Innehållsförteckning för November 2019 från Outside

The last time I saw kayaker Scott Lindgren was June of 2007. We were at a Los Angeles photo studio shooting the cover of Outside’s 30th anniversary issue, for which we’d gathered some of the biggest stars in the outdoor industry. Most of them were household names: then retired (and not yet infamous) cyclist Lance Armstrong, legendary climber Lynn Hill, snowboard pioneer Jake Burton, mountaineer Ed Viesturs, surfing superstar Kelly Slater, Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard, big-wave giant Laird Hamilton, and musician Ben Harper. Lindgren, it’s fair to say, was the least known of the bunch, and that day he seemed starstruck in the presence of so many adventure icons. There’s no question, however, that Lindgren belonged among these luminaries. He was then—and perhaps still is—the world’s most accomplished kayaker, having…

SEVERAL YEARS AGO, writer Richard Louv was on Alaska’s Kodiak Island to visit a remote lodge where his son worked as a guide. Walking from his cabin to dinner, he stopped briefly to double check that he had money in his wallet. A moment later, when Louv looked up, he was greeted by “two piercing eyes” watching him from a few feet away—a black fox. He and the fox stood frozen for a moment, locked in a staring contest. Louv eventually moved to continue his walk, but the fox followed along, disappearing back into the woods only when Louv arrived at the main lodge. “Today I recall few significant details about most of the people I met in that Alaskan camp,” Louv writes in the introduction to Our Wild Calling…

THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN DAILY DRIVER A. Völkl Mantra 102 $850 A marvel of a ski, the Mantra 102 has a frame of titanium alloy just beneath the topsheet, adding edging power where you need it most, while carbon tips reduce the overall weight. That layup holds on when you’re tipping the ski on hardpack at any speed, but is surfy and playful when you head in search of soft snow. “You can butter them into and out of turns all day long,” said one tester. 140/102/123 THE DEPENDABLE DARK HORSE B. Rossignol Black Ops 98 $800 Our testers loved this hard-charging ski, which until this season was only available to shop employees and Rossignol athletes. The Black Ops is as simple as ski construction gets, with a vertically laminated wood…

MIKE HESS BREWING IMPERIAL BEACH, CALIFORNIA CLOSE TO: SURFING Mike Hess is a pillar of San Diego’s robust craft-beer scene, and the new outpost in the funky border town of Imperial Beach is heavy on post-surf vibes. Just north of the pier and steps from the Pacific Ocean, the open-air taproom gives way to a beer garden. While the region has a reputation for busy breaks and occasionally grumpy locals, Imperial Beach is low-key, with crowd-free lineups and shifting sandbars that keep the surf firing year-round. If you can’t find a decent swell near the pier, head south along Seacoast Drive, where breaks can be found at the end of every side street. San Diego is an IPA kind of town, but for your après-surf meal, pair something light and…

THE NEXT BEVERAGE trend might be moderation. With millennials leading the charge, America’s overall alcohol consumption took a slight dip for the third year in a row in 2018, representing millions of gallons of unsold liquor, according to data from industry tracker IWSR Drinks Market Analysis. It’s hard to argue with the health benefits of teetotaling, particularly if you’re an athlete: various studies have suggested that drinking can have a negative impact on sleep, aerobic performance, muscle recovery, and reaction time. Fortunately, you don’t have to forgo the cocktail ritual in order to cut back. This new crop of nonalcoholic drinks and “spirits”—featuring fresh ingredients and surprising flavors—make it easier than ever to skip the booze. Bar None Bellini Spritz Bar None’s portfolio of single-serve bottled mocktails use kombucha or…

A GREAT DEAL OF SKI RACING, Shiffrin told me last summer at a photo studio in Los Angeles, is logistics management. How do you get thirty or forty pairs of skis, seven pairs of ski boots, plus speed suits and poles and helmets and goggles across Europe, during winter, on time, without losing anything? It’s a challenge that doubles or triples if you plan to race in all six of skiing’s disciplines, which almost nobody else does, because that’s crazy. Two days before the World Championships began last February, in Are, Sweden, Shiffrin had raced and won a slalom in Maribor, Slovenia. Only a few skiers planned to race both the Maribor slalom and the super-G in Are, but Shiffrin was one of them, which meant she needed to charter…

BEST POWDER BOARD A. Snoplanks Asym Fish $799 Likely the weirdest snowboard shape we’ve tested, the Asym Fish is the epitome of experimental. The compact heel-side edge and cockeyed nose are designed to counter the imbalances snowboarders feel when standing sideways. Our crew found the edge-to-edge action surprisingly quick. In powder, the unsinkable nose and light bamboo and carbon core imparted ample float. BEST URBAN BOARD B. Arbor Westmark Frank April Edition $499 Arbor’s aesthetic may be rooted in the woods, but the Westmark is built for the streets. This is, after all, the brainchild of Frank April—a Quebecois renowned for shredding the concrete jungle. Ample camber lends pop and hold, leading one rider to claim that “carves come easy and butters look steezy.” A park tester warned that multiple…

I THOUGHT I’d given up playing Army around age nine. But in July, I found myself alone at a high school track on the outskirts of Las Vegas, trying to pass the new Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT). I worked my way through five exercises: a set of three deadlifts, a behind-the-head medicine-ball throw, two minutes of hand-release push-ups (rest your torso on the ground and lift your hands at the bottom of each rep), a timed sprint-drag-carry, and pull-up leg tucks. The test wrapped up with a two-mile run. I hit a button on my stopwatch and sprinted into the Mojave Desert, finishing in 13 minutes 10 seconds. Each exercise is worth a maximum of 100 points, and I scored 547 out of 600. Not bad. For infantry the…

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BIKE A NEW ELECTRIC-MOTORCYCLE COMPANY IS RAISING THE OFF-ROAD STANDARD When Stefan Ytterborn first tried to build an electric-motorcycle, he used some of the popular DIY bike kits available on the market. But it wasn’t long before he realized he’d have to go rogue. The off-the-shelf hub motor was clunky; motorcycle parts were too heavy and bike parts too weak. “I recognized that if I was really going to be honest with myself, I would need to start from scratch,” Ytterborn says. In early 2018, Ytterborn launched his own electric-motorcycle company, Cake, with the limited-edition Kalk. The bike had only five standard parts. Everything else, from the rims and tires to the fork, was designed in-house. Cake now has two models: the Kalk OR (above) for…

JULY 2019 WAS officially the hottest month ever recorded, but if you only paid attention to the political headlines last summer, you’d be forgiven for thinking the biggest environmental threat we face is plastic straws. For that we can thank Brad Parscale. “I’m so over paper straws,” the Trump 2020 campaign manager tweeted after suffering a straw blowout while boarding a JetBlue flight on July 18. The tweet, which included the hashtag #LiberalProgress, garnered more than 7,000 likes. It also gave Parscale a novel fundraising idea. Almost immediately, the Trump campaign began selling ten-packs of plastic Trump Straws for $15. When the first batch sold within 24 hours, the national media took notice, and not long after that the president himself was asked to weigh in. “I do think we…

In watch-enthusiast circles, the name Vacheron Constantin is spoken with reverence. The Swiss company is the oldest continuously operating watch manufacturer in the world, based in Geneva. Though Vacheron specializes in hand-finished dress watches, its Overseas line, which was first launched in the 1970s, includes waterproof stainless-steel cases and rubber straps. They’re perfectly suited to snorkeling off the transom of your yacht. The Overseas Self-Winding is the simplest of the lot, with just three hands and a date indicator. The mechanical movement was devised and built entirely by Vacheron watchmakers, a rarity in this age of outsourcing. The motor, visible through a sapphire window on the back of the case, is meticulously assembled by hand. But this is no fragile showpiece. Cory Richards recently wore a prototype during his attempt…

FITNESS TRACKING took a leap forward in the early 1960s, when the Japanese company Yamasa released a pedometer called Manpo-kei, which roughly translates as “the 10,000-steps system.” This early wearable helped establish the myth that there’s an optimal number of steps you should take every day. Decades later, even as GPS and app-based tracking have proliferated, our increasingly sophisticated devices are often little more than counting tools that log activity. The newest innovations, by contrast, promise to adapt with you, using past performance data to craft customized workouts using machine-learning algorithms. It’s almost like having an automated personal trainer. For the uninitiated, artificial intelligence is the much hyped term for computational systems designed to mimic human reasoning. Wearables that incorporate AI, in addition to logging activity, can replace human decision-making,…

THE ROBOT was born out of a treasure hunt. It all started in 2010, when Eric Stackpole was a promising young engineer designing satellite technology as an intern at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. He was simultaneously working toward a master’s degree at nearby Santa Clara University and was prone to procrastinating. Lately, he’d become taken with the idea of building his own underwater robot. Some of the engineers at Santa Clara were already developing autonomous submersibles, and Stackpole had noticed that they “seemed to be having all the fun.” Instead of spending years planning for a mission, they’d design, build, and deploy a sub within months. “I was like, man, I want one of those,” he says. “You don’t have to have a rocket, just some…

The worst part about paddling Uganda’s Murchison Falls section of the White Nile wasn’t the rapids, even though the 50 miles of Class V whitewater is bookended by a pair of unrunnable waterfalls. It wasn’t the threat of disease, even though during my first visit to Uganda, in 2000, I slipped out of the country just before an Ebola outbreak. It wasn’t even the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), the brutal rebel force that had been kidnapping, conscripting, and killing children in northern Uganda for decades and called this region home. No, the worst part was the hippos, among Africa’s most dangerous animals, thanks to their enormous size and rude temperament. They were everywhere, and they did not appreciate our intrusion into their world. Dozens of them pooled in flatwater beneath…