Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2017 i Outside

FIRST LOOK Warm Fuzzies CAN OUTDOOR-APPAREL MANUFACTURERS SAVE THE AMERICAN WOOL FARMER? “Six years ago, we didn’t know much about where our wool went. All we knew was that a lot of it was exported to China,” Roberts says. FRED ROBERTS’S sheep lead cold, hard lives. The herd of some 500 Rambouillet- Columbia ewes spend the winter on the prairies of southwestern Wyoming, where the wind can strip the paint off a Ford pickup. In the spring, they walk 300 miles north to their summer range in the mountains near Jackson, which can see snowfall just about any day of the year. But there’s an upside to the harsh American West: the sunny, arid climate spurs the animals to produce small-diameter wool fibers that can make a merino-grade garment. “American…

FOR OUTSIDE’FOR OUTSIDE'S 40TH ANNIVERSARY, WE'RE FEATURING 11 PEOPLE WHO HAVE CHANGED OUR WORLD. THIS MONTH, WE LOOK AT A BASE JUMPER WHO REDEFINED ACCEPTABLE RISK. WITH A GENIUS for heart-pounding spectacle in breathtaking locations, California daredevil Jeb Corliss, 40, has plum meted from the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Angel Falls in Venezuela. Last year he darted in his wingsuit through a target suspended above the Great Wall of China. Beyond the stunts, Corliss—with his allblack wardrobe, blunt sound bites, and attitude seemingly calculated to provoke (he stuck out his tongue at news photographers after he was arrested for attempting to parachute from the Empire State Building in 2006)—has forged an image as an action figure in the most dangerous sport ever devised. Twenty years ago, when…

IT HAS NEVER BEEN EASIER TO BEAT THE MIDWINTER DOLDRUMS THAN WITH THESE EIGHT WARM-WEATHER ESCAPES 1. Fill the Jack Shealy, whose roots go back five genera tions in the Everglades, started Everglades Adventure Tours in 2005. His property is a 35-acre campground in Big Cypress National Preserve, where you can rent a safaristyle tent or try out a chickee—an elevated, screened-in, thatchroofed hut built by a local Miccosukee Indian. Shealy will happily share the region’s best spots for freshwater bass or catfish and rent you a Jackson kayak, so you can paddle the cypress swamps and mangrove tunnels of the nearby Turner River, where egrets, anhingas, and herons feed. He also offers the only poleboat tours of the backwaters, and his other guided trips will get you paddling among…

TWO NEW BOOKS BREAK DOWN HOW SUGAR IS KILLING US—AND WHO IS TO BLAME FOR MORE than half a century, we’ve been led to believe that fat is the root of all dietary evil. Recently, though, increasing numbers of public-health officials and researchers are contending that sugar has been the problem all along, causing numerous chronic diseases including gout, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. ¶ The reason it has taken so long to swing popular and scientific opinion is largely because the sugar industry—composed of both trade groups and major corporations like General Mills, the Coca-Cola Company, and PepsiCo—has manipulated or subverted science, paid and pressured researchers, academics, and politicians to ignore the risks, and spent billions funding studies that support their products. ¶ Last September, a report in JAMA Internal Medicine…

RICE’S LOVE OF snow has grown exponentially. In 2011, the Alta, Utah, native skinned 75,000 vertical feet. In 2015, he logged 703,000. But the one-year world record was two million, set by Canadian Greg Hill in 2010. So in 2016, Rice planned to notch 2.5 million self- propelled vertical feet by skinning (and hiking, when he had to) 5,000 to 12,000 feet per day in Argentina, California, Chile, Colorado, Utah, and Oregon. There were plenty of powder days, but much of it was a slog. He spent the entire month of June trudging up dirt and scree to ski down Colorado’s diminishing veins of snow. Along the way, he learned a few things about setting an ambitious goal and staying motivated. By late October, he’d pulled even with Hill. And…

The most perilous road in America gets 300 inches of snow a year, features 70 named avalanche paths, and has almost no guardrails. Who would be crazy enough to keep Colorado’s infamous Highway 550 clear in winter? Leath Tonino hopped into the cab of a Mack snowplow truck to find out. It’s an exceedingly white January afternoon on America’s sketchiest road—white flurries rushing the windshield and swirling in the mirrors, white ridges and cirques disappearing among torn white clouds. Heck, even the road is white, though it won’t remain so for long. Dack Klein is behind the wheel of his 18- ton Mack plow truck, laughing his big laugh, navigating yet another lethal curve with all the casual confidence of a man who has done this some 7,000 times before.…

WHETHER YOU SPEND MOST OF YOUR DRIVE TIME NAVIGATING URBAN STREETS OR POWERING THROUGH RUGGED DIRT, 2017’S STANDOUT RIDES ARE ALL-ACCESS PASSES TO WILD ADVENTURE adventure tools, tested & reviewed THE TEST: After throttling Jaguar’s first ever SUV across frozen lakes in Scandinavia and over 11,000-foot passes in the Colorado Rockies, our opinion of the 340- horsepower V-6 F-Pace boiled down to this: it’s a riot. The 18- inch wheels rolled over uneven terrain with verve. Our con fidence was further boosted by an on-demand allwheel- drive system that sends power to the rear by default, engaging AWD only when needed. Interior space is enough for two mountain bikes with the seats folded down. All that and this cat can still ferry four adults around. WHAT’S MISSING: Despite the F-Pace’s…

LOVE PLAYING ON OUR PUBLIC LANDS? IT’S TIME TO HELP PAY FOR THEM IT’S NO SECRET that our public lands are in trouble. The Forest Service has had its budget cut, for everything but firefighting, by 36 percent since 1995, and the Park Service is teetering atop a $12 billion maintenance backlog. Oregon is selling a popular state forest full of old growth to make ends meet, and a Colorado nonprofit estimates that it’ll take $24 million to repair trails on the state’s fourteeners alone. In light of diminishing resources, it’s time for hikers, bikers, and paddlers to become more like gun owners and take care of our outdoor spaces. Every time someone buys a rifle or ammunition in the U.S., they pay an 11 percent tax (10 percent for…

JIM SHEPARD’S LATEST COLLECTION TAKES A HARD LOOK AT CHARACTERS CONFRONTING EXTRAORDINARY—AND OFTEN CATACLYSMIC— ENVIRONMENTAL SITUATIONS THERE’S NOTHING more present than death in Jim Shepard’s latest book of short stories. Given the subject matter of the ten pieces in The World to Come ($26, Alfred A. Knopf), that’s no surprise. The collection features characters confronted with the extremes of the natural world— volcanic eruptions, once-in-a-millennium cyclones, and doomed Arctic expeditions. It may sound depressing, but this is Shepard, a perennially undersung writer of seven novels and four previous collections whose subjects stretch from the Holocaust to the trials of middle school. There’s no topic he can’t handle, and each story in The World to Come is its own sort of joy to read, despite the often gloomy subject matter. Primarily…

Westin Hotels wants to take you surfing. And hiking. And skiing. Building on the success of RunWestin, which pairs local runners with guests looking to put in a few miles while away from home, the upscale hotel chain has begun offering an adventure concierge service, connecting you with gear and seasoned staff members who know the area’s best hills, breaks, trails, and peaks. With several more locations joining soon, even the quickest trip will have room for a little extra fun. GRAHAM AVERILL ←LAX Los Angeles Surf the South Bay from nearby Manhattan Beach. Peachtree Plaza Atlanta Tune up at the hotel’s repair station, then tour historic neighborhoods on two wheels. Bear Mountain Victoria, British Columbia Hike to the summit of Mount Finlayson, with panoramas of Victoria and Vancouver Island.…

THE TEST: It may look like the same old Pathfinder, but a peek under the hood proves otherwise. Nissan boosted the engine to pump out 284 horsepower and tow up to 6,000 pounds (e.g., a 27-foot Airstream). The suspension is better, too—stiffer and more capable. On a hilly drive near Big Sur, California, the smooth continuously variable transmission (CVT) was well mated to the engine, with little of the whining drone found in other CVT set-ups. While it’s primarily built for the asphalt, the Pathfinder has adventure chops. We locked the transmission into four-wheel drive to power up a sandy lane in the mountains, and descent control stopped us from sliding on the way down. Nissan’s Around View Monitor provides a 360-degree image of the terrain, so we could skirt…

Despite the dangers that sugar poses to sedentary folks, early studies suggest that it’s mostly OK for athletes who need quick, easily digested fuel. The sweetener powers your cells and is the main source of energy for your brain and muscles. But remember these two important rules: First, you need a sportsperformance product only if you’re exercising for longer than 90 minutes. Second, sugar comes in many forms, so it’s important to know exactly what you’re taking in while training and racing. WHAT IT IS: Basically table sugar (a.k.a. sucrose) processed slightly differently. The same is true of evaporated cane juice, cane sugar, and sucrose syrup. RESEARCH SAYS: Sucrose breaks down into the simple sugars glucose and fructose, which are metabolized at different rates and provide you with a steady…

You’re addicted to your phone. You’re the world, and get in shape. Fortunately loaded down by useless stuff. And you eat like a teenager. No wonder you can't find the time to play outside see streamlining your life-and having more fun- is easy:just do less. Here's how. BY CHRISTOPHER KEYES The first piece of furniture I ever bought kept me up at night. I was 25 years old, and the offending item was a 60-pound oak armoire the color of whiskey and the size of a standard refrigerator. It wasn’t the price or the quality of its construction that triggered the angst. It was what it represented. I now owned something that couldn’t fit in my rooftop RocketBox. I saw my adult life beginning, along with a relentless accumulation of…

The women’s U.S. cross-country ski team has always been second-tier, but that’s changing thanks largely to Alaskan nordic star Kikkan Randall, a pink-haired skate-skiing power house who trains harder than anyone on the planet—and has everybody else following her lead. NOVEMBER IN ANCHORAGE is bleak. The sun doesn’t come up until around nine, and it sets before you’ve had your second cup of coffee. Today there’s black ice on the roads and a damp chill in the air. Ashen fog covers the city’s front range, and the sky spits freezing rain. None of this seems to bother Kikkan Randall, a cross-country ski racer who grew up here. The 34-year-old pulls into the parking lot at Hilltop Ski Area—a small mountain on the city’s outskirts, with just one chairlift— and hops…

The summer of my sophomore year in college, I signed up to work on a trail- maintenance crew for a project in the Frank Church Wilderness Area. On our drive from Oregon to the Idaho work site, we pulled over at a seemingly random spot off a dirt road in the Umatilla National Forest. It was dark, and there was nothing but a bare patch of ground amid the ponderosas, but our crew leader told us to start pitching our tents. I’d camped dozens of times with my family growing up, but nearly always in established national park campsites or KOAs in nearby towns. What we were doing that night was a revelation to me. America owns 640 million acres of land, and on the vast majority of it, my…

THE DAYS MAY BE GETTING LONGER, BUT WEEKENDS ARE FEW, AND THERE ARE MANY ADVENTURES TO CRAM IN. SO FOLLOW THE LEAD OF AMBITIOUS MOUNTAIN TOWNERS ACROSS THE WEST AND PUT IT ALL TOGETHER INTO A MULTISPORT SUFFERFEST. THE FIRST Ironman was the product of some good-natured bullshitting. At a 1977 awards banquet for a Hawaiian swim club, members argued over whether runners, swimmers, or cyclists were the fittest, finally deciding to hold a race to find out. Ironman competitions are now big business, of course, with fulltime professionals and $900 entry fees. But that same spirit has been animating mountain towns, where multisport backcountry sufferfests are all the rage. There are two ways of going about it: hold a mass-start race, like a traditional triathlon, or establish a new…

SKI ENDLESS UNTOUCHED POWDER FROM AN ARTFUL LODGE ON THE ISLAND’S REMOTE UPPER COAST “IT’S HARD to get to?” When searching for a downside to Deplar Farm, the newest heliskiing and fishing lodge from the Crested Butte, Colorado, luxury brand Eleven, that’s the best I can do. The lodge sits on an old sheep farm tucked into Iceland’s rugged Troll Peninsula, but once inside you’re surrounded by unexpected features intended to inspire recreational indulgence, not rural drudgery: two bars (wipe away the jet lag with a shot of Brennivín, the country’s signature spirit), a massive game room with pool and Ping-Pong, locally sourced three-course meals made by a live-in chef, a 3,700-squarefoot glass-walled spa with an indoor- outdoor pool and water piped in from a nearby hot spring, and 13…

DREAMING OF #VANLIFE? FOLLOW THESE LEADERS. M.F. Jon and Pamela Robichaud Marketing consultant, physical therapist Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, $42,495 UPGRADE: A giant drawer to mount their bikes on and then slide them out the rear doors. PRO TIP: “Establish roles,” Jon says. “I’ll do coffee and morning dog walks, and set up and break down camp, while Pamela does dinner preparation and packs everything in the cabin.” @roamingrobos @keeperjon Dave Lefebre Bassmaster elite fisherman Nissan NV 3500, $33,800 UPGRADES: A rack system, with two nine-foot PVC pipes and locking end caps, to hold 80 fishing rods, plus custom tacklebox racks. PRO TIP: “My van’s a rolling garage. I’m constantly moving stuff from boat to van and back again. I can’t overemphasize how valuable it is to have a system for your…