Indice dei contenuti per November 2014 in Outside

HANSI JOHNSON While fat biking in Duluth, Minnesota, last winter, Johnson stood on the edge of an ice shelf above the 33-degree waters of Lake Superior to shoot his friend Casey Krueger riding the floes along the shore. The city had endured the longest string of below-zero days in its history, and the photographer, who lives nearby, wanted to capture the icebergs and gargoyles that had formed along the beaches at Park Point. “It looks like we could have been in the Arctic,” Johnson says, “but we were so close to Canal Park that even if I’d fallen in, Icould have gotten out and walked to a coffee shop three blocks away.” THE TOOLS: Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 24–105mm f/4 lens, ISO 320, f/8, 1/125 second PAOLO MARCHESI To…

OBSTACLE COURSE racing has seen explosive growth since 2010. Participation has soared by an estimated 4,000 percent since 2009, and race organizers have made millions on the events. But success doesn’t mean the industry is one big group hug. “There’s a lot of infighting,” says Adrian Bijanada, the 35-year-old owner of apparel company OCR Gear. Tough Mudder’s Will Dean and Spartan Race’s Joseph De Sena are notorious rivals, and directors of races large and small have resisted collaborating with each other, giving Bijanada something to think about. “I took a step back and asked, What does the sport really need?” he says. That’s a good question, and there are two competing answers. Companies like Spartan Race want to continue to grow while carving out more market share for themselves. The…

RACHEL BRATHEN RACHEL BRATHEN’S résumé really needs only one thing on it: a link to her instagram page (@yoga_girl). Thanks to photographs of oceanside yoga poses, personal anec dotes, and, yes, her good looks, the 26-year-old has attracted more than 900,000 followers since she joined in 2012. Brathen is part of a new generation of social-media stars who are turning their following into dream careers (see “Sharing the wealth,” above). She teaches sold-out yoga workshops and retreats across the world, and her yet-tobe-titled book will be released in Sweden (her home country) this fall and in the united States next spring. FACE RECOGNITION: during her first year on instagram, people began recognizing Brathen, then a yoga teacher at a small resort in aruba called manchebo, on the street. at a…

IN 1879, MORE THAN a century before ultra-endurance races became a thing, Arctic explorer Frederick Schwatka and 12 Inuit companions embarked on a record-setting 3,200-mile sled journey across the frozen tundra. To fuel themselves during the next 11 months, the men killed and ate reindeer, musk oxen, polar bears, and seals. In short: tons of fat and practically zero carbs. Not surprisingly, Schwatka initially noted in his journal “an apparent weakness and inability to perform severe exertive, fatiguing journeys.” But after two or three weeks the feeling passed. The secret? The low-carb diet had forced his body to adapt and use fat as its primary fuel. These days the Schwatka diet— or modern variations on it—is making an unlikely comeback among ultra-endurance athletes, led by record-breaking runners, alpinists, and Ironman…

RUNNING 1. TomTom Runner Cardio $270 A tiny joystick below the screen lets you toggle between outdoor, treadmill, and heart-rate modes. Even better, an embedded heart-rate monitor lets you leave the chest strap at home. tomtom.com GYM 2. Atlas Wearable $200 With a built-in accelerometer and a gyroscope that can identify and provide feedback on the exercises you’re doing (the sensors are precise enough to tell the difference between types of squats), the touch-screen Wearable doubles as a personal coach. atlaswearables.com BACKPACKING 3. Suunto Ambit3 Peak $500 The strengths of this watch are its battery life—a staggering 50 hours while GPS tracking—and advanced navigation functions, which can help you find your way back to the car. Bluetooth Smart capability pairs the Peak with your iPhone to display incoming calls and…

2004: During his junior year in high school, sketching on a napkin, Tom creates a concept for the perfect ceramic salsa bowl. It features a curved lip that helps keep the salsa on your chip after dipping. May 2009: With the Great Recession in full swing, Michael and Tom graduate from Columbia University with degrees in economics and architecture, respectively. Michael scores a job deleting pornography from a social-networking site. Tom gets an internship studying digital fabrication under a Swiss architect in Zurich. Both are unhappy. TOM: “We’d commiserate over Gchat: ‘There must be something better out there.’” June 2009: The guys come up with a plan. They will mass-produce Tom’s salsa bowl. Product name: Salsabol. They research manufacturing facilities in China. November 2009: Tom takes a three-month surf trip…

SOME CALLED IT G.I. JOE FANTASY CAMP, and for good reason. In the piney woods of north Mississippi, professionals and wannabes alike would come to the 60-acre compound of an outfit called SCG International to play war games, fire live weapons, conduct mock interrogations, and run around like kids, zinging paintball rounds across creeks and seeking cover in open fields. But this was serious business, too. During SCG’s heyday, between 2008 and 2012, the U.S. government and local law-enforcement agencies paid a lot of money to get people trained so they could function capably in war zones, shoot-outs, and other dicey situations. It was an exciting place to be, even for amateurs. If you displayed some talent, you might get a nod from one of SCG’s professional tough guys— lawmen…

Capita Spring Break $670 Best For: Deep powder and spring slush. The Test: Spring Break Snowboards partnered with Capita to handcraft this powder surfer with a shape that Spring Break describes as “experimentally primitive.” Testers credited the board’s resilience to Capita’s materials, while the Surf Rocker profile gave it a floaty feel in deep snow. The girth is slow to initiate turns, but once on-edge it transitions fast—almost like a wakeboard. One rider summarized it well: “A weird, dramatic sidecut with a surprising amount of pop. All that surface area makes it easy to stomp airs.” The Verdict: An energetic powder surfer. capitasnowboarding.com Venture Storm $595 Best For: Big mountains. The Test: Venture Snowboards are built in Silverton, Colorado, home to some of the state’s most intimidating peaks. So it’s…

—FLORENCE WILLIAMS, PAGE 80 Work Outs After seven years of managing people, I’ve identified a few tells. For example, note to outside editors: if you request a one-on-one meeting with me without noting a specific agenda, I brace myself. Why? Because roughly 50 percent of the time, that means you’re leaving. If your meeting request immediately follows a vacation or time spent reporting a story somewhere exotic, I bump those odds up to 95 percent. So it was last May when former senior editor Abe Streep asked to meet a few days after returning from a reporting trip to Chile. When he announced that he was departing to focus on writing full-time, I wasn’t surprised. I wasn’t disappointed, either. For one thing, i knew we’d be the beneficiary of a…

FOR DECADES, cycling’s most prestigious achievement wasn’t standing atop the podium at the Tour de France or the Giro d’Italia. It was setting the hour record, the maximum distance a cyclist can cover in a velodrome in 60 minutes. The pursuit once drew some of the biggest names in the sport. “That was the hardest ride I’ve ever done,” Belgian legend Eddy Merckx said upon setting a new record (30.714 miles) in 1972, after he’d won four of his five Tour de France titles. But in the 1990s, the UCI began tossing out records every time an advance in aerodynamics or riding position led to a new mark, and no serious attempt has been made since 2005. That’s about to change. Last May, the UCI reversed position when it announced…

Get Wild St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands The ferry chugs out of Red Hook harbor on St. Thomas, and I settle into a bench on the top deck as the sun sinks below the jagged outline of Tortola in the distance. As far as I’m concerned, a boat is the only way to arrive on an island, which is why I’m so intrigued by my destination. St. John has no airport—and no golf courses, either. What the 19-square-mile island does have is proximity—the flight from Miami to St. Thomas is less than three hours, and from there it’s a 20-minute ferry ride—and unadulterated wilderness. Nearly two-thirds of the island (7,000 acres) is part of U.S. Virgin Islands National Park. Beyond the bustle of the ferry port in Cruz Bay, the…

LAST APRIL at the Boston Marathon, when at the seven-mile mark Meb Keflezighi pulled away from one of the strongest fields in the race’s 118-year history, the other elite runners let him go. He was old for a podium contender—nearly 40—and slower, it seemed, than at least a dozen of the other favorites; they figured they could reel him in later. But Keflezighi gutted it out for a dramatic win, the first for an American man since 1983. This month, when the Eritrean-born Keflezighi toes the line at the New York City Marathon, a race he won in 2009, you can be sure that none of his competitors will be thinking about his age, even if he is. → “Now that I’m getting older, I use nine-day training cycles, with…

10 SECONDS: LAUGH Even just anticipating a chuckle is enough to relieve stress and elevate hormones that combat depression and boost immunity. 15 MINUTES: MEDITATE Research has shown that a quarter of an hour of guided meditation performed in the office can kick psychological and physiological markers of stress. You don’t need someone in the flesh to help lead your thoughts; UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center offers free weekly meditation podcasts to download or stream. 45 MINUTES: TAKE A NAP A 45-to-60-minute daytime snooze boosts your cardiovascular system, bringing spiked blood pressure back down to normal. 1 DAY: WALK IN THE WOODS Shinrin-yoku is a Japanese term meaning “walking or staying in forests to promote health.” Just a day in the wild, researchers have found, is enough to reduce stress,…

TIRED OF EPIC LIFT LINES, HOSTILE LOCALS, AND $15 BURGERS REMOTE POCKET OF BRITISH COLUMBIA, WHERE HOMEGROWN RESORTS AND THERE’S PLENTY OF POWDER TO SHARE. WINTER IN NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA IS LONG AND IT IS ALSO DEEP, AND THE DISTANCES UP HERE VAST, AND IF YOU WANT TO see any real bit of this country, you spend a lot of time staring through the windshield of a speeding automobile while you contemplate life and violent death and also road sand. The highway department sprays the few paved roads liberally with this orangey grit, a fact for which you are grateful, because only that and a restraining touch on the brakes are what’s keeping you and four patches of rental-tire rubber from careening into the frozen wilderness. Your relationship with the…

THE FIRST company to create twin tips, Line was conceived in the mid-nineties to disrupt long-standing assumptions about how skis should look and perform. Today that anti establishment philosophy persists in designs by artist Eric Pollard. When he started skiing as a teenager, Pollard thought topsheet graphics were lame and uninspired. “I saw painting and drawing as a way to change this,” says the 31-year-old freeskier and filmmaker. Pollard likes to describe the relationship between inventing tricks and creating art as “symbiotic,” and Line’s new Magnum Opus is a good example of his expressionistic style. The lone peak with cascading roots symbolizes Mount Hood, Oregon, where he tests Line’s prototypes daily. The ski is enviably light (just 4.6 pounds), thanks to its balsa-composite core, and the reverse camber decreases drag…

Dana Beaman, snowboarder Beaman brings a shock-proof, waterresistant Nixon Blaster portable speaker ($150; nixon.com) to make activities like building a backcountry jump more fun. “Listening to good music on a crisp, reliable speaker definitely makes the time go by faster,” Beaman says. Julia Mancuso, Olympic skier The 30-year-old four-time Olympian almost always wears a buff while skiing to keep her face from freezing. We like the Buff Original ($20; buffusa.com) for its warmth and flair. Seth Morrison, freeskier Morrison never knows when a big day will turn into a long night, so he always packs a headlamp. Our favorite is the Petzl Tikka R+ ($80; petzl.com). It’s smaller than an egg, and the 170- lumen max is plenty for getting home. GEAR HACK Sage Cattabriga-Alosa, freeskier It’s Cattabriga-Alosa’s least expensive…

HOW DOES HIGH-WIRE WALKER NIK WALLENDA ATTRACT SUCH MASSIVE TV AUDIENCES? SIMPLE: HE’S ONE OF THIS GENERATION’S GREATEST ENTERTAINERS. NIK WALLENDA is organizing the merch cart, trying to figure out the perfect configuration for selling the most T-shirts and coffee mugs stamped with his likeness. “I hate being a perfectionist,” he says. A little perfectionism is probably a good thing in Wallenda’s line of work. In recent years, he has walked a high wire 1,400 feet across Niagara Falls (tethered, though not by choice) and crossed another 1,400-foot cable strung over the Little Colorado River Gorge (untethered, as he prefers). Approximately 13 million people watched each of the walks on television, setting ratings records for both ABC and Discovery and making Wallenda one of the most famous daredevils of our…

WHILE YOU WERE busy flipping flapjacks, the maple-syrup business has been going through a major upheaval. Scientists have developed a new harvesting technique that will transform the industry, and this winter a new grading system will debut. Don’t panic—we’re here to walk you through every thing you need to know. ADVANCES IN SCIENCE modern pro ducers tap vast groves of adult sugar maples. The method requires patience and a lot of land: the maples take 30 years to mature, and an acre of trees produces only about 40 gallons of syrup per season. which is why the premium stuff, like Shady maple Farms, can cost $35 a quart. change is afoot, however. a project at the university of vermont’s proctor maple research center found that mature trees aren’t necessary. Scientists…

NOVEMBER IS SPRINGTIME in the altiplano of South America, where the vast two-million-acre Lake Titicaca collides with the 20,000-foot peaks of the Cordillera Real and an endless sky. At the heart of it all is Titilaka Lodge, situated on a remote peninsula on the lake’s western shore. The 18 rooms have windows overlooking the water, which changes from gold to blue to silver over the course of a day. Not that you’ll be inside. At 12,500 feet, the lodge is central to adventure. Grab a hotel kayak for a morning paddle around the peninsula and two private beaches; take a boat trip to the Uros Floating Islands—a manmade archipelago of reeds that’s home to a community of weavers and fishermen; or cycle into the altiplano, ditching your mountain bike to…

HANDS 1. Jack Black Industrial Strength Hand Healer $15 Rub on twice daily to prevent dryness, calluses, and cuticle damage. getjackblack.com FACE 2. Mayron’s Goods Chapstuff $15 Apply wherever dry skin is found. Loaded with bees wax, chamomile, cocoa butter, and calendula. mayronsgoods.com 3. Recipe for Men SPF 15 Facial Moisturizer $37 This protection comes packed with burnet, ginger, and cinnamon to minimize oiliness and protect from UV rays. recipefor menusa.com 4. Stubble & ‘Stache Face Moisturizer and Beard Conditioner $34 A two-in-one lotion with aloe and jojoba hydrates coarse hairs and the dry skin beneath. stubbleandstache.com LIPS 5. C.O. Bigelow Mentha Lip Balm Stick $7.50 Shea butter in this balm guards lips from wind and cold. bigelow chemists.com ALL OVER 6. Lucky Tiger Head to Tail Muscle Rub $12…

THISWAY FORWARD AN EIGHT-STEP PLAN FOR REBOOTING YOUR CAREER AND FINDING A JOB THAT YOU LOVE 1. Admit That You Have a Problem Crabby at the end of the day? Dreading Sunday night? Pay attention. It could be a sign that it’s time for a switch. Of course, there’s a big difference between run-of-the-mill workplace malaise and a major problem. “Ask yourself if your frustration is due to the tasks you perform or to office politics and interpersonal stuff,” says David Blustein, a professor of counseling psychology and a career-development scholar at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education. If you’re tired of the minutiae, consider a small change— between companies within your industry. If you’re dreading the fundamentals, however, it’s probably time for bolder measures. 2. Choose a New Direction…

MANY THINGS SCARE ME: the huge rock at the bottom of Boulder Garden on Colorado’s Gunnison River that has flipped my kayak numerous times; the chutes off the stormy top of the Big Sky tram; sullen men with clubs who lurk in Kenya’s Ngong Hills (I met them a while back). Can a scientist in an eggplant-colored blazer wielding cartoons of spiders instill fear in me? Yes, he can. Kevin LaBar is part evil genius, part Wizard of Oz. He creates sinister worlds that make your heart race, palms sweat, stomach clench—and then he cures you. He is, you might say, Dr. Fear. LaBar is a professor at Duke University’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, where he and others conduct twisted experiments using a nine-foot-square Rubik’s Cube of an alternate universe.…

Despite the insider jargon, buying skis today is easy: it’s all about waist width—of the skis. Carve powder every day? We don’t believe you, but regardless, you’re a 110-to-120-millimeter big-mountain shopper. Spend most of your time arcing turns on corduroy? Start in the range of 80 to 90 millimeters. Want versatility? The meat of the market is now 90 to 105 millimeters. From fat to thin, here’s a sampling of standouts from our three-day test at Snowbird, Utah. Line Supernatural 100 $810 Best For: All-mountain western skiing. The Test: The brand-new Supernatural 100 offers just a hint of tip rocker—enough to float the ski and keep it maneuverable in boot-deep powder. But because that rocker isn’t pronounced, you feel the full power of the edges in a carved turn. On…

COLD FRONT Cooler temperatures mean more layers On Reid: Övik Lite vest by Fjällräven ($250; fjallraven.us); Plaid shirt by Nautica ($70; nautica.com); 511 jeans by Levi’s ($68; levis .com); Legacy striped scarf by Icebreaker ($55; icebreaker .com); Reid’s own hat On Ryan: Hacking jacket by Filson ($520; filson.com); Hybridge Lite jacket by Canada Goose ($495; canadagoose. com); Lodge shirt by Icebreaker ($165; icebreaker.com); Echo Lake Selvage Chino pants by Timberland ($118; timberland.com) Location: Corkins Lodge, Chama, New Mexico…