Table of contents for July 2014 in Outside

The word surreal is used far too often, but here’s a situation that might merit its use: last weekend, within one 24-hour span, I went from standing amid the bright lights of New York City’s Times Square on my way to an annual business conference to standing in one of the darkest spots in the United States, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, for my daughter’s school camping trip. I had seen this mashup of events looming on the calendar for weeks, and I knew that attending each of them would require a brutal sequence of plane connections and car rides. I was dreading all of that, but I also didn’t want to miss either, so I clenched my teeth and said yes to both. It’s only in hindsight—and a few days…

THE CROSS-COUNTRY drive is, in my mind, a crucial part of being an American. I think it should be a precursor to voting. There is no better way to escape your head and see the expansive and flat and hilled and tight and busy places you’ve never closely considered. I’ve crossed the country five or six times, but I’ve usually had a fixed destination and a rushed schedule. A couple of years ago, I decided to take my time. I’d go from New Mexico to New York, giving myself two weeks and no firm itinerary. I left Santa Fe with a bushel of freshly roasted green chiles, drove south to Clines Corners, got gas off I-40, and looked at the map. I called a friend, who suggested Zion National Park.…

Wheatcroft didn’t have to travel far to get this shot of his friend Andy Feuling paddling under the Long Bridge, on Lake Pend Oreille, during low water last fall. “This spot is almost in my backyard,” says the photographer, who has lived on the banks of the 43-mile-long lake for the past 13 years. “It’s like a big playground. I’m not sure I’d live here if it weren’t for the lake.” THE TOOLS: Canon 5D Mark II, 135mm f/2 lens, ISO 200, f/2.8, 1/250 second…

JACKSON, WYOMING, TO GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA See the country’s most iconic wildlife and mountains at five stunning national parks along this 600-mile route. Packing List: Binoculars, Stetson, beer mug Highlights: Burn off jet lag with a couple of fingers of Wyoming Whiskey on the deck at Bin22 (bin22jackson hole.com), then rest up in one of 132 rooms at the LEED-certified Hotel Terra, in Teton Village ($309; hotelterra jacksonhole.com). Start your adventure north of town with a seven-mile run around Jenny Lake in the shadow of the jagged Tetons. Once in Yellowstone National Park, drive north past Yellowstone Lake and into Hayden Valley, prime viewing territory for buffalo, elk, and grizzly. Before leaving the park, stop for a 100-degree soak in the Gardner River, two miles north of Mammoth Hot…

Olympic Peninsula loop, Washington Get soaked on this 550-mile journey past 73 miles of Pacific coastline, dozens of whitewater rivers, and a temperate rainforest in a millionacre national park. Packing List: Kayak, surfboard, and wetsuit; every waterproof item you have Highlights: From Olympia, warm up with a two-mile round-trip hike to the 130-foot froth of Murhut Falls near Quilcene, one of dozens of waterfalls on the peninsula. Then head to Port Townsend for fresh local clams at the Silverwater Café (silverwatercafe.com), a stop along the Olympic Culinary Loop—a collection of farmers’ markets, seafood spots, farms, and wineries (olympicculinaryloop.com). As you continue west, stop at the former Elwha Dam site to pay homage to the free-flowing Elwha River. The 108-foot barrier was built in 1910 and removed in 2012, allowing five…

The Big Island loop, Hawaii Play in the waves and summit a snow-covered volcano in the same day on this 300-mile tour of paradise. Packing List: Snorkel and fins, swimsuit, SkyView iPhone app Highlights: Start in Kailua-Kona and rent a four-wheel-drive vehicle at Harper Car and Truck Rentals (from $735 per week; harpershawaii.com), which will let you go from sea level to the 13,796-foot summit of dormant Mauna Kea. Kick off a weeklong tour by renting a paddle-or surfboard at Kahaluu Bay Surf and Sea and play on the reef break at Kahaluu Beach Park (surfboard, $100 per week; SUP, $250 per week; learntosurfkona.com). In Hawaii Volcanoes National Park ($10 entry), choose from 150 miles of hiking trails and eat ahi tuna at the newly reopened Rim restaurant while overlooking…

Las Cruces, New Mexico, through West Texas Explore the biggest, starkest landscapes in the country on this 950-mile, ten-day adventure. Packing list: Headlamps, plenty of water, Cormac McCarthy books on tape Highlights: Head 20 miles east from Las Cruces to hike around—or climb—1,800-foot Sugarloaf (a multipitch 5.6) in the Organ Mountains. Then drive northeast to the 275-squaremile gypsum dunes of White Sands National Monument and camp under the stars at one of ten primitive sites ($3; nps.gov/whsa). Head southeast and explore the 119 known limestone caves of Carlsbad Caverns ($10; nps.gov/cave) before driving on to Marathon, Texas, to splurge on a newly renovated room and a quail dinner at the Gage Hotel (from $109; gagehotel.com). From Lajitas, put in for a three-day guided paddle on the Rio Grande through the…

FOR THE PAST TEN YEARS, my truck has been my second home, my office, and my part-time storage unit as I’ve moved around the West. It’s not clean. It looks like a ranch truck. But various mishaps have taught me to keep it stocked with three essential items. Before I owned my truck, or any other car, my brother and I would take the family’s 1984 Ford Aerostar minivan on fishing trips. We had no business tilting mom’s van down those muddy logging roads, but it taught us to plow through puddles and straddle ruts. Then came one slippery corner, where I beached that blue van like the Costa Concordia, and the fun was over. It was a good time to be worried, but it was a better time to…

GREAT SALT LAKE, UTAH Since 2011, Fowlks has been photographing land-art installations around the Southwest. Last spring he captured his father, Bob, in front of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, built in the 1970s on the north end of the Great Salt Lake. “I’d been doing research on these sorts of art projects and wanted to convey the idea of open-space viewing, in contrast to what you might experience in a museum,” says the Los Angeles photographer. “We’d get to those places and often spend the night. The whole thing was like a visual expedition.” THE TOOLS: Horseman 4x5, 150mm f/5.6 lens, ISO 100, f/32.3, 1/2 second…

FITNESS DISRUPTER Missoula, Montana Ruby, an exercise physiologist and director of the Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism, once took a muscle biopsy of his own leg after a half Ironman, because he was curious about how much energy he’d expended. (The answer: about 4,500 calories.) Needless to say, this isn’t the way traditional research is done. But Ruby’s real-world tests have led to innovative discoveries, including one that found that rates of muscle recovery are as dependent on how often you eat during a race as what you eat afterward. Last August, intrigued by altitude acclimatization, he took a mobile lab up Mount Evans in Colorado, site of the highest paved road in America (14,264 feet), and flew in 30 subjects. Without giving them time to acclimatize,…

Raleigh, North Carolina LeBoeuf, founder of Valencell, a tech supplier to consumer fitness companies, says most wearable devices—Fitbit, Nike+ FuelBand—aren’t providing meaningful data. “They don’t measure the things we need to know about,” he says. For a device to be useful to the average consumer, it can’t just track your heart rate. It needs to compare your heart rate with your activity history to calculate training adaptations. Most important, the device has to fit seamlessly into your daily routines. To help transform wearable devices from gimmicks into essential gear, LeBoeuf and Valencell developed PerformTek, an earbud technology that tracks everything from oxygen levels to core temperature to, in the future, whether you’ve got a heart problem. LeBoeuf’s ultimate goal is a day when tracking allows consumers to personally take charge…

A SHEEP WAS DEAD. A bighorn sheep. Earlier in the day, in Wyoming’s Sinks Canyon, the workers at the state park had organized a fun run and bake sale to raise money to stuff and mount the sheep, so he could come home, either in a standing pose or a walking pose, life-size and lifelike, once and for all and forever. At the visitor center, a sign hung from the rail around the deck. BRING BAM BAM BACK! Down in the town of Lander, his disembodied horns and coarse, tanned hide remained ensconced in a taxidermy shop, waiting to be mounted. Now, in the cooling dusk of a 2013 summer evening, surrounded by the vast, impossible beauty that can start to feel almost commonplace in this part of the country—to…

ADVENTURE TOOLS, TESTED & REVIEWED Freedom Rider A MADE-IN-AMERICA LONGBOARD TO KEEP YOU ROLLING PROUD GROWING UP, I lived at the top of a hill. At the bottom was my high school, with a mile of perfectly paved sidewalk in between. Each morning, I’d grab my skateboard—a battered thing I stole from a friend’s backyard—and point the nose downhill, carving every driveway like it was the face of a wave. The earlymorning wind blowing through my hair was the only reason I made it to class. Handcrafted in Denver, the Kota SPAD XIII is much slicker than my old board, but the feeling is the same. The cambered deck is cut from Wisconsin maple, and the textured finish on top means no grip tape covering up Old Glory. After all,…

DOWN, THE MUSIC UP, AND A COOLER FULL OF BEER IN THE BACKSEAT (YOU KNOW, FOR LATER). SURE, THE RUMPLED MAPS OBSOLETE—BUT ONE ESSENTIAL QUESTION REMAINS: WHERE TO GO? LOOK NO FURTHER. PLUS: TOOLS, STRATEGIES, AND INSIDER ADVICE FROM PRO SKIER, FIREFIGHTER, AND ROAD WARRIOR KALEN THORIEN.…

SOUTHERN COLORADO LOOP Bomb down epic singletrack, play in Class IV whitewater, and take in Colorado’s famous 14,000-foot vistas on this 500-mile multisport tour of a lifetime. Packing List: Your entire gear closet, a big roof box, a GoPro Highlights: Start this odyssey by playing in the four brand-new features in downtown Durango’s Animas River White water Park. Then head east to soak away shoulder burn in Pagosa Springs’ 22 pools (from $25; pagosahotsprings.com) and cool off with a Skallywag pale ale at Riff Raff Brewing Company (riffraffbrewing.com). Near 10,857-foot Wolf Creek Pass, take a mile-long hike to the Pass Creek Yurt, which sleeps six, comes stocked with firewood, and is the ideal base camp for hiking and mountain-biking the Continental Divide Trail ($139 per night; wolfcreekbackcountry.com). At Great Sand…

Grand Canyon, Arizona, to Moab, Utah Hit six classic national parks in a ten-day, 862-mile epic through the best canyons in the Southwest. Packing List: Light hikers, mountain bike, extra camera memory cards Highlights: At the Grand Canyon, skip the crowded South Rim and drive to the 8,000-foot North Rim. Give yourself two nights and a full day to explore; be sure to hike seven miles down the North Kaibab Trail to Ribbon Falls. Once you cross into Utah, be on the lookout for the Thunder Mountain Trail, part of a 15-mile technical singletrack route with steep drops, tight switchbacks, and a 1,200-foot climb. At Mount Carmel Junction, head 24 miles west to Zion National Park, where the best way to escape ever present crowds is a three-day basic-canyoneering course…

Kenai Peninsula, Alaska Forge your way through 495,000-acre Chugach State Park and the 1.9-million-acre Kenai National Wildlife Refuge on a 500-mile pilgrimage through the Last Frontier. Packing List: Rubber boots and rain jacket, fly rod, bug spray Highlights: Acclimate to your moose-heavy surroundings in Anchorage with an 11-mile run or hike along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail. Then head south in a high-clearance vehicle. (Most of the roads are good, but the best side trips will require something rugged.) An hour away you’ll find the Alyeska Resort and its 50-mile maze of mountain-biking trails (full-suspension bike rental with pads and helmet, $100; alyeska resort.com). In Seward, stay at the Exit Glacier Lodge, where the staff packs bag lunches for early-rising fishermen and stores their catch in a giant freezer (from…

Road-tripping with your own car has advan tages: you know its quirks, your favorite radio stations are already in the presets, and you’ve mastered a byzantine packing system that no one else could possibly comprehend. If you’re going to be gone for more than a few days, consider a rental—especially if you can return it to the same location, which makes things cheaper. It could save you both wear and tear and gas money. To get the best deal, follow these five guidelines. 1. GO BIG. If you think you may be hard on the vehicle, pick one of the large rental companies. “Hertz, Avis, and National are known in the industry for being less aggressive about damage charges,” says Jonathan Weinberg, founder of AutoSlash.com, a site that aggregates the…

CERTAIN SEASONAL FOODS, like cherries in Michigan or apples in Vermont, are worth the trip—no matter how far the drive or how long the wait. For most of my childhood, I was lucky enough to have one of them right outside my front door. As kids growing up in Montana, my younger brother and I were primed to love huckleberries. Because they grow wild and are ripe for only a short period in late summer, choice patches are coveted like good trout holes. Our parents would usually splurge on ziplock bags of the wild purple fruit at the Missoula farmers’ market and freeze them for later use: frying them in buckwheat pancakes, making preserves, tossing them in salads. On its own the fruit was a special treat. But the founders…

AS ROAD-TRIP CRITERIA GO, there’s no better predictor of a memorable drive than a no-services sign containing some impossibly large number. There are a few great ones, like on Washington State’s Highway 14 as it leaves Maryhill along the banks of the Columbia River (NO GAS 82 MILES); on U.S. 191 in Montana, on the vast plain between Malta and Roy (NEXT GAS 98 MILES); and in Texas, on Highway 90 outside Marfa (NO SERVICES NEXT 74 MILES). But all those pale in comparison—if not in charm than certainly in enormity—to Highway 6 in Nevada between Ely and Tonopah: NEXT GAS 167 MILES. The narrow blacktop bisects the Great Basin’s rock plateaus and deserted sand flats like a crack through the heart of a tree stump. When I drove its…

Days on the road can leave the body haggard and make it hard to enjoy much once you step out from behind the wheel. This discreet set of cockpit exercises will keep you from falling too far off your game. —J.B. BUNS OF STEEL 1. Firmly grip the steering wheel. 2. Check your mirrors for approaching vehicles. 3. Keeping your head level, clench your buttocks together. You should raise off the seat a few inches. 4. Hold the clench for 20 seconds. Release. 5. Check mirrors again. Repeat. THE LION 1. Looking straight ahead, drop your mouth into a low O shape. 2. Stick out your tongue. 3. Lift your eyes high in their sockets, like a scowling lion. 4. Hold for 30 seconds. 5. Relax. Repeat. RIGOR MORTIS 1.…

AMERICA’S RELATIONSHIP with soccer has always been a little complicated. For one thing, the entire universe cares more about the sport than we do—we refuse to even refer to it by the same name. Then there is the matter of our utter futility. Team USA’s best result at the World Cup—third—came back in 1930, long before the game had reached its competitive zenith, and since then just getting past the tournament’s first round has required agonizing struggle. That doesn’t exactly help sell the sport to a spoiled American public used to measuring success in World Series titles and Super Bowl rings, not advances to the second round. (We’re referring, of course, to men’s soccer. Our women’s team won the World Cup in both 1991 and 1999.) And yet. Going into…

FITNESS DISRUPTER Portland, Oregon Salazar will always be known for his three New York City Marathon titles in the 1980s—and the fact that he wrecked his body through vicious training sessions to achieve them. But he’s now making an even bigger name for himself as the head coach at Nike’s pro running program, the Oregon Project. And his masochist past has fueled his unconventional belief in prescribing brutal workouts for his runners, including having them run after all-out races. Why? Salazar, 55, believes that the adrenaline of racing primes the body to work harder than everyday conditions permit and that his runners get a double stimulus from a race followed by a workout. Beating the best in the world, Salazar says, means you’ve got to experiment, and over the years…

IT FELT LIKE finally teaching my son to hunt. But instead of wilderness, our game preserve was the industrial zones northwest of downtown Denver. And instead of the ducks my grandpa used to shoot in Minnesota, our quarry was freight trains. I had hopped freight trains a lot, from this city, my hometown, thirty-some years before. Old-time tramps camped along the creek had schooled me: Don’t catch on the fly if you can help it. Just walk into the yard, figure out which train is which, and climb on before it leaves. It’s a lot easier. And safer, I came to learn, than trying to board a moving train. But Asa, an 18-year-old New Yorker, appeared to have grown up on the same movies I had—the ones where the hero…

JUST A FEW BLOCKS from downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, on a narrow, nearly empty side street near the train tracks, there’s a 40-foot window in an expansive brick building. Peer inside on any given weekday and you’ll see roughly two dozen people busily at work on looms, fabric cutters, and die-cast sewing machines. It looks like a scene out of the 1950s. And while the business behind it, Raleigh Denim, is not that old, most of the machines are. “I had to rebuild all of them,” says Victor Lytvinenko, 33, the company’s founder. But first he had to learn how to rebuild them, which meant tracking down the retired workers, some of them in their seventies, who’d kept the machines humming before the apparel manufacturers started closing up shop in…

New Balance Fresh Foam 980 $110 We’ve got one word for this neutral trainer: fast. The Fresh Foam is the quickest shoe here—a soft, bouncy platform with a slim fit and a bare minimum of structural pieces. We love the stretchy upper and four millimeters of drop, which gives you enough forward lean to keep you effective on your toes but also lets you sink back into the heel on mellower cruises. Efficient runners will fault the soft forefoot, but for the rest of us the Fresh Foam is a slipper with booster rockets. 8.8 oz; 4 mm drop; newbalance.com Hoka One One Clifton $130 The Clifton is a minor miracle of design. It comes with Hoka’s signature doublethick foam suspension, yet it boasts a floats-on-your-foot weight of less than…

EUREKA, CALIFORNIA, TO COOS BAY, OREGON Soak in the Pacific on this 250-mile trip from Eureka to Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area—it’s every bit as stunning as California’s iconic Highway 1, but without the crowds. Packing List: Sunscreen, hammock, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds Highlights: Take a 6.5-mile roundtrip hike in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, 50 miles north of Eureka, where you’ll trek along Gold Bluffs Beach and into Fern Canyon, a chasm so lush that Steven Spielberg filmed part of Jurassic Park 2: The Lost World there. In southern Oregon’s self-proclaimed banana belt, named for its warm climate, take a guided four-hour Pacific kayak tour and paddle past sea stacks, arches, and kelp forests ($105; southcoasttours.net). Reserve one of six yurts at Harris Beach State Park, then head…

A good road trip involves a certain amount of improvisation. But the best ones require the right strategy and a few essentials. These eight pieces of advice will start you on the right path. 1. ARM YOURSELF. The best app for a long haul is Roadtrippers, which will plan your route, estimate fuel costs, and suggest itineraries (free; Android and iOS). But the trustiest route assistance remains the Rand McNally road atlas ($14; randmcnally.com). It doesn’t require batteries or a signal, and it’s the best inspiration for our favorite part of any journey: the impromptu side trip. (Is that a lake or an ink spot? Let’s find out!) 2. PICK THE ROUTE. Avoid big cities and highways and stick to two-lane roads for the most scenic drive. Unpaved roads are…

Citizens band is more than just truckers’ radio. You can use it to get beta on traffic, accidents, radar traps, weather, and the tastiest truck-stop pie. But before you try out your new handle (“This is Pop-and-Locker, who’s got ears on?”), learn the etiquette and some lingo. We reached out to 42-year veteran Jerry Pliska, a long-haul driver with transport company J Double L Express, who spoke to us from the wheel of his purple Freightliner Coronado as he headed for Chicago with a load of pig serum (we didn’t ask). Pliska says you should keep the jargon to a minimum, lest you expose yourself as an amateur. Make contact with some thing casual, like “How ’bout that purple Freightliner going north on 55, you got a copy?” Once you’ve…

TO DRIVE ALONG an American road is to be bombarded with deals. Restaurants tout all-you-can-eat prime-rib buffets for $19.99. Gas stations vie to display the lowest price per gallon. Hotels offer a low nightly rate plus free HBO plus air-conditioning plus free Wi-Fi plus an indoor pool. As someone who was born and raised in the Bible Belt of the Midwest, I appreciate that kind of value. “Waste not, want not” was practically scripture in my house. But to me, one road-trip deal stands above all others: the ultra-size cup. I’ve seen it under a few names—most notably the Double Big Gulp at 7-Eleven—but the deal is always the same. You pay two dollars, more or less, and in return you get one 64-ounce cup that you can fill with…

The enviably nomadic life of pro firefighter and skier KALEN THORIEN EIGHT YEARS ago, when Kalen Thorien moved from her home in Boise, Idaho, to Alta, Utah, to become a ski bum, she could barely click into her bindings. “I was awful,” says 25-yearold Thorien. “I was snowplowing down groomers.” But, as you do in mountain towns, she skied. A lot. Spurred on by friends—“It was either keep up or be left behind,” she says—Thorien became proficient enough at carving powder in big backcountry that she scored a spot in a random photo shoot, then another, and another. Suddenly, she was appearing regularly in industry publications like Skiing and Powder. Sponsorships trickled in, but Thorien soon realized that if she wanted to support her habit during the winter, she would…

The teardrop trailer is back to help you rediscover the open road AMERICANS have an on-again, off-again love affair with teardrop trailers. At the height of the real estate bubble—a 3,000-squarefoot home, media room, and eat-in kitchen for every family!— there wasn’t much innovation in the industry. But since the 2008 financial crash, more and more trailers have appeared on the scene. “There’s just something attractive about being fully self-contained and on the road,” says Ashley Grimes, founder of Utah-based Moby 1 Trailers. Take the So-Cal Krawler, which has a reinforced steel frame, adjustable shocks, and a burly roof rack for gear or a tent ($16,195; socalteardrops.com). And the military-grade Schutt Xventure is a utilitarian beast, with 19 inches of ground clearance ($11,995; goxventure.com). For sheer ruggedness, however, no trailer…

Duluth, Minnesota, to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Michigan Get your fill of Lake Superior views on this 550-mile, five-day tour through prime hiking and biking country. Packing List: Sea kayak with spray skirt, 29er, flannel shirts Highlights: Rest up for your tour with a waterfront suite at Duluth’s South Pier Inn (from $197; southpierinn.com). When you cross the Blatnik Bridge into Wisconsin, stop at Thirsty Pagan Brewing in Superior for a Derailed pizza and an India Pagan Ale (thirstypaganbrewing.com). In Bayfield, buy provisions—like smoked lake trout from Newago Fish Market—then launch your kayak (or take a full-day tour, $99; livingadventure.com) and explore the sea caves in 22-island Apostle Islands National Lake shore. Once you reach Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, take a detour up 11-mile-long Black River Scenic Byway and hike to…

New Orleans, Louisiana, to Apalachicola, Florida Gorge yourself on this 425-mile seafood tasting menu, with plenty of opportunities to surf, kayak, or hang out on the beach along the way. Packing List: Aviators, flip-flops, the biggest cooler you can find Highlights: Start with the free Saturday afternoon wine tasting in the leafy courtyard of Bacchanal Fine Wine and Spirits (bacchanalwine.com), then make your way to Chef Donald Link’s Cochon Butcher for the world’s best muffaletta (link restaurantgroup.com) or local Louisiana chef John Besh’s French fine-dining venue, August, for dishes like snapper courtbouillon (restaurantaugust.com). Sleep off the food coma at Soniat House, a boutique hotel in the French Quarter (from $195; soniathouse.com). Then aim for the north side of Lake Pontchartrain to cycle Tammany Trace, a 31-mile paved rail trail that…

LAST SEPTEMBER, I met Joe De Sena at his in-laws’ house in suburban Massachusetts. Earlier that day, De Sena had driven south from Vermont for a meeting in Boston, and we had arranged to get together for dinner. Sitting at a kitchen island in front of his computer, De Sena turned to his mother-in-law, Laurel, and said that he had a new project: a truck driver from Chicago named Danny. De Sena is an entrepreneur and longtime endurance and adventure racer. A decade ago, he sold his Wall Street trading firm and moved to a farm in the small central Vermont town of Pittsfield, in the Green Mountains, where he lives with his family. Soon he started hosting his own races, including the Death Race, a multi-day event that is…

San Francisco “For most people, the gym is broken,” says Kapoor, 43. “Globally, it’s a $75 billion business, and more than 60 percent of people don’t go, even though they’re paying.” That’s why Kapoor, one of Silicon Valley’s most well-known investors (he cofounded the photo app Snapfish), turned his attention to the fitness world. He quickly realized that the problem was not time or money but motivation, or lack thereof. His big idea? Spark people’s enthusiasm with two incentives: community and cash. In January, he launched Fitmob, a website that lets you connect with personal trainers, who are vetted by the company, and join group workouts in studios, gyms, and even nightclubs. The more training sessions you attend each week, the lower the price, from $15 for your first session…

NEXT SUMMER, SOME 110 million visitors will enter America’s National Parks. Among the most enthusiastic will be the paddlers running whitewater sections of the Merced River through Yosemite. That’s because, for the first time since the invention of modern whitewater kayaks and rafts, the National Park Service is allowing them on parts of the river that offer some of the most scenic and challenging rapids anywhere in the world. The opening up of the Merced is part of a much larger project, five years in the making, that will attempt to alleviate road traffic problems, as well as roll back some of Yosemite’s early, ill-conceived development—the ice rink in the shadow of Half Dome will be moved—while allowing more access for some of the sports that have come to define…

ON FRIDAY, March 28, 2014, I did something that has been impossible for most of the past 50 years and, by the time you read this, will be again. As photographer Pete McBride snapped photos of me, and two French documentary filmmakers shot footage of him, and an unidentified blue helicopter circled above, I pumped up an inflatable NRS paddleboard, dropped it onto the Colorado River below Morelos Dam, on the Mexico-Arizona border, flopped onto the board, and glided over the cool waters. What was remarkable about this was not my less-than-graceful launch but the fact that I was launching at all. Morelos, the last of the 12 major dams on the main stem of the “American Nile,” is where you go to watch the Colorado die. Stand on Morelos…

EDITORS’ CHOICE 1 Santa Cruz Bronson C XO-1 AM 27.5 $6,305 The Bronson, with its tweener 650B wheels, was that rare bike that didn’t just win over both 29er devotees and 26er zealots, but also made us forget about wheel size entirely. That’s because it’s laughout-loud fun to ride, especially on motostyle descents that beg for you to get those WTB Frequency wheels off the ground. It’s the prototypical enduro bike, with a short cockpit, de rigueur dropper seatpost, and slack geometry (67-degree head-tube angle). And yet the svelte, 27.5-pound build weight didn’t cramp our legs on climbs. As one tester summed it up: “I’d ride this bike anywhere, on any terrain—as long as there’s downhill.” 27.5 lbs; santacruz bicycles.com BEST FOR: UPGRADING 2. Ellsworth Absolute Truth $8,385 ($3,500 frame…