Tabla de contenidos para April 2015 en Outside

THE ADVENTURE sports world can be an enlightened place when it comes to gender. Athletes like alpinist Melissa Arnot and ski racer Mikaela Shiffrin are as celebrated as Dave Hahn and Bode Miller. But that doesn’t mean the gear industry got the memo. In January, at the Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City, business leaders gathered to strategize about how to attract more women to sports like skiing and mountain biking. We appreciate the effort, and as gear editors at Outside, we’d like to suggest a way to start: by producing as much high-performance equipment for women as you do for men. Don’t get us wrong. Gearmakers have come a long way since hall-of-famer Jeannie Thoren convinced Blizzard to produce a women’s ski in 1986 and Santa Cruz…

DOC’S SEAFOOD AND STEAKS CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS THE ORDER: Black drum with roasted crawfish and poblano cream sauce THE GRAND MARLIN PENSACOLA BEACH, FLORIDA THE ORDER: Grouper picatta with whipped potatoes and sautéed spinach MIDDENDORF’S SEAFOOD AKERS, LOUISIANA THE ORDER: Middendorf’s Special—thin fried catfish MARKET BY THE BAY DAPHNE, ALABAMA THE ORDER: Large seafood platter, with shrimp, oysters, and fish. Get a side of hush puppies, too. CASAMENTO’S NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA THE ORDER: Oyster loaf— pan bread, butter, and oysters…

The Best streaming service you didn’t Know you needed —B.R. Shell out $10 per month for YouTube’s Music Key and you get ad-free streaming, offline and background playback (which means songs run even when your phone is locked), and access to Google Play’s 30-million-strong library. Bonus: the mil lions of rare remixes, bootlegs, and historical curiosities you simply can’t get anywhere else besides YouTube—like Stevie Wonder’s 1973 performance of “Superstition” on Sesame Street.…

Nike+ Create your own event, challenge up to 50 friends, and cheer each other on via group chats. Also nice: users get training tips from some of Nike’s top athletes. Free; nikeplus.nike.com Strava Challenges Each month, more than 100,000 cyclists and runners compete in events conceived by Strava. Winning is a long shot, but the street cred you get from being anywhere near the top is gold. Free; strava.com/challenges Nerd Herd Finish the assigned mileage— from 5K to a half marathon— during the allotted week and get your medal. There are no losers, and half the entry fee goes to Stupid cancer.org. $25; thenerdherd.info Full Medal racing Similar to Nerd Herd, except you get 30 to 60 days to complete the race. A minimum of 20 percent of net profits…

A Romanian, a German, and a South African hailed a cab. it was around 11 P.M. on a cool night last September in Manhat tan, and the men were planning to make a video. They all worked for Greenpeace, the international environmental nonprofit, but had little in common besides that. The Romanian was Radu Dumitrascu, a 33yearold communications specialist who’d joined Greenpeace after burning out on a D.C. desk job and spending a couple of years working to protect mountain gorillas in the Congo. The German, 46yearold Wolfgang Sadik, was a lifer; he’d been with the organization for 25 years. He helped run the actions team, the cloakanddagger unit that does the planning when, say, an oil rig needs scaling. The South African was the boss, Greenpeace International executive director…

FROM TINY SHELLS with Swiss Army utility to opulent retro Airstreams, it’s safe to say that we’re enjoying a golden age of the mini camper. But the Sealander—a curious hybrid of a yacht and a pop-top—beats them all. Leave it to the Germans (makers of U-boats and the Volkswagen Westfalia) to build a luxury travel trailer that can be towed behind your car at 60 miles per hour and do double duty on calm water. This diminutive teardrop is handcrafted with a watertight, one-piece plastic hull, and the main hatch and massive roll-back roof open the interior up to the heavens. Each model also comes with a galley, fold-down beds, and sleek wood paneling and cabin e try. The tiny, ten-horsepower outboard motor isn’t made for waterskiing or braving big…

Auguste Piccard, grandfather Took a balloon to 53,000 feet in 1931 and developed the bathyscaphe to travel to the ocean floor. Jean Piccard, great-uncle Invented both the plastic balloon and the cluster balloons used by the U.S. military for atmospheric research. (He and his brother are the namesakes of Star Trek captain Jean-Luc Picard.) Jacques Piccard, father Jacques and U.S. Navy lieutenant Don Walsh were the first to reach the bottom of the Mariana Trench, in 1960.…

RELEASED IN APRIL, David Gessner’s All the Wild that Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West ($27, W. W. Norton) is a biography of two of the West’s most iconic authors. At least, it’s primarily biography; it’s also a travelogue in which Gessner, a thoughtful and irreverent essayist, traces the two men’s lives as they headed west across the country. He begins in the east, visiting Vermont, the setting of Stegner’s last novel, Crossing to Safety, and Home, Pennsylvania, where Abbey was raised “without flush toilets, with a gun sometimes in hand, and with an intimacy with animals both wild and tame.” In the early going, much of what Gessner learns fits in with what we already think: Stegner the restrained writer and Stanford professor; Abbey the wild…

HOW ONE TEAM IS LEAD ING PRO CYCLING OUT OF THE BRAIN-INJURY DARK AGES— AND PROVIDING A POTENTIAL ROAD MAP FOR THE NFL IF YOU WANT a snapshot of the way head injuries were treated in professional cycling until very recently, start with the viral images of Chris Horner at the 2011 Tour de France. After the American cyclist crashed toward the end of Stage 7 and was knocked out cold, he climbed back onto his bicycle, despite displaying clear signs of the disorientation caused by a severe concussion. At the fi nish line 15 miles later, television cameras captured Horner’s bewilderment. “I don’t understand,” he stammered as he rolled in. “Where am I? When did I crash? I don’t remember.” Horner, who was forced to drop out of the…

Q: Does exercise make me crave healthier food? A: Absolutely—at least in the short term, if you work out hard. Immediately after an intense 60-minute bout of exercise, our brains prefer lower-calorie fare like fruit and veggies to caloriedense stuff like burgers and cake. That’s because hard exercise dehydrates you, says appetite researcher Daniel Crabtree, and fruits and veggies are loaded with water. Moderate to intense exercise also suppresses the appetite- stimulating hormone ghrelin for up to a few hours. “But as time goes on,” says Crabtree, “it comes back up again, and you’ll see a rebound in hunger.” In the long run, it’s possible that regular exercise could change your brain, leading to more permanent healthy-food cravings. Researchers at the University of Colorado found that people who exercised 40…

Just because you’re traveling doesn’t mean you have to downgrade your diet. aloha’s daily good greens ($19 for six servings; aloha.com) contains two helpings of fruits and vegetables, including moringa, one of the planet’s most nutrient-dense foods, and spirulina for your protein fix. Turmeric is a natural anti inflammatory, thanks to the antioxidant curcumin, which blocks the molecules related to chronic swelling. Mega Food’s daily turmeric nutrient Booster powder ($20 for 30 servings; mega food.com) mixes easily into a smoothie and doesn’t make it taste like, well, turmeric. The raisins, eggplant, and other fruits and veggies that make up Health Kismet’s purple dragon ($40 for 30 servings; health kismet.com) are high in anthocy anins, which control blood-sugar levels and assist cognitive function. Why eat blueberries in powder form? Because they…

In Early May, Quebec’s Mistassini River is still full of ice. Muscled up with spring runoff and stained almost black by tannins from tundra far to the north, the eddies are swirling, acrewide slurries. Underneath a highway bridge in the town of Dolbeau-Mistassini, 40,000 cubic feet per second—almost half the flow of Niagara Falls—rush through a narrow gap and then plunge over a jagged line of granite bedrock ribs. Oceanic waves, some more than ten feet high and 70 feet wide, rise and break, and the river implodes into churning pits of whitewater known simply as Bridge Rapid. Normally, no one here pays the rapid much mind—it’s just another thunderous falls in this broad, waterlogged province— but today there is a spectacle brewing. Cars and vans topped with crayon- colored…

Warning: unless you’re an annoyingly carefree bon vivant with a hefty trust fund, reading our annual Best of Travel awards (“One Direction,” page 50) may trigger a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the pathetic state of your mundane life. There are so many cool places to go, you’ll think as you flip through our 40 epic selections. And not enough time! Why am I stuck at this desk! Do not panic—this is a totally natural reaction. (I have it myself every year.) And if we’ve done our job, any mild depression our list elicits will quickly give way to feelings of inspiration and the sudden realization of how lucky you are. Why? Because there’s never been a better time to travel in search of adventure. While classic destinations like New…

RIDE AN ICEBERG Since 2012, Italian explorer ALEX BELLINI has been working on a plan to board an ice block in Greenland and ride it until it melts. He’ll try later this year. LOOKING GOOD WALK THE GLOBE KARL BUSHBY set out from Chile in 1998 and has since logged 20,000 miles. He needs a Russian visa to complete the final 16,000. SURF A 100-FOOT WAVE GARRETT MCNAMARA and others have been chasing the big one for 14 years. McNamara’s world record is still 22 feet shy. ASCEND K2 IN WINTER For a decade, climbers like DENIS URUBKO have tried to scale the peak off-season, when conditions are all but impassable. DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH…

BEFORE RACING SEASON BEGINS A team physician conducts this series of tests three times to establish a baseline. Step 1: Balance >The athlete stands with both feet on the ground, with eyes closed, for 20 seconds. Each balance correction is noted. >The test is repeated on a single, dominant foot. >A final, one-legged test is run on a soft surface like grass, carpet, or a foam pad. Step 2: Cognition >The physician tells the athlete a list of five words: banana, golf ball, pillow, coffee, feather. After the next two tests, the athlete attempts to recall the list. Accuracy is measured. >The athlete is given a series of five or six numbers. The physician then records how long it takes to repeat the series backward. >An iPad app like Mind-Metrics…

For centuries, Europeans have used salt therapy to treat respiratory problems. By inhaling salty air—either in salt caves or in artificially salt-filled rooms—you remove mucus that clogs your airways. Recently, in the U.S., the treatment has been focused on people looking for an athletic edge. “If you can breathe better, you can perform better,” says Gary Patrick, CEO of Breathe Easy, one of over 100 clinics that offer 45-minute sessions in a room infused with salt microparticles. Some athletes also point to the anti-inflammatory properties of the treatment. But Robert McElroy, a naturopath in Washington and a former Ironman triathlete, sees another benefit. “For the type A athlete,” McElroy says, “it’s almost more helpful in the way that it just makes you sit there and relax.”…