Month: March 2019

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In January, 25-year-old Erin Jackson became the first African-American woman to make a U.S. Olympic team in long-track speedskating. And she did it just a year after strapping on her first pair of blades. Originally an inline skater, Jackson continued as a member of both Team USA Roller Derby and Inline Team USA while training for Pyeongchang. (She’s competed with the derby team for the past year and the inline team since 2008.)

Jackson’s quick transition from inline skating to the ice garnered a lot of media attention, but it was her only shot at the Olympics, and the same path is becoming increasingly common for young skaters. For the past two decades, U.S. Speedskating has made a concerted effort to transition inline skaters like Jackson over to ice, after recognizing that access to the sport’s few traditional 400-meter training tracks was a detriment to the sport’s growth. The formula has reenergized the sport and has resulted in more athletes bringing home medals from both world championships and the Olympics.

Inline speedskaters are particularly well-suited to ice, thanks to the similarities between the two sports. There are some technique contrasts—wheels require more force than blades to generate speed, for instance—but the two disciplines share more commonalities than differences. Inline skaters compete both on the road (in races from 5K to 100K) and indoors (on 100-meter courses). The former translates well to long track, which is the traditional 400-meter oval version, and the latter to short track.

Heading into the Pyeongchang games this month, the U.S. team looks stronger than ever. Repeat Olympians include standouts Joey Mantia and Heather Bergsma, both of whom began their careers with inline skating. “Before Lillehammer, the talent pool for ice was relatively small,” says former inline skater and Olympic medalist Derek Parra, director of sports at the Utah Olympic Oval. “Inline skating has had a very positive impact on the program.”

Speedskating has long flown under the radar in the American consciousness. The first time it captivated a U.S. audience was the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, when all eyes were on American world record holder Dan Jansen, a favorite to medal in the 500 meters and 1,000 meters in long track. Jansen’s sister died of leukemia the morning of his first race of the games. He fell in both his events and slipped away from the limelight until the 1992 Albertville Games, where he again failed to medal. Jansen returned a final time to win gold in the 1,000 in the 1994 Lillehammer Games, cementing his place in spectators’ memories.

As Jansen captured the hearts of U.S. fans, another American was preparing to make his Olympic debut. KC Boutiette was a brash, smack-talking 24-year-old inline skater from Tacoma, Washington, looking to sharpen his skills for the roads. “KC showed up to the Milwaukee training center and surprised everyone by making the team,” says Parra. “He opened the doors for the rest of us.”

U.S. Speedskating took note and began scouring the nation for inline talent. While roller sports had applied time and again to be part of the Olympics, they had not succeeded, giving the ice version of the sport a special allure. Watching Boutiette excel encouraged a new wave of inline racers—many of them national and world champions—to attempt the transition. “They took us on and provided everything we needed to adapt to ice,” says Parra.

The gamble paid off at the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, when four Americans medaled in speedskating events. Later that year, Parra collaborated with the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Speedskating to create the Wheels to Ice Program (WhIP). “I took ten athletes and passed along everything I knew,” Parra says. “Many of them went on to make national, world, and Olympic teams.”

In the ensuing years, inline skaters have continued to contribute heavily to the ice speedskating team rosters, even as many, like Jackson, have continued to compete on wheels at the same time. “When you look at how many inline skaters we have on the team, it speaks volumes for what it does for ice success,” she says.

Jackson came into the program through the International Skating Union’s transition program, something of a wider-reaching, updated version of WhIP. At first, she says she found the transition to ice frustrating. “But it was a good frustration—the kind that motivates.”

Ryan Shimabukuro, Jackson’s coach, heads up the ISU transition program. “When we first got her on ice, we focused on the technical component of the sport, learning to use her hips more instead of relying mostly on quad strength,” he says. “After she returned from the inline world championships this fall, we began incorporating physiological training, getting her body accustomed to essentially sitting in a squat and tolerating a higher lactate buildup.”

Together, Shimabukuro and Jackson came up with a plan to fast-track her to success. “I started picking up extra training wherever I could get it,” Jackson says. “I had to break down a lot of old inline habits, like sitting up too high, to get it right.” About a month out from the January trials, everything started to click for her. Shimabukuro says it was perfect timing. “She’s very coachable and analytical, and she never complains. She just puts her head down and trains.”

As she approaches the games, Jackson’s eyes are focused firmly on the clock. “If I can keep bringing my times down, I’ll be happy,” she says. “As an underdog, I’ve already accomplished my goals, and everything else is icing.”

No matter her results in Pyeongchang, Jackson recognizes her unique position as an African-American woman in speedskating and sees an opportunity to inspire future champions. “There aren’t many people of color in the Winter Olympics,” she says, “so maybe this will introduce the sport to younger kids and show them some representation.”

Any (non-doping-related) publicity is good publicity

I love this time of year, when the harbingers of the fall running season begin to trickle in. The big races announce their elite fields. Marathon promos appear on TV. Packs of high school cross-country runners invade public parks like members of the world’s least intimidating gang.

Another seasonal fixture of sorts, one that has become more conspicuous in the age of social media, is the celebrity marathon runner. The lead-up to a prominent race typically includes an announcement by an entertainer, athlete, or politician stating their intention to run 26.2 miles with the masses. Oprah. Al Gore. Pamela Anderson. P. Diddy. The list of celebrity marathoners is long. In late July, Kevin Hart, his five-foot-four-inch frame laden with Nike gear, informed his 34 million Twitter followers that he had a “HUGE” announcement: He is going to run the New York City Marathon in November. (“I’ve got little legs, but a big heart.”)

Unsurprisingly, this disclosure prompted a LetsRun.com thread speculating on how the actor and comedian would fare. Would he DNF or DNS? Would he go sub-four? Mixed in among finishing-time predictions based on Hart’s previous 5K performances were a few derogatory posts:

“The ego these entertainers have. Why is it HUGE NEWS when a young healthy person decides to run a marathon? Oh, because he’s famous for something else? So that makes HIS entry special?” one poster complained.

Despite such grumbling, however, the positive reactions outweighed the negative ones. Most agreed that Hart’s enthusiasm and promotional clout would give distance running some much-needed attention. Several posters wrote that Hart’s upcoming NYC marathon run—and, by extension, the celebrities-running-marathons phenomenon as a whole—was “good for the sport.”

The question of what is “good for the sport” comes up frequently in debates about the current state of running—particularly in discussions about how it can increase running’s popularity. Even though a number of fans felt rather lukewarm about Nike’s recent Breaking2 project—the heavily marketed, meticulously contrived attempt to get a few superstars to run a sub-two-hour marathon—afterward there was some consensus that one positive effect of the spectacle was that it churned up some healthy media buzz. From this perspective, anything that can be done to get more people into running, whether it’s Kevin Hart’s “HUGE announcement” or Eliud Kipchoge’s superhuman ability, is desirable.

Of course, there’s a sense that what’s “good for the sport” isn’t necessarily always in the interest of the individual recreational runner: With increased demand, popular races can become more expensive, crowded, and difficult to get into. Earlier this year, the Airbnb Brooklyn Half Marathon sold out in 26 minutes. It had 27,000 finishers. According to a New York Road Runners (NYRR) press release, there were 98,247 applicants for the NYC Marathon lottery this year, a 20 percent increase from 2016, and 16,211 (about 17 percent) were ultimately accepted into the race. Thanks to Kevin Hart and co., one could argue that it might be even tougher to get into the NYC Marathon next year.

But there were 1,100 marathons in the United States in 2016. If entry to the most famous among them becomes marginally more exclusive as a result of Hart’s ebullient endorsement, it feels like a small price to pay. Having an entertainer with 54 million Instagram followers be an ambassador for running is good for the sport. Yes, that ambassadorship may be Nike-sponsored, but for now, distance running should be grateful for any exposure that doesn’t involve a doping scandal. Hart cited Kipchoge as his inspiration for signing up for New York. Speaking from the perspective of a longtime athletics fan, it feels almost surreal that a Hollywood actor would even know a pro marathoner’s name.

As for any concern that Kevin Hart’s running New York might unfairly hijack the spotlight from those pro marathoners vying for the win (at least one LetsRun poster brought this up), it’s rather unlikely that he’s going to be busting out a continuous stand-up routine while going hard for 26.2 miles. And if he does, he probably deserves the attention.

Anyway, the scale of the event is such that it tends to eclipse the status of any one participant, be it a Hollywood actor or a world record holder. As I’ve noted before, one of the best things about high-profile marathons is that you actually get to be in the same race as the finest runners in the world. It’s a welcome contrast to other sporting events where athletes are so aloof that fans feel grateful when a sweaty headband is flung into the stands post-game and celebrities occupy $15,000 courtside seats.

Fittingly, the most iconic photos of New York’s race are not images of famous individuals, but aerial shots of the flow of humanity traversing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Swarms of people may be the bane of the backcountry skier or trail runner, but they are the soul of the big-city marathon. So bring on the crowds.

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Rooftop tents look really neat on Instagram, but prove disappointing in real-world use. Campers are extremely heavy, yet weak, limiting your capability off-road.

Now, a new company in Bozeman, Montana, is combining the best parts of both to make a rooftop-tent-cum-camper that doesn’t suck. Meet Go Fast Campers.

“Rooftop tents are too tall when closed, take too long to setup or stow, and are a hassle to get into and out of,” says Graeme MacPherson, who, along with Wiley Davis, founded GFC. MacPherson was the founder of AeroContinental, a custom off-road camper company, and Davis is an industrial designer who makes off-road accessories for motorcycles and trucks.

“Campers are too big and heavy, and will eventually fall apart off-road, even just driving over washboard,” MacPherson says. “We designed the GFC platform for folks who want to get into remote areas, and who don’t want to waste time setting up or breaking down camp.”

The first thing you’ll notice about the Go Fast Camper is that it’s more than just a tent. Rather, it’s a cohesive unit built into the back of a pickup that incorporates a pop-up shelter. This arrangement has several advantages, the biggest of which are strength and weight.

Most bed caps for pickups are not able to support much weight on their roofs. That’s a big problem if you have a Tacoma you want to sleep on top of, particularly if you plan to go off-road. I have friends that have “solved” this issue by building support structures inside their capped beds from wood planks. Throw some bumps, some body flex, and some vibrations inside a weak fiberglass shell, and I’m sure you can see why this is problematic. Over time, a rooftop tent will slowly destroy your bed cap, and could create invisible damage that might lead to sudden catastrophic failure.

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To solve that problem, MacPherson and Davis designed a tubular steel space frame that bolts inside the pickup bed, and creates the strongest-possible mounting solution not just for the tent but also for the bed cap built into it, and even stuff you may want to carry on the tent’s roof. That’s right, you can carry bikes, kayaks, or anything else up to about 500 pounds on the roof of your rooftop tent. (The tent roof’s capacity does drop to 100 pounds when it’s open—what the hydraulic struts that raise it up are spec’d to handle.) 

Incorporating the cap and tent allows the entire unit to fit more space into less height. Instead of fitting rails to your cap, then bolting a tent to the top and wasting a bunch of space in the process, the Go Fast Camper’s tent forms the roof of the cap. That cap also includes flip-up windows that open the entire side of the cap and create a covered work area where you can cook, ready gear, or perform vehicle repairs out of the sun and rain. There’s also T-track built into the perimeter of the platform, allowing you to easily mount accessories like awnings, water tanks, or a Hi-Lift jack and other off-roading tools. The lift-up panels are heavy duty aluminum, so you’ll be ale to use those to mount MaxTrax, or other accessories, too.

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Combining the tent and cap also eliminates the traditional barrier between your capped bed, and the tent mounted on top of it. And doing that also gets rid of the need for a ladder. Access to the tent is via a modular padded floor that’s built on an ultralight honeycomb platform. Configure the panels to maximize tent floor space, or to open up a wide portal for easy entry. Ditching the ladder means you have one less heavy, large thing to carry with you everywhere, and creates a cohesive living space with the capped truck bed.

The tent’s roof is made from a translucent honeycomb composite that allows daylight to illuminate the interior, and its fabric body is PVC-backed, for long-lasting, and total weather protection. Zip-open panels on the sides and rear of the tent allow ventilation, while mesh keeps the bugs out.

All-up weight for the steel space frame, its aluminum side panels, and the rooftop tent is just 250 pounds, far lighter than the combination of a bed cap (200 plus pounds alone), roof rails, and RTT, not to mention an in-bed camper. Priced at $5,000 before accessories, GFC is also competitive with the cap, rail, RTT combo, and far cheaper than a camper. 

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GFC has just delivered its first production unit to a customer in California. Currently, the company has solutions for short-bed Toyota Tacomas and Tundras, the Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon, and the Ford F-150 (including the Raptor). Units for long-bed trucks are in-development—MacPherson says they’re exploring a solution that mounts the top of the closed tent flush with the truck’s roof for improved fuel efficiency.

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Perhaps the most impressive thing about Go Fast Campers is the tangible build quality. Where campers and rooftop tents all feel like they’re on the verge of self destructing every time you use them, GFC’s massive CNC-machined aluminum hinges, steel space frame construction, and use of high-end materials like that honeycomb composite roof are going to keep working flawlessly for years. As anyone who’s ever been off-road knows, if something can break, it will break. So making an off-road tent/camper that won’t just makes sense.

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The Bureau of Land Management raised eyebrows this week with a new “vision card”—an ID-sized badge meant to be worn by employees that states is the department’s mission and goals. And by the looks of the card, the BLM is primarily in the business of exploiting, rather than protecting, natural resources.

On the front of the card, just below the BLM insignia, is an image of an oil derrick. The badges were commissioned at the beginning of the Trump administration by then-acting director Mike Nedd, according to  The Washington Post.

Since Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke took his post, the BLM has consistently phased out imagery and language that highlighted conservation and recreation in favor of resource extraction and agriculture. It began in April 2017, when a banner image of mountains on the BLM’s homepage was quietly replaced with an image of coal. It continued in the hallways of BLM’s Washington D.C. headquarters, the Post reported, where posters of national monuments were removed. Neither move is particularly surprising, given the Trump administration’s emphasis on energy extraction from public lands.

On one side of the card, the BLM says its mission is to “sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations.” On the other side, it lists its guiding principles, in part, as pursuing “excellence in business practices” and to improve “accountability to our stakeholders, and deliver better service to our customers.”

It’s not clear what they mean by customers, but recent history suggests it may mean extractive industries. Last year, the Trump administration ignored conservation groups, recreational users, and local tribes when it decided to shrink Bears Ears National Monument, largely at the urging of oil and mining interests. Last month, the DOI removed Obama-era regulation that restricted methane emissions from federal land-based oil and gas development (a judge has since ordered an injunction, meaning the regulations must be enforced pending litigation). And earlier this month, Zinke said the Department of the Interior and the energy industry “should be in the business of being a partner.”

All of this is underscored by the DOI’s new plan to fund much of the Park Service by ramping up extraction on public lands, and auction leases to energy companies for cut-rate prices.

Of course, the 250 million acres of land maintained by the BLM represent different things to different groups. For a Utah rancher, it might be her livelihood. For conservationists, archeologists, and many scientists, it’s a priceless resource. For recreationists, BLM land offers the least-regulated wild space in the country, space where Americans can shoot, build fires, camp, climb, hike, and hunt with less extensive permitting and supervision. For an energy company, it’s profit—a vision the Trump-era BLM seems to share.

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From Montana to California, wildfires in 2017 shattered record after record and cost the Forest Service an unprecedented $2 billion. The blazes ravaged rural landscapes and business centers and claimed dozens of lives, including those of at least two firefighters. This season’s bone-dry winter conditions in the southern Rockies could set the stage for another taxing fire season in the West. If it’s starting to feel like the weather pendulum is favoring one side of the extreme, that’s because it is.

Over the next two decades, as many as 11 states are predicted to see the average annual area burned increase by 500 percent, according to a recent study. That would mean a small fire, say 100 acres, becomes, on average, a 600-acre fire, with Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, and Nevada expected to increase 700 percent in burn size. It’s a grim picture for future fire seasons—one that might be inevitable, because researchers have been able to check their work from current trends.

Scientists from the University of Arizona, the Universidad Nacional del Comahue in Argentina, and the University of California, Merced, analyzed more than three decades of fire occurrence, seasonal temperatures, and snowpack trends throughout western North America to calculate how climate regulates wildfire. By 2039, the researchers estimate there will be 50 fewer days of snowpack in much of the West and a four-degree Fahrenheit increase in average temperature. Both trends will create longer fire seasons that burn much more land.

“This model is essentially saying that fire is going to increase a lot in the interior continental U.S. But that’s only true to a certain point. It’s going to stop being true when those forests can no longer support that kind of fire,” says LeRoy Westerling, a professor of complex systems management at the University of California, Merced, and a co-author of the study. When that happens, the landscape is going to look really different. In less than a generation, drought and fires in western North America could reshape some forests into dry scrublands, where only smaller, water-hardy, and fire-resistant trees thrive.

To check their math, the researchers ran historic climate data from 2004 to 2015 and compared it to their model predictions for 2010 to 2039. The five-year overlap period verified the model’s accuracy. It also showed that every western state where wildfire was expected to at least double by 2039 had already blown past that threshold, suggesting that even the most drastic forecasts for wildfire in the West have probably underestimated the destruction to come.

“Even if we make really major efforts, the truth is a lot of these systems are going to be pushed past the brink by midcentury or soon after,” Westerling says. “That goose has already cooked.”

In California, Dave Shew, a staff chief with the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, has already seen a glimpse of what fire seasons of the future could look like for the rest of the western United States. The study’s model suggests California could see anywhere from a 10 to 150 percent increase in area burned by 2039. “It’s gotten to the point now where we’re reluctant to use the term ‘fire season’ because we’re seeing fire impacts running year round now.” When fires were still raging last December, Shew knew the state had entered uncharted territory.

“The amount of destruction that everyone witnessed and the speed at which these events occurred were unbelievable,” Shew says. “We’ve seen big fires, but to have both Northern California and Southern California affected by sieges of this type, almost simultaneously, is unprecedented.”

By the end of 2017, California had witnessed the costliest, longest, deadliest fire season in its history. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to charred moonscapes and, as the Los Angeles Times phrased it, “lonely chimneys.” Now the most populous state in the country is scrambling to stave off an increasingly unpredictable force of nature. From upping controlled burns to incorporating more fire-resistant materials into city planning, like those found in the wildland-urban interface, all options are on the table.

“We wouldn’t traditionally think of needing to build a neighborhood deep inside the city limits with those kinds of building standards. But now officials are considering if those kinds of higher fire-resistant materials should be used in the rebuilding process,” Shew says. “If you look at a neighborhood like Coffey Park in Santa Rosa, very few people—if anyone—anticipated that the community would be at any risk for a wildland fire event, yet it was virtually completely eliminated. We don’t have any reason to believe that these types of events won’t continue to happen. It’s just a matter of time.”

If this study is any indication, the countdown has already begun.

Not completely, but they’re certainly in a state of flux

Conventional wisdom has long held that there’s nothing better than a superlight bike with long, low, aggressive geometry for going fast on cross-country trails. Considering that Nino Schurter has won every UCI Mountain Bike World Cup race this season aboard a Scott Spark RC 900 with a position so downward contorted that it would make most yogis squirm, that prescription still holds.

However, in watching some of the footage from this year’s races—for instance the slippery course at Lenzerheide—I couldn’t help but notice that these guys, the best racers in the world, had a hard time negotiating the track. The precipitous, slick, nasty looking course looks like it would be tricky to pilot aboard a proper trail bike, much less on the steep, spindly bikes favored by the world’s top XC racers.

That squares with our testing experience. In the last few years, as components and bikes have gotten lighter, our testers have gravitated toward bikes with slacker and more forgiving geometries, additional travel, and niceties like burly tires and dropper seat posts that make the riding experience more enjoyable. We tested only one cross-country race bike at the 2017 bike test, and just two the year before. Taken together, that had us wondering: Are XC race bikes obsolete except for at the highest echelon of the sport? Should the average rider even consider buying a racer anymore, considering how good and light trail and all-mountain bikes have become? And how are bike companies negotiating the changes in the cross-country market to keep these bikes relevant?

To answer these questions, I’ve spent the last months testing a trio of new cross-country machines. (I’d have included Schurter’s winning Scott, but we’ve already tested and loved it, though tellingly, our preference was for Scott’s plus-size offspring.)

Canyon Lux Pro Race Team ($3,200 to $7,000)

Canyon is new to the U.S., having just begun selling here this week, but the German company’s 29er carbon race bike, the Lux, is the most conservative of the three bikes we tried. It’s the steepest of the bunch, with a 70-degree head angle, and has the longest chain stays (450mm) and stem (90mm). That gives the bike a decidedly twitchy and old-school feel, and it was the bike on which I most missed having a dropper post because I felt so high and forward on steep terrain.

Of course, the Lux is a thoroughly modern build, especially the Team model we rode, which had a SRAM XX1 Eagle drive train, carbon SRAM Rise 60 wheels, and a RockShox RS-1 fork. Our size medium weighed an impressive 22.4 pounds out of the box, though part of that feathery weight came from paper-thin Continental X-King tires, both of which sprung huge sidewall tears in the first two days of our rocky, New Mexico riding. The suspension felt the plushest of all three, and I loved the lateral stiffness and small-bump handling of the RS-1 fork, despite its weight penalty. There are smart little design cues, as well, including a nifty little ring beneath the stem that prevents the fork from crashing into the top tube if oversteered, and a sole bar-top button that locks out the shock and fork at once. But the very idea of a shock lockout, as well as the choice of Grip Shift, point to the bike’s European sensibilities.

Still, if you don’t mind your speed with a helping of jitteriness, it’s impossible not to like the Lux considering its price tag. This model, the top spec available in the U.S., goes for $7,000, which is almost 30 percent less than the comparable Specialized Epic. And the Canyon 8.0 ($4,500) and 7.0 ($3,200) represent even more value.

Rocky Mountain Element ($3,500 to $9,400)

On the other end of the spectrum is the Element, which is the North Shore’s answer to the cross-country bike and the equivalent of many brands’ full-fledge trail machines. It has 100mm of travel in the rear paired to a 120mm fork, a 69-degree head angle (in the slackest setting), a stubby 60mm stem and yawning 800mm bars, and a dropper post. Rocky sent me the 990 RSL BC Edition ($6,000) for the B.C. Bike Race, and as such it gets some meatier bits and pieces compared to the standard Element, including a RockShox Pike fork instead of a Fox 34, Stan’s Arch wheels rather than the lighter Crest model, and beefy Maxxis Minion tires as opposed to Ikons.

That’s overbuilt by most cross-country standards, and indeed the bike weighed 27 pounds. So yeah, this bike wasn’t the quickest climber in the bunch, though it hooked up just fine. The trade-off, however, was impeccable downhill manners relative to the other two bikes. With those wide bars and the saddle dropped, I was fast and confident on terrain that I had to pick through slowly on the Epic and Lux. Except for the smaller gear range (46-tooth granny gear), I also favored the Shimano XT and XTR components here over the feathery SRAM stuff on the other bikes, mostly because it held up flawlessly while the competition needed tweaking and bleeding.

If I were buying the Element, I’d lean toward the lighter models (e.g. no B.C. Edition), as the weight savings would save time and energy climbing, but you’d still get the geometry and trail niceties on the down. (According to Rocky, the top-shelf 999 weighs a much more competitive  24.7 pounds.) While not the exemplar due to weight, the Element points the way forward for cross-country machines as it makes short travel manageable and more fun to ride than the steep, nervous old days.

Specialized Epic ($2,900 to $10,500)

The Epic is perhaps the most venerable cross-country race bike on the market, and it gets some significant updates for the upcoming season. Most notably, Specialized has done away with the rear pivot, making this a single-pivot design that relies on flex in the stays for the first time ever. The head angle is a full degree slacker (now 69.5 degrees), the rear end is tighter (438mm chain stays), and the front center is longer to allow for a shorter stem (75mm). Taken together, it’s a more modern feeling bike, though the steering is still surprisingly quick thanks to a custom 42mm fork offset, which basically pulls the wheel back underneath the bike. Specialized also trimmed a ton of weight out of the frame (350 grams in the S-Works models), and in this XX1 Eagle Trim ($9,500), the bike weighs an almost miraculous 21.4 pounds.

As far as fit and feel, the Epic sits between the Lux and Element. It’s crazy light, so pedaling and climbing feels like a revelation, but the slacker angles and more modern geometry mean the bike is surprisingly deft and confident in rougher and steeper terrain. The new Brain, which turns the suspension on and off based on terrain, also feels much more supple and quick than before, partly, I assume, because it is now located at the rear hub for quicker engagement. And the new Roval Control SL wheels are incredible, both stiffer and wider than their predecessors for better cornering and tire contact, but somehow lighter than before. (1330 grams!)

Last year, I felt that the Epic was a bit dated and had lost its edge in the market. But with this new model, Specialized has done an excellent job of bringing the bike back. The Epic is, once again, the standard-bearer and seems to point the way forward for the entire segment: namely, it’s slacker and more confident, especially on technical terrain, without sacrificing weight. In fact, the new Epic is so self-assured that I plan to swap in a 120mm fork and dropper post to see if it can become the ultimate lightweight trail machine. Oh yeah, and that color scheme—officially called Gloss Chameleon Purple with Rocket Red—is the sexiest thing we’ve seen in a while.

So Do You Actually Want an XC Bike?

There will always be a place for light, fast race machines, but those bikes, as with everything in the market, continue to evolve. “Historically, cross country bikes were steep and twitchy feeling, partly because you were on the edge of control,” says Brian Gordon, Specialized product manager for the Epic. “They were definitely faster uphill, and they felt faster downhill. But while trail and downhill bikes don’t feel as quick, on the downhills, at least, times are quicker.” So, says Gordon, the goal with the new Epic, and with XC bikes in general, is to marry the handling and fast climbing characteristics of a traditional cross-country bike with the confidence and downhill agility of a trail machine.

This is what I’ve always wondered: Why must XC bikes be so long, low, and aggressive? Part of the answer lies in the need to save weight. Because these bikes tend to run feathery, low-tread race tires to save grams, it’s important to keep a rider’s body weight over the front end for traction. The low front end also makes climbing, especially through uphill switchbacks, the quickest. Having said that, unless you’re in a situation where second and tenths of seconds count, you’re likely to make up for time lost climbing on the descents.

I still feel the market is due for a gossamer bike, say, sub-23 pounds, with slacker angles than a traditional XC bike and perhaps a bit more travel. Basically, I think most riders would benefit from a bike that blends the Elements angles with the Epic’s weight. (For the record, Trek had the formula dialed in the 2016 Fuel EX, but they subsequently made that model more trail oriented.)

If I were racing an event like the Leadville 100 or a local XC series, I’d want a bike like the Epic or Lux. And I appreciate the modifications that Specialized has implemented on the Epic to make it more of an all-arounder. Still, with bike weights coming down and suspensions constantly improving, most riders (other than dedicated racers) who want just one bike and favor trails beyond pure, buffed-out flow, will be better off on a trail bike like the Specialized Camber, Intense Primer—or for that matter, the Rocky Mountain Element. And yes, the lines will continue to blur.

The decorated veteran announced this week that he’s done with professional cycling, leaving behind a legacy of highly tactical riding and lots of heart

Alberto Contador, the most winning grand tour cyclist of his generation and one of the greatest cyclists in history, announced this week that he will retire at the finish of the 2017 Vuelta a España.

The 34-year-old’s departure will conclude a 14-year professional career during which he stood on the top podium three times each at the Giro d’Italia (2008, 2011, 2015), Tour de France (2007, 2009, 2010), and Vuelta (2008, 2013, 2015). And while it’s true that the Spaniard’s legacy was sullied by controversies over drugs—his 2010 Tour and 2011 Giro titles were rescinded for his use of the performance enhancer clenbuterol—it’s also true that pro cycling will lose one of its most charismatic and entertaining stars when Contador retires. He will go down as just one of six racers in history to have won editions of all three grand tours. Even with those two titles annulled, only Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault, and Jacques Anquetil have more grand tour wins than Contador.

Contador’s was a turbulent career from the start. He won an individual time trial stage in the 2004 Tour of Poland in the very first year of his career but was forced out of the sport a year later after a fit of convulsions at the Tour of Asturias led to a diagnosis of cerebral cavernoma, a congenital disorder. After undergoing a risky surgery to remove a benign tumor in his brain, Contador returned to racing in 2005, just eight months later, and, almost as if he hadn’t ever left, picked up a stage win at the Tour Down Under.

The young racer looked poised for a long and successful career, with multiple stage wins at weeklong races in the coming two seasons. Yet controversy was never far away. In 2006, he and four of his Astana-Würth teammates were implicated in the Operacíon Puerto doping scandal, and the team was excluded from the Tour de France on the eve of the race. (Contador was eventually cleared.) Even his first grand tour victory, at the 2007 Tour de France, was tinged, as he inherited the race lead after Danish climber Michael Rasmussen was ejected following Stage 16 because of another dispute over drugs.

Nonetheless, Contador just kept winning. Besides his grand tour titles, Contador claimed, among others, five editions of Tour of the Basque Country, two podiums each at Paris-Nice, the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon, and the Vuelta ao Algarve, and overall victories at the Vuelta a Burgos, Tirreno Adriatico, and the Route du Sud. That deep palmarès sets the Spaniard apart from many of today’s top racers, who target few events and time their peaks accordingly. By contrast, Contador looked hungry to win at almost every race he entered, which earned him a reputation for combativeness and the ability to turn any race on its head.

For me, two races define the Spaniard’s illustrious and contentious career. With a Giro d’Italia and Vuelta title to his name in 2008, Contador went into the 2009 season as the rightful team leader at his Astana squad, but the role was thrown into tumult when Lance Armstrong announced his return from retirement and joined the same team. The two would race side by side as teammates at the 2009 edition of the Tour de France, a fraught arrangement that saw the two attacking one another from the start. Contador’s eventual victory over the American, who placed third, proved his tactical acumen and his psychological mettle.

In the 2012 Vuelta a España, Contador cemented his reputation for highly tactical riding. The Madrileño entered Stage 17 of the race, which features a mountaintop finish at Fuente Dé, in second place overall behind fellow Spaniard Joaquím Rodriguez, who had nullified Contador’s every attack through the first two weeks of the mountainous event and looked to be on track for overall victory. But 30 miles from the finish, Contador made a daring escape, bridged to teammates up the road, and overtook his fellow countryman on the general classification by nearly three minutes. He went on to secure overall victory, but it was the way in which he did it—with a bold, powerful long-distance attack—that made the win so special. Comparisons were inevitably drawn to the raw, unabashed styles of Bernard Hinault, Pedro Delgado, and Eddy Merckx, and indeed, the Spaniard seemed prone to the sorts of wild and exciting victories that made Contador seem like an old-school racer from a different era. As Spanish champion Pedro Delgado put it, Contador’s departure feels like the end of an age.

Many fans never forgave Contador for his doping offenses, and some consider his career a tainted one. There’s no doubt that he came from an era rife with drugs and that he was always riding that sharp edge of controversy. But more than the scandals, I’ll remember his audacity and willingness to take risks to win. These days, the Tour de France is so calculated, with racers staring at their power meters and rarely willing to attack, that racing has become tedious. Contador has always torn up that script, attacking when he feels the moment is right and constantly trying to put his rivals under pressure. Sometimes it worked, as in the 2012 Vuelta, and others times it did not, like in Stage 18 of this year’s Tour, when the Spaniard went up the road but was eventually swept up by the chase. It is the act of trying, the seeming belief that there’s always a chance to win, that has made Contador so exciting to follow.

Despite having won the Vuelta a España three times, Contador will enter this year’s edition as an underdog. Given his lackluster ninth place at last month’s Tour de France, it seems unlikely the Spaniard will factor for the overall victory. But that’s the thing about Contador: You just never know. The only guarantee is that the Spaniard will be up there attacking, doing his best to unseat the competition. Whether he wins or not, Contador is likely to deliver the same the drama he has brought to cycling for so many years.

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I will admit that I balked a bit before shelling out $480 for my Volkl Aura all-mountain skis, and again before buying a lighter touring setup—Dynafit Radical TLT bindings ($400) and Dynastar Cham 87s ($600). In the end, of course, I was glad for the upgrades.

But every time I make a big gear purchase, I find myself asking some version of the same question: How much is too much to spend on better, lighter, more durable gear?

I asked myself that question again when I came across the Oro Nero Classico, a pair of handcrafted Foil skis with a whopping $60,000 price tag. Foil is an Italian ski maker that specializes in rare, unusual, and often precious materials—think rosewood and purple heart top sheets, bamboo sidewalls, and metal-plated bindings. Its aim is “to create a ski of World Cup performance, in perfect balance with the body, in harmony with nature, and one that aesthetically celebrates the timeless beauty of skiing.”

Prices for its planks range from $20,000 to $60,000. The most expensive in the lineup, the limited-edition Oro Nero, features a top sheet of 8,000-year-old certified bog oak and bindings plated in 14-karat gold. The skis also come with gold-plated poles and a custom leather ski bag.

Foil joins a long list of other brands producing excessively expensive gear. In 2012, Kobold released its contentious Himalayan Edition watch ($16,500), with a chunk of rock from the summit of Mount Everest embedded in the face. Earlier this year, The North Face teamed up with Japanese designer Junya Watanabe to produce the CDG Terra 65 Jacket ($2,870), an insulated parka with a built-in backpack.

I haven’t tested Foil skis before, so I can’t say whether their performance matches their price tag—though the company’s head designer is a former Austrian World Cup ski racer, so maybe it’s not just a fashion statement. Alas, it’s up to you to find out, as we won’t be buying a pair for review.

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Imagine you’ve just stepped off an air-conditioned tour bus. Maybe you came from Las Vegas, so you’ve been on the road more than four hours, napping on the plush seats and watching the desert zip by. Now you and your 50 or so tour companions have arrived at the packed parking lot for Horseshoe Bend, about ten minutes from Page, Arizona. You’re eager to take in the sweeping view you’ve seen in countless photos, excited for the chance to gaze down the 1,000-foot cliff to where the Colorado River turns a dramatic 270 degrees around a sandstone escarpment.

Maybe it’s July, a busy time here, and the 115-degree heat begins to hit you. But it’s only three-quarters of a mile to the canyon rim. Surely you don’t need water. Surely you can make it in your flip-flops.

Or maybe not. Craig Janicki, a supervisory park ranger, has personally responded to dozens of emergency service calls at Horseshoe Bend Overlook, most for heat stress or heat stroke—the result of people not drinking enough water, overexerting for their abilities, or both—as well as a few trips and short falls.When people step off those buses, he says, “the level of preparedness is probably not what it should be.”

Roughly five miles south of Glen Canyon Dam and just off the area’s only highway, the spot is both stunning and irresistibly easy to reach. “It’s hard to put a finger on exactly when it became discovered,” says William Shott, superintendent of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. As recently as five years ago, Horseshoe Bend was still somewhat of a local secret. With visitation in the thousands over the course of a year, it was still possible for visitors to get lucky and have the rim completely to themselves. But National Park Service staff noticed a drastic spike in 2015 and early 2016. In 2017—the first year visitation was officially tracked—the trail drew more than 1.3 million people—close to 4,000 a day.

Like many beautiful and Instagrammable natural attractions, Horseshoe Bend has become so popular that it’s at risk of being loved to death, as the Outline recently reported. Because of its rapid growth in visitors in such a concentrated geographic area, Shott says, Horseshoe Bend has become “a little microcosm of what we’re seeing throughout a lot of, if not all of, the National Park Service.” Namely: bigger crowds of less experienced, less prepared visitors, combined with strained resources, making for more emergencies.

The phenomenon of Instagram and other social media driving up visitation is happening on public lands nationwide, in national parks like Grand Teton and Denali, and even in some difficult-to-reach spots like Colorado’s Conundrum Hot Springs. That trend is especially pronounced at Horseshoe Bend, which, in this time of selfies and filters, has become a must-see for tour buses and families tracing a Southwest road trip route promoted as the Grand Circle. “Everyone wants to tag these places,” Shott says. The iconic view also pops up constantly in marketing materials—including, as Pam Rice, assistant superintendent at Glen Canyon, points out, in Utah’s Mighty Five campaign. “They must not realize Horseshoe Bend is in Arizona,” she quips. (It appears to have since been removed from the site.)

Particularly because of its accessible location, the area now faces a slew of predictable problems: trash, improper disposal of human waste, resource damage from off-trail wanderings. But particularly troubling is the upsurge in emergency medical calls. According to the Park Service, in 2012 and 2013, there were no EMS incidents at Horseshoe Bend Overlook. In 2014, there were seven, and there were 17 in 2015. By 2016, when visitation soared and record-high summer temperatures persisted for weeks, that number spiked to 56.

The increase in medical emergencies was alarming but not surprising. “More people, more incidents are going to happen,” as Janicki puts it. And it’s roughly in keeping with national statistics. In 2013, the Park Service counted 34 emergency calls per million visitors. What’s striking, though, is that the number of calls rose so swiftly in a relatively small and accessible geographic area, as opposed to the more remote backcountry areas, where the risk of emergency is typically higher. It’s a statistic that says less about the danger of the area and more about the people who visit it.

To accommodate the flood of Horseshoe visitors and make the rim trail safer and more accessible, the Park Service and the city of Page are working together to build a new trail, complete with an American Disabilities Act–compliant safety railing, at the rim, as well as two shaded structures where people can stop and cool down along the way. (Half the trail lies within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, while the other half belongs to the city.)

Shott describes the existing route as “kind of a mar on the landscape.” It’s 20- to 30-feet wide, created by droves of visitors making a beeline straight over a hill to the overlook. “It’s like walking on an uphill sandy beach,” Shott says. The new trail, in addition to being sturdier and narrower, will go around the hill and be far less steep. At a time of tight budgets, the city and the Park Service worked to fast-track this construction, getting from planning and public input to groundbreaking in about a year. The construction, which began last fall, is expected to be completed by July 2018.

In the meantime, the Park Service has already made some changes to make the area safer. It has increased Park Service presence and set up flashing marquees to remind visitors to carry water and wear appropriate footwear. Those two small adjustments seem to be making a difference. Last year, the number of medical emergencies went down by half, to 28. (There was one fatality during this time span—a suicide.) But the seeming ease of traipsing down a short trail right off the highway still entices many of the unprepared. Mary Plumb, the recreation area’s public information officer, recently saw a woman set out in a pair of open-toed high heels. “We still have people all the time who don’t manage their own behavior and get in trouble.”

Not everyone appreciates the updates. Some people call this modernization the end of Horseshoe Bend Overlook. Yet the reality, Shott points out, is that the wilderness experience at Horseshoe Bend disappeared a long time ago. Adventurous visitors could easily visit a dozen other spots at least as spectacular as the one right off the highway. “If you want a wilderness experience where you can look down on a ‘horseshoe bend’ and get that feeling that we all love, that you’re the first one to see it,” Shott says, “come to me and I’ll show you a few places on the map.”

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If the unseasonably warm temps have you thinking about your local crag, you're in luck. Moosejaw's Climbing Sale started on Monday and runs through March 11. You'll find hundreds of products that are up to 25 percent off. Here are a few of the ones we're eyeing. 

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