Inhaltsverzeichnis für November 2013 in Outside

TAIT TRAUTMAN Last December, Trautman spent three and a half weeks traveling around Chile with 30 professional kayakers in order to shoot the White Water Grand Prix, an international paddling event held on some of the toughest whitewater in the world. During stage three of the competition, the Bellingham, Washington, photographer captured 25-year-old Jakub Nemec launching off the lip of a ten-foot waterfall on the Rio Nevados. “It was the favorite river of most of the paddlers,” says Trautman. “It was also the first and only sunny day of the entire trip.” THE TOOLS: Canon 5D Mark III, 14mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 500, f/8, 1/3,200 second BRANDON COLE In June, Cole was in Mexico scuba diving off Roca Partida—a famously isolated dive site 300 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas—when…

900 Approximate number of miles traveled by writer David Gessner and geol ogist and climate activist Orrin H. Pilkey as they examined post–Hurricane Sandy rebuilding efforts from North Carolina to New York City for “Down by the Seaside with Dr. Doom” (page 70). 400 Approximate number of miles of that trip that will be underwater if sea levels rise seven feet by 2100, as predicted by Pilkey. TWO MILLION Approximate number of people whose homes will disappear.…

THERE ARE a handful of accomplishments that can anchor your expedition résumé. Summiting Everest. Sailing around the world alone. Schlepping to a pole. Then there’s the rare feat of crossing the Bering Strait, a physical challenge that few have even attempted, due to dicey international politics. In 1987, at the height of the Cold War, open-water swimmer Lynne Cox finagled permission from the USSR and swam the 2.7 miles from the U.S.’s Little Diomede Island to Russia’s Big Diomede Island. In 2006, Briton Karl Bushby and Frenchman Dimitri Kieffer walked on ice across the entire 51-mile mainland-to-mainland route—and were promptly detained by Russian authorities. The same thing happened to six guys on personal watercraft who filmed their crossing for an obscure reality-TV series. This summer, 28-year-old Sonya Baumstein added her…

This month, IFC Films releases The Summit, a documentary about the 2008 K2 disaster that killed 11 mountaineers. Opening in more than 100 U.S. theaters, The Summit is the biggest climbing release since 2003’s Touching the Void. Which makes it all the more surprising that the film, the first feature-length effort by Irish director Nick Ryan, mostly falls flat. Ryan apparently couldn’t decide whether to make a documentary, a docudrama, or a historical biopic, so he crammed all three into 95 minutes. A quick refresher: In August 2008, after summiting the mountain, 16 climbers were trapped above K2’s infamous Bottleneck—a narrow couloir overhung with seracs at 26,900 feet—when falling ice tore out their fixed ropes. For two days, the world waited to see who found a way down and who…

IN JUNE, at this year’s European College of Sport Science conference in Barcelona, Mari Carmen Gomez-Cabrera, a physiologist at the University of Valencia and one of the world’s leading experts on antioxidants, was debating the merits of supplements with two top researchers. For more than 90 minutes they went back and forth, parsing the accumulated evidence in front of a packed auditorium. Finally, Gomez-Cabrera landed on a provocative question that summarized her position. The debate, she explained, isn’t whether supplements are good or bad for athletes. Rather, it’s “are they useless, or are they worse than useless?” The question may come as a shock to the more than half of Americans who take some sort of dietary supplement—a vast catchall term that includes everything from vitamins and minerals to herbal…

CLEANSE Once or twice a week, wash with a natural cleanser like Grandpa’s (A) Pine Tar or (B)..Sandalwood soap ($6; grandpabrands.com) to avoid greasy whiskers. Grandpa’s forgoes the harsh foaming agents in most soaps for simple ingredients like shea butter, ginseng, and coconut oil. CONDITION A daily moisturizer softens coarse or brittle hair...Brooklyn Grooming’s (C) Fort Greene or (D)..Red Hook beard oil ($29; brooklyngrooming.com) prevents flaking, too. (E)..Mod Cabin’s Vagabond beard oil ($18; themodcabin.com) adds a woodsy scent and straightens wayward hairs. SHAPE If you’ve got a wiry beard, use a pomade like (F)..Mod Cabin’s Backwoods Beard Balm ($23), with natural beeswax, to tame reluctant strays. For more advanced styling, use just a touch of..(G)..Mr. Natty’s Moustache Twizzle Wax ($11; birchbox.com), which has enough hold for a handlebar. SCENT (H)…

IN THE SPRAWLING genre of survival television, there is one man who has managed to earn both huge ratings and the respect of bearded guys with big knives on their belts: Les Stroud, a.k.a. Survivorman. Stroud, 52, grew up in Toronto watching Jacques Cousteau and Tarzan, then became a rock-and-roll addict with dreams of being the next Neil Young. At 25, disillusioned by the music industry, he took a survival course at a Toronto college and was hooked. He went on to train for years with elite survival instructors and honed his skills on numerous wilderness forays, including a yearlong honeymoon with his wife in the remote woods of northern Ontario, during which they lived off the land and used no metals or plastics. Early on, Stroud had the idea…

MY SKYDIVE TEAMMATE Katie and I had planned a formation for a jump last March where we would float a giant U.S. flag between our two flying parachutes. I had done about 7,000 jumps and competed in six world meets and probably 14 nationals. I’m also the safety adviser for my local drop zone here in Lodi. Katie looked at me as we were getting on the plane and said, “I don’t have a knife. Is that a problem?”I took mine from my chest pouch and handed it to her. In 25 years, I had never needed one. Plus, I had a backup attached to my leg. We started our trick at 6,000 feet. Katie placed her parachute just below me, so I could put my feet in the lines.…

The prophet and I return to the drowned city. Trailing robes behind him, he will point his wooden staff at the places where the waters rose, the subway steps turned into rapids, and the cross streets became fast-flowing inlets. He’ll gesture toward the river, explaining how it was pushed back by the winds and tide, how the full moon affected this most modern of places. Four years ago, when he pointed at these same spots and told me what was going to happen to New York City, I only half believed him. Now I believe, along with everyone else. We have seen it with our own eyes. The prophet’s name is Orrin Pilkey, and his day job, for many years, was as a coastal geologist at Duke University, where he…

FOR YEARS, BOB SHACOCHIS WAS OBSESSED WITH A FISH, SOUTH AMERICA’S FIGHTING GOLDEN DORADO. BUT WHEN HE FOLLOWED THAT DREAM TO ARGENTINA’S IBERÁ MARSH, HE FOUND THAT HE WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WITH A VISION THAT COULD PULL HIM UNDER. ROAM: ARGENTINA Casting for dorado on Argentina’s Río Paraná FOR YEARS, BOB SHACOCHIS WAS OBSESSED WITH A FISH, SOUTH AMERICA’S FIGHTING GOLDEN DORADO. BUT WHEN HE FOLLOWED THAT DREAM TO ARGENTINA’S IBERÁ MARSH, HE FOUND THAT HE WASN’T THE ONLY ONE WITH A VISION THAT COULD PULL HIM UNDER. WE EACH HAVE our dreams and if they are meant to mean anything at all you hold tight and don’t let them go. You can dream of love or money or fame or something much more grand than a fish, but…

EACH FEBRUARY, Outside teams up with Mountain magazine and descends on Snowbird, Utah, for our annual alpine ski test. OK, we call it a test, but it’s really a culling operation. We order up 90 pairs of skis and bring in 20 test riders to push each one to the limit. The best are written up; the worst get tossed into obscurity. This year it was harder than ever to differentiate the merely OK from the truly great. Innovations like rocker and taper—and a seemingly endless investment in weightsaving, flex-adding materials—have translated into a glut of skis that float, carve, charge, surf, and slarve easier than ever. Oh, and by “slarve” we mean carve a turn in sloughy snow. And by “easier” we mean more fun. Because that’s the most…

EVEN BETTER THAN THE REAL THING Clothing that’s purposebuilt for serious outdoor activities has been migrating to the city for several years now. What’s changed? The cut. Classic American brands like Filson and L.L.Bean now make the exact same clothes your grand father wore, but with an updated, streamlined fit that looks of the moment. PHOTOGRAPHED AT THE SHAKE FOUNDATION, SANTA FE On Matt: Greenland No. 1 Special Edition jacket by Fjällräven ($250; fjallraven.us); Tweed vest ($295), Red and Navy Flannel shirt ($125), and Slim Fit jeans by Polo Ralph Lauren ($125; ralphlauren.com); Desert Mali boots by Clarks ($140; clarksusa.com); Briefcase bag by Filson ($300; filson.com); M8 Rivoli bike by Public ($1,495; publicbikes.com) On Scott: Aberdeen vest by Remington 1816 ($125; remington1816.com); Earthkeepers Plaid Allendale shirt by Timberland ($78; timberland.com);…

Each spring, from the window in my office, I have an unobstructed view of smoke plumes from forest fires in the mountains north of Santa Fe. It’s become an annual marker of the passage of time, like the aspens turning yellow in the fall, only much more unsettling. I’ve never quite gotten used to the proximity, but wildfires are a way of life in the American West, and according to most predictions, climate change will only worsen their severity. In early 2012, Outside was looking for a unique angle on the phenomenon. We wanted to find a way to personalize the story of wild fires, not just publish a report full of doomsday prophecies. That’s when Outside associate editor Kyle Dickman made a modest proposal. A former wildland firefighter himself,…

When Les Stroud isn’t filming the Discovery Channel’s Survivorman or offering advice on how to overcome life-threatening situations, from storms to alligator attacks (“Oh No,” page 58), he plays guitar and harmonica with blues-rock outfits. He’s not alone—here are a few of the adventurers and athletes who moonlight as musicians, not always with resounding success. KELLY SLATER SURFER, SINGER, GUITARIST NOTABLE SPORTINSPIRED LYRIC: Black sand on the beaches / White wave on the water / And I think of you / And I think of you (“Hawaii” LES STROUD SURVIVORMAN, GUITARIST, HARMONICA PLAYER, SINGER NOTABLE SPORTINSPIRED LYRIC: Snow, winter, spruce boughs for floor / Fur, fire, keep the body warm / Where eagles fly and the caribou lie is where we got to be / The wolf waits there for…

“I DIDN’T LIVE a lot of lies,” Lance Armstrong says at the beginning of Alex Gibney’s new documentary, “but I lived one big one.” The film’s title, The Armstrong Lie, suggests an exposé, but that heavy lifting has, of course, already been done. Rather, Gibney looks at the Lie as a thing that took on a life of its own, regarding it from every angle. And that includes Lance’s. Gibney, the Oscarwinning director of Taxi to the Dark Side, had unprecedented access to Armstrong’s tightly guarded camp from 2008 until his teary-eyed Oprah confession. So while there are other retellings in the works—Hollywood is reportedly working on two biopics, and New York Times reporter Juliet Macur’s forthcoming book Cycle of Lies is also slated to go to film—The Armstrong Lie…

AMELIA BOONE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS IF OBSTACLE RACING has a breakout star, it’s Amelia Boone. The 30-year-old Portland, Oregon, native has won, or scored a podium spot in, each of the 14 races she’s entered, and she’s done it while working 80-hour weeks as a corporate bankruptcy attorney for one of the world’s largest law firms. At last year’s World’s Toughest Mudder, a 24-hour championship race in Englishtown, New Jersey, Boone traversed 90 miles and more than 300 obstacles to take first place among women. She also finished second overall and a full ten miles ahead of the guy in third. As an encore, this summer at the eight-mile Spartan Super Championship, she got lost and was forced to run an extra mile—and still won the women’s division. THE ASCENSION: In…

DISTANCE RUNNERS have no problem cranking out mile after mile, but when it comes to sprinting they often fall flat because they’ve neglected to train the fast-twitch muscle fibers crucial for short-burst movement. Skiers, in turn, are often terrible runners because they have tight, bulky legs. And cyclists tend to have undersize upper bodies. In fact, any athlete who concentrates on a single sport is probably developing one aspect of their body at the expense of another. Those imbalances often lead to injury. “Balanced strength equals durability,” says Rob Shaul, owner of Mountain Athlete in Jackson, Wyoming. “Stronger athletes are harder to injure and, if they do get injured, recover faster.” The solution is easy: train your weakness. YOUR ADVISERS ROB SHAUL, OWNER AND FOUNDER OF MOUNTAIN ATHLETE IN JACKSON,…

Water World MAALIFUSHI, MALDIVES The English word atoll comes from Dhivehi, the official language of the Maldives. And with good reason. This nation consists of 1,192 islands spread across 35,000 square miles of Indian Ocean. Turquoise lagoons, pearlescent beaches, and coral gardens teem with over 1,900 species of fish, 400 species of mollusks, and 350 species of crustaceans, making it an aquaphile’s paradise. But it can be tough to put together a DIY trip in a place where the easiest way around is by boat or seaplane. Base yourself at Maalifushi, which can arrange your adventures for you (doubles from $650; comohotels.com/maalifushi). The hotel opens in December and is one of only two resorts in the rarely visited, pristine Thaa Atoll. You’ll stay in one of 66 thatched-roof bungalows and…

THE RÍO TULIJÁ is a remote white water river that snakes its way through the rainforest of southern Mexico. Often called Agua Azul because of its swimming-poolblue color, it features a stunning stretch of five waterfalls ranging from 40 to 70 feet tall. This past March, a team of four world-class kayakers—Rafa Ortiz, 26, Rush Sturges, 28, Evan “E.G.” Garcia, 27, and Gerd Serrasolses, 24—attempted to descend the falls as part of an expedition they were filming for a documentary. The previous day, they had become the first paddlers to drop all five waterfalls on the nearby Río Santo Domingo, arguably the steepest navigable section of whitewater on earth. The Agua Azul mission was to be their final day of filming. RUSH STURGES: We were coming off the biggest descent…

APRIL 17—1:30 A.M. I woke up feeling sick and went to the head and immediately started exploding out both ends—it was food poisoning. I went on deck to throw up and saw one of my mates, who was also sick. I went and told the captain, then went back outside. That’s the last thing I remember until I came to in the ocean and saw the boat about 200 feet from me, sailing away. I must have fallen over the railing. I screamed, but I knew it was futile. APRIL 17—3 A.M. I decided I had two choices: live or die. I chose to live. I immediately started focusing on getting my heart rate down, using breathing and meditation. Thankfully, the water was about 82 degrees. APRIL 17—2:30 P.M. I…

IT TOOK three months for Congress to pass a bill aimed at helping East Coast residents cope with the impact of Sandy, and it will take at least eight times that long to spend it. Unlike many emergency-spending bills—which get loaded up with extraneous provisions, ranging from federal subsidies to tax breaks—the $50.5 billion measure approved in late January guides recovery efforts by designating funds to specific missions. But does that mean all the money is being spent wisely? Not entirely. First, it’s worth noting that funding under the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013 is separate from the National Flood Insurance Program, which has now paid out $7.7 billion on 143,000 Sandy-related claims. Up and down the coast, almost anyone with a home who got federal flood insurance to…

Andrew Ashcraft Robert Caldwell Travis Carter Dustin DeFord Christopher MacKenzie Eric Marsh Grant McKee Sean Misner Scott Norris Wade Parker John Percin Jr. Anthony Rose Jesse Steed Joe Thurston Travis Turbyfill William Warneke Clayton Whitted Kevin Woyjeck Garret Zuppiger On the morning of June 30, twenty members of Prescott, Arizona’s Granite Mountain Hotshots headed into the mountains to protect the small town of Yarnell from an advancing blaze. Later that day, every man but one was dead. Through interviews with family, colleagues, and the lone survivor, a former hotshot pieces together their final hours—and the fatal choices that will haunt firefighting forever. YARNELL, ARIZONA, A FORMER gold-mining town of 650 people, sits on a precipice at the western edge of the Colorado Plateau. Rising above it are the 6,000-foot peaks…

BIG MOUNTAIN 1. Rossignol Super 7 $850 Best For: Everyday skiers. The Test: Prostrate yourself before the highest-scoring ski ever to emerge from our annual test. For its redesigned Super 7, Rossignol found the perfect balance of rocker (upturned tip and tail), camber (underfoot for edge hold), and taper (for easy turn entry and exit). All that and it cut the weight by 25 percent, thanks to unique Air Tip honeycomb inserts and a lightweight paulownia core. It floats as well as any powder ski, pivots at will, and still edges powerfully on hard snow. The Verdict: The most versatile western ski we’ve ever tested. 140/116/130; rossignol.com Overall: 5 / Turning Pleasure: 5 2. Völkl Gotama $825 Best For: Occasional powder skiers who carve. The Test: The Gotama held stable…

In September, our Best Town Ever package generated the traditional annual debate among readers, who criticized us for either leaving out their hometown or outing their secret hideaway. But it was Ian Frazier’s “The One That Got Away,” about a troubled Deschutes River fishing guide known as Stealhead Joe, that prompted the most heartfelt response. This may be the best piece I’ve ever read in Outside. I didn’t know Joe, but I know the Deschutes and its steelhead, as well as many of the guides and characters who inhabit the river. I also know depression and have been as close to the edge of suicide as a person can get. This is a portrait of a broken man who was glorious and flawed but unique and valued—except, perhaps, in his…

IT’S A JULY MORNING in Park City, Utah, and U.S. Ski Team star Ted Ligety, six of his teammates, and I are locked in an intense game of basketball. From the first inbound, Ligety, who is five foot eleven and 185 pounds of power, drives hard, tosses elbows, and blows through picks. Then—“Ahhhh!”—he comes down hard on his ankle, turning it over. It starts to swell, and Ligety limps around with clenched teeth, but after ten minutes he shakes off the pain. He has to: the Winter Games in Sochi are only seven months away, and Ligety is expected to contend for numerous medals. There’s a lot of training to do. Today it’s a brutal circuit of squats, leg presses, hamstring curls, and various balancing exercises. He attacks it ferociously—his…

It’s the spring of 1924, and English playboy Lord Percival Bromley has disappeared in the Himalayas. The climbing world assumes he’s perished in an avalanche. Lady Bromley, his mother, believing otherwise, summons three mountaineers to her estate. “If my Percy is alive,” she says, “I want you to bring him home to me.” So begins prolific sci-fi master Dan Simmons’s brickthick adventure thriller The Abominable (Little, Brown, $28). Bromley’s an invented character, as are the three sent after him: decorated World War I veteran Richard Deacon, crafty Chamonix guide Jean-Claude Clairoux, and young Harvard grad Jake Perry. Soon enough the trio is battling Nazis disguised as yetis, but the surprise here is how well Simmons knows his climbing history. The team’s gear is supplied by George Finch, the inventor of…

DURING MY high school and community college years in western Michigan, I sold firewood to supplement my meager income from on-again, off-again construction work. I’d follow in the wake of commercial logging operations, sawing and splitting the unwanted hardwood “tops” that littered the forest after the saleable logs had been hauled away. I’d earn $95 a cord, delivered. It was hard work, which is why I had zero regrets when I left to attend graduate school. In a seemingly symbolic gesture, I traded my Husqvarna chainsaw for an ’89 Ford Econoline that I used to flee my hometown for Montana. Now I occasionally get nostalgic when I handle the gritty tools of my woodsman days. The sentiment came in mixed form when I picked up the four-pound felling ax designed…

THE BENEFITS of juicing are no secret, namely that it’s an extremely efficient way to get a full serving of fruits and vegetables. For athletes, liquid fuel makes even more sense. Cherry juice, for example, helps reduce inflammation, which can speed up muscle recovery. And beet juice is one of the few natural performance enhancers, thanks to high levels of nitrates, which improve blood flow in the body. “There probably wasn’t an endurance athlete in the London Olympics who wasn’t on beet juice,” says Malachy McHugh, director of research at Manhattan’s Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma. Today there are dozens of companies hawking bottled concoctions at the grocery store, but here’s the reason to do it yourself: heat and sunlight degrade nutrients and antioxidant compounds, so packaged…

SINCE THE MID-1990S, my family and I have spent Thanksgiving at a set of three rustic fishing cabins on Oregon’s Deschutes River. There’s no Internet or even cell reception in this section of the canyon. To send a text, you have to climb a small mountain, edge your way onto a rocky ridge, and hold your phone high in the air. No one can reach us in this gorgeous place, and that’s just fine. We pack in what we’ll need, because the nearest store is 90 minutes away. If something gets forgotten or dropped in the river on the boat ride across, tough luck. This isn’t a candied-yam kind of place, anyway. After a deep sleep and a leisurely breakfast, some of us try our luck nymphing for the season’s…

IT WAS LATE fall 2011, and I was three weeks into a course with the National Outdoor Leadership School in southeastern Utah, hiking with three other students along the Dirty Devil River. Around midday, we came to a point where the canyon wall met the river. A sandbank extended into the water, and I walked out on it with another guy. About 20 feet from shore, I suddenly sank knee deep. The other guy did, too, but only one foot. After 15 minutes of struggling, it was clear we were going to need some leverage. The two students on shore helped us rig a pulley so we could yank ourselves out. After about an hour, the other guy was able to slip out of his boot. He and one of…

I WAS HAVING my best day tracking wildlife. I’d seen a manatee, a river dolphin, and a couple of new birds. When two guys in their twenties motored past in a pirogue, I didn’t pay them much attention. Ten minutes later, something slammed into my back and knocked me into the water. My arms were frozen stiff. I didn’t know what was going on. I kicked to the surface but didn’t see anyone. Then something hit my face. I used my head to push my kayak to the riverbank. I sat down and got hit again—someone was shooting at me from the jungle. I looked down and saw a pool of blood. I thought, This is where you are going to die. I lay down and closed my eyes. When…

AS CLIMATE adaptation measures go it’s a doozy, worthy of the storm that spawned it. New Jersey governor Chris Christie wants huge protective sand barriers to exist along all 127 miles of his state’s shoreline, where Sandy made landfall last October, ultimately destroying 360,000 homes and causing $37 billion in damage. The initiative will play out differently around the state, largely because federal law restricts the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will do much of the work, to whatever was authorized or constructed in the mid-1990s, when the project was first dreamed up. So, for example, along 21 miles of coast in northern New Jersey, from Sea Bright to Manasquan Inlet, the Corps will rebuild an existing berm—a ten-foot-tall flat stretch of beach, 100 to 200 feet wide—but there…

1 3:58 P.M.* Brendan “Donut” Brendan “Donut” McDonough leaves his look out after a 180-degree wind shift and gusts up to 50 mph. 2 4:20 P.M. Granite Mountain leaves its initial safety zone and heads toward Yarnell. 3 4:30 P.M. The hotshots lose sight of the fire and descend toward the Helms place. 4 4:48 P.M. Trapped in the basin by the advancing fire, the hotshots deploy their shelters. Fire’s size at 3:55 P.M. Fire’s spread from 4 P.M. to 4:15 P.M. Fire’s spread from 4:30 P.M. to 4:35 P.M. Fire’s spread from 4:35 P.M. to 5:15 P.M.…

1. Arbor Steepwater $580 Best For: Big-mountain rippers. The Test: Arbor’s newest freeride board, the Steepwater is built in the same burly vein as its cocreator, big-mountain legend Steve Klassen. It features classic camber that enhances edge hold and stability on steep chutes and icy traverses, which we expected. What we didn’t: the paulownia and poplar core was both the stiffest in the test and the lightest underfoot. Expert riders will love that combo. The Verdict: Push hard and it pushes back. Might be too much board for intermediates. arborcollective.com RESPONSE: 5 / VERSATILITY: 3 2. Burton Trick Pony $500 Best For: Those who want one board for all terrain and conditions. The Test: Pardon the pun, but this is no one-trick Pony. Burton shaved ounces off the tip and…