Table of contents for December 2014 in Outside

BLAKE JORGENSON Last March, Jorgenson and pro skier James Heim spent three days scouting on Ipsoot Mountain, near Whistler, British Columbia, while filming their latest project, Days of My Youth. “James kept looking for something at his limit,” Jorgenson says, referring to the 400-foot pitch Heim chose. “I couldn’t see the outrun, and it looked really scary from my angle, but he made it look easy.” THE TOOLS: Nikon D4, 80–200mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 125, f/6.3, 1/2,000 second JOSHUA MEADOR After seeing a photograph of the frozen spray around Abiqua Falls five years ago, Meador was determined to visit the icy cascade, located two hours south of Portland, Oregon, where he lives. On a freezing morning last December, when he knew the icicles would be spectacular, the photographer hiked in…

THE BIGGEST fracking fight in the country is now taking place in Colorado. And the most important man in the ring is 45-yearold Shane Davis, a self-identified fractiv -ist, who wants a total ban on the practice. Some activists focus their energy on civil disobedience, others on protests. Davis crunches data, digging deep into state and industry records to illuminate fracking’s damage across the state. He even speaks in statistics. “Forty-three percent of all operator spills have already caused groundwater contamination in Weld County, Colorado,” Davis says. “One point seven million gallons of toxic waste was never recovered from the ground.” Davis distributes those findings via his website, Fractivist.org, to environmental activists, ranchers, and homeowners, who then use them to enact local moratoriums and bans. “Shane is not just a…

Fuel KEFIR A cultured milk product similar to yogurt, kefir is loaded with probiotics, the healthy bacteria that live in your gut— where most of your immune cells dwell— and help you absorb nutrients to keep your immune system solid. Blend one cup with fruit and drink it like a smoothie. RED GRAPEFRUIT Vitamin C can shorten colds while alleviating symptoms, but skip the supplements. Any more than 500 milligrams per day can cause digestive issues, and eating just one red grapefruit will satisfy your needs. SWEET POTATO Root veggies are brimming with vitamin A, which helps the body produce white blood cells that fight bacteria and viruses. They also maintain mucosal membranes in the nose and throat to prevent infections from gaining a foothold in your body. Prick the…

IF YOU THINK it’s scary to race Kilian Jornet Burgada, the 27-year-old Spanish ultrarunning beast, try dating him. ¶ One September morning in 2013, Jornet set offfor a light and fast climb in the French Alps with his girlfriend, 27-year-old Swedish trail runner Emelie Forsberg. To her competitors, Forsberg sort of is Jornet. She’s gorgeous and charming and superstrong, and like him she arrived as a young nobody and now reigns alongside him as a world champion and frequent event winner in the Skyrunner World Series, a collection of some of the hardest mountain races on the planet. She’s also a world-class ski mountaineer, but when she joined Jornet for that morning run, Forsberg got a taste of something new—fear. After hours of scrambling in little more than running shoes…

LESS THAN A YEAR AFTER THE END OF WORLD WAR II, WHEN CELINA HARPE WAS JUST SEVEN, SHE SAT BESIDE HER GRANDFATHER ON THE STEPS OF HIS CABIN, OVERLOOKING THE ATHABASCA RIVER IN THE NORTHERN REACHES OF ALBERTA. “It was spring,” she told me recently—the time of breakup, when the ground is still packed with pearlescent snow but the sun weakens the river ice until it cracks and starts to move. The force of the current pushed giant floes onto the banks and up the ridge. “Look at the beautiful river, the way it looks now,” her grandfather said. Adam Boucher was an elder of the Fort McKay First Nation, descended directly from the hereditary leaders of the Chipewyan people, who in the 19th century had intermarried with French and…

Pace Maker A few months ago, when a small team of Outside editors began assembling our firstannual What’s Next report (Dispatches, page 28), a list of the ideas, trends, people, and breakthroughs that we think will define 2015, I asked them to come up with some profile candidates who could headline the package and go on the cover. They came back with nearly a dozen names, but the overwhelming choice was Kilian Jornet Burgada. I wasn’t so convinced. Our own country’s greatest ultra runners aren’t exactly A-list stars in the United States, which means that the stateside name recognition of Jornet, a Spanish ultrarunner, is probably on par with that of Russell Howard. (Who? Exactly. He’s a Canadian curling Hall of Famer.) Most of the people in the office know…

SKIER PROFILE: Convenience Is King Within an hour or two after hitting the tarmac at Salt Lake City Airport, you can be soaring up Snowbird’s tram and scouting lines at this famously deep (500 inches annually) resort. Stay slopeside in one of four lodges—we like the outdoor hot tubs and top-floor sushi at the concrete-b unkerstyle CliffLodge (from $214; snowbird.com). If the canyon road is closed due to a storm—a frequent occurrence—you’ll beat the crowds to powder-day hot spots like the long, sustained vertical offthe Gad 2 chair, now easier to access with last winter’s upgrade to a high-speed quad. In Colorado, Breckenridge combines terrain for all abilities with a relatively short drive from Denver Interna tional Airport (two hours west via Interstate 70), and the Wi-Fi-enabled Colorado Mountain Express…

Tools 1. YogaRat SportLite Hand and Face towel Featherweight microfiber in the SportLite makes it quick to dry and easy to pack without sacrificing absorbency. $20; yogarat.com 2. New Balance Minimus 00 shoes Running shoes are designed for forward motion and aren’t great in the gym, where you move dynamically in all directions. The 8.4-ounce Minimus 00 combines barefoot-inspired features—zero drop and a barely there upper—with the stability you usually find in much burlier trainers. $90; new balance.com 3. Lululemon Assert shorts A stretchy panel along the inseam prevents chafing, the thick waistband holds tight without constricting, and side slits at the leg openings maximize mobility. $72; lululemon.com 4. Normal earphones Using proprietary software and 3-D printing, Normal sculpts each pair of buds to its user, so they won’t fall…

“ ‘Don’t cry Anna. Didn’t you say I am like a father to you? (smack, blood in my ear) You have all those boyfriends anyways. I want to keep you focused on swimming.’ I am thirteen and in a private discussion with [my coach] that was set up after nationals. Ripping pain, grunts that sound like the monster in a horror movie, blood, my hair pulled out lying on the ground, the smell of fear. It smells like fresh chlorine and metal.” —FROM AN ESSAY BY ANNA STRZEMPKO, DESCRIBING AN ALLEGED 2008 RAPE AT THE HANDS OF HER SWIM COACH AT THIRTEEN, Anna Strzempko was nine years into her amateur career when she reached the finals of the 2008 YMCA Long Course national Championship, swimming for the greater Holyoke YMCA…

Present Company During the holidays, we’ve been known to ditch the tonic and drink St. George’s delicious Dry Rye gin ($31; stgeorgespirits.com) unadorned. The distinctive rye and fragrant juniper tastes like a Christmas tree and also makes a great addition to creative cocktails. Play Channel Islands surfboards typically collaborates with its team riders (think: Kelly Slater and Dane Reynolds) to create new models. The Average Joe (from $695; cisurfboards.com) is engineered for the rest of us. It’s built for small waves, but despite the beefy rails it turns surprisingly well in the pocket, while the minimal rocker allows for early takeoffs. In the 17th century, a toolmaker named John Wilson made skates for England’s Royal Court. Today, his eponymous brand of laser-cut, hand-finished steel iceskating blades (from $137; worldsbestblades.com) endure…

Corporations Will Give Away Their Best Ideas Companies tend to be pretty protective of their patents. But this year the electric-car maker Tesla Motors made all its technology available to help spur innovation in the industry. That includes batteries that hold a charge longer than any other on the market and aerodynamics that produce less drag, as well as designs for the Model X crossover SUV, which will hit streets in fall 2015. Joining the open-source trend is Patagonia, which partnered with a bioprocessing company called Yulex to create natural biorubber for its wetsuits. The material, extracted from the bark of the Southwestern shrub guayule, should turn up soon in Quiksilver wetsuits, followed by everything from shoes to surgical devices. Adventure Bikes Will Reign A few years ago, cyclocross riders…

In the Lead WILL RECLA JOINED the cross-country team at Lindbergh high school, in Renton, Washington, in the fall of 2012. On October 3, Recla, one of the most talented freshmen on the squad, underwent a high-tech heart screening through an organization called the Nick of Time Foundation. The American Heart Association recommends a 14-part cardiac workup for athletes, and most high school and college students must pass to play sports. But, as a teenager, the athletic director at Recla’s school had witnessed a friend collapse and die suddenly, and he wanted all incoming athletes to undergo an electrocardiogram (ECG) and echocardiogram (see “Pump Primer,” page 62). Recla didn’t have a family history of heart disease, and he hadn’t experienced symptoms associated with heart disorders: no fainting, weakness, or irregular…

AGE 27 5 FEET 11 INCHES 175 POUNDS STRATTON, VERMONT THE UNITED STATES has never been a hotbed of nordic skiing. At the Sochi Olympics, the men’s sprint team eked out a sixth-place finish, and even that was considered a success. But Hamilton, who was a member of that team, is beginning to buck the trend. He won a solo World Cup race in Switzerland last year—the first for an American in 30 years—and this winter, at the World Championships in Falun, Sweden, he’s aiming for an unprecedented medal in the individual classic sprint. Even with a training load equal to a full-time job, he still finds room for the fun stuff. “I’d go crazy if I had to roller-ski every time my coach told me to, so sometimes I’ll…

THE JAPANESE enjoy a culture of consensus. All things touristed, in particular, take their place in a hierarchy. This is convenient for travelers: the country is organized for best-of consumption. In the three years that my younger brother, Micah, lived there, we joined Japanese tourists in staying on not just the beaten track but the ranked one. We visited the Third Most Famous Original Flatland Castle and the Second Most Famous Garden, as well as the Second Most Famous Large Buddha and the First Most Famous An cient Hot Spring. There’s even a list of the Three Most Poisonous Creatures. We stayed away from those. The original triumvirate is the Three Scenic Views, first identified as such by a Confucian scholar in 1643; all subsequent rankings have followed that medieval…