a lasting image of his father’s bamboo fishing rod. The piece took many readers by surprise — not the style, which was the same seamless combination of carefully chosen details and information, but the presence of the author, blinking in full glare,” writes Susan Salter Reynolds of The Los Angeles Times.

“It’s a fit metaphor for the author’s evocation of family, friends and places. They waft in from the blue to illumine these essays. As a result, Silk Parachute reveals a good bit more of the writer and his personal engagement with his always-fascinating subjects,” writes Tim McNulty of  The Seattle Times.

“The title essay is a small piece of memoir in which McPhee fondly remembers growing up with his mother. We have McPhee’s mother to thank for encouraging his love of observation, indulging his childhood wish to stand at La Guardia Field in freezing weather and watch the planes,” writes Danny Heitman of The Christian Science Monitor.

Paddle to Seattle is documentary featuring J.J. Kelley, a television producer for National Geographic, and Josh Thomas, a carpenter from Seward, Alaska, as they decide to build sea kayaks from pygmy wooden kits and paddle 1,200 miles from Juneau, Alaska to Seattle–96 days of exploration and adventure along the North American Inside Passage.

“…[W]hen you have three months at eight hours a day, you get to know yourself very well. And that’s huge just to go inside your brain to try to make yourself a better person. You learn just to be yourself,” says Josh Thomas in a National Geographic Traveler interview.

Produced by Ben Gottfried

Bryan Smith, kayaker/filmmaker of Reel Water Productions and the 22-episode outdoor series The Season, scouts Dipper Creek –a tributary of British Columbia’s Upper Squamish River–along with Chris Trentwold, Shane Robinson, and Todd Gillman. Rope-work, rappelling, rock climbing, and creative portaging required…

Produced by Reel Water Productions