Gear Testing in Spring Powder
We closed out the season up at Eldora testing gear for the Outside Buyer’s Guide and enjoying some April powder. For this little excursion out the gates and into the backcountry we tested brand new Karhu Storms, Movement Goliaths, and Atomic RT86s. We also donned Marmot and Arc’teryx hard shells and a Nau soft shell. All performed admirably—but it’s tough to complain about anything with conditions like this…
Isaac Stokes filmed the action (and his own line) with a Flip video camera…
Karl gave Arc’teryx’s Theta SV a thorough test here….
National Poetry Month
It’s National Poetry Month and Radha and I are taking on Robert Lee Brewer’s challenge to write one poem a day (he even suggests two for Tuesdays for true freaks) for the month of April. The challenge, as well as fantastic content on how to write and publish poetry, is posted on Brewer’s site Poetic Asides.
If you’re not up for it, here’s a short list of the poetry we’ve been reading recently.
Robert Hass, Time and Materials; Richard Kenney, The One-Strand River; Julia Hartwig, In Praise of the Unfinished; Thomas Transtromer, The Great Enigma; Adam Zagajewski, Eternal Enemies; W.S. Merwin translator, Purgatorio; Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Poems: 1956-1998
Plus, we have been listening to Kris Delmhorst’s Strange Conversation, songs that are either famous poems verbatim or responses to them. It’s a fantastic selection of poems/songs—with “Light of the Light” and “Everything Is Music” capturing the ecstatic mysticism of Whitman and Rumi; “Pretty How Town” turning e.e. cummings into a folk romp; and “Galuppi Baldassare” uptempo-ing Browning’s insight on art and ashes.
Backpacker Hot Springs Extravaganza
I was happy to write the hot-springs service package in this month’s Backpacker. My only gripe? Backbone Media’s Nate Simmons is lounging in a thermal pool in Iceland on the cover instead of me…
I have been to my fair share of hot springs, however, and some of my favorites got cut from the piece for space. So here’s some extra-credit pots you won’t find in the magazine: Cougar Hot Springs, OR; Sweet 16, ID; Sykes, CA; If you are looking for a hot spring in the Northern Rockies, check out the web page for the Idaho Hot Springs Guy—an amazing resource and incredible dedication to the art of soaking.
Mud Slinging in Bike
I wrote a “Crucible” feature in the latest issue of BIKE (the 15th anniversary issue, on stands now). The story revolves around a trip to the Abajo Mountains south of Moab that was almost sabotaged by our guide. If you have any interest in seeing my mud-splattered legs, pick it up.
I’d also recommend you read editor-in-chief Lou Mazzante’s story “30 Years to Whistler,” which delves into the past three decades of the sport and managing editor Kip Mikler’s feature on the birth of downhill at Big Bear. Mountain bike writing is much tougher to pull off than most people would think. And putting together a magazine that speaks to all the varied niches of the sport (from single speed and 29er freaks, to downhill kids hopped up on Red Bull, to x-c transcendentalists) is no easy game. But Bike has a fantastic editorial staff in place and their hard work is truly paying off and appealing, I think, to anyone who likes to get stupid on two wheels.
Bike There, Google
Take a moment to sign this online petition asking Google to add a “Bike There” option alongside the “Drive There” and “Take Public Transportation” features on Google Maps.
Mountain Love
SkiPress editor and talented writer Peter Kray took over the editor position at Mountain Gazette this year and he has been hard at work updating the magazine to reflect the changes in mountain-town culture. I don’t envy him the job. The Gazette has long been a bastion of free-thinking, non-consumer mountain town authenticity and former editor M. John Fayhee, who is still contributing as editor-at-large, infused the Gazette with a swaggering, Beat-inspired sensibility that gave the publication credence with mountain-town curmudgeons. But the truth is that mountain towns have irrevocably changed over the past decade. Those crunchy, isolated escapes where soul-seekers went to live off their own elk meat and backcountry ski all winter continue to transform into expensive real estate inhabited by retirees, trust-funders, and core outdoor sport junkies (66% of the homes in Summit County, Colorado, are second homes). Those cultural shifts are an inescapable dynamic of the mountain town experience now, and Kray has made changes that he thinks will make the mag more relevant, incorporating both the classic mountain town freaks and the new blood. So it’s no surprise that Kray, a Colorado native and thoughtful writer who is as “authentic” as they come, has been inundated with letters accusing him of sucking the soul out of the publication—the letter writers have taken the most umbrage with the new real estate column, which is supposed to highlight property that dirtbags could actually afford. I have been lucky enough to work with Kray over the past few months, writing a “deep winter” gear piece, a February cover story on “mountain love” that examines how difficult it is to maintain relationships in mountain towns where the communities themselves are so transitory, an interview with Black Diamond’s Peter Metcalf, and an upcoming piece on the lost art of sharpening a cross-cut saw. And… I have been assigned one of the dreaded real estate columns.
A Day in the Office
Gear testing is tough work…
Videophilia
It’s official. We are a nation more interested in video games than getting outdoors. At least according to the latest study from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Pergams and Patricia Zaradic, a fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program, Delaware Valley in Bryn Mawr, Pa., had previously reported a steady decline in per capita visits to U.S. national parks since the late 1980s — which correlated very strongly with a rise in playing video games, surfing the Internet and watching movies. The researchers call this recent shift to sedentary, electronic diversions “videophilia.” And they don’t see it as healthy progress.
“The replacement of vigorous outdoor activities by sedentary, indoor videophilia has far-reaching consequences for physical and mental health, especially in children,” Pergams said. “Videophilia has been shown to be a cause of obesity, lack of socialization, attention disorders and poor academic performance.”
No real surprise. But how to reverse the trend?
I interviewed Larry Selzer, president of the Conservation Fund, for the OR Show Dailies and think he’s making a good start by rethinking the way different ethnic and economic demographics relate to the outdoors. 
Conservation Fund President Larry Selzer speaks out on how youth and minorities can save the outdoors—if we would just listen
By Doug Schnitzspahn
When Outdoor Industry Association assembled the most dynamic CEO-level minds in the industry at the Though Leader Conference during Outdoor Retailer Summer Market 07, Larry Selzer was the featured speaker. Since the big problem the meeting focused on was how to get more kids outdoors, the choice made perfect sense. Selzer is the president of the Conservation Fund , a non-profit that has preserved Read the rest of this entry »
Brooklyn to Beaver Creek
I wrote this gear/fashion piece for the January issue of Outside on the emerging trend of urban-style jackets that use technical outdoor fabrics (Gore-Tex, Primaloft, merino wool, etc.). I like to refer to it as the Brooklyn-to-Beaver-Creek look. To be honest, I’m surprised that so few companies have moved into the niche. There’s nasty weather in places like New York, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle and you do a lot of walking in the city—but you don’t want to go out looking ready to ski the Middle Teton. I expect to see more companies once thought of as sport- or outdoor-specific like Burton, Merrell, and even bike-freaks Swobo leveraging into the urban style market—especially Burton, who seem to understand how to boost the value of the brand by simultaneously promoting urban sensibility on the hill and snowboard credibility on the street. But Scapegoat, which was recently purchased by Prana, may be the most intriguing, since it positions itself simply as a hip, urban brand that uses performance fabrics, defining itself by a lifestyle rather than activity. You can read the piece at Outside’s web site.
While you are there, you can also take a look at the videos Outside Buyer’s Guide editor Sam Moulton and I filmed at Neptune Mountaineering the day before we gave a presentation on travel writing at the Magazine Conference here in Boulder back in October.
Hampsten on Elba
Pick up a copy of the latest issue of Outside’s Go.
I wrote the cover story about a cycling trip I took with Andy Hampsten in Italy this summer. Hampsten, who is the only American to ever win the Giro d’Italia, runs tours in Italy that merge intense riding with an intelligent immersion in Italian culture through his company Cinghiale, named for free-wheeling wild Tuscan pigs. But beyond that, Hampsten’s a thoughtful, self-effacing, energetic figure, and a strong proponent of cleaning up the sport. It was an honor to ride (and drink wine) with him.
Here’s a quote from Hampsten that did not make the story, but addresses how he thinks the sport can reclaim its image:
“It’s not easy but it’s very simple. The riders have to say, ‘let’s clean it up.’ They have to realize it. It has been dirty since the 80s. A lot of people quit because they don’t want to deal with it, but if the riders said, ‘lets clean it up from within, not from the outside,’ then the sport is going to be more interesting than ever.”
And another on the pure psychological pressure of racing the Tour de France:
“It’s three weeks of absolute physical, mental, and psychological pressure. If it’s 23 days of racing, 18 of those are just staying out of trouble. There was never a second when I shouldn’t have been calculating what I was doing, or thinking about a competitor, or thinking about how my competitors were thinking about me. You just go nuts analyzing everything. It’s exhausting. But I learned how to relax until the gun went off and then deal with the variables.”
Outside also published a Q&A with me about the trip. LINK
You can read the story here. LINK