Innehållsförteckning för Fall 2025 från Outside

BUT IF YOU DO, do it like Alexi Pappas. We were out on the Malibu bluffs at the tail end of a long shoot day—one that started at her cabin-y home in Topanga, wound through the canyons to a rustic theater, and ended in that golden-pink stretch of dusk that makes you understand why so many movies are filmed in California. Alexi was prepping for a shot when she, yes, stepped on a cactus. In socks. Most people would’ve cursed. But Alexi looked down at the offending sprout and said, “I didn’t see that little one, but I’m proud of him growing there. Of asserting his space.” That’s the thing about Alexi. She doesn’t just show up for a shoot—she inhabits it. And like that little cactus, she asserts her…

DELILAH CUPP (@DCUPPERS) grew up watching the MTV show Jackass, and in college, she started posting videos on YouTube and Instagram of her athletic shenanigans with her friends, which included shotgunning beers mid-run at a downhill mountain bike race and spinning 360s in a bikini on skis. Her following took off in 2021, when she and two girlfriends made a film called “Girls Gotta Eat Dirt,” in which they wore jorts by performance denim maker Ripton, tore around on their bikes like banshees, and poured handfuls of loam into their mouths. She became known for her lighthearted and irreverent online presence (“20 photos that i took of myself in 2024 that u never asked for never wanted & yet here they are,” she captioned a recent photo dump, “better luck…

WHEN R.F. KUANG first took up running in college, she was stymied by what it meant to be a “real” runner. “I thought you had to run at least two miles without stopping, and I thought you had to have a seven-minute mile time,” she says. But after several false starts and a couch-to-5K training breakthrough, she realized that “real” runners have just one thing in common: they get out the door and keep moving. Kuang is the mega-bestselling author of several award-winning novels, including Babel, Yellowface, and the Poppy War trilogy. Nowadays, she travels the world speaking about her books in far-flung cities—and wherever she goes, you’ll find her running along the nearest river first thing in the morning. Currently training for a half marathon, with the goal of…

BY DAY, BOB CARBAUGH designs hospitality spaces as a senior associate with Scott Edwards Architecture, based in Portland, Oregon. Off the clock, he’s an avid traveler and hiker. Those two passions, as dissimilar as they may seem, are actually in pursuit of the same goal. “When you’re hiking a trail or getting to the end of an arduous climb, there’s that big reveal, that big ‘aha’ moment, and you get chills to feel that magic,” he says. “I feel like I’ve created a great project when I can give that sense of exploration and excitement to people who use a space.” Brewery taprooms aren’t typically synonymous with that sense of awe. Most need to function, at least partially, as sterile manufacturing businesses full of stainless steel and industrial-grade cleaners. But…

This fall, I hope to visit my home state of Minnesota, where leaves come in all shades of yellow, orange, and red, the mornings are crisp, and the apple-picking is abundant. —Abigail Wise Our favorite fall ritual is completing the six-mile out-and-back hike to Lilly Pad Lake, a small pond near Frisco, Colorado. You pass through tunnel-like groves of aspen trees, and if you time it right, your entire journey is a menagerie of yellow, orange, and even crimson leaves. — Frederick Dreier I’m stoked for hikes in Boston’s Arnold Arboretum. It’s a 281-acre tree preserve. I love the sound of fallen leaves crunching under my feet. —Ayana Underwood I’ll be road-tripping through Japan in October and am very excited to observe the foliage in the Kiso Valley. The hike along…

THE JOURNEY THAT Zelzin Aketzalli is on could take 50 years—or even longer—but she’s not daunted. In 2019, she become the first Mexican to complete hiking’s Triple Crown (the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Trails), and the 31-year-old immediately dreamed up an even more ambitious project: developing the first national trail system in her home country. The inaugural installment is a prospective 1,300-mile trail across Baja California, which Aketzalli has mapped out across a trailless expanse of mountains, desert, canyons, and beach. Aketzalli says her experiences thru-hiking the Triple Crown helped her discover her true passion for long-distance trekking. Though she was already an accomplished athlete when she logged her first mile on the PCT, she had spent more time on a bike than on her feet. Aketzalli grew…

1 The Q+A By Christine Yu ON THE FIRST Sunday of November 2021, I was standing where I always stand: on a street corner on Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, waiting to cheer on the New York City Marathon runners, especially the pro women. In New York, the women’s race is special. Athletes start a half hour before the rest of the field. It means that they have the streets—and the spotlight—all to themselves to showcase their talents. To compete. The first wave made their way down the wide avenue in a blur, and my head swiveled back and forth, trying to track each runner in the lead group and the chase pack that followed shortly after. A few minutes later, I saw someone moving alone. I realized that it was…

Hill’s new hobbies: Ashtanga yoga is one thing. And I’ve been skate skiing for, oh gosh, it’s been more than ten years now. One thing I want to try this winter is kiteboarding. My friend keeps inviting me to come down to Lantana [in Florida], and it’s been difficult to balance the time between going to Hueco [Tanks, in Texas] or other trips for work. So, I’m going to make the time and give it a try. How learning shifts her mindset: When I’m learning something new, I appreciate all of the subtleties. It’s not just about strength, but knowing how to read the terrain and how to coordinate the exact force that you need to use in your ankles or your wrists, or some aspect of the balance and…

MAPS Trailforks Mapping App: Now Available on Apple Watch Forget fumbling with your phone. See exactly where you are on the trail with the new Trailforks Apple Watch app, loaded with the world’s largest database of trails. Get a buzz at key turns with Traildar proximity alerts. See distance, speed, and vert at a glance. Dive deeper into your stats with seamless syncing to your feed. It’s everything you love about Trailforks, right on your wrist. Visit trailforks.com for more details. TV The Return of Park Sessions Outside Studios collaborated with Parks Project and Crooked Highways to bring OutsideTV subscribers a new adventure series, Park Sessions. The show features iconic musicians performing live music in National Parks across the United States. New episodes include Scout Willis (about) in Sequoia National…

RUNNING IS A SPRING-LOADED SPORT—and no, I’m not just referring to the springy, carbon-plated super shoes that have swept the running world in recent years. Muscles and tendons themselves act like elastic bands, stretching with each stride and then springing back to help power the next. By some estimates, this recoil cycle provides about half the energy required for sustained running, meaning that the elasticity of your muscles is just as important as more commonly discussed parameters like VO₂ max. The problem: over the course of a long, hard run, the elastic starts to wear out. Earlier this year, scientists from the Nike Sport Research Lab in Oregon published the first data on muscle elasticity in runners before and after a marathon. The results suggest a link between the elasticity…

OF THE MANY METHODS for cooking with live fire, few rival the simplicity, speed, and flavor-to-effort ratio of the éclade de moules. This traditional dish (going back at least to the 13th century) is from the French département of Charente-Maritime, which sits on the Atlantic coast north of Bordeaux. It originated when hungry mussel foragers carried their haul up from the sea to the pine forests along the coast and used the fuel they found there to cook their catch quickly and deliciously, without pans or implements. This was often done directly on the ground, on a flat area of dried mud, but over time wooden boards became de rigueur, as they keep the food cleaner. Mussels generally come in two-pound bags, so you’ll want two or three bags depending…

ONE HUMID SATURDAY in June, I jogged two blocks from my Brooklyn apartment to join a group run at Public Records, a vegan restaurant, cocktail bar, and nightclub in the rapidly de-industrializing neighborhood surrounding the Gowanus Canal. At first glance, the 100 or so runners might have looked like any of the city’s million other crews: lithe, youngish, tattooed. There were, however, key differences. The group was overwhelmingly male, unusual in New York, with just a handful of women. And their outfits were surprisingly monochromatic, ranging from black shorts to dark gray tees, many adorned with the name of the run’s organizer—the Paris-based apparel brand Satisfy, which launched a decade ago with high-performance fabrics and a skate-punk aesthetic. Satisfy singlets can weigh just a few ounces; shirts have artificial “moth…

Nicole McLaughlin believes anything can become a shoe. Upcycled Patagonia fleeces work well if you’re making a slipper—but so do tennis balls, badminton birdies, crossword puzzle booklets, balloons, golf visors, and packing peanuts. An egg carton makes an excellent sandal, and the baffles of a beach ball can quickly become a striking rainbow clog. But why limit yourself to shoes when you can also make pants from napkins or backpacks, and bras from lemon squeezers or croissants? McLaughlin, a fashion designer, artist, and gorpcore icon based in Boulder, Colorado, has made a jacket from oven mitts—and an oven mitt from a loaf of bread. She’s turned cereal bags (still filled with Froot Loops and corn flakes) into a vest and sewn a puffy jacket from bubble wrap. Each of her…