Colorado’s premier celebration of the outdoor adventure lifestyle returns for its third year this weekend with a new name, a new location and an expanded schedule kicking off on Friday.
What started in 2024 as the two-day Outside Festival at Civic Center moves to the Auraria Campus, expanding to three days of music, film, thought-provoking speakers and outdoors culture. Renamed Outside Days, the event is a production of Boulder-based Outside Interactive Inc., which owns two dozen media and service brands including Outside, MapMyFitness, Velo, Gaia GPS and Trailforks. Last year’s event attracted 35,000 attendees, nearly double that of the inaugural year.
Famed rock climber Alex Honnold and co-host Fitz Cahall will record an episode of their Climbing Gold podcast with ski mountaineer Jim Morrison in a discussion of risk and resilience. Honnold was the first to free solo Yosemite’s El Capitan. Morrison made an epic ski descent of Mount Everest last fall via the Hornbein Couloir on the mountain’s North Face.
Adrian Ballinger will discuss the future of Everest in an era of drones, helicopters, climate change, ski descents and speed-focused ascents. Ballinger has guided in the Himalayas for 25 years, including 10 Everest ascents.
National Geographic photographer Keith Ladzinski will describe what it takes to capture exceptional images in remote places. Ed O’Brien of Radiohead will discuss music, nature and creative renewal.
, curated in partnership with Mountainfilm, includes 11 titles. Feature films include Threshold, the story of Jessie Diggins, an Olympic champion in cross country skiing who struggled with an eating disorder at the height of her career; Surfilmusic, a documentary about Jack Johnson and his evolution from surfer to filmmaker to musician; No Hands is the story of the Schwinn Bicycle Company, an iconic brand dating back to 1895.
Short films include two documentaries about athletes with disabilities. Right to Risk takes viewers to the Adaptive Climbers Festival in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, while The Best Day Ever focuses on two adaptive mountain bikers in Vermont’s Green Mountains. Another short, The Boys of Summer, is the story of a group of teenage boys and the emotional growth they experienced at a remote summer camp in the woods of Vermont.
For , Friday’s headliner will be Death Cab for Cutie plus Goth Babe and Japanese Breakfast. Saturday’s lineup includes My Morning Jacket and The Flaming Lips. The lineup on Sunday includes Cage the Elephant and two local bands, N3ptune and The Mañanas.
A can be found on the Outside Days website.
