Innehållsförteckning för Summer 2021 från Outside

Noob Beginnings This summer’s edition of Outside is unlike any issue we’ve ever produced, not because we’ve thrown out the usual architecture and departments—we’ve done that several times in the past—but because the entire idea was the direct result of reader feedback. Several years ago, when our digital team was redesigning Outside Online, we gathered a diverse panel of Outside readers to help us better understand our audience. A lot of this research confirmed things we’d always believed—you’re passionate about our longform storytelling, are obsessed with gear, and look to us for comprehensive advice on travel and fitness. But one thing took us by surprise: the majority of you desire more beginner content and tips for getting started in adventure sports. We always imagined that our audience was made up…

“My boyfriend and I have two dogs. I adopted Birdie from a dog-meat farm in South Korea after the 2018 Winter Olympics—we think she’s a Korean Jindo mix. Frank is a terrier, miniature pinscher, and Chihuahua mix. Half the reason I do an outing is for the dogs. They’re why I get motivated to go for a hike or to the beach. They have so much energy to expend, and they get a lot of joy out of doing something active. I can see how happy they are and how well they sleep afterward. Start slow and progressively take your dogs on bigger, more taxing adventures. Every dog is different in terms of what they’re capable of. Birdie will let me know when she’s tired—she’ll be sprinting and having fun,…

“Too often we associate the great outdoors with somewhere far, far away that requires special equipment and expertise. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Not everybody is going to find joy and excitement dangling off the side of a cliff. You can turn to nature close to home. We have to think more broadly and inclusively about what being in the outdoors can look like. By doing that, we help people feel validated and empowered to try a broader range of activities. Outdoor Afro is an organization that connects Black people across the country to outdoor activities near them. It’s headquartered in Oakland, California, where there’s a lake at the center of town—Lake Merritt, which is actually the oldest wildlife sanctuary in the country. People walk around it, they…

CLIMB A WALL SELF-STUDY: Majorca, Spain If you’ve ever wondered what it feels like to be Alex Honnold—but you don’t want to, you know, risk your life to find out—consider a climbing trip to Majorca. This Balearic island, just 45 minutes by airplane from Barcelona, is one of the best spots for inter-mediate climbers to go deepwater soloing, which means climbing oceanside cliffs without a rope, with the warm Mediterranean Sea to catch you when you fall. Deepwater soloing is a relatively safe way to give your climbing an injection of pro-level courage, and the limestone on Majorca’s southeastern coast offers up all sizes and difficulties. If soloing isn’t your jam, head inland for thousands of world-class sport climbs, from the fully bolted multi-pitch routes at Sa Gubia to the…

“The first thing I needed to learn when I started writing about climate change was that we weren’t really in the argument I thought we were in. Writers tend to think of things as an argument and believe that if you assemble enough well-crafted words, studies, and research data, then the powers that be will do what needs doing. It took me a number of years—and a number of books—to understand that this wasn’t completely true. By 1995, the world’s scientists were in strong agreement about the danger of climate change. But you can win the argument and still lose the fight. Our opponents, the fossil-fuel industry, had enough money and power to keep winning the fight long after they’d lost the argument. Once I figured that out, I started…

REGULAR EXERCISE keeps illness at bay and promotes overall physical health. So why do we treat the mental side differently? “People often wait until things are completely falling apart to start therapy,” says Emily Anhalt, a clinical psychologist and cofounder of Coa, a mental health gym that offers classes on skills like resilience, mindfulness, and self-awareness. “But that’s like waiting until you have heart disease to start cardio.” Just as getting your blood pumping can help prevent cardiac disease, “therapy can be a proactive way to stay on top of your emotional well-being,” Anhalt says. According to the American Psychiatric Association, therapy has been shown to increase career satisfaction, improve physical health, and enhance our connections to others. “Therapy can help us become more authentic versions of ourselves, which can…

“MAYBE WE OUGHT TO CONSIDER ALTERNATING THE ACTIVE, SPORTY EXCURSIONS WITH MORE CONTEMPLATIVE OUTINGS.” THE MENTAL wilderness, the mindful wilderness, the landscape-meets-headspace wilderness that I’ve been exploring for two decades, always alone, always without a map, always motivated by this same curiosity, part fear and part excitement—here I am again. A subalpine basin in the backcountry of Colorado’s Elk Mountains this time, a rugged spot accessed by rugged bushwhack. It’s the first evening of a late-spring weekend that I’ll spend, for want of a better description, climbing Mount Nothing. My bivy sack is spread out beside a shallow tarn, the teal surface of the water rippling with leaping trout that I do not intend to catch. Hanging in a stunted spruce, my pathetic kitchen bag (peanut butter, tortillas, instant coffee,…

“Even after 50 years of being active outside, I still struggle with motivation. Nowadays, regardless of how big the day is going to be, what I tell myself is, I’m getting up. I’m going to enjoy that cup of coffee and piece of toast. I’m going to go out and catch the dawn, even if just for half an hour. You don’t have to do the big thing. You can turn around at any time. You can go at a more relaxed pace. Sometimes the key is to fake yourself out. Almost always the momentum takes over. Because being outdoors, catching the first light, it’s spiritual, it’s energizing. It allows you to build that momentum. For a big multi-day alpine climb, it can be a challenge to stay confident and…

Tales of Obsession Our winter issue featured stories on Apple’s forays into fitness, a writer’s quest to do 100 wheelies per day for a month, and a missing park ranger. However, it was Daniel Duane’s profile of Joshua Skenes, a chef with an ultra-exclusive Washington ranch, that elicited the strongest reactions. A vanished rebel ranger and those obsessed with finding him. A story about a fantasy resort that somehow ends up being about conservation. A woman who knows how to master a skill and inspires us all to get out and practice. And then: the tale of Skenes Ranch, which had me eye-rolling almost to the end, when I started to drool. The whole issue prods us toward obsession, reminding us that it can be fatuous or hedonistic, yes, but…

WHILE BARS and gels have their place in outdoor excursions, real foods—as close to their natural state as possible—are often more nutritious, satiating, and palatable than their highly processed peers. These simple meals can help you bag a summit or set a PR. Skiing Adventure food should check three boxes, according to Lauren Ross, a former college downhill skier and a registered dietitian in Portland, Oregon: it should be filling, packable, and easy to grab. Her go-to for skiing is a bagel with cream cheese piled high with veggies like sprouts and cucumbers. It can be stashed in a pocket and provides plenty of energy (plus a satisfying crunch) without making you sluggish. Trail Running Whole-grain berry pancakes are Ross’s snack of choice on a trail run, thanks to their…

AT FIRST glance, Alex Honnold and Cedar Wright are a strange pair. Honnold is 35, doesn’t drink, and trains constantly. He looks as if he were chiseled from marble by Michelangelo. Wright, 46, calls to mind a different Michelangelo—the Ninja Turtle. He’s the life of the party, he caps off training days with pizza and whiskey, and he has passions other than rock climbing, including paragliding and filmmaking. They’re both opinionated, stubborn, and contrarian. They’re also from different generations. When the two met in Yosemite in 2007, a couple thousand feet up the side of El Capitan, Wright had been on the North Face team for nearly five years, and Honnold was just getting noticed, quietly repeating some of Peter Croft’s free solos from back in the eighties. And yet…

“The night before a big race, I always set goals. What am I going to say to myself when it gets really hard? Maybe it’s a mantra I’m going to repeat, something simple like I can do this. Then I set a technique goal: How am I going to ski efficiently? Finally, I set a pacing goal. If it’s a 10K race, you don’t go sprinting out of the gate. How am I going to pace this effort? When I’m nervous, I think about those process goals. What do I need to be doing right now in order to have a good race? Maybe it’s eating a good breakfast or getting a good warm-up. Fixating on the process and not the outcome is how I make sure I can handle…

IT’S 2 P.M. on November 4, 2020, in Yosemite National Park, and the afternoon sun is blasting the south-facing Golden Gate route on El Capitan. Emily Harrington is a little more than 12 hours into her fourth attempt to free-climb the 3,200-foot-tall granite behemoth in under 24 hours. Heat radiates off the wall, but Harrington, 34, is confident and moving well. She’s at the base of a pitch called Golden Desert, a stretch of slick rock with a thin crack. A few minutes ago she took an unexpected fall when her foot slipped, but she’s anxious to get to the next pitch, the A5 Traverse—her prior high point. Despite already ascending 2,900 feet, she isn’t that tired, so she decides to try again. Graded 5.13a, Golden Desert is one of…

ALIPHINE TULIAMUK visualized the finish line of the Olympic Trials marathon long before she touched down in Atlanta in February 2020. The 32-year-old Kenyan American had won road races before, but she was the tenth seed going into this one—a long shot, or at least an underdog. She would toe the start line with more than 400 other women, hoping to finish in the top three. She’d thought about this moment for 12 years. On the morning of the marathon, Aliphine is feeling stressed and physically off. Her right leg hurts. By the time she emerges from her hotel room, her coach, Ben Rosario, sees that she looks frightened. He gives her a pep talk and reminds her to smile. (“A happy Aliphine is a dangerous Aliphine when it comes…

“THERE’S SOMETHING WEIRDLY LIFE-AFFIRMING ABOUT GETTING THROUGH THESE MOMENTS OF STRUGGLE.” IT WAS LATE 2013. Explorers Ben Saunders and Tarka L’Herpiniere were on the return segment of their pioneering round-trip journey, on foot, from Ross Island to the South Pole, when desperation set in. Amid a ferocious blizzard, with temperatures dipping to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, their energy was flagging, and they didn’t have enough food to ride out the storm. Saunders made a fateful command decision—he called for a resupply. This would forever add a footnote to the expedition (it was now “supported”), but it probably saved their lives. Saunders was no polar novice, but in setting out to achieve what had never been accomplished, he was in virgin territory. Which raises the point that sometimes even pros are…

IN 2012, I completed two of New Zealand’s ten Great Walks, the 87-kilometer version of the Whanganui Journey and the 60-kilometer Abel Tasman Coast Track. I was 33 at the time and in the best shape of my life, which meant that I could cover maybe a mile on an extremely even surface in a day—as long as there was a day of moving as little as possible, or of hot-tubbing, after each day of ambling. I’ve lived with severe rheumatoid arthritis since I was an infant. Basically, my immune system wrongly imagines the cartilage in my joints as the mother of all viruses and attacks accordingly. Many of my joints are locked at uncommon angles. I’m also not at all flexible. I can walk short distances, but I tire…

a. Forage for cocktail ingredients. Pine needles, which are packed with vitamin C, were brewed into a tea by sailors to stave off scurvy. You’re going to use the wild evergreen to spice up a hot toddy. Needles from white pine in the eastern U.S. and Douglas fir in the West both contribute bright citrus flavors. Drop a handful of needles into three cups of boiling water. Simmer for 20 minutes, then pour into mugs, adding lemon, honey, and whiskey to taste. For an Instagram-ready garnish, hang a cluster of needles on the rim. b. Build a hammock tower. A single hammock is relaxing. Several hammocks stacked in a tower is a unique, full-on experience for a group. Start by securely hanging the first hammock a few feet off the…

“NEW AMBITIONS RESTORE OUR SENSE OF LIFE AS AN ADVENTURE.” MY DREAM of surfing bigger waves took hold on a blue winter day several years ago, when I stood on a dune at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach and watched 20-foot swells peel into magnificent long walls. I was 45 years old, and I’d been surfing OB for 15 years, never venturing into anything above 10 or 12 feet, but all of a sudden I began thinking… maybe. Before I explain why, and how it all worked out, I should clarify that nothing I’m describing qualifies as what I’d consider true big-wave surfing. I’ve seen the latter in an awful lot of movies, and with my own eyes at Maverick’s, 20 miles south of Ocean Beach, and at a break on…

BODY SHOP A spiral of injuries—and the attendant existential crisis—can be an opportunity to revisit the fundamentals A FEW YEARS ago, I went for a run with my girlfriend in the foothills outside our home in Santa Fe. It was early June, after work, and we planned to run for an hour or so, hoping to catch the evening light as the sun fell below the Jemez Mountains. We were going to take it easy. I was tapering for what would be my first 100-mile race a few weeks later. I had recently clocked my first 80- and 100-mile weeks after progressively building mileage over six months. I was 30 years old. Before we’d made it a mile, a sharp pain radiated up from my foot. I stopped, expecting a…

“I refer to my life and my career in two phases, B.C. and A.D.: before children and after diapers. It used to be that I scheduled my day around running. When I became a mother, I scheduled my running around my day. Now the children are grown and are runners themselves. I still make running, cycling, and other exercise a priority. I like to have a plan. I go to bed on a Sunday night and think, This is what I’m going to do this week. These are the runs that are important to me. These are the workouts that I need to fit in, whether I like them or not. It’s easy for me to run out the door and go. I should probably take more days off. I…

1. Mend a Busted Frame A crack in metal tubing is usually easy to spot. Carbon fiber is trickier, says Brady Kappius, owner of the frame-repair shop Broken Carbon in Boulder, Colorado. Push on the suspect area, feeling for soft spots. You can also tap along the tube: healthy carbon sounds hollow, not dull. The Fix: Kappius recommends J-B Weld’s FiberWeld repair cast ($10), which is small enough to keep in your repair kit. Wet the fiberglass tape to activate the resin, then wrap your frame and wait 15 minutes for it to cure. The weld should hold up even on bumpy terrain, but as with all of these fixes, it’s a temporary solution to get you back to the car or trailhead. 2. Patch a Torn Sidewall Sidewall tears…

First, cut your spending. “It’s a tax advantage, because every additional dollar you earn from a raise, you get taxed on, whereas a dollar saved is an after-tax dollar. It’s also immediate—you have opportunities to cut down on spending right now that are highly within your control—and much easier than getting a raise or moonlighting.” —Scott Trench, CEO of Bigger Pockets, an online resource for real estate investing Be specific. “In one study, we asked people to close their eyes and picture their financial goals, then create a visual representation of those goals—essentially a vision board. Then I instructed them to go home and open a savings account, assign it a name and year (“Ethan’s College Fund 2030”), and transfer money into it automatically each month. If you’re passionate about…