Outside December 2019

Full disclosure: there’s an unavoidable sleight of hand required when producing and selling a year-end story franchise in a print magazine. This issue features the second installment of our annual outsiders of the year, which showcases the most inspiring athletes, innovators, activists, and leaders of, well, the first eight and a half months of 2019. The reality is, we started generating our final list of outsider selections in july, made most of the assignments in august, and began shipping the december issue to the printer during the last week of september. Our apologies to anyone in the outside realm who notched a historic first descent in october, broke a freediving world record in november, or invented the first hackproof performance-enhancing-drug test just before the holidays. The time constraints involved with…

All Revved Up In September, the Interior Department issued a controversial order instructing federal land agencies to stop classifying e-bikes as off-road motorized vehicles and allow their use wherever bicycles are permitted. As Christopher Solomon explained in his online report, “The Great Public Lands E-Bike Rush of 2019,” the announcement split the outdoor world, with some people cautiously optimistic and others worried about the impact on trails. This will not end well. E-bikes will put people further into the wilderness, where they will not follow the rules and get themselves into trouble. This will eventually limit our options for two-wheeled recreation of all types. Shane O’Donley Facebook I personally think e-bikes are awesome—they expand the number and spectrum of people who can ride. TJ Williams Facebook All this reminds me of when mountain biking first came out and…

SINCE 1950, when warren miller began traveling the u.S. With his amped-up ski footage, fall film tours have marked the arrival of winter for snow-sports lovers. Miller birthed a ski-porn industry that spawned over a dozen clones. Warren miller entertainment has a film coming out this fall, as usual—it’s called timeless—but this year things feel different. Overall, the number of ski flicks is shrinking. In september, level 1 released romance, the 20th and final installment of the company’s storied annual franchise. It joined a growing number of production houses that haven’t been able to sustain operations: poor boyz productions stopped making feature-length shred films in 2015 and transitioned into commercial work. Smaller outfits like stept and powderwhore productions have shuttered or moved away from the medium, too. What happened? Since miller’s day,…

Photographer Todd Antony and his assistant Harry Hawkes were hurting. The London-based team wasn’t used to the altitude of the 19,974-foot Bolivian peak Huayna Potosí, and being up before the sun didn’t help. But the five indigenous women they were there to photograph didn’t seem to mind. “They were blowing past us,” Antony says. This wasn’t such a surprise: the women, known as cholitas (a term for indigenous women), had recently been up Argentina’s 22,841-foot Aconcagua in their skirts and petticoats, ditching ultralight backpacks for traditional slings to carry their equipment. This glacier trek 25 miles northwest of La Paz was nothing to them. As recently as the turn of this century, indigenous women in La Paz, many of whom are Aymara, were banned from entering certain public spaces and branded by…

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, Wyoming Friday 4 P.M. For lodging in Teton Village at the base of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, you can go bro style (get a bunk at the Hostel, from $32), eco-friendly (see rooms at Hotel Terra, from $249), or super luxe (reserve a two-bedroom suite at the year-old Caldera House, from $2,000). Saturday 8:45 A.M. Skip the tram for the Sweetwater Gondola for more access to beginner and intermediate runs. If the kids are going to Mountain Sports School, take a break at the newly built Solitude Station. 10:45 A.M. Make your way to Thunder chair to ski down groomers between rocky outcroppings in Laramie Bowl, then migrate to Sublette chair to sneak through the trees of Pepi’s Run. 12:30 P.M. Southcable Café, next to the tram terminal, has pizza by the…

Arapahoe Basin, Colorado Extreme terrain? Check. October to June skiing? Check. Close to Denver? Check. Locals call A-Basin “the legend” for good reason. It added 468 new skiable acres last season and left the Epic Pass this summer to join the Ikon Pass and Mountain Collective for limited days. A-Basin left Epic because skiers complained about the crowds, so this should help alleviate that. Red Mountain, British Columbia Powder seekers who journey to this former mining territory will be rewarded with 3,850 acres of skiable terrain, $10 cat skiing, and a new chairlift that accesses six fresh runs. The resort takes its independent bona fides seriously: in 2018, it raised more than $2.5 million for on-hill upgrades via crowdfunding. Sugar Bowl, California The Northern California ski area, which sees an average of 500 inches of…