Table of contents for January 2014 in Outside

THOMAS SENF To shoot climber Stephan Siegrist scaling a frozen waterfall near Eidfjord, Norway, last February, Senf set up three pocket flashes, triggered them by remote control, and captured this single image before the lights burned out a few seconds later. “We’d planned on installing a whole lighting system around the falls, which would have given us more time to work, but the conditions were too dangerous,” says the Interlaken, Switzerland, photographer. “By the time we packed up 30 minutes later, the flashes were covered in ice.”THE TOOLS: Nikon D3, 24–70mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 1,250, f/5.6, 1/2 second GRANT GUNDERSON Last March, after a blizzard dropped nearly ten feet of snow on Washington’s Mount Baker, Gunderson and ski partner Josh Daiek headed into the backcountry and discovered a series of…

STARTING IN JANUARY, it’s legal to smoke marijuana recreationally in Colorado. You can buy it, carry it, admire its crystals, and use it in private without fear of getting busted by state or local authorities. (It’s technically still illegal under federal law, but the Justice Department has said it has little intention of getting involved.) In response, Centennial State entrepreneurs are launching weed-tourism businesses, from pot-farm tours (my420tours.com) to a toker-friendly airport-to-resort shuttle (coloradohighlifetours.com). Among mountain towns, tiny Telluride (pop. 2,300) is doing the most to welcome red-eyed skiers and snowboarders. The former mining hub has four—four!— recreational dispensaries, and unlike Breckenridge, which is forcing its pot shops out of the downtown area, Telluride is stoking legal-weed businesses by fast-tracking permits and allowing operators to grow plants within city limits.…

There have been plenty of books documenting the myriad ways that climate change will take us all down. In Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming (Penguin, $28), Seattle journalist and frequent Outside contributor McKenzie Funk takes a contrarian approach, reporting on the people—and, in the case of Greenland and Canada, countries—that are poised to profit handsomely from the coming chaos. Funk tracks down Arctic oil strategists, Israeli snowmakers, arable-land grabbers, and those cunning enough to privatize public services, from water delivery to firefighting. So is it pragmatism, opportunism, or pure steely greed? FLORENCE WILLIAMS caught up with Funk to discuss the new boom. OUTSIDE: How did you figure out there were so many people trying to make a buck off global warming? FUNK: In 2010, I read that there…

Ten years ago, you were lucky to find a delapidated treadmill and some greasy mats in a hotel gym. Today, more than 84 percent of hotels have fitness facilities, many of them state-of-the-art. “Travelers expect it as part of the overall experience,” says Taylor Cole, a spokeswoman for Hotels.com. “And they want high-end stuff like yoga classes and elliptical machines.” The result is an arms race of upscale gyms, in-room equipment, and outdoor fitness programs. Here’s who’s getting it right. Last July, KIMPTON HOTELS fielded a fleet of three-speed city bikes from San Francisco company Public that are free for guests to use at each of Kimpton’s 60 U.S. locations. kimptonhotels.com TRUMP HOTELS loan out iPod Shuffles loaded with playlists, stock rooms with yoga mats and stretch bands, and provide…

Do January’s festivals right Ouray Ice Festival Ouray, Colorado; January 9–12 STAY: Box Canyon Lodge puts you within walking distance of the festival. From $116; boxcanyonouray.comEAT: Head to the Beaumont Grill for French onion soup and rib-eye steak. SOAK: Hit the redwood tubs over the hot springs at Box Canyon. Sundance Park City, Utah; January 16–26 STAY: The hotels are booked by now. But plenty of locals rent out their homes through the town’s visitors bureau. visitparkcity.com EAT: Avoid the long lines at the town’s multi-star restaurants: the cafeteria at Park City Medical Center is good and cheap. SCHUSS: While the crowds pack screenings, the slopes are empty. Try Stein’s Way at Deer Valley. Winter X Games Aspen, Colorado; January 23–26 STAY: The Viceroy is the most dog-friendly five-star hotel…

PLUS: THE SECRETS BENIND ULTRARUMMER HAL KOERMER’S PERMA-GRIN. THE TENDENCY TO BE HAPPY OR NOT IS AN INHERITED TRAIT, but the good news is that this is less than half the story. According to a 2012 study of identical and fraternal twins conducted by a team of scientists from top uni versities around the world, only about a third of our happiness level is determined by genes. The rest is up to us. Looking for drivers of well-being, the researchers zeroed in on a gene that aids in the transport of the neurotransmitter serotonin. In the biochemistry of mood, serotonin plays a role much like the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, bringing brightness and cheer, and regulates stress levels, sleep, and pain, among other things. The study found…

Manufacturer: Outside Magazine Issued: January 2014 Photographs by: Ivan Kashinsky IN THE PERUVIAN AMAZON, in the city of Iquitos, there is a soiled waterfront barrio called Belén, within whose borders strains a vast market. Among its cacoph onous lanes is a passageway, freckled with fish guts, fly-covered watermelon rinds, and mysterious oozes, known as Witches Alley. When the sun is savage, which is to say when it is up, the keepers of its stalls string tarps overhead in a patchwork defense. Against the humidity they have no counterattack, although someday a go-getter here will probably find a way to bottle humidity and make a killing in the export trade. These vendors tout powders and potions no less wondrous. Plant hunter Chris Kilham, explorer in residence at the University of Massachusetts…

BEST FOR: DROPPING THE HAMMER 1. Mammut Eigerjoch Light $300 You can wear this trim-fitting insulated jacket around town or as a warmth-boosting midlayer on chilly resort days, but it prefers charging up mountains. Stretch panels on the sides and back let our arms swing freely during hard runs in Jackson Hole, and the high collar blocked biting wind. But the reason it’s both the most breathable jacket on these pages and way warmer than its 14 ounces suggest comes down to Polartec’s new Alpha syn thetic insulation. It’s lofty for extra heat and features an airy, open structure that dumps perspiration. 14.4 oz; mammut.ch BEST FOR: MATING CALLS 2. Helly Hansen Svalbard Thermo $140 Forty years after Helly Hansen released its first classic quilted jacket, the company updates it…

The collaborative Old Growth Collection from Woolrich x Danner includes the classic Danner boots, a hefty shirt-jacket, a cozy blanket, and this scarf ($55; danner.com). Merino wool is the magic ingredient in Icebreaker’s versatile Seeker pants ($180; icebreaker.com) and Ugg’s Westly chukka boots ($160; ugg australia.com). The stripes on SmartWool’s Double Insignia socks ($21) are just for show, but the rolled ear band on its Pattern Cuffed beanie ($28; smartwool.com) is there to boost warmth. With boiled wool bonded to a cotton twill liner, Filson’s updated Seattle Cruiser jacket ($495; filson.com) is built to the same specs as its famous Mackinaw Cruiser—but with a slimmer cut. Bonobos gets tartan right on its Canning tie ($85; bonobos.com), which feels modern and classic at the same time. Patagonia’s Gerard shirt ($129; patagonia.com)…

Happy Now? Last February, Outside Online posted a brief News from the Field item titled “Study: Bike Commuters Are Happiest.” The story drew a ridiculous amount of traffic for something just 117 words long, but perhaps that’s not surprising. Americans may not rank in the top ten on the UN’s annual Happiness Index (in the 2013 report, we’re down at number 17 of 156 nations), but if the survey gauged obsession with the topic, there’s no question we’d lead the category. Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that chasing happiness was our God-given right, and over the centuries we’ve come to interpret this as a moral obligation—with libraries full of self-help books to prove it. If we’re not happy, something must be wrong, and action must be taken!…

MODEL/SKIER. That’s the label most often used to describe 24-year-old Park City, Utah, native Sierra Quitiquit. But unlike most women who’ve tried to straddle those two worlds, Quitiquit is actually holding her own in both. Last winter, while she was skiing 4,000-foot lines in Iceland for Warren Miller’s latest film, Ticket to Ride, her image was plastered on a billboard in New York’s Times Square, part of her gig with the apparel brand American Eagle. Last fall, the five-foot-ten-inch former Freeskiing World Tour competitor also appeared in Sweetgrass Productions’ Valhalla, where she plays a freespirited woodswoman. ASCENDANCY: Quitiquit grew up ski racing in Utah, and she spent winters in a modified 15-passenger van with her parents and three brothers. “It was not a normal childhood,” she says. “It was a…

WHEN SELECTING a craft, sledding purists such as myself are guided by a time-honored principle: less control equals more fun. Thus our predilection for saucers, toboggans, and other wood and plastic artifacts from mountain sports’ pre-helmet era. Today’s contraptions have too many moving parts, high-tech materials, and cumbersome safety features. I recently encountered a sled that was designed to be ridden on one’s knees in order to facilitate halfpipe-style tricks. No, thanks. But I am willing to make one sop to modernity, in the form of Hammerhead’s Pro XLD—an elegant, high-performance machine capable of frighteningly fast descents. Polycarbonate skis make pinpoint turns easy, and a four-foot-long aluminum frame with tensioned webbing allow proper position for a steerable sled: belly down, headfirst, with a POV like Mario Kart. Included in the…

LOCATION IS EVERYTHING. Which is why Jordan—long a hub for hiking, mountain biking, and exploring historical ruins and Bedouin culture—has seen a 22 percent drop in tourism since the tumult in neighboring Egypt and Syria began. But the Middle East has been rife with conflict for decades, and Jordan has remained calm. The Global Peace Index ranks Jordan above France and Argentina in key areas like security and the potential for violence. The upshot of the surrounding unrest is that you can have the sprawling, multicolored canyonlands of the Dana Biosphere Reserve—closer to Israel and Saudi Arabia than to Syria or Egypt—all to yourself. Explore it from the Feynan Ecolodge, a 26-room hotel that’s totally off-grid. The lodge generates hot water through solar panels and is lit almost exclusively by…

This month, the profligate correspondents of the Matador Network travel blog publish 101 Places to Get F*cked Up Before You Die ($14), an ode to overindulgence that’s also a surprisingly handy travel guide. BRIAN KEVIN spoke with Matador senior editor David Miller about inebriation as ritual. OUTSIDE: The title seems a bit fratty. Is this a guide to traveling or partying? MILLER: We’re not advocating drinking for drinking’s sake. We’re speaking to that more introverted traveler who feels the need to hold back during their travels. The subtext is: just go for it. Are you making a case for getting tanked as a form of cultural exchange? There’s a definite universality to the way people celebrate, and events can be transformative. Isn’t that the whole point of ceremony? How did…

BODE MILLER IS AT A BEACH VOLLEYBALL MATCH, AND HE’S PISSED. As in: he has thrown his Sölden cap to the floor, his head is in his hands, and he’s visibly shaking. It’s August 2013, and Bode is in Salt Lake City’s Liberty Park watching his wife, 26-year-old Morgan Beck Miller, lose in a tournament put on by the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP). A couple of friends sitting near him in the VIP section look worried. It doesn’t help that the families of the winning players—who just beat Morgan and her partner, Kaitlin Nielsen, two games to none—are only a few feet away, whooping and clinking beer cans. Bode probably wants to hit something. Instead, he has to sit there, itchy in this moment of athletic impotence. At 36,…

The drowning of Avishek Sengupta at a Tough Mudder event last April was ruled an accident, but his family and friends believe race organizers did a terrible job of monitoring safety at a water obstacle called Walk the Plank. ELLIOTT D. WOODS looks at the life of a remarkable amateur athlete and explains why his tragic death may lead to a multimillion-dollar legal fight. The wind was blowing hard at noon on Satur day, April 20, when Avishek Sengupta and his five teammates gather ed near the starting corral of the 2013 Mid-Atlantic Tough Mudder . Part of a throng of more than 13,000 obstacle racers who would hit the course in staggered waves that weekend, they sang the national anthem and listened to a speech about how their efforts…

EVERY FEW MONTHS, another travel-ready charger appears that’s intended to replenish your mobile phone when you’re miles from the nearest wall socket. Be it solar, wind, or hydrogen, the devices work by converting energy to electricity and charging a USB-connected handset in real time. (They can also store power in an internal cell or an external battery pack.) Most generate enough juice for a few clutch texts or calls, and that makes them potential life savers—whether it’s an off-the-grid vacation or Hurricane Katrina. We paired a dozen of the gadgets with a Samsung Galaxy SIII. Some worked faster than others; these four stood above the rest. 1. GOAL ZERO NOMAD 7 $120 How It Works: The magazine-size panel weighs less than a pound and is perforated with eyelets, so it…

NEWS FROM THE FIELD IN 2010, A FRENCH adventure racer named Nicolas Mermoud approached Karl Meltzer, the accomplished American ultrarunner, and asked him to try out a pair of running shoes he’d designed. They looked bizarre, like moon boots, and were wider, thicker, and softer than typical running shoes—two and a half times beefier and 30 percent cushier. Meltzer, who had been training with conventional running shoes, was skeptical, but he laced them up and cruised around his Sandy, Utah, neighborhood. He was shocked by how forgiving they were. Halfway through the run, he was sold. Within three months, Meltzer dropped his sponsor, La Sportiva, which specializes in lightweight trail runners, and started competing in Mermoud’s creation, the Hoka One One. The shoes gave Meltzer’s career new life, and by…

IF ALASKA’ 20,320-foot Mount McKinley is unforgiving during the spring climbing season, North America’s highest peak is downright lethal in winter, with 100-mile-per-hour winds and temperatures so low they turn stove fuel into Karo syrup. This year, polar explorer Lonnie Dupre aims to become the first person to summit the peak solo in January, via the West Buttress route. And if anyone knows how to prepare for a dark, frigid slog, it’s 52-year-old Dupre, who has crossed the 3,000-mile Northwest Passage in winter, circumnavigated Greenland, and skied from Canada to the North Pole. So why does he keep heading back to Denali? “It’s the ultimate proving ground,” he says. “But it’s also selfish. I want all that beauty to myself.” Above, what Dupre carries to stay alive.—CHRIS SOLOMON…

HIGH ROAD Lausanne, Switzerland The hardest thing about training for a triathlon is the tedium. Mix it up with one of Brevet’s new five-day training camps in the Swiss Alps, based in the small towns of Les Diablerets and Lausanne. Coaches offer tips on training, recovery, and technical skills like descending switchbacks on daily 25-to-50-mile hauls up some of the same steep, greenpastured cols that the pros ride in the Tour de Romandie. After that, guests jump off the bike for a run on soft trails through pine forests and a swim in an outdoor pool with views of snow-dusted peaks. The camps are offered all summer, but sign up now for the one that begins on May 14, which culminates in an Ironman-worthy test piece: the Cyclotour du Léman,…

SKI HUTS IN the Alps are like small castles—most employ caretakers who greet you with beer or wine and cook you hot meals. The U.S. may not have the luxury or the sheer numbers (Switzerland alone has 213 hüttes), but we’re getting better. Last year, the newly formed, Colorado-based Grand Huts Association opened the Broome Hut at Berthoud Pass near Denver, and there are plans to add eight more linkable huts in the next decade. Until then, there are plenty of other options. At least ten states from Maine to Oregon have huts. With a little planning, you can piece together a world-class trip without the transatlantic flight. Rocky Top The 10th Mountain Division hut system in Colorado remains the premier—and most popular—network in America, and its 20 well-stocked cabins…

THE AIRPORT ATM in Recife, Brazil, looked like any other, so I withdrew $400 and left for a remote island to dive with turtles. Two days later, my bank e-mailed me. Had I really just withdrawn $1,700 from two ATMs hundreds of miles away? No, I had not. I’d become the latest victim of skimming, a growing multimillion-dollar crime; one ring in New York City stole $1.5 million in 2012. It works like this: Thieves install a duplicate reader in an ATM’s card slot that sucks the information off the card’s magnetic stripe. Then they get the pin from a hidden camera and program a new card. The practice is on the rise, and not just abroad: 3-D printing technology makes it easier to mount bogus faceplates on gas pumps…

TRANSLATION: GREAT, DEEP POWDER! After three sunny days, Niseko is finally getting back to normal. It’s snowing. I’m with a dozen members of a snowboard club from Tokyo, and together we zip down a short run covered in fairy dust, then ride the lift back to the top of the mountain, only to discover that, in the ten minutes we spent on the chair, a fresh sifting of white has completely filled in our tracks. “The run reset,” says Mucchan, a member of the club. We traverse into a glade of snow-pasted birch—what some here call juhyo (“ice trees”) or snow monsters, for the way the clumps of powder that stick to their limbs can leap down and startle you when disturbed—and then shimmy onto a second pitch where more…

PROBLEM: RUGGED cameras usually sacrifice shooting chops for durability. Solution: Nikon’s new AW1. It’s the first digital interchangeable-lens camera that’s waterproof (to 49 feet), shockproof (up to 6.6 feet), and worthy of being a pro shooter’s kit. The reason it takes such remarkably crisp photos is what’s under the hood. The giant CMOS sensor refuses to pixelate, even in shots that blend bright white snow and forest shade, and it can capture 15 frames per second at shutter speeds up to 1/16,000—see falcon in flight, freeze falcon in flight. Nikon gave the camera rubber gaskets that seal underwater, and the whole body is packed into a polycarbonate-lined steel frame to insulate it from shock. The AW1 is also equipped with a GPS that tracks where photos were shot, and an…

BEST FOR: Everyone 1. Briefs Compression shorts are about moisture, not warmth. CW-X’s LiteFit ($35; cw-x.com) are made of a proprietary quick-dry fabric that wicks moisture away from your nethers in dry cold and wet heat. Bonus: silver fibers in the fabric kill bacteria and neutralize odors—adios, junk funk. BEST FOR: Fall Runners 2. Light Bottom We tested dozens of bottoms, and none of them combined form, comfort, and durability as admirably as SmartWool’s NTS Micro150 ($65; smartwool.com). Made of 100 percent merino wool, they feature lowprofile, flat-seam construction along the hips, thighs, and calves to eliminate chafing. Best For: Dry Cold 3. Mid Bottom Black Diamond pairs light and heavy fleece in the Co-Efficient ($109; blackdiamond equipment.com). The result is an amply insulating piece that breathes like something half…