Outside August 2014

CHARLIE MUNSEY Munsey knew he’d snagged a classic shot when he captured Canadian kayaker Katrina Van Wijk dropping over 80-foot Toketee Falls on Oregon’s North Umpqua River last March. “The falls are runnable only a few weeks out of the year because of hydro-project diversion,” says the White Salmon, Washington, photographer. “Katrina was the first woman to ever tackle it.” Van Wijk’s line was clean, but the entry was harder than she expected. “She broke her nose on the deck of her boat when she hit the water,” says Munsey. “She’s one tough woman.” THE TOOLS: Nikon D700, 70–200mm f/2.8 lens, ISO 800, f/5, 1/640 second JEREMY KORESKI Despite freezing December tempera tures, Koreski couldn’t miss the opportunity to scramble an openair floatplane and shoot aerials of longboarders waiting for…

Group Therapy For most of my adult life, running has been my exercise of choice and largely a solo ritual. Wake up early, throw on some shorts and shoes, and head out the door. The routine was my sanity, fueling me with a steady drip of endorphins to vanquish any stress the workday threw at me. Morning runs were as ingrained as brushing my teeth, and even after I had kids, I simply adapted. Both of my children spent a large part of their infant and toddler years cruising along with me in a jogging stroller. Eventually, however, the day came when they grew tired of my routine, and my morning run became harder to squeeze in. Suddenly, I was arriving at work without my endorphin fix. That’s one reason…

TEN YEARS AGO, kiteboarding pioneer Don Montague hatched a plan to become the fastest person to circumnavigate the globe. His idea was to use a 65-foot catamaran, cabled to a large parafoil, that would fly some 250 feet in the air. Essentially, he would supersize the typical kiteboard rig. A few months into the project, he gave a preview to a couple of kitesurfing friends, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. “I was showing them how much power was actually available at higher altitudes, and I said, ‘Look, I can even generate electricity,’” says Montague, who had worked with a Dutch astronaut to build a kite-power prototype. “They said, ‘Don, don’t waste your time sailing around the world. Let’s save the world.’” So Montague and his partners set about…

IN 2007, Boston was ranked the worst biking city in the U.S. by Bicycling magazine—for the third time. There were plenty of reasons: lack of lanes, poor road conditions, boorish drivers. Today, Boston is on its way to becoming one of the country’s most bike-friendly cities, and it’s the first to create a public bike program targeting low-income communities. The main reason for the one-eighty: former Olympian Nicole Freedman. Freedman grew up in the Boston suburbs, rode professionally for 12 years (she won the national road-racing trial in 2000), and holds a degree in urban planning from Stanford University. In 2007, when Freedman was tasked with heading up the city’s newly launched Boston Bikes program, the city had zero bike lanes and a dismal safety record. In 2006, there were…

WALMART, ALREADY one of the country’s largest distributors of organic foods, will gobble up additional market share this summer, thanks to a deal it struck with Wild Oats to carry more than 100 of the natural-food chain’s house-branded products. The agreement, coming on the heels of Target’s Simply Balanced line, which is 40 percent organic, marks a new era. One obvious benefit is that prices for organic foods should drop nationwide as production increases and competitors are forced to match big-box discounts. But the supersizing of organic comes at a cost. When the term first gained traction, in the 1980s, it was mainly used by small farms supplying local markets. In 2000, when the Department of Agriculture created the USDA Organic label, its standards included a list of roughly 100…

WHEN 21-YEAR-OLD Lukas Verzbicas turned pro as a triathlete, he got death threats. As a teenager, he’d been billed as the next great hope in American running, becoming only the fifth high school star to break the four-minute barrier in the mile. As some runners saw it, he’d betrayed their sport. But according to Verzbicas, triathlon, something he’d pursued since he was 11 years old, was always his true passion. In 2011, he graduated early from high school and set his sights on competing in the sport at the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro. 20% AMOUNT OF BODY WEIGHT VERZBICAS LOST WHILE RECOVERING THE CRASH: Verzbicas had already picked up two Olympic-distance wins on the World Cup circuit when, during a workout in July 2012, he lost control…