Indholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2025 i Outside

People love a comeback story. THE ATHLETE RETURNS. The warrior rises. The broken become whole again. It’s satisfying and narratively clean—fall, reckoning, redemption. But I wonder if we’ve gotten the story wrong. Maybe the frame itself is the problem. Lindsey Vonn retired in 2019, devastated and in pain. Six years later, she’s racing again at 41 with a titanium knee. It’s easy to call it a comeback—we did (makes a nice headline). But Vonn doesn’t see it that simply. “I have nothing to prove,” she told us. “This isn’t about records.” What she’s actually doing is continuing—healing her body, rediscovering joy in something she loves, and making space for that in her life now. It’s an evolution, not a return. The comeback narrative suggests a binary where you’re down, then…

COOKING OUTDOORS means cooking with fire, but the practice is largely predicated on protecting your food from the flames. What if I told you that you can just toss a steak directly on the hot coals, and that it might be the tastiest, juiciest one you’ve ever made? No less a luminary than President Dwight D. Eisenhower swore by this method, which he used to delight dinner guests at the White House, and he never, ever served them well-done. They are variously known as “caveman steaks,” “dirty steaks,” or, appropriately, “Eisenhower steaks.” Ike favored superthick (four-inch) sirloin, and you’ll want to get steaks at least two inches thick so they don’t overcook on the coals, which can easily exceed 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (you can get away with one-inch steaks, but…

EVER SINCE THE debut of the New Balance 1906L at Paris Fashion Week in 2024 in collaboration with Japanese designer Junya Watanabe, the “sneaker loafer” has been gossiped about to a point that seems almost existential. The Frankenshoe has dominated footwear headlines. “Are you ready to wear ‘snoafers?’” NPR asked, as if to prepare us for forced adoption. After Crocs came out with a version, British GQ posed a similarly consequential question: “Fashion wants you to wear a snoafer, but should you?” Even the New York Times asks, “Are these shoes hideous or genius?” The deluge of snoafer think pieces seems to be asking what it says about us, that we’re paying more than retail value for a mash-up of running soles and penny loafer uppers. According to footwear designers…

IT’S A TUESDAY afternoon in early September in a warehouse in Brooklyn’s Red Hook, where Lindsey Vonn stands at the center of a 20-person crew moving with the precision of a pit team. SHE ARRIVED BAREFACED, hair damp from her post-gym shower, and went straight into hair and makeup—three stylists working at once while she offered calm, exact feedback. She’s done this countless times, toggling between athlete and model, snow and studio. That’s the duality of Lindsey Vonn, the consummate professional, who floats between the two worlds with fluency. At her request, the genre-bending vocals of Jessie Murph’s country trap album pulse through the speakers. The ski racer is in her country music era, she says. (“Nothing sad, nothing about heartbreak.”) The set hums with energy—fans roaring, camera shutters firing,…

When I located Carl Cocchiarella on a hillside at 10,500 feet, after hiking for hours toward a blue dot on my phone, he was eating lunch in the shade of a large spruce, blended with the terrain like the savvy hunter he is. His $2,000 compound bow rested in the dirt. He chomped into a flour tortilla slathered in peanut butter while reclined next to his hunting partner, Teig Olson. I would give you a rough idea of where we were, except Carl insisted I refer to the location only as “the high country of Colorado.” He explained why: “Hunters are territorial, and they have guns.” So did he: a Glock strapped to his hip, in case a large predator tried to move in on his kill. The prospect of…

TV Bring on Winter with Warren Miller From the Scottish Highlands and the streets of Finland to the back bowls of Whitewater, British Columbia, and a local hill-turned-terrain park in downtown Denver, Warren Miller’s SNO-CIETY celebrates the spirit of winter—wherever you ride and however you connect to the snow and the community around it. Featuring all-new, original segments with Olympians, urban riders, and local legends, the 76th Warren Miller film will be streaming this December on Outside TV. TRAVEL Outside x Marriott Bonvoy: Adventure, Upgraded Looking to get outside a little more luxuriously? In a new collaboration, Marriott Bonvoy and Outside Interactive are weaving together the power of outdoor media and world-class hospitality. Beginning next year, guests at Marriott Bonvoy Outdoors hotels will have to access new in-stay benefits provided…

IN A FEW short years, the concept of “threshold” has gone from niche sports science jargon to mainstream obsession. You want to follow Peter Attia’s advice and maximize your longevity by exercising in zone 2? Cycle like Tadej Pogačar? Smash your running PRs by adopting Norwegian miler Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s double-threshold workout routine? Then you’ll need to learn how to identify your threshold, that quasi-mystical point where exercise shifts from easy to hard. That’s the theory, at least. But scientists have been debating how to define threshold and what it means for half a century now. Two new studies suggest that the concept really is important, but not necessarily in the ways we expect. Having a higher threshold doesn’t automatically mean you’ll be faster or healthier—but understanding where your threshold is,…

THE BEST BOURBON begins in the dirt, in the black loam where heirloom corn grows wild and rye bends in the wind. Here, America’s obsessed distillers have returned to something primal: putting seed to soil. The farm-to-glass movement is elevating estate-grown whiskey to a category of its own. From Nevada desert farms to Kentucky family land, distillers are betting that what grows in their backyard tastes better than what comes off a commodity truck. They’re farmers first, distillers second—and the liquid they’re producing is unlike anything Big Bourbon has imagined. Here are five bottles where the taste of place has been distilled into proof. Far North Spirits Hazlet Single Varietal Rye Whiskey Far North Spirits, Hallock, Minnesota In the windswept fields of northern Minnesota, where winter lasts six months and…

Snow-Tested, Expert-Approved This season’s standout equipment will take you from groomers to backcountry powder. Edited by Amelia Arvesen, Benjamin Tepler, and Jenny Wiegand Head Kore 100 Ti Skis, $799 The new Head Kore 100 Ti is a huge leap forward for the Kore series. Previous models were light and nimble but tended to get knocked around in crud. By adding Titanal, Head gave this year’s Kore 100 Ti a dose of muscle, transforming it into a smoother, more predictable ride without losing its signature quickness. The long, low tip rocker makes turn initiation effortless and adds float in soft snow, while the extra damping keeps chatter in check. “This ski will open the whole mountain for you,” said one tester. All-Mountain Skis One ski, every condition: these are the top-performing…

On Why Ski Racers Retire: We quit when our bodies won’t give us what we ask of [them]. Because in order to simply be safe during our sport, while expecting a certain level of performance, our bodies need to be healthy. We could die out there. The Moment She Knew Her Career Was Over: It happened in a doctor’s office in Utah. It became obvious that my body and my mind weren’t on the same page anymore. I was making my own comeback from breaking my femur and blowing out my right knee in the same crash. I wanted to ski one more Olympics in 2002, but it was just taking forever for my body to come around. I couldn’t do a single squat and here I am trying to…

IT STARTED WITH a pair of basic aspirations for our times: I wanted to lose some weight and eat more protein. As is likewise increasingly modish, I sought guidance from ChatGPT. First I told it to create a meal plan for a female endurance athlete who wanted to run a specific daily calorie deficit and eat a certain number of grams of protein a day, eat only whole grains, and still perform without being underfueled. Most meals the AI suggested didn’t sound tasty, so I chucked the plan. But it gave me a sense of portion sizes, as well as ideas for high-protein snacks (cottage cheese) and new-to-me whole grains (farro), which I did incorporate. Then I started telling Chat—that’s what I call it now—what I ate each day, and…

ON A CLOUDY morning in late-January, I heat up in the sauna until sweat beads down my face. I then step out into the biting air and take in Oslo’s half-frozen harbor, where its white angular Opera House rests like an iceberg. As I nervously look down to a ladder leading to the ice-speckled fjord below, I let out a slow shhhhh, inching my way down in the water as it sends pounding jolts to my bare skin. Less than a minute later, I climb out and dash into another wooden sauna on the same floating dock, before I do it all over again. My love for this hot-cold Nordic ritual began in 2018 on my first trip to Finland, the birthplace of sauna, but it’s here on my first…