Outside March 2014

DAVID CLIFFORD If Carbondale, Colorado, photographer David Clifford had to name the one place he’s photographed more than any other, it would be Aspen’s Highland Bowl, the hike-to terrain off the top of 12,329-foot Highland Peak. “The bowl contains some of the best in-bounds skiing in Colorado,” says Clifford. “I’ve spent countless hours there studying and photographing it. It’s a love affair for the ages.” THE TOOLS: Nikon D600, 50mm Zeiss f/1.4 lens, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/4,000 second. JIM MARTINELLO When a cold spell rolled through the Sea-to-Sky Corridor near Squamish, British Columbia, last December, Martinello didn’t pass on the opportunity to shoot Tim Emmett climbing this three-pitch feature, formed from frozen spray ice. “Tim had been working on it for two days when it disappeared as a result of…

Slave to the Starting Gun One night last November, I received the following text from my sister: “Do you think Outside would sponsor an ultra team?” Heather lives 1,400 miles away, in Portland, Oregon, and her message arrived with zero context, but I knew exactly what it meant. It meant that my sister was still deep in the throes of racing addiction. It all started quite innocently in the summer of 2012, when she entered her first Hood to Coast, a 12-person, 199-mile team relay from Oregon’s Mount Hood to the Pacific Ocean. The following summer the mania took hold. It’s all documented on Facebook: suddenly, the adorable photos of my nephews vanish from her timeline, pushed down by a stream of updates about the Ragnar Northwest Passage, a 196-mile…

ASK RETIRED professional cyclist Will Frisch korn what he misses most about the Alps and he doesn’t cite the glorious views or the breakneck competition. Frischkorn, 32, was struck most by the markets—small neighborhood places where artisans sold bread, cheese, and cured meats. “In Europe, people shop for food more thoughtfully. Products are hand-selected and placed there for a reason,” says the former Garmin-Slipstream member, who won the Tour of Colorado in 2005. “I spent a lot of time on my bike thinking about food.” In 2005, on a break from training, Frischkorn attended a six-week culinary school in Colorado. His cycling career never took off the way he wanted—his top result was second place in the third stage of the 2008 Tour de France—so in 2010 he quit and…

YOU’VE PROBABLY used Google’s Street View feature to find a restaurant, gawk at your house, or peak into the Grand Canyon. Soon you’ll be using it to scout bomber singletrack. As part of its effort to build the world’s most comprehensive map, Google has launched a new program that will put Trekkers—40-pound backpack versions of the cameras used on its Street View vehicles—in the hands of trail-management crews, tourism bureaus, universities, and other nonprofits around the world. The first Trekker was sent to Hawaii’s Big Island last August, to Rob Pacheco, cofounder of outfitter Hawaii Forest and Trail. “It’s like being a cinematographer—you keep thinking about how everything’s going to look,” says Pacheco, who hiked past ohia lehua trees, lava flows, and a 400-foot-deep pit crater in Hawaii Volcanoes National…

WANT PROOF THAT the world is flat? Consider this: how much you pay for your next jacket or sleeping bag could depend on whether 1.4 billion Chinese order Peking duck. China produces roughly 70 percent of the world’s down, a by-product of the estimated three million tons of ducks and geese its population consumes each year. But China is rapidly urbanizing, and the burgeoning middle class is eating more beef and less fowl. Combine that with panic over recent bird-flu outbreaks and growing demand in the West for jackets, sleeping bags, and comforters, and the result is a massive spike in down prices. In 2009, a pound sold for $10; today it goes for $50. In the U.S., higher materials costs are driving up prices on store shelves, where down…

IN THE PAST year, the number of commercial makers of craft sake in the U.S. has doubled. The reason for the boom: American rice has improved, and brewers, long stifled by a lack of industrial rice steamers and other traditional equipment, have gotten creative with how they make it. “We’ve used wine tanks, beer vats, even a screen for filtering diesel fuel,” says Jonathan Robinson, who oversees production at Ben’s Tune Up, a sake pub and beer garden in Asheville, North Carolina. Most of the new sake specialists are refugees from the oversaturated craftbeer industry, and they bring with them a reverence for small batches and bold flavors. Steve Vuylsteke, president of Oregon’s SakeOne, the country’s largest craft-sake brewer, says the industry is poised for growth; his company’s sales have…