Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2015 i Outside

FIVE YEARS AGO, Dan English, a former manager at Microsoft and an executive vice president at hunting-apparel company Mossy Oak, had a revelation: there were too many clothes in his gear shed. Most of it worked all right but was so specialized that he had to bring a suitcase full of layers whenever he traveled. Many of the hard shells were so flimsy, they didn’t last more than a few seasons. “I wanted to know how you could wear a piece of apparel for longer,” English says, “both throughout the day and over the span of years.” Since the 1970s, companies had been making shells the same way: by sandwiching a water proof membrane between two pieces of fabric. Confined by overseas supply chains and textiles sourced largely from two…

El Salvador Pupusas and point breaks When I’m going on a surf trip to another country, I don’t want to feel like I’m in Newport Beach, which is why last June I packed my boards and flew to tiny El Salvador. The country has issues with gang violence, but tourists are almost never affected, and it’s the perfect place for a Central American experience without all the gringos. So bone up on your Spanish and start with the small coastal town of El Tunco, about 40 minutes south of the airport in San Salvador. On weekends it’s packed with day-trippers from the capital, but it empties out during the week. The rocky beaches west of town offer a beginner-friendly surf spot with long, crumbling rights and steeper, shorter lefts. Surfers…

WHEN LEBRON James famously dropped out of game one of the 2014 NBA Finals with a cramping left leg, many wondered if he was low on electrolytes. Gatorade even teased him on Twitter, suggesting he wouldn’t have cramped if he’d been drinking their product. (James reps Powerade.) He was hardly alone. From tennis star Rafael Nadal (2011 U.S. Open) to marathoner Dathan Ritzenhein (2012 Olympic trials), athletes the world over have always been plagued by painful muscle spasms that show up in the crucial late stages of fierce competition. Inevitably, these cramps are blamed on heat and dehydration. The only problem? Research tells us that neither have anything to do with it. A Boston startup called Flex Pharma says it knows why cramps really happen and, more important, how to…

SPRUCE ISLAND Maine • The ultimate New England escape: an 80-acre island, 20 minutes by motorboat from the bustling lobster harbor of Stonington, featuring two stone homes that sleep 18 people and include kayaks, horseshoe pits, beach campfires, and, of course, lobster pots. From $416; home away.com EAGLE ISLAND Georgia • Tucked into a marshy coastline, this ten-acre homestead feels remote, but you’ll hardly be roughing it. The three- bedroom main lodge has a king-size loft, an outdoor shower and fireplace, and a hot tub. Fill your days touring the marsh by kayak and catching blue crabs off the dock. $600 per night; privateislandsof georgia.com DEEPWATER ISLAND Ontario • A three-bedroom luxury home with a huge deck, a gas grill, a kayak, and two canoes, located on a threequarter-acre speck…

THERE’S NO shortage of life advice these days. Some of it is even valuable. What’s harder to find are honest lessons from people who’ve learned the hard way how to achieve success and happiness no matter what’s thrown their way. Take Mick Fanning, current number two on the World Surf League rankings. At 34, the Australian has already lived through more than most. In 1998, he lost his older brother, Sean, to a car accident. Six years later, he ripped his hamstring from the bone while surfing in Indonesia, nearly ending his career before it had really launched. And recently—you and the entire Internet have seen the footage—he fought off a great white shark at Jeffreys Bay, South Africa, on live TV. Through it all, he only seems to get…

THE RULES: Pilot a boat 750 miles from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska - no motors allowed. THE PRIZE: $10,000 nailed to a piece of wood. THE RESULT: Seven capsizings, four lifesaving Big Macs, one dramatic coast guard rescue, and a cast of oddball adventurers who reclaimed the salty heart of ocean racing. ON A CONCRETE RAMP near the pier in Port Townsend, Washington, Alan Hartman pulls on his eye patch. It’s uncomfortable, but the doctors say it’s necessary to keep salt water out of his right cornea, which the 47-year-old fisherman recently speared while chainsawing brush near his remote Alaska cabin. He drove himself an hour to the nearest hospital, where he encouraged doctors to cut out the eye so he could make it into a necklace, but…

(1) Dragon’s frameless NFX2 goggles ($180; dragonalliance.com) provide a huge field of vision, and two side levers allow for quick switches among the 20 lens options. (2) The North Face Summit L5 shell ($600; thenorthface.com) is tailored mostly from a single piece of DryVent fabric for a trim fit with a minimum of seams. Hem cinching at the waist keeps it from riding. (3) Blizzard carbon-fiber Zero G 108 skis ($960; 136/108/122; blizzardsportusa.com) are light enough (3.6 pounds) for all-day uphill duty, yet the sidewall construction and paulownia core lend them power to carve trenches on hardpack. (4) Dalbello’s Sherpa TI I.D. boots ($850; dalbello.it) have a two-piece tongue for more range of motion. At 8.4 pounds, they’re a great everyday option and sacrifice little on the descent. (5) POC’s…

“ ‘IF YOU THINK A HELICOPTER IS GOING TO FLY OUT AND COME PLUCK YOUR ASS OUT OF THE WATER,’ SAID COAST GUARD SUPERVISOR SUSAN PICKRELL, ‘IT’S NOT GONNA HAPPEN.’ ” —ABE STREEP, PAGE 82 SEA CHANGE Sylvia Earle has dedicated her life to protecting the world’s oceans from human mistreatment. While reporting “Earle Power” (page 92), his profile of the oceanographer, Ian Frazier came to admire her work as an activist. But he wasn’t quite cajoled into giving up fishing, a lifelong passion, which Earle says amounts to torturing wildlife. “Talking to her is like talking to a fish,” says the Montclair, New Jersey, writer. “I might stick to flyfishing with barbless hooks, but she totally per suaded me that you can’t eat big fish. I can’t even look…

Get Roped Up GREAT WESTERN POWER COMPANY, a climbing gym in the heart of downtown, has 48-foot walls, a bouldering area, and a tricked-out weight room. Sign up for the lead class to get comfortable making clips and taking whippers. $20 for a day pass; touchstoneclimbing.com/gwpower-co Pack a Picnic Our favorite bit of green space isn’t a park. MOUNTAIN VIEW CEMETERY, on Piedmont Avenue, is open until the sun goes down, has panoramic views of the San Francisco skyline, and is home to turkeys and deer. Too macabre? Hike to the top of SIBLEY VOLCANIC REGIONAL PRESERVE, where you’ll find 10-millionyear-old rock formations. Just be sure and mind the cows. Take a Taco-Truck Tour The Fruitvale neighborhood has the best Mexican food north of the border. SINALOA, 3132 International Blvd.…

1. Get the Kit a. Tweezerman Gear Precision Grip toenail clippers Trim toenails fairly short and straight across—not with the curve of the toe. File edges smooth. $14; tweezerman.com b. Lush T for Toes foot powder While we can’t promise that the tea-tree and lime oils in this absorbent powder will kill stink completely, they’ll definitely help. Particularly effective when sprinkled in climbing shoes. $7; lushusa.com c. Burt’s Bees Peppermint foot lotion Like Icy Hot for your feet. Cools aches and pains after a long day. $9; burts bees.com 2. Get Healed Blisters are caused by friction. The best defense: make sure your shoes fit and are big enough in the toe box, and always wear high-quality moisturewicking socks. If you do get one, drain the fluid using a sterilized…

HEIGHTS It doesn’t get scarier than a slackline over a 400-footdeep chasm. During Thanksgiving week, a group of Utah high liners and BASE jumpers host an event known as Gobble Gobble Bitches Yeah, in Mineral Bottom Canyon, near Moab. Warm up on a line close to the ground, then don a harness and inch your way across the canyon. FLYING The trick is putting yourself at the controls. Kitty Hawk Kites, a school in Nags Head, North Carolina, offers demo flights in hang gliders over the dunes of Jockey’s Ridge State Park, where newbies soar 15 feet off the ground. $99; kitty hawk.com CONFINED SPACES South Dakota’s Jewel Cave National Monument, the thirdlongest cave in the world, is a trove of geological formations. On a ranger-led spelunking tour, crawl through…

PHANTOM RANCH CANTEEN Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona • Take a 7.8-mile, knee-busting hike down 2,546 vertical feet on the South Kaibab Trail to Phantom Ranch, a collection of 1920s stone and wood cabins. The Canteen sells snacks, first-aid supplies, and, most important, ice-cold Tecate. Warning: last call is at 3:30 P.M. EBENEZER’S PUB AND RESTAURANT Lovell, Maine • Lovell isn’t on the way to anything except a few White Mountain trailheads, but beer connoisseurs make the pilgrimage to this northern outpost, about 90 minutes by car from Portland, to sample the selection of 35 drafts and 90 bottles, including rare Belgian brews. GOLDEN SALOON McCarthy, Alaska • After a week in the bearthick wilds of Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve, this watering hole in end-of-the-road McCarthy serving hardliving…

LOCATION IS EVERYTHING • The ideal spot is bike friendly with a gorgeous view. GET AHEAD OF THE WEATHER • We look at average rainfall as well as sunset and sunrise times for certain dates, then plug those into a spreadsheet to find ideal party times. ACCESSORIZE • Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore (habitat.org) is amazing for cheap furniture and decorations. DON’T OVERDO THE PLAYLIST • You just want classic songs that create good background ambience—Budos Band, Sam Cooke, Jimmy Cliff. ADD A SURPRISE • We do something called “portaoke”— a karaoke booth among the Porta-Johns. Those kind of strange, unexpected, and interactive moments are what people talk about when it’s all over.…

ALMOST THE FIRST thing Sylvia Earle said to me was, “The oceans are dying.” We were at a small dinner in Manhattan last fall, celebrating the new York premiere of a documentary about her called Mission Blue. As the world’s best-known oceanographer— Sylvia is to our era what Jacques Cousteau was to an earlier one—she feels a heavy responsibility. In her lifetime, she has seen the ocean damaged in ways humans never thought it could be. The ongoing disaster leaves her mournful, desolate, and sometimes scary to talk to. Since her first dive, in a sponge-diver’s helmet in a Florida river when she was 16, she has spent 7,000 hours, or the better part of a year, underwater. In the depths, swordfish and bioluminescent fish and humpback whales in midsong…

You might never have heard of Mick Fanning, our cover subject this month, but I’m pretty confident you’ve seen him in action. After the World Surf League posted a You-Tube video of the Australian pro fending off a shark during a competition at South Africa’s legendary J-Bay on July 19, coverage of the incident clogged innumerable Facebook feeds. The video has since been viewed more than 22 million times—not including the dozens of copycat posts and embedded videos found in hundreds of subsequent news stories. Fanning was already a threetime world surfing champion, but unless you’re Kelly Slater, that doesn’t make you a household name. Now he’s officially You-Tube famous. Social media is a fickle and ravenous beast, however. Like all viral stories, Fanning’s shark encounter was entirely consumed within…

IN 2010, JACKSON HOLE ski patroller Mark “Big Wally” Wolling was using hand charges to set off controlled avalanches when the slope above him broke free. He was carried over a cliff, buried, and died three days later. Though it’s rare for the job to be fatal—since 2009, one ski patroller has died each year in the United States—it’s not uncommon for avalanche-control personnel to be in some precarious situations. Paul Baugher, head of the ski patrol at Crystal Mountain, in Washington State, has been buried three times. “We do mitigation work with explosives, which have inherent danger, and we do it in bad weather,” says Baugher. “If you can reduce someone’s exposure to dangerous snow conditions, that’s huge.” In December 2013, ski buddies Brent Holbrook, Warren Linde, Gray Byers,…

PICK ANY PHOTO in this magazine, and chances are it was shot with a digital single-lens reflex camera. DSLRs produce print-quality images, are fast enough for action shots, and are compatible with a huge range of lenses—from macros for zooming in on ants to telephotos for capturing skiers on distant peaks. ¶ This fall, photographers in droves will likely consider selling off that gear in favor of the mirrorless Sony a7R II. Introduced in August, the a7R II represents a quantum leap in camera technology. While DSLRs use a large sensor and a mirror to let photographers see the image in a viewfinder, mirrorless cameras nix the mirror and usually make do with a smaller sensor. That used to mean lower-quality pics, but no more. The a7R II is just…

+ INKED A new company called SafetyTat is offering custom temporary tattoos to brand your brood with your contact info in case any of them wander off. This is either awful or awesome parenting— we can’t quite decide which. $21 for 24; safety tat.com ROOM AND BOARD A trip to Grain Surfboards in York, Maine, takes the travel souvenir far beyond T-shirts and snow globes. Students who attend the four-to-seven-day shaping seminars stay nearby and learn to use planes, chisels, and other woodworking tools to custom-craft their own surfboards “We’re on a little farm ten minutes from the beach,” says Grain founder Mike LaVecchia. “By seven every morning, people are out trying demo boards.” LaVecchia, 48, a former boat builder, recommends not shying away from the cooler months of the…

FOR YEARS, study after study has shown that a good sweat improves brain function. But what’s the optimum dose? Only recently are scientists figuring out the proper prescription and timing necessary to achieve the biggest boost. Following new research out of Stanford University and the Mayo Clinic, companies like Google, Reebok, and the online-coaching platform TrainingPeaks are strategically using physical activity to make employees smarter and more productive. “They’re moving beyond just viewing exercise as something to keep their workforce healthy,” says John Ratey, a Harvard psychiatrist and author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. “They realize it’s important for performance.” Try these four tips to get a bigger cognitive boost from your next workout. Rise and Shine Train in the morning, says Ratey, right…

SKI MOUNTAINEERING Grand Traverse; Crested Butte to Aspen, Colorado, March 25–26 • Teams of two set off at midnight on a 40-plus-mile backcountry route that climbs over 7,800 vertical feet and ends with a 3,200-verticalfoot groomer. $400 per team; elkmountains traverse.com ROAD BIKING Death Ride; Sierra Nevada, California, July 9 Roughly two-thirds of the 3,500 riders who set out to do the Death Ride every July finish the 129-mile route, which climbs 15,000 feet over five passes. $135; death ride.com OPEN-WATER SWIMMING Trans Tahoe Relay; Lake Tahoe, Nevada and California, July 16 Some 1,400 racers compete in teams of six in this ten-mile crossing of 60-degree-plus Lake Tahoe (no wetsuits allowed), which has become one of the world’s largest openwater swims. $600 per team; transtahoerelay.com TRIATHLON New York City Triathlon;…

LOCK EYES WITH A MOUNTAIN GORILLA • Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda is easy to access and home to more groups of habituated mountain gorillas than anywhere else on earth. Africa Adventure Consultants leads four-day trips out of Kigali. $1,880; adventures inafrica.com CIRCLE NEW ZEALAND’S SOUTH ISLAND • A sparse population, alpine peaks, world-class whitewater, paddle-perfect fjords, stunning cycling, and a “freedom camping” ethos that allows you to park your luxury RV rental almost anywhere makes the South Island the premier road-trip destination on the planet. $1,500 for a twoweek camper-van rental; mavi.co.nz CROSS THE OCEAN • The right way to do it: as part of a sailing crew. Online hubs list openings for sailors on boats making crossings. Many captains don’t require extensive experience, and they’re happy to offer…

IF YOU’RE like me, skinning up mountains is nothing more than a necessary annoyance when accessing backor sidecountry powder stashes. But last winter, I started using a climbing skin that made going up almost pleasurable. While standard skins mimic seal fur—smooth when you slide forward, grippy when you pull your ski against the snow—the Fischer Profoil takes the fish- scale design that has been used on no-wax crosscountry skis for de cades and adapts it to alpine skins. The scaly surface offers far smoother glide and comparable bite on all kinds of snow, from icy hardpack to powder. Unlike faux-fur skins, the waterproof plastic won’t absorb moisture and get heavier as you go. With the Profoils, I climbed faster and was less fatigued at the top. Which meant that I…