Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2023 i Outside

WHEN AN ATHLETE reaches the podium despite a prior medical event—a cancer diagnosis, say, or a car accident—we consider it a triumph of the human spirit. When a bunch of athletes do so, and all of them have suffered the same setback, we can be forgiven for wondering what’s going on. According to the International Olympic Committee, roughly one in five competitive athletes suffers from exercise-induced bronchoconstriction, or EIB, an asthma-like narrowing of the airways triggered by strenuous exercise. The numbers are even higher in endurance and winter sports. Puzzlingly, studies have found that athletes with EIB who somehow make it to the Olympics are more likely to medal. What’s so great about wheezing, chest tightness, and breathlessness? The answer isn’t what you’re thinking. Sure, it’s possible that some athletes…

Alan Ramsey, head of marketing at the Schilthorn ski resort and a veteran racer, leans back in his chair at the end of our restaurant booth. “I don’t think anyone who leaves the start gate isn’t nervous about what’s ahead,” he says. “It’s pushing your limits. How much guts do you have?” Ramsey delivers this prerace pep talk with a smile, in a lyrical Irish accent, but we are not comforted. It’s the night before the 79th Mürren Inferno, and my teammates and I, all first-timers, are nervous as hell. It’s January 2023, and the small Swiss village of Mürren—accessible only by train or cable car—has come alive with anxious energy in advance of the race. This usually quiet mountain oasis is home to only 400 residents, and right now…

Montana is home to huge swaths of public land, clear rivers, and stunning mountain ranges. It also produces more fossil-fuel-related carbon emissions annually than all but five other states—and is responsible for as much carbon dioxide as many countries, including Argentina, the Netherlands, and Pakistan. Montanan Kian Tanner, 18, grew up next to Flathead Lake, in the state’s northwest corner, fly-fishing, hiking in nearby Glacier National Park, and spending most of his time outside. During his adolescence, he saw his home increasingly threatened by wildfires and smoke-choked air. Another local teen, Taleah Hernandez, 19, witnessed this, too. “I’ve had a few wildfires pretty close to my home,” Hernandez says. “A few years ago, one shut down the highway, so we had to check in with a police officer any time…

Early in my journalism career, I reported on Olympic cross-country mountain-bike racing for Velo News. I fixated on a generational debate during the 2007 season: Had French rider Julien Absalon, then the Olympic champion, surpassed the previous era’s top rider, Thomas Frischknecht of Switzerland, as the sport’s greatest male athlete? It was an apples-to-oranges argument. Absalon, then 26, had won more world championships (three to one), while Frischknecht, 37, owned more World Cup victories (15 to 9). When Absalon won his fourth straight world title that year, Frischknecht pulled me aside. “You can say now he is the greatest,” he told me. I wrote a column about the passing of the torch. A few months later, I ran into Frischknecht in Germany, and he had a story to pitch. His…

If Courtney Dauwalter could travel back in time, this is what she would do: She’d join a wagon train crossing the American continent, Oregon Trail–style, for a week, maybe more, just to see if she could swing it. It would be hard, and also pretty smelly, but Dauwalter wonders what type of person she’d be if she deliberately decided to take that journey. Would she stop in the plains and build a farm? Could she make it to the Rocky Mountains? How much suffering could she take, and how daunted might she be by the terrain ahead of her? “If you get to Denver and this huge mountain range is coming out of the earth, are you the type of person who stops and thinks, ‘This is good’?” she wonders. “Or…

IT’S A BRIGHT, windy December day, and we’re on a boat barreling east from Belize City. For nearly three hours, the Caribbean has been choppy and rough, until the water abruptly goes still. The sudden calm can only mean we’re inside the reef. We’re almost there. I poke my head through a porthole in the ceiling. Ahead of us on the blue horizon, a small island is growing bigger and more distinct. Longer than it is wide, it appears to consist of palm trees, a narrow crescent of yellow-sand beach, and, at the north end, a cluster of wooden, thatch-roofed cabanas. A small dock on the lee side awaits. Figures emerge, arms raised in greeting. Belowdecks, someone’s kids are shrieking like lunatics. I blink, letting my eyes adjust to what…

Give the Gift of Time BY JONATHAN BEVERLY Outside senior running editor Anyone who’s ever cleaned out a storage area needs no convincing that physical presents are overrated. I recently transferred a pickup truck’s worth of junk from my barn, and far too much of it had come into my possession in the form of a gift—framed pictures, clothes, souvenirs, sports equipment—that I had used infrequently, if at all. Many were unloved from the start, items that didn’t fit me or were simply weird. Even things that initially brought joy had quickly gotten old and were forgotten, replaced with the next new thing. The primary emotion they inspired now was guilt—for not using them more, for holding on to them too long, and for getting rid of them when they’d…

SERVES 8 TO 10 INGREDIENTS 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil4 slices smoked bacon1 pound pork or beef sausage links, cut into half-inch-thick rounds1 large onion, diced½ pound ground beef½ green bell pepper, diced½ red bell pepper, diced1 celery rib, diced1 teaspoon dried thyme1 Tablespoon minced garlic2 (14.5-ounce) cans diced or stewed tomatoes, with juice2 Tablespoons tomato paste8 cups hot water1 teaspoon sugar3 cups long-grain white riceSalt and pepper to taste INSTRUCTIONS In a large pot, heat the oil on medium-high. Add the bacon, sausage, and onion, and sauté for one to two minutes. Remove from the pot, leaving the bacon fat. Add the ground beef and fry for three to four minutes, until loose and brown, then return the onion mixture to the pot. Add the bell pepper, celery, thyme, garlic,…

THE SUN HAD RISEN ABOVE THE ASTHMATIC HAZE OF CALIFORNIA’S SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY, AND THE DISASTER TOURISTS WOULD SOON BE ARRIVING AT THE EDGE OF TULARE LAKE TO TAKE THEIR SELFIES. IT WAS A SATURDAY, TWO DAYS BEFORE MEMORIAL DAY. COUNTY HEALTH AUTHORITIES HAD WARNED THE PUBLIC TO STAY OUT OF THE CONTAMINATED WATER, AN UNWHOLESOME BREW OF PESTICIDES AND ANIMAL WASTE. AS FOR THE KINGS COUNTY SHERIFF, DURING MEDIA INTERVIEWS HE HAD INFORMED WOULD-BE GAWKERS THAT THE LAKE BOTTOM—A VAST DEPRESSION AT THE SOUTHERN END OF THE NATION’S BREADBASKET—WAS PRIVATE PROPERTY. TRESPASSING RULES WOULD BE STRICTLY ENFORCED. Our shuttle driver, Vincent Ruiz—a 360-pound trucker, originally from Guadalajara, who owned a 13-acre farm a few blocks from the flood zone—steered around a ROAD CLOSED sign without a care. “Damn, I…

“I guess you could say I was born to mush,” says Ryan Redington, an Inupiaq musher who grew up in the town of Knik, Alaska, not far from Anchorage. The first piece of evidence: his dad’s dad was Joe Redington, widely called the Father of the Iditarod, and the race’s founder. Then there’s his great-grandfather on his mother’s side, who carried mail to remote parts of Alaska via dog sled. Redington always knew he wanted to carry on the family legacy. “I was fascinated with the dogs and their drive,” Redington says. “My brothers and I read all the newspaper articles about the race and the racers. We just lived and breathed it.” Just after noon on March 14, Redington claimed his birthright when he and his team of sled…

“She needs to stop. Somebody needs to give her some advice to step off and stop trying to run on.” Watching the BBC’s broadcast of this year’s London Marathon, it was hard to disagree with Paula Radcliffe’s blunt assessment of what looked to be an ill-fated marathon debut for Sifan Hassan, the 30-year-old Dutch national and track star. (Born in Ethiopia, Hassan came to the Netherlands as an asylum seeker while she was still a teenager.) Radcliffe was providing commentary for a race she herself had won three times during her illustrious career. Hassan was clearly having a rough time, even though it was still the first half of the race. A quad injury she’d sustained toward the end of her training cycle seemed to be flaring up at an…

When the SOS message beeped on Kirsten Neushäfer’s satellite device, she was piloting her 36-foot sailboat, Minnehaha, alone through the remote vastness of the Southern Ocean. She was two and a half months into the Golden Globe, an old-school, solo, nonstop sailing race around the world—run without use of most forms of modern technology, a challenge that many in the maritime community consider the greatest in sailing—and she had the lead. Fellow competitor Tapio Lehtinen’s boat had suddenly sunk, leaving the Finnish sailor adrift in a tiny raft far off the tip of the African continent. Neushäfer changed course, sailed some hundred miles through the night, found the little raft in the huge and heaving ocean, and shared a glass of rum with Lehtinen before safely transferring him to a…

1 Hike Coast-to-Coast in Costa Rica Since Costa Rica became the spokesmodel for ecotourism in the 1990s, its natural treasures—the cloud forests of Monte Verde, the gently active Arenal volcano—have attracted millions of visitors every year. But you can still escape the crowds. El Camino de Costa Rica, a 174-mile trail stretching between the Caribbean and the Pacific, was completed in 2018 and showcases largely untrodden parts of the country, like the coffee-growing region of Tarrazú and the Indigenous territory of Nairi Awari. Funded by the nonprofit Mar a Mar Association, the 16-stage route spans four provinces and half a dozen or more microclimates; borders protected areas; and passes through remote villages, Native lands, and more than 20 towns that receive little benefit from conventional tourism. Trekkers can eat with…

Mikaela Shiffrin The 28-year-old American ski racer may just be her sport’s GOAT Mikaela Shiffrin had a banner year in 2023. On March 11, she notched her 87th World Cup win, breaking the record for most career victories, held for 34 years by Swede Ingemar Stenmark, considered by many to be the most successful ski racer of all time. Shiffrin is now the winningest racer in World Cup history—and at 28 years old, she has plenty of time to add to the tally. She has a lot going for her, to say the least. Incredible discipline, strength, technical skill—you name it. But Shiffrin has long said that the secret to her success isn’t her time in the gym or a perfect ski tune. It’s her mom, Eileen Shiffrin. Eileen has…

On August 19, in a hotel lobby in Budapest, Hungary, professional runner Nikki Hiltz opened a text from their mother to find a quote often attributed to Anaïs Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Hiltz’s mother had sent an inspirational quote before every race since Hiltz ran for the University of Arkansas. But Nin’s words still felt special to the 29-year-old middle-distance runner, U.S. national champion, and American record holder—and so did the day. In just a few hours, Hiltz would compete in the 1,500-meter semifinal at the World Athletics Championships. Sitting in the lobby beside partner and fellow runner Emma Gee, they began to tear up. “I don’t know why I’m…

If he’s being honest, Martinus Evans thinks running is boring. That’s not what you’d expect to hear from a running-club founder who’s on a mission to inspire a million people to take up the sport. But Evans knows that if he wants more people to lace up their trainers, he needs to lean on more than just the sport’s health benefits or competitive side. He has to convey the joy of it. “In the simplest terms, we’re all just running in a parade,” he says of road races. It should be a celebration. Evans, a 37-year-old Brooklyn resident, knows that the running world isn’t always the most welcoming place. He’s been heckled at races. He’s participated in events where aid stations and finish lines were broken down before back-of-the-pack runners…