Inhaltsverzeichnis für November 2016 in Outside

LAST YEAR, a member of Stephen Sullivan’s design team at Jackson, Wyoming, outdoor-apparel brand Stio approached him about producing a heavy winter jacket. Sullivan stopped her. “I said, ‘It doesn’t get that cold anymore. And when it does, it doesn’t stay cold very long,’ ” says Sullivan. “ ‘We need to concen trate on midweight jackets.’ ” What Sullivan meant is that global warming has forced Stio to adjust its business strategy. To that end, the company has gone from producing lots of gear designed to be used in extremely cold situations to garments built for milder conditions, a move that reflects consumer demand for multiseason apparel. And companies stand to lose if they don’t adapt. As the Oregonian reported last December, Columbia’s share price took a hit in 2015,…

WHEN STACY Bare returned from his deployment to Baghdad in 2006, he struggled with a host of problems: alcoholism, a cocaine habit, and suicidal thoughts, to name a few. It wasn’t until 2010, when a fellow veteran took him rock climbing on First Flatiron, in Boulder, Colorado, that things began to turn around. “If I hadn’t started climbing, I’d probably be another sad statistic,” says Bare. “The focus it gave me let me leave my troubles on the ground.” The idea of a nature cure isn’t new. Groups like Outward Bound have been bringing veterans on expeditions for years, and we all know the psychological benefits of a simple walk in the woods. But Bare wanted to take things a step further. He thought that if there were enough scientific…

I’D BEEN TOLD to meet the Australian actor Travis Fimmel, best known for his role as Norse warrior Ragnar Lothbrok in the His -tory channel’s Vikings series, at his ranch outside Los Angeles. Given the popularity of the show—four seasons, an Amazon Prime release, and season five in the works—I had assumed that Fimmel’s pad would be some secluded midcentury hideout with a wellstocked kitchen and a gym worthy of a broadsword slinger who’d also recently anchored a Warcraft film adaptation that made nearly half a billion dollars worldwide. But the address led to a dusty outdoor riding arena just off the highway, where Fimmel, barefoot in a pair of camo cargo shorts and a surf tee, greeted me from the back of his 15-year-old chestnut quarter horse, Wanker. “I’m…

Do South LOOK PAST THE SPRING BREAKERS (EASILY AVOIDED) AND SECURITY CONCERNS (MOSTLY OVERBLOWN) AND YOU’LL FIND AN ASTOUNDING VARIETY OF ADVENTURE SOUTH OF THE BORDER— WHETHER YOU WANT TO SIP MARGARITAS OR SEND WATERFALLS. WE ASKED A FEW LUMINARIES ABOUT THEIR FAVORITE ESCAPES, THEN HEADED TO GUADALAJARA FOR A STYLISH, TEQUILAFILLED WEEKEND. JORGE MEDINA Medina, photo graphed at the hotel Casa Fayette in Guada lajara, is a graphic designer and illustrator. “The bar at Casa Fayette is the best place for a cocktail,” he says. Thermore Quilted Bomber jacket by Levi’s ($128); Aran Patchwork sweater by Dockers ($98); Madras Flannel shirt by Burkman Bros ($170); Five-Pocket trousers by Zara ($89); Bardstown Chukka boots by Timberland ($300) Experts Only We assembled a dream team of athletes, chefs, and adventurers from…

IN FEBRUARY 2011, Brint Markle and three friends were skiing the uncontrolled back side of Mont Fort in Verbier, Switzerland. It was a great day for poor decisions: the powder deep, the sky blue, the stoke high. “I think our skiing experience was above our education,” Markle says today. One of the skiers took an aggressive line. The slope ripped out. Markle watched, helpless, as the avalanche swept his buddy 750 feet down the mountain, siphoned him through a cliff band, and spat him out at the bottom, partially buried but unharmed. The group later heard that, shortly before the incident, another slide had occurred on a similar slope just a ridge or two away. “I just remember thinking, Gosh, had we known a bit more, we wouldn’t have been…

QUICK GEEK lesson: “persistence of vision” is the optical illusion in which rapidly flashing static images blend together to look like they’re in motion. It’s how films work, and it’s the trick behind Tangram Factory’s Smart Rope, which uses 23 LEDs embedded in the cord to display your jump count in real time in front of you. “At our office, we took every ex cuse not to work out— we were too busy, it was raining outside,” says Tangram cofounder Joen Choe. He and his business partner, Deokhee Jeong, wanted an effective fitness routine they could do on the office patio in five minutes. “But if your reps are getting into the hundreds, who wants to count them like a hamster in a wheel?” Choe says. He promises that the…

Whenever I tell the story of how Sara and I fell for each other, it sounds like a lie. Sometimes I rein in the details—not because they’re false, but because I know they appear to be. Like the part with the volcano. The part with the volcano always tips it from crazy to unbelievable. We’d been in the Amazon for a week, in northern Ecuador, dodging bullet ants, swimming with pink dolphins, fishing for piranhas. Friends, platonic, since childhood. On what was supposed to be the final day of our trip, we emerged from the jungle on the outskirts of Lago Agrio, a little oil town just south of the Colombian border, where we planned to drag our grimy backpacks onto a turboprop and fly to Quito. We already had…

BY W. HODDING CARTER The first date that my wife, Lisa, and I went on was a bug safari in Central Park in the summer of 1992. Dressed in khakis and penny loafers, we wandered the woods and hillsides with magnifying glasses and entomology books in hand. Two weeks later, we pitched a tent for three nights in Adirondack Park. Soon afterward, we camped in New York’s High Peaks Wilderness Area and hiked 5,344-foot Mount Marcy. As our relationship grew, our outings got more ambitious. Later that year, we strapped a canoe on top of Lisa’s Saturn and drove from Boston to Everglades National Park to paddle the 99-mile Wilderness Waterway. We conceived our first children—twin girls—while backpacking in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and eloped in the summer of…

BY THE TIME IT CRASHED, EASTERN AIR LINES FLIGHT 980 WOULD HAVE BEEN JUST ABOUT READY TO LAND. Beverage carts stowed, seat backs upright, tray tables locked. The 29 people on board would have just heard the engines change pitch and felt the nose dip slightly, seat belts tugging at their stomachs. One imagines a focused cockpit. Pilot Larry Campbell was responsible for the safety of everyone on the flight, and this was just his second landing in the Bolivian city of La Paz. Copilot Ken Rhodes was a straightforward military man. No foolishness, especially when descending through a mountain valley in bad weather. Sitting behind both, flight engineer Mark Bird was a retired fighter jock. In the Air Force, he was known for buzzing the tower and other hijinks,…

There is an evolutionary death match under way in Hawaii, where half a million feral cats, some of them infected with a terrifying zombie parasite, are wreaking havoc on endangered species. Some people call them the “kitties of doom." will do anything to save them. PAUL KVINTA investigates. One Sunday afternoon last November, Michelle Barbieri, a wildlife veterinarian with the National Oceanie and Atmospheric Administration, receiced word of a Hawaiian monk seal in distress in a harbor near Oahu's Waikiki Beach. The animal was “logging,” or drifting aimlessly, rather than chasing fish, flopping around on the beach, or doing any of the happy-go-lucky things associated with a nearly two-year-old monk seal. Such reports were not unusual for Barbieri. As the chief medical staffer with NOAA’s Pearl Harbor–based Hawaiian Monk Seal…