Innehållsförteckning för September/October 2024 från Outside

THE 2022 Tour de France Femmes was decided in the Vosges mountains, during a brutal seventh stage with three category-one climbs. Dutch rider Annemiek van Vleuten attacked on the second climb, then opened up a four-minute gap on the final push of the day, a grueling 3,163-foot ascent of the Grand Ballon. It was the hardest day of the Tour, and with another mountain stage coming the next day, recovery was crucial. But with their legs fried, their cortisol levels soaring, and their nervous systems cranked in fight-or-flight mode, would the riders actually be able to sleep properly? Surprisingly, the answer was yes—or at least, mostly. Nine of the Women’s Tour riders were wearing Whoop bands on their wrists; their data, which was published earlier this year in Sports Medicine—Open,…

I’m getting ready for my first marathon in the fall, and I am trying to dial in my kit. I keep hearing about these “super shoes” people use for racing, but they’re expensive, and I don’t know if I should switch to something new for race day. Do I need to buy a super shoe to run my best?—NEWBIE DISTANCE RUNNER Dear Newbie, Super shoes are no doubt attractive. The lightweight racers with ultra-bouncy foam and embedded carbon plates have been shown to enable some athletes to reach higher speeds with less effort. Could a super shoe help you run slightly faster and easier than you would in a standard trainer or racer? Yes. Probably. Maybe. It’s complicated. If you’re a sub-seven-minute-mile marathoner, you’ve established serious training habits and built…

There are a million and one jam-bar recipes out there, and this is mine—except that I use fresh fruit instead of preserves. The recipe works equally well with fresh and frozen apricots; you can also swap in seasonal berries or peaches and plums. What makes the treats so irresistible is the sweet-tart play of crust and fruit. —Amanda M. Faison MAKES ABOUT 12 BARS For filling: 3 cups apricots, halved orquartered, depending on size¼ cup sugar½ lemon, juiced2 tsp cornstarch For crust: 1½ cups flour½ cup old-fashioned oats½ cup sugar½ tsp baking powder½ tsp salt½ cup unsalted butter, chilled⅓ cup full-fat plain yogurt Prepare the filling by combining apricots, sugar, and lemon juice in a medium bowl. Set aside and allow to macerate at room temperature. (This step can be…

Pro snowboarder Kimmy Fasani seems to have only one speed: fast. I learn this at her tiny green clapboard cabin on Lake Mary, just 15 minutes up the road from her primary home in Mammoth Lakes, California. Soon after we arrive aboard a little e-powered dinghy, I turn around to gaze over the lake and its forested shores. Kimmy, meanwhile, has somehow already stripped down and pulled on a bikini, and is now leaping off a 20-foot cliff that fronts the frigid alpine water. For a moment, her body is silhouetted against the deep blue summer sky, and then she disappears beneath the glassy surface with a big splash followed by ripples of concentric waves. She surfaces with a whoop and a grin. “It’s a tradition,” Kimmy says as she…

If you are the Carhartt sales representative in Alaska, you hear so many stories about how your durable, mud-brown workwear has saved people’s flabby backsides from wolf fangs and grizzly-bear bites that, after a while, you stop recalling the individual anecdotes. Except during the annual Carhartt Ball in Talkeetna, a winter festival at which fans gather to celebrate another year of survival on the Last Frontier. “One time,” says Doug Tweedie, Carhartt’s man in Alaska for the past 25 years, “there was this walrus attacked a guy tying his boat up to a dock somewhere in the Aleutian chain who said what saved him were the black extreme-heavy-duty Carhartts the walrus’s chompers couldn’t bite through.” Tweedie tells me this as he busily checks the microphone onstage at the Denali Fairview…

MATT MCADOW was sitting on a cardboard box in a Montana warehouse, tapping out emails on a laptop and waiting for his shoes to arrive. It was Monday, September 18, 2023, a pivotal moment for Bedrock Sandals, a boutique footwear company headquartered in Missoula. The shoes, Bedrock’s first to be manufactured overseas, were supposed to have arrived four days earlier. McAdow, director of operations, had spent months coordinating photo shoots, producing marketing collateral, and figuring out how to fill a 10,000-unit order for Bedrock’s new mountain clogs—in three colors of suede and nubuck. Cofounder Dan Opalacz was excited that the rollout would occur a week before his first son was due to be born. “It was all lining up with these big work and life milestones,” he says. “Then everything…

Yes, Weight Matters BY MIKE KAZIMER Cycling gear director Modern mountain bikes are better than ever, but some of them have become downright rotund, especially long-travel enduro bikes: thick tires, burly forks, coil shocks, and big brakes all add up to a fairly significant figure on the scale. Those components work well when gravity takes over, but come climbing time, well, lately it feels like we’re back in the freeride days of the early 2000s, when getting off and pushing was an acceptable way of reaching the top of a hill. For me, weight matters. Think of it this way: Would you rather ride your bike in its current state, or with a gallon of milk (roughly eight pounds) strapped to the frame? I’ve spent more than my fair share…

A. Under Armour Infinite Elite shoes $160 Comfortable, stable, and durable enough to withstand the trial of miles, the Infinite Elite became a go-to trainer for testers of all speeds and strides. The thick, wide stack of responsive TPU-based midsole foam isn’t excessively cushy and offers a smooth, bouncy feel. We appreciated the fit of the knit upper, which contours around the heel and midfoot. 11.5 oz (men’s), 9.3 oz (women’s); 8 mm drop —Cory Smith B. Soar Run shorts $125 These light, ventilated shorts are what you grab for all kinds of runs throughout the year, because you know they’ll be comfortable and functional whatever the conditions. During summer testing, they excelled in hard, sweaty miles, thanks to a quick-drying blend of polyamide and elastane. The notched hem and…

Puglia, Italy WHY NOW: My first trip to Puglia, which forms Italy’s bootheel, was in early November, and in packing I made two mistakes: I left out a bathing suit and bike shoes. I didn’t anticipate that the southern latitude would bring late-summer temperatures. I arrived to see umbrellas shading folks on the rocky beaches and bicycles outnumbering cars. I chose the region hoping it would deliver the food, wine, and culture of Tuscany, but with fewer crowds and better prices. So it did, and also surprised me with a bounty of outdoor playgrounds, including two national parks, 16 state reserves, three marine protected areas, many fantastic cycling routes, and an incredible network of limestone caves. In early autumn, Susumaniello grapes are plucked from the vines; toward the end, olives…

KITZSTEINHORN, a 10,000-foot Austrian peak that sits in the Alps just south of Salzburg, is not considered a draw for serious mountaineers. But to a group of Ukrainian refugees who climbed it last August, as part of a summer camp hosted by the U.S.-based Mountain Seed Foundation, Kitzsteinhorn symbolized hope. Filmmaker and photographer Max Lowe documented his second trip to Healing Base Camp, a weeklong program for families whose lives were upended by the violence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A mix of talk therapy, art classes, and guided mountaineering expeditions, the camp is about building resilience. “All of these people lost someone far too soon,” says Lowe, who is based in Bozeman, Montana. “There’s beauty in the fact that they’re showing up here and learning how to move forward.”…

“SCARCITY FOSTERS creativity,” said chef Aaron Lopez as he placed a small woven basket on my plate. He removed the lid to reveal two amaranth-leaf-topped squares that looked like artisanal chocolates. I lifted one and took a bite. The crème-brûlée-like shell shattered, releasing a sweet, fibrous, squash-filled interior laced with subtle heat. It was late June and Lopez, 38, had invited me to his hometown, the inland Southern California city of El Centro, to preview the menu of his ambitious new restaurant, Ursa, which pays homage to the deserts of the American Southwest. The freshly limewashed walls of the dining room were decorated with tumbleweeds gathered from his mom’s backyard and lined with cacti growing in clay pots. In the kitchen, his fridge and pantry were stocked with esoteric ingredients:…

A. Pingora Impulse 9 pack $140 Equipped with all the best features of a running vest, plus a zippered main compartment with a reservoir sleeve and a lightly padded hipbelt, the Impulse 9 pack is built to go fast. Four vest pockets and two at the hips offer ample space to store snacks, and a U-shaped back-panel zipper means hikers can grab layers on the go without slowing down. (S/M–M/L) —Corey Buhay B. Adidas Terrex Free Hiker 2 Low GTX shoes $180 Though the Free Hiker 2 Low GTX was designed for through-hiking, with the extra stability of a heel counter and an effective midfoot-supporting torsion bar, our testers preferred its versatile, stylish looks and easy-to-clean, PFC-free ripstop upper for day hikes. A durable, bouncy ride, Gore-Tex lining, and cleverly…

As he slathered SPF 30 onto his left calf, Ryan Johnson looked back at me and issued a warning: expect honking. I hadn’t been astride a bike in six years, but here I was on a brutally hot late-October afternoon in Arizona, an e-bike beside me, preparing for a ride. Our destination was a cycling path along the Salt River, which bisects Tempe, a city of 189,000 people about ten miles (or 60 minutes by bike) east of Phoenix. Tempe is home to Arizona State University, and it’s also the place where Johnson is currently running a grand residential experiment. Johnson is the cofounder of Culdesac, a real estate development firm that wants to flip the script on urban living. In May 2023, he became one of the first tenants…