The best outdoor adventure travel books to read

One of the world’s best-known ultrarunners, Scott Jurek decides to take on the Fastest Known Time (FKT) on the Appalachian Trail in his book ‘North‘.

The book combines insights from both Scott and his wife, Jenny, as they partner together on this challenge.

After two decades of racing, training, speaking, and touring, Jurek felt an urgent need to discover something new about himself. He embarked on a challenge to break the speed record for the Appalachian Trail.

Named 2019’s Adventurer of the year, Heather Anderson’s tales from her second hike of the Tripple Crown (backpacking the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail and Continental Divide Trail) with a combined distance of 7,900 miles.

Thirst combines wilderness adventure with Anderson’s courage, and willingness to do something different and discover a purpose.

In The Rise of the Ultra Runners, author Adharanand Finn investigates the reasons behind the rise of this extreme endurance sport and discovers what it takes to join the ranks of these ultra athletes.

Meeting with colourful characters of the ultramarathon world, and the author’s own experiences of running ultras everywhere from the deserts of Oman to the Rocky Mountains, Finn offers a fascinating account of people testing the boundaries of human endurance.

A fiction book but a great adventure nonetheless this book set in Alaksa, will have you mesmerised by both the beauty and the harshness of an Alaskan winter.

In The Great Alone, a desperate family seeks a new beginning in the near-isolated wilderness of Alaska only to find that their unpredictable environment is less threatening than the erratic behaviour found in human nature.

Join Kate and her friend Mel as they take on a cycling adventure of the Silk Road.

As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved was to be an explorer. In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris set off by bicycle down the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel.

Another fiction book on this list of outdoor adventure travel books is Migrations.

Franny talks her way onto a fishing boat, and she and the crew set sail, travelling ever further from shore and safety.

But as Franny’s history begins to unspool―a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime―it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds.

When Franny’s dark secrets catch up with her, how much is she willing to risk for one more chance at redemption?

I read this book in one day and devoured the story of Jan Redford follows her life from a reckless rock climber to a mother who fights to win back her future in End of the Rope.

As a teenager, Jan sets her sights on the improbable dream of climbing mountains. By age twenty, she’s a climber with a magnetic attraction to misadventures and the wrong men.

Redford finally finds the love of her life, an affable Rockies climber. When he is killed in an avalanche in Alaska, a grieving Redford finds comfort in the arms of another extreme alpinist.

After three years in East Africa, and newly engaged, Trina returned to Peace River with a plan to sponsor her fiance, Akello’s, immigration to Canada. Despite her fear of being alone in the woods, she applied for a seasonal lookout position and got the job.

With only a farm dog, Holly, labelled “a domesticated wolf” by her former owners, to keep her company, Trina unravels under the pressure of a long-distance relationship and a dawning awareness of the environmental crisis that climate change is producing in the boreal.

As adventure novels go, man, this book is one hell of an adventure.

This non-fiction adventure book follows the adventurous author, Caroline, and her partner’s incredible (and scary-sounding) adventures.

The biggest of these is the great adventure they plan where the pair go travelling through 4,000 miles of wilderness to the tip of Alaska. If it’s Alaska adventure books you’re after, pick this one. 

The couple has to fight off bears, overcome near starvation and more. Along the way she contemplates how to fit a love of adventure into a life of work she loves in science and building a family. One of the best true adventure books I’ve read.

Less of an outdoor adventure book but an adventure nonetheless, The Great Railway Bazaar is one of those class adventure books. Make sure to add this famous adventure book to your list of books to read while social distancing. 

I read this while we were travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway last summer which I’m sure added to my enjoyment. However, where ever you read this I’m sure you’ll be able to picture yourself on some of the trains described on the pages.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re the only one in your group of friends who is not buying a house, married or pregnant, then this book’s for you.

This hilarious travel adventure book follows Kristin Newman as she travels the world and meets men all over the world who offer her emotional connection without having to give up her freedom.

I can’t believe I’d never read this adventure travel classic until fairly recently.

It’s widely considered one of the best adventure novels and it was a consistent bestseller. It’s one of those adventure books for adults that everyone should know about. 

It’s not the most upbeat of novels but it is a fascinating read and a really interesting insight into one of the most disastrous years on Mt Everest.

If you’re looking for the best action adventure books to read, try this one!

Of all the great adventure books on the list, this is one of the ones I read most recently. Having followed Blair on Twitter for a while (yes, for the photos of her cute sleddog team), I was excited to read this book.

I had no idea about the difficulties of trying to break into the sledging world as a woman. Whilst this is a hard read at times, I really came to admire her strength and loved the insight into life in the ice cube. 

This book has been the guide to how to do that as an outdoors person in an environmentally friendly way. It’s widely seen as one of the best wilderness adventure books for what it can teach you.

With more and more people getting outside into the backcountry every year this has never been more important to read. After all, do you really want to go out camping and find toilet paper or worse next to where the tents are supposed to go? Or end up with polluted water systems.

Anna’s 2nd book tells the story of the time she decided to cycle 11,000 miles through each state of the USA after becoming disillusioned with corporate life.

It’s funny, and heartwarming and will give you a better insight into America from the eyes of an outsider. Having travelled across the USA myself (albeit in a van!), it was interesting to see what someone else thoughts were and recognise places I, too, had been to. 

“Choose the wiggliest, most mountainous route possible,” advises Anna McNuff in “Llama Drama”, a compelling outdoor adventure book that chronicles Anna and her friend Faye’s six-month journey along the Andes.

Armed with limited Spanish and a desire to meet as many llamas as possible, they cycle 5,500 miles from La Paz to Patagonia, encountering dense jungles, pristine salt flats, towering volcanoes, thundering rivers, and snow-tipped peaks.

Through catastrophic crashes and wild crosswinds, they endure a determined saddle sore called Sally and ascend over 100,000 meters through the Andes – equivalent to 11 times the height of Everest.

The book is a witty and raw portrayal of life and stunning natural landscapes in South America.

“Barefoot Britain” by Anna McNuff is one of the best outdoor adventure books as it takes readers on a journey of pushing mind and body to the limit by running 100 marathons barefoot from the Shetland Islands to London.

Along the rugged coastlines, small villages, windswept moors, and golden sandy beaches, she was joined by thousands of runners and learned the power of community.

The book is warm-hearted, funny, and honest, portraying the messy reality of pursuing a crazy idea and inspiring readers to dig deep and carry on.

Adventureman is written by Anna McNuff’s boyfriend and tells the story of his adventure as he ran across Canada raising money for children’s hospitals after he spent a lot of his own childhood in one.

I saw Jamie and Anna talk during their book tour leg in Vancouver a couple of years ago and was dying to read their books afterwards.

I listened to a podcast interview with Diana Nyad and her attempts to swim across from Cuba to Florida.

It’s not an easy swim and one that she’d attempted before and failed due to very near death by jellyfish and poor weather. But, on September 2, 2013, at the age of sixty-four, Nyad emerged onto the sands of Key West after swimming 111 miles in fifty-three hours.

I’m a big fan of Alastair Humphrey’s books about his big adventures. While I waited for his book about his time spent travelling across Spain playing the violin I thought I’d read the book which inspired his journey.

I found it a little hard to get into at first but once the journey starts and Lee beings walking across Spain it’ll awaken your sense of adventure. One of the classic and best travel adventure books to read!

I absolutely LOVED this book. The first time I read it I was trying to get into running for an upcoming half marathon. That probably helped my enjoyment but I think even if you hate running you won’t be able to help but find this book interesting.

The book takes a look at the mysterious Tarahumara tribe who live in the Mexican canyons. They’re reputed to be the best distance runners in the world; in 1993, one of them, aged 57, came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing a toga and sandals!