Indice dei contenuti per September 2015 in Outside

My family traveled a lot from our home in Minnesota. I remember my parents taking us on a cruise to the Bahamas, to the Statue of Liberty, down to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi. We didn’t have the means to do the international thing, but they tried to help us gain some perspective and experience by traveling when we could. When I went ice climbing in Slo venia, my hands were sore, my back was sore. I was using muscles I’d never really used before. The couple-day hike up to Machu Picchu was pretty tough. The air is so thin. That was one of the tougher things I’ve experienced physically. Since I can only really travel Janu ary through early April, I’ve hit everything you can imagine in the Southern Hemisphere. This…

When I was growing up an hour south of Chattanooga in the eighties and nineties, the city was best known for MoonPies, those sinfully delicious chocolate, graham cracker, and marshmallow hockey pucks. Fast-forward a couple of decades and I’m standing in a juice bar on the edge of downtown, wondering what happened to the corny place I once knew. Now it’s all nitro cold brew and tech startups, like the love child of Nashville and Sili -con Valley, but with more singletrack. The city of 173,000, built in the belly of the rocky Tennessee River Gorge, always had the potential to be a great adventure town. Climbers have been sending routes on the nearby sandstone cliffs for more than 30 years. A decade ago, the local mountain-bike club set out…

“It’s like Boulder with an Iowa-nice twist,” is how one 20-year resident of Iowa City describes this bucolic river town of 72,000. No, there aren’t any mountains. No legal pot, either. But the city does have a pedestrian mall to rival Pearl Street, a university with more than 30,000 students, and a bike-crazy culture. Unlike Boulder, it’s affordable. The median home price of $178,000 will get you a midcentury bungalow. Yet the local economy is extremely healthy, with an unemployment rate of just 2.3 percent, thanks to the University of Iowa and corporate employers like Oral-B Labs and Procter and Gamble. With no mountain climbs, cyclists here have turned to the state’s tens of thousands of miles of unpaved roads. “Iowa is ground zero for gravel riding,” says Steve McGuire,…

Half the county surrounding Beaufort is water. Which means anglers and paddlers have the better part of a million acres to explore, from brackish inland rivers to Jurassic Park– looking salt marshes that separate the mainland from the barrier islands. That’s not counting the Atlantic Ocean, where sea kayakers can play with dolphins before beaching on the white sands of Hunting Island State Park. As for the city itself, think of a coastal Gone with the Wind. Giant live oaks, thick with Spanish moss, surround antebellum homes. Consider it a smaller, less expensive Charleston, with the same historic charm but a tenth of the population and slightly more affordable digs. (The median home value in Beaufort is $253,000.) Locals and visitors alike eat plenty of seafood, either fresh catch from…

In Middlebury, you’re either a townie or a Middkid—one of the 2,500 students who attend Middlebury College, the liberalarts school that makes this town of 8,500 a crunchy utopia. The nerds are the ones speaking Chinese and Arabic or turning cow manure into natural gas, but the locals live an equally charmed existence. They’re busy with the 37-mile Tour de Farms bike ride, which includes pit stops at 18 agricultural spreads for donuts and apple cider, or sending the 15-foot waterfall downtown in a kayak. You can get a three-bedroom house, complete with a chicken coop out back, for under $300,000, and jobs are relatively abundant. Woodchuck Hard Cider, for example, recently opened a new $30 million headquarters. Yet it remains very much a rural town—the closest city, Burlington, is…

IT’S BEEN ALMOST TWO DECADES SINCE THE INFAMOUS 1996 TRAGEDY ON MOUNT EVEREST, AND THE WORLD'S TALLEST MOUNTAIN HAS SEEN MORE DESTRUCTIVE SEASONS — ESPECIALLY IN THE PAST TWO YEARS. DOES THE CATASTROPHE THAT GAVE US INTO THIN AIR STILL HAVE THE POWER TO CAPTIVATE AUDIENCES? NICK HEIL TALKS TO THE CAST AND CREW OF THE NEW MOVIE EVEREST ABOUT MAKING AN ADVENTURE EPIC ROAR TO LIFE FOR A NEW GENERATION. There are plenty of arresting visuals in Everest— mountaineers plummeting into the abyss, massive avalanches, a high-altitude superstorm, Keira Knightley—but the best scene is one of the quietest. In a dimly lit mess tent, climbers huddle around a dinner table, sipping chhaang from tin cups, when journalist Jon Krakauer (played by actor Michael Kelly) hits his crew with the…

JONATHAN KUNG RIDING IN BELLE ISLE. THE HONG KONG NATIVE MOVED TO DETROIT IN 2007 AND NOW RUNS A POP-UP RESTAURANT CALLED KUNG-FOOD ' WHICH WILL EVENTUALLY OCCUPY A BRICKAND-MORTAR SPACE IN EASTERN MARKET. “ I LOVE HOW DETROIT HAS THE BONES OF A BIG CITY YET FEELS INTIMATE AND CLOSE KNIT ' ” SAYS KUNG. “WE ALL HAVE OUR PROFESSIONAL REALMS ' WE ARE AWARE OF EACH OTHER ' OR AT LEAST HAVE BEEN DRUNK IN THE SAME ROOM. YOU CAN GO TO MOTORCITY WINE ON A SUNDAY AND SEE MOST OF DETROIT’S CULINARY INDUSTRY GATHERED ON THE SAME PATIO . ” ON JONATHAN: Solid Authentic jacket by J.Press York Street ($425; jpressonline.com); Commuter 513 jeans by Levi’s ($88; levi.com); West Haven Waterproof chukka boots by Timberland ($170; timberland.com);…

1. Acre Meridian Alpine jacket $455 This sleek city rain slicker is packed with cleverly disguised performance features, like zippered pockets on the sides to keep clear of a pack and a snap-off hood that’s cut to fit over a helmet. The Polartec NeoShell fabric breathes better than a bike courier doing block sprints, and the tailoring is so good it could have been designed just for you. acre-supply.com 2. Specialized Utility vest $180 Unlike the vast majority of syn thetic puffers, which can cause you to sweat like you’re wearing a garbage bag when pedaling hard, this vest adapts to regulate your temperature, thanks to militarygrade synthetic insulation. Even better? Reversible versatility: staid two-tone gray for the office and traffic-cone orange for low-light conditions. specialized.com 3. Kitsbow Power Wool…

Employment Insurance About five years ago, Outside owner Larry Burke stopped by my office and plopped a hardcover copy of Forrest Fenn’s memoir The Thrill of the Chase on my desk. “We’ve got to do a story on this,” he said. Then he told me how Fenn, a local art dealer in Santa Fe, had recently hidden a box of treasure worth more than a million dollars somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. The clues to finding it were embedded in a poem inside his memoir. “This is going to be huge,” said Larry. “And this guy is in our backyard. We should be all over this.” When he left my office, I flipped through the book, awash in skepticism. It was hard to believe that the story was true, and…

DAY ONE 7:30 A.M. Start with a Night rider Nitro (nitrogenated cold brew) at Velo, a coffee roaster with vintage bikes on the wall. 9 A.M. Raccoon Mountain is the crown jewel of the local trail system, with 30 miles of singletrack just eight miles from downtown. Be sure to hit High Voltage, a 3.5-mile cliffside enduro course with crazytight switchbacks. 12:30 P.M. Head to Taqueria Jalisco, a brick-and-mortar restaurant built around a food truck. Show up early for the mole: it’s made fresh on Saturdays and gone before the lunch rush ends. 2 P.M. Paddleboarding the Tennessee River is a citywide obsession. Rent a SUP at L2 and launch in the heart of downtown to spend a couple of hours exploring the sandstone bluffs beneath the supermod Hunter Museum.…

Stop at this riverside city of 68,000 on a summer Saturday and you’ll see families lazily tubing and cyclists tackling the 30-mile rail-trail system. But what sets Eau Claire apart is its music scene, which was going strong long before native son Justin Vernon’s group Bon Iver won a Best New Artist Grammy in 2012. Things got louder this July, when Vernon debuted his Eaux Claires Festival, with acts like Sufjan Stevens and the National joining his band. We checked in with Vernon to find out what makes Eau Claire so special. OUTSIDE: What’s your favor ite local activity? VERNON: Canoeing the Flambeau River and jumping in the lakes up by New Auburn. No question. Did the town play a role in your musical education, or are you just a…

Athens is known for its SEC football, robust party scene, and cycling on endless farm roads. But the city of 121,000 has also become an outpost of world-class eateries that combine the best of the South with an adventurous, farm-fresh ethos. White Tiger Gourmet, a barbecue joint where vegetarian dishes get equal billing with pulled pork, is a good example of that. We asked chef-owner Ken Manring to walk us through his perfect day chowing down. Breakfast: Down a fluffy, buttery biscuit from the Bread Basket, hidden in a gas station off Boulevard. This may be the world’s best hangover cure. Lunch: Cali-NTito’s is a Peruvian joint with an infusion of Caribbean flair. Bring your own beer and order the arroz chaufa, stir-fried rice with plantains and hot sauce. Happy…

In the shadow of the San Juan Mountains, tiny Pagosa Springs is a microcosm of authentic Colorado. In the downtown district, historic storefronts house a brewery, restaurants, and an old movie theater supported by a crowdfunding campaign. The namesake springs—the deepest in the world— attract 500,000 annual visitors to this remote corner of the state. The springs aren’t just for soaking: hot water runs beneath sidewalks, melting snow in the winter. Most residents live outside town, which has a population of just 1,700. (The county is home to 12,000.) “You have to be OK with that low-key rural aspect,” says Sandy Kobrock, owner of the Pass Creek Yurt and Wolf Creek Avalanche School. “Don’t come here if you want nightlife.” Jobs are concentrated in tourism, but home prices are reasonable,…

The Black Hills around this town of 11,000 are the exception in pancake-flat South Dakota—there are cliff walls for cragging and streams teeming with fat browns just down the road. In town there’s an Old West vibe, but bikes are the preferred steeds. Locals can roll to the Cycle Farm for vegetables, partake in the bar-hopping Poker Ride, or saddle up for one of these three awesome annual events. SEPTEMBER 6 2015 Dakota Five-O A 48-mile, mostly singletrack jaunt that starts downtown on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. Look for the bacon and PBR station around mile 35. savoywinterchallenge.com/dakotafiveo MARCH 19 2016 28 Below Fat Bike Race Each March, come rain, snow, or mud, this 28-mile lollypop loop climbs 2,700 feet toward the Cement Ridge Fire Lookout on a…

If not for the TREASURE, it seems unlikely that FORREST FENN and DARRELL SEYLER would ever have crossed paths. Fenn is an 85-year-old retired art dealer from Santa Fe; Darrell is a 50-year-old former cop living in Seattle. Fenn grew up exploring Yellowstone National Park; Darrell bounced in and out of foster homes. After a bad tour in Vietnam, Fenn wandered the plateaus and canyons of the desert Southwest; after a divorce, Darrell spent a few unfortunate months on the Dallas club scene—glow sticks, bass drops, put your hands in the air. Yet the two are inextricably linked by an incredible fact: for the past three years, Darrell has been searching the Rocky Mountains for a chest filled with an estimated million dollars in gold, and Fenn knows where it…

BEST FOR: Tech- Obsessed Triathletes 1. Rudy Project Proflow $325 If the Proflow looks pricey… well, it is. But consider what you’re getting for your dollars: a bomber, aerospacegrade aluminum-alloy frame with a carbon core, “unbreakable” ImpactX-2 photochromic lenses that transition across an incredible spectrum in seconds, and a snug, stable fit, thanks to exceptionally adjustable temples and nosepiece. e-rudy.com BEST FOR: Fat Tires in the Forest 2. Uvex Sportstyle 700 Vario $150 Plunging below tree line, whiteknuckled and sweating, shouldn’t mean descending into darkness. That’s not a problem with Uvex’s photo chromic Variomatic lens, which goes from full dark to almost clear in just 28 seconds. Aggressive antifog tech—including both venting and lens coating—keeps things clear on the uphill slog. uvex-sports.us BEST FOR: Roadies with Low-Key Flare 3. POC…

IN 2009, Shimano released Di2, an electronic shifting system for road bikes that cost $4,500. At first it was used only by pros, but prices have dropped (at least a little), and electronic components have proliferated. Best of all, the new technologies are making their way to mountain bikes. From today’s electronic drivetrains to tomorrow’s wireless suspension systems, these developments will change how you attack the trails. DRIVETRAINS This year, Shimano finally brought electronic shifting to mountain bikes with the rugged XTR M9050 Di2. Powerful derailleur motors make it possible to shift even when pedaling hard. The $1,200 premium over mechan ical shifting keeps it mostly out of reach, but that’s likely to change soon. SUSPENSIONS Using input from accelerometers embedded in the fork and stem, an onboard chip senses…

HEALTH, FITNESS & NUTRITION BODYWORK SPECIAL: PERFORMANCE NUTRITION Part I: Breakfast (March) outsideonline.com/breakfast Part II: Lunch (June) outsideonline.com/lunch Part III: Dinner THE MEAL: Kenyan Ugali THE CHEF: Runner Dennis Kimetto For years experts have wondered what makes Kenyan distance runners like Kimetto so dominant. (Kimetto broke the marathon world record, running 2:02:57 in Berlin in 2014.) Is it genetics? Training? Maybe it’s the ugali. For dinner he often digs into the dough-like Kenyan staple, made from cornmeal or flour, along with kale and kidney beans sautéed with onions and tomato. “I’ve been eating this since I was a young boy,” says Kimetto. “I stick with what works.” The dish is so popular among Kenyan runners that marathons like Boston and Prague have begun serving it at pre-race dinners. Why It…

In the final throes of this year’s contest, Port Angeles (population 19,000) staged an impressive fight. Homeowners put placards in their yards re -mind ing passersby to vote, businesses made pleas on sandwich boards, and locals stood on street corners with signs. The town ended up coming in second to Chattanooga— which has almost ten times the pop ulation—by just 2 percent of the vote. The message was clear. “We love this town, and this community can really pull together,” says Jacob Oppelt, owner of Next Door Gastropub. Situated on the northern shore of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles is a gateway to Olympic National Park. Because of the dramatic relief— the peaks rise to over 5,000 feet within a few miles of the coast—the area hosts diverse ecosystems, including…

Don’t go to Flagstaff expecting scorching heat and snowbirds. This railroad town of 69,000 is flanked by 12,000-foot mountains and the largest contiguous ponderosa pine forest in the world, defying all the state’s stereotypes. “People think of Arizona as a hot desert, but we’re at 7,000 feet,” says Caleb Schiff, owner of Pizzicletta, a beloved local pizzeria. “Flagstaff is an oasis.” The high desert is prized by athletes, including marathoners Ryan and Sara Hall and ultrarunner Rob Krar, who come for the combination of sunny but cool weather, elevation, and a strong community of professional coaches. “At any given time in Buffalo Park”—a scenic mesa with a two-mile running loop—“super tall skinny people are blowing by you at a million miles a minute,” says Allie Stender, a program manager for…

“There’s a saying around here, ‘Our life is your vacation,’ ” says Mike Thomas, a local trail builder. That sounds awful smug, but visit and it’s easy to see his point. Tucked into the southern Appalachians, this college town has an embarrassment of out door riches. Down the road, you can find Class V boating on Wilson’s Creek, and 45 minutes outside town is Linville Gorge, one of the most dramatic canyons east of the Rocky Mountains, with more than 11,000 acres of wilderness backpacking and endless walls for trad climbing. Nearby Beech Mountain offers some of the only lift-served mountain biking in the South. A choice section of the Appalachian Trail runs across a series of above-tree-line peaks just 40 minutes from downtown. And you can’t beat the cycling…

To see Annapolis shine, come on a Wednesday evening in the summer, when the weekly sailboat race draws more than 100 boats to the harbor. After the race, the locals party like, well, sailors. You’ll find crews talking smack over the night’s race footage at the Boatyard Bar and Grill. But you don’t have to sail to get on the water: in the spring, kayakers and paddleboarders float Spa Creek. On land, runners tackle the three-mile trail to the old Navy radiotransmission towers on Greenbury Point. With some 39,000 residents, Annapolis is a manageable city. Downtown, you’ll run into midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy and students from St. John’s College discussing Kant at City Dock Coffee. While it’s not cheap, you can buy a home with bay views for…

Site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Games, Lake Placid still feels like an Olympic village. It’s tiny—population 2,500—but it’s an amazing place for all kinds of athletes to call home. Just ask 29-year-old U.S. Ski Team member and two-time Olympian Andrew Weibrecht, a Lake Placid native. He walked us through his favorite spots. Morning: My day starts with coffee and breakfast at the Olympic Training Center, then a workout. I train in the basement of the former Olympic ice rink, which has everything I need, from free weights to physio balls. If I’ve got a day off, I get eggs Benedict at the Breakfast Club on Main Street. Midday: On Saturdays, I’ll go out on my mountain bike. I can put together a two-hour ride on Logger’s Loop right…

As I have gone alone in there And with my treasures bold, I can keep my secret where, And hint of riches new and old. Begin it where warm waters halt And take it in the canyon down, Not far, but too far to walk. Put in below the home of Brown. From there it’s no place for the meek, The end is ever drawing nigh; There’ll be no paddle up your creek, Just heavy loads and water high. If you’ve been wise and found the blaze, Look quickly down, your quest to cease But tarry scant with marvel gaze, Just take the chest and go in peace. So why is it that I must go And leave my trove for all to seek? The answers I already know I’ve…

ADVENTURE TOOLS, TESTED & REVIEWED IMAGINE a Hollywoodcaliber camera so portable you could schlep it up the Dawn Wall in a backpack and capture Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson struggling through the crux of pitch 15 while it dangled next to them. With Red Digital Cinema’s 8K Weapon Dragon, that camera now exists. Red has been a game changer in adventure filmmaking since Oakley founder Jim Jannard launched the company in 2005. His vision: create a digital camera with quality superior to industry-standard 35mm film—at a fraction of the cost. The Red One did just that, wowing Hollywood auteurs like Peter Jackson and Steven Soderbergh in the process. Subsequent generations were smaller, enabling cameramen to shoot in spectacular new places. The Weapon Dragon is the latest iteration. It’s faster…

BOTTOMS 1. ExOfficio Classic Give-N-Go boxers $26 With a blend of quickdrying nylon and spandex, the Give-N-Goes breathe naturally and dry fast. Bonus: antimicrobial treatment fights funk. exofficio.com 2. Icebreaker Anatomica boxers $40 These shorts use one of Icebreaker’s lightest and softest merino wools, plus 4 percent Lycra in the weave for a stretchy, durable, body-hugging fit. icebreaker.com 3. Mack Weldon Silver boxer-briefs $34 Silver antimicrobial fibers have been a core odor-fighting strategy in base layers for more than a decade. Mack Weldon brings that level of tech to everyday underwear. mackweldon.com TOPS 4. American Giant Classic Pocket T-shirt $25 This versatile, layerable piece is crafted from sturdy 4.8-ounce jersey cotton. It’ll last longer than almost any other T-shirt out there. american-giant.com 5. Hugh and Crye White Pocket Tee $20…