Brad Rassler’s work intersects place, history, and adventure, focusing on play as a fundamentally political act, the natural environment itself a major character. He has broken stories about crowding on Mt. Whitney and turning climate change research into classical music; he has explored outdoor culture in Lillehammer, Norway, and Elkhorn City, Kentucky; he has written about the outdoor recreation economy, Ed Abbey’s prose, and the environmental ramifications of ski resort snowmaking. He investigated his uncle’s suicide on a northern Michigan trout stream. Rassler wrote part-time while working as an investment analyst and management consultant, before returning to school for a master’s degree in journalism and a full-time career in writing. His feature pieces have been published in Outside, Alta Journal, Alpinist, climbing’s literary journal, Ascent, Sierra Magazine, Backcountry Magazine, Adventure Journal, The Guardian, Powder Magazine, and Sea Kayaker. Outside’s editors chose to nominate two of Rassler’s features for the National Magazine Award, and his work has been curated by Longform and Longreads. As an editor-in-chief of The Sustainable Play Reader, he has collaborated with writers and publishers to breathe new life into magazine classics, such as Philip Weiss’s “Inside Bohemian Grove,” a feature for Spy Magazine.
When not writing, Rassler can be found exploring the areas he chronicles, usually around his home in the Eastern Sierra.
