Month: March 2019

Including how to get that coveted wet-dog smell

Nothing’s better than a brand-new sleeping bag, that miraculous cocoon of warmth that enables you to sleep under the stars. Nothing, that is, except an old sleeping bag—one that seems to somehow have lost 60 percent of its fill and loft, smells like a wet dog with chronic flatulence, and has the greasy sheen of the inside of a discarded Wendy’s Baconator wrapper. Here’s a solid plan to get your sleeping bag broken in for ultimate comfort/dismay of your tentmates this year:

1. Always store your sleeping bag in a damp or wet environment and compact it as much as possible when you’re not using it. Ball it up in a wet corner of your backyard, basement, or garage, or, if you have a somewhat empty gallon jar of pickled pigs’ feet, stuff your sleeping bag in there between trips. If you don’t like the idea of your sleeping bag smelling like pickled pigs’ feet, try a gallon jar of pickled eggs.
2. In order to get that “wet dog” smell, you’re going to need a dog’s help. If you don’t have a dog, borrow a friend’s dog. Take him or her on a nice hike with some opportunities to swim in stagnant ponds, and maybe roll in some mud or animal feces. When you’re finished hiking, dry your canine friend off by wrapping them in your new sleeping bag. For the ride home, line the back seat of your vehicle with the sleeping bag and have the dog lie on it.
3. To fully break in the insulation of your sleeping bag, schedule your first camping trip for a wet and/or hot weather forecast. When finished with your trip, don’t allow your bag to dry out in storage (refer to Step 1).
4. When zipping or unzipping the bag, yank the zipper in fast, long, reckless strokes.
5. Eat dinners that are extremely high in fiber to maximize your own flatulence and properly “season” your bag. Keep it zipped up throughout the night.
6. Wear your sleeping bag around camp. Although you’ll have to take short steps, there’s no cozier way to spend time in camp than shuffling around in your sleeping bag. Nothing says “broken in” like a shitload of holes from flyaway campfire embers landing on your new bag. Which isn’t new anymore, and by this point should be acquiring a nice black patina on the outside and a smell that should ruin everyone’s appetite.
7. Didn’t bring anything to clean the macaroni and cheese out of your cooking pot? Bullshit you didn’t. You’ve got a perfectly good (and absorbent) sleeping bag. Scrub that coagulated cheese with it! Also, if you can find a semi-clean spot, it’s a great napkin to clean the corners of your mouth with.
8. Before getting into your sleeping bag for the night, toss a couple handfuls of sand and/or dirt into it. Make sure to apply sand along the zipper as well.
9. Just before bedtime, enjoy some crunchy snacks in your sleeping bag. Note that this may lead to your being killed by a bear in the middle of the night, but sometimes chile picante Corn Nuts in bed are worth paying the ultimate price.
10. As long as it’s not going to get really cold at night, it’s perfectly acceptable to pee in your sleeping bag. Urine will remain warm for at least a few minutes, and you can just wring it out in the morning. No one loves to get up out of a tent to pee in the middle of the night.
11. If you’re noticing some small tears in your sleeping bag starting to appear throughout the break-in period, staple them closed with an office stapler or use a small amount of sap or Krazy glue to seal them back together.

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Trucks are expensive. Like, stupid expensive. So it might feel like a slap in the face to be told you should spend an extra grand or more on a set of drawers for the bed. But hear me out. They make a huge difference for anyone who likes to play outside. Mine have quickly become one of my favorite upgrades.

First, a primer. Drawers are covered organizational bins that live full-time in the bed of your truck and slide out on rails, much like the drawers in your dresser. Most systems have two side-by-side double covered drawers that take up the entire length and most of the width of the bed, while topping out at about a foot high. Many are waterproof, so you can use them without a camper shell and won’t have to worry about rain; most lock to keep your gear safe; and most are rated to withstand heavy weights, so you can stack lots of gear on top. Customizable options also exist, but more on that later.

Organization

I’m a fan because drawers are great organizational tools. Just like the Rubbermaid bins and Wolf Packs in my garage, they ensure my gear has a designated spot and can always be found. As our Gear Guy, Joe Jackson, has argued, organization isn’t just nice for peace of mind—it also helps you get out the door faster. Less rummaging means more time on the trail.

Capacity

Right now, I own a 2005 short-bed Tacoma, and all my truck-related tools are in the larger of my two Decked system drawers ($1,150). (Decked offsets the drawers to make one wider and one skinnier.) The bigger drawer, which is 18 inches wide and 53 inches long, has approximately 140 liters of space and holds the tow straps I use to pull people out of the snow, a large set of tools in case something breaks, jumper cables in case I leave the dome light on, gloves for when it’s cold, an extra jacket, all my ratchet straps, my breaker bar for changing a tire—you get the idea. If I were to stuff that drawer with camping gear, it could easily hold four sleeping bags, four pads, and a big six-person tent. The smaller drawer, which is 53 inches long and 11 inches wide and has approximately 86 liters of space, can hold two bags, two pads, and a four- or five-person tent.

Accessibility

I’ve made the mistake of packing the bread in the middle of my truck bed, forcing me to unload everything on the side of the road so I can make a sandwich for lunch. Drawers, on the other hand, slide all the way out, so I can always access the bread without setting up an impromptu highway-side yard sale.

Double Drawers

I chose a side-by-side double-drawer Decked system for my Tacoma because the layout offers a lot of storage, and because they lay flat and come with a high-strength, polyethylene plastic full-bed platform upon which I can stack up to 2,000 pounds of gear. Thanks to that weight rating, I never have to worry about crushing the drawers below, even when I throw Yeti coolers full of beer and La Croix on top.

There’s no right or wrong way to organize a two-drawer system. Walt Wagner, who owns Tactical Application Vehicles, an expedition and overland shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, likes the high-strength, double-drawer aluminum Alu-Cab models ($900) and often keeps one drawer “clean” and one “dirty.” Tools and recovery gear go in the dirty drawer, and things like clothes, sleeping bags, and cooking gear go in the clean drawer.

Over the years, I’ve seen some creative two-drawer organizational strategies. Grayson Schaffer, an Outside editor-at-large and co-owner of the production company Talweg Creative, has a Toyota Tundra outfitted with Decked drawers like mine. On a recent multiday film trip that involved lots of camping, he and his crew stuffed one slide-out drawer with nonperishable food. They had everything from licorice to sweet potatoes in there, creating an easy-access pantry. The other drawer was reserved for cameras. He used padded F-Stop Internal Camera Unit bags to store bodies and lenses. Other photographers often use reinforced plastic Pelican cases with customizable padded inserts.

Several other companies make double-drawer systems as well, including Tuffy, TruckVault, and Front Runner.

Slide-Outs

If you don’t want to go with the standard two-drawer system, there are lots of other options. You could make your own if you have the carpentry skills, or you could make a hybrid slide-out like those of photographer Stuart Palley, the country’s best-known wildland fire photographer. He outfitted his Tacoma with a Bedslide (starting at $900), a shelf that slides out but doesn’t have sides or a top like a drawer. On the slide, Palley stores a large camera case with three DSLRs and lots of lenses, plus two drones, and he covered it with a DIY plywood shelf that holds his other camping and fire gear.

“I didn’t want to be limited by the size of premade drawers, which is why I went with my own option,” Palley says.

Custom

Goose Gear, run by Brian Fulton, a cabinetmaker by trade, offers a number of different drawer systems for trucks, Toyota 4Runners, and Jeeps. Fulton says one of his most popular is the Camp Kitchen 2.0 ($1,700), a large drawer that houses a slide-out mobile fridge and stove down below and a storage shelf up top. The drawer itself is not customizable—it’s always built the same way—but where you place it in your truck is totally up to you.

Fulton says he designed this setup because he hated having to unload his fridge from the bed of the truck every time his family stopped for lunch or his daughter wanted a soda. Access to food and his stove was most important, and he felt the standard side-by-side drawers often took up unnecessary space.

Fulton and Wagner both say to start by figuring out which drawers will fit your truck or SUV. Decked, for example, makes drawers for lots of full- and midsize trucks, but its gear will not fit in a 4Runner because there isn’t enough trunk space. Front Runner makes lots of options for Jeeps, Toyota Land Cruisers, and Land Rovers, while Goose Gear has options that will fit most off-road vehicles.

Next, think hard about what you’ll be carrying, where you’ll be carrying it, and how much gear you realistically need to haul along. If you’re carrying big-ticket camera or hunting equipment, for example, Tuffy makes bombproof steel drawers that are pretty much impossible to break into. But all that steal is heavy and eats up lots of gas. If you’re going to be off the grid for a long time, the newer and soon-to-be-released version of the Alu-Cab drawers are designed to hold a water container up front. For daily driving, I love the Decked drawers because they’re lightweight and don’t bog my truck down.

Like any gear, it’s an easy trap to pick the most complicated, feature-rich setup because you think you need all the bells and whistles. And it’s also easy to load your drawer system with every piece of gear known to man, just in case. Don’t do it. All that extraneous stuff will ultimately slow you down and make life harder, not easier.

“I definitely think less is more with drawers,” Fulton says. “I try to help people figure out what they need and discard anything extra.”

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Judy Gross calls her company, LightHeart Gear, the “accidental tent business.” When she sewed herself a lightweight, one-person backpacking shelter in 2006, she never imagined that within three years she’d be selling tents to hikers across the country, or that in 12 years she’d be pouring the foundation for her own factory. At the time, she just wanted a lightweight tent that didn’t skimp on comfort.

At 61 years old, Gross has already retired—twice—once from the Air Force and then from a job as a nurse practitioner. Her plan upon leaving her hospital gig in 2001 was to spend most of her time out hiking the trails of her native North Carolina. That all changed in 2006, when she started section-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Frustrated with her relatively heavy 4.5-pound, two-person tent, Gross figured she could make a better one herself. Her specifications were simple: The tent had to be lightweight and compact yet spacious, foolproof to set up, and it couldn’t have long guylines (a recipe for tripping).

After months of tinkering, Gross came up with an oblong pyramid-shaped, double-walled model that had ample floor space and was tall enough to sit up in but weighed less than two pounds. Her friends were so enamored with the design that they encouraged her to sell it as a DIY kit. “I had struggled for so long with this pattern,” Gross says. “I was not going to put it out on the public domain.” She’d make the tents herself. In 2009, LightHeart Gear was born. (The name is an adaptation of Gross’ trail name, Heart Fire.)

Gross sewed the tents out of her home in Asheville, North Carolina, and then showed them at local hiking festivals. Hikers would see the tents, and then call weeks or months later when they decided the tents they were using weren’t cutting it. Word spread organically as more of Gross’ models started making their way onto the AT.

Each year, business grew 30 to 40 percent, and within two years, Gross hired her first seamstresses to help with production. “That’s when I realized I had to make this a real business,” she says. Gross moved production into a rented facility in Asheville and committed to managing the company as a full-time job. As business grew, so did her product line, which evolved to include larger and smaller tent options and a new apparel collection.

“The fact that LightHeart tents are made in the USA and offered at a reasonable and competitive price point is very impressive,” says David Kauffman, associate product manager for tents at Sierra Designs. “I think this goes a long way with a lot of consumers. Working in tent development myself, this does deserve a lot of respect.”

But domestic manufacturing and competitive pricing aren’t what made Gross’ products so popular with thru-hikers: It’s her customer service. “She is known for her prompt response and will do anything to help out hikers, thru-hiking or not,” says Allegra Torres, a LightHeart customer who knows Gross through the North Carolina hiking community. If someone calls the company phone number, chances are Gross herself will answer. If that person’s tent is malfunctioning, Gross will mail them a loaner while she does repairs. If that person is on the trail within a hundred or so miles of Asheville, Gross will drive to hand off that loaner in person.

And because of that—as well as the popularity of her design and relative affordability of her price points (tents average around $300)—business is good. LightHeart now sells four different tents, a line of rain gear, and a line of women’s hiking apparel. Across the board, her design process starts with a mandate of function over fashion. Gross’ SoLong tent came about because she noticed a lot of people taller than 6'4" complaining in online forums about not being able to fit into standard one-person tents. Her Hiking Skirt with Pockets was born because Gross couldn’t find a hiking skirt with functional cargo pockets. (She makes sure smaller sizes still have the same large pockets because “petite women don’t have petite-size phones, maps, or guidebooks.”) Its A-line cut is designed to allow freedom of movement.

In the name of catering to customers’ specific needs, Gross takes special alteration requests for many products. For rain jackets, she offers custom sleeve lengths and will flare hems to accommodate larger hips. On rain pants, she offers custom inseams. Gross will even retrofit tents with add-on features like awnings or door flaps.

In May, Gross started building a sewing factory in Asheville, where she’ll soon employ anywhere from two to six seamstresses. For now, Gross says she loves her job and is determined to become a go-to brand for women’s hiking clothing. She hopes her son, Joshua, will take over the business when she’s ready to retire (again), but she doesn’t know if she ever wants to be the kind of company that sells millions of tents or pieces of clothing a year. “It becomes even more business and less passion,” Gross says. “My customers are so grateful and surprised when I answer an email late on aFriday night. I want to keep that personal touch.”

It isn’t the answer to all your muscle-building woes, but it is a smart nutrition option for outdoor athletes. Fact is, you likely can’t get enough protein without it.

Anti-protein powder sentiment is brewing in some circles of the outdoor community. Six months ago, I wrote this piece, which recommends a few good protein powders. Many reader reactions were, to put it mildly, not positive. Here’s a representative sample of some of the comments I received:

To quickly address each concern: Science says your kidneys will be fine. Many nutritionists do, in fact, recommend protein powder—there’s even a guy with a PhD quoted right there in the story. If protein powder were toxic, I’d be dead. And, finally, I wish I had towering stacks of supplement-industry dollars.

The truth about protein powder is less dogmatic and more straightforward. The stuff isn’t a muscle-building, performance-enhancing cure-all. But, for athletes especially, it can be a valuable part of their nutrition.

First, it’s crucial to note that athletes need more protein than the regular recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 50 grams, says Stuart Phillips, director of the McMaster Centre for Nutrition, Exercise, and Health Research at Canada’s McMaster University. “Active people stress their muscles, joints, and bones more, which increases protein breakdown,” he says. If you don’t build back what you broke down, your performance might suffer. You’re best off with at least 0.75 grams of protein per pound of your body weight each day.

For a 120-pound woman, for example, that means eating something like a couple eggs and a cup of Greek yogurt for breakfast, a tuna sandwich (using the entire can of tuna) for lunch, a jerky or dried-meat snack like Epic bars for a snack, and a chicken breast as part of dinner. That’s in addition to a healthy intake of carbs and fats. For a 180-pound guy, add another egg or two for breakfast and double your serving of chicken. But that amount is the ideal minimum, and “there’s no quantifiable harm to eating more,” Phillips says.

Brian St. Pierre, director of performance nutrition Precision Nutrition, says hitting that protein number improves post-training muscle recovery and immune support, as well as “numerous other important performance, health, and body composition functions.”

Plenty of scientific evidence backs such claims, and while many protein powder detractors point out that most short-term studies suggest bumping up your protein won’t improve your immediate endurance performance, research does indicate that correct protein consumption can improve your fat-to-muscle ratio by spurring fat loss and encouraging muscle growth. “If you reduce your fat mass while maintaining or increasing your muscle mass, your performance will likely improve. It’s like putting a bigger engine in a lighter car,” says Alex Leaf, a nutrition researcher with Examine.com.

I exercise six times a week. A couple long runs in the desert foothills behind my home, some swimming or backpacking, a few weightlifting sessions, and one CrossFit-style beatdown to check my ego. I also eat pretty well. My diet centers around whole, nutrient-dense foods. But even though I follow the “real foods first” approach heralded by so many nutritionists, I still find it difficult to get the right amount of protein given my activity. So I throw a scoop of powder into my smoothie every morning and mix another scoop with water and ice to accompany my lunch.

Unless you’re crushing a ton of calories or eating large portions of meat at every meal, an entirely whole-foods diet may not give athletes, who need more than the masses, an optimal amount of protein, Phillips says. Protein powder fills the gap. “It’s just a very convenient way to get in high-quality protein to meet your needs,” St. Pierre says. It’s also dirt-cheap relative to quality sourced animal proteins or even certain vegetarian sources. A scoop of my favorite whey protein costs about 50 cents. The cheapest whole-food option—a serving of chicken with equivalent protein—costs anywhere from a few dimes to a few dollars more. To get the same protein from Greek yogurt would run me four to five times my current cost.

Nutrition-wise, powder is an efficient protein source—it delivers that and not much else. And that purity is rather hard to find in most whole foods beyond the leanest meat and fish. A serving of Cytosport 100 percent whey protein powder—our favorite in the aforementioned rankings piece—packs 27 grams of protein in just 140 calories. By comparison, you’d need to eat 739 calories worth of almonds, 4.5 eggs, or 2.5 cups of fruit-flavored Greek yogurt to get the same amount of protein.

Meat and dairy also have a huge carbon footprint. But whey protein powder, for instance, is made from byproducts of cheese making that may otherwise be thrown out. By drinking whey protein, technically you’re recycling. How about that? Personally, I also consider the ethical implications of overdoing meat. I usually have a little bit of meat with dinner—St. Pierre says many whole-food proteins contain other beneficial compounds that powders often don’t—but if there are ways to up my protein intake without upping my meat consumption, I consider that a less harmful choice.

With these seeming advantages (or, at least, lack of drawbacks), you have to wonder: Why all the protein powder hate? “I think people associate protein powder with the stereotype of big, muscular guys who hide in the gym and do all sorts of bizarre things to their body,” says Phillips, an avid skier who includes protein powder daily in his breakfast. “So people just don’t want to be associated with that.”

St. Pierre thinks the stigma may also come from the notion that processed food is unnatural, or “not clean.” But Phillips, St. Pierre, and Leaf all say that protein powder is a processed food they endorse. “The processed nature of protein powder is only a downside if you also consume lots of other processed foods,” St. Pierre says. Protein powder is just dried, processed milk, like jerky is dried, processed beef. (And keep in mind that so many staple foods of the outdoors—including a significant portion of the best performance foods and post-trail craft beers—are highly processed).

Bottom line: Is eating enough protein good for athletes? Yes. Does that protein have to come from protein powder? Of course not. But will it be easier, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly to reach “enough” by eating protein powder? Hey, it works for me.

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Five days ago, Alex Honnold and Tommy Caldwell shattered the speed record on the Nose route on El Capitan in Yosemite, climbing the line in 2 hours, 10 minutes, 15 seconds. But they had a few tangled ropes and a couple mishaps, which forced a bit of down climbing and wasted valuable seconds. They wanted to go faster. 

“From the get-go, we've been talking about sub two,” Honnold said after the climb. “I think we can. We're going to keep trying a bit.”

This morning, they inched ever closer to the sub-two mark, setting a new record on the nearly 3,000 foot route: 2 hours, 1 minute, 53 seconds. 

“A lot of it is familiarity with the route,” Honnold says. “Even though it doesn’t feel like we’re moving faster, we are. Every time we do a lap we’re a little smoother. We’re adapting to a new level of effort.”

But they still weren’t perfect. Just six pitches from the summit, their rope got stuck. Caldwell had to rappel down and shake it loose, while Honnold sat and waited. “It cost us at least two minutes,” Honnold says, “and ultimately the two-hour mark.’

It’s been a weekend of highs and lows in Yosemite Valley. On Saturday, two experienced climbers fell to their deaths from the Salathé Wall.  

Honnold and Caldwell climbed the Nose yesterday, intentionally moving at a more casual pace to get a feel for how the deaths affected their headspace. “I didn't know them personally,” Honnold says. “But it is sobering. What we’re doing is a little bit different, but it’s using the same strategy and the same tactics. It’s definitely on the same spectrum.”

Honnold said he and Tommy will continue to try to chip time off the record in the coming weeks. 

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Trucks exist to perform work. Tailoring your truck to the job you have to do will help you work harder and smarter, while likely saving you some cash. Let’s look at the various types of truck available and analyze how best they can work for you.

Towing and hauling
Mediocre to fair
Mediocre to Fair
Not a problem
Mediocre

In stock form, modern pickups represent the most versatile adventure vehicles possible. They’re huge these days, but modern technology has brought their fuel economy and handling to levels nearly equal to those of passenger cars. The massive number of sales in this segment and the intense competition also keeps prices low and updates regular. You’ll spend less on a pickup than you will an equivalent SUV, and the pickup will likely feature newer technology.

You already know you can use a pickup to carry virtually anything, or even gear for multiple sports all at once. But if you haven’t driven one of the latest generation of full-size trucks, you probably don’t know just how huge they are inside or how luxurious. Four-door cabins offer more passenger space than even the biggest luxury sedans, making them ideal for carrying four to five large adults, with all their gear, on long road trips. Pickups also make the easiest platform from which to perform a custom build. Heck, installing a camper is often just a case of dropping one right into the bed and calling it a day.

But all that size and space works against pickups both in town and off-road. Even midsize trucks like the Toyota Tacoma are too long and low to tackle serious off-roading without even more serious (and expensive!) modifications. We should also note that development of the midsize truck segment has fallen behind their big brothers, and they struggle to compete even on price with the full-size alternatives, which often get just as good fuel economy, with better performance and considerably greater utility. If you want to get a truck to do truck stuff with, get a full-size pickup like the Ford F-150.

Pickups are available in a mind-boggling array of configurations and have even more options. That F-150, for example, can be had in a $27,000 two-wheel-drive, two-door work truck configuration, all the way up to a fully loaded 4WD and AWD four-door Raptor ($71,000) that shares its motor with the $500,000 Ford GT supercar.

For most people who want to do most truck stuff while retaining decent off-road ability at a reasonable price, we suggest going with four-wheel drive, four doors, and whichever trim level gets you leather seats without too many other frivolous extras. The second-best motor is usually good enough to give a pickup a surprising turn of speed and solid towing capability and should come in a littler cheaper and have somewhat better fuel economy. If you can’t tell by now, the F-150 is our pick in the current truck market, and we’d spend our money on a 4×4 SuperCrew XLT model with the 6.5-foot bed and 3.5-liter EcoBoost engine and ten-speed transmission, for a total of $44,000.

Carrying people and going off-road
Mediocre to excellent
Mediocre to excellent
Some last as long as pickups
Mediocre

Let’s start by defining SUVs roughly as body-on-frame passenger trucks with four-wheel drive. That makes them more robust and better off-road and at towing than unibody all-wheel-drive crossovers. But by mounting the body on top of a separate frame, SUVs struggle to achieve equivalent exterior size-to-interior volume ratios to lighter, smaller, more efficient, and better-driving crossovers. Most of today’s drivers will also be better served by AWD than 4WD.

Here’s a thorough explanation of the differences between AWD and 4WD. Every truck buyer should learn which is right for them before shopping.

If you’re serious about going off-road, there’s no better new vehicle available than the Jeep Wrangler. It is hands down the most capable off-road passenger vehicle available today, and it’s a serious bargain, with a starting price of just $27,000. If you want more on-road comfort and performance, then look no further than the Jeep Grand Cherokee. Starting at $30,000, it can be optioned up to serious levels of luxury or speed (there’s even a 707 HP Track Hawk version) and takes well to modifications like suspension lifts, protection parts, and larger tires. It would be my choice as a basis for an overland build, and I recommend the nicer trim levels over more expensive but less capable SUVs from England, Japan, and Germany.

Need three rows of seats? The new Ford Expedition has considerably more space inside than its rivals, thanks to a first-in-segment fitment of independent rear suspension, which also endows it with superior ride and handling. You can also spec an Expedition with a low-range transfer case for climbing or descending steep hills, and its terrain management system helps get the humongous SUV through or over challenging off-road obstacles. That would be my pick if I had serious towing work to do.

Everyday driving
Mediocre
Excellent
Don’t count on it.

When SUV sales started booming in the 1990s, car engineers were baffled. Big, heavy, 4WD trucks made no sense for the people who were buying them, most of whom stayed on-road the majority of the time. Why were people prepared to suffer atrocious fuel economy and put up with limited handling, poor packaging, and often higher prices? It turns out that people who should have been buying station wagons and minivans preferred the higher seating position and rugged looks and were prepared to drive a vehicle that was bad for them in every other way to achieve those two merits. Car engineers thought that was dumb, so they set out to design something that performed the job of a station wagon or minivan but looked tough and had high seats. Thus, the crossover was born.

Don’t let that relatively humdrum beginning fool you. Most of us are not cowboys, we’re not competing in the Camel Trophy, and, heck, most drivers are afraid to yank on the 4WD lever in their trucks, much less put in the 60 seconds of time it takes to learn what would happen if they did.

The vast majority of today’s SUV buyers would be much better served by a crossover. Unibody construction—where they body and frame are integrated into a single unit—gives crossovers better packaging, maximizing interior space in even smaller vehicles. It’s also much lighter, helping every single performance metric a car has, from acceleration to braking to fuel economy. It’s also stiffer, leading to a better ride and quieter interiors. The all-wheel drive most crossovers are fitted with is always working automatically, so you don’t need to worry about shifting into it if you come across a slippery surface.

Is there a reason you should buy a crossover over a minivan or station wagon? All other things being equal, the answer would be no, but because sales of crossovers are so strong right now, automakers are investing all their money on them while neglecting their other passenger vehicles. So today’s crossovers are the cars that benefit from the highest R&D budgets and have the volume to amortize the cost of quality components. Right now, crossovers are often the best vehicles an automaker produces.

On a budget? The $21,000 Subaru Crosstrek is an extraordinary value and is all the car any Outside reader actually needs. I’d recommend leasing one of these (depending on mileage, as low as $120/month) over buying a nicer but used car. Want something a lot nicer? The $33,000 Volvo XC40 is probably the best combination of performance, luxury, design, practicality, and price available today. Need three rows? Look at the $32,000 Subaru Ascent if you’re worried about the price, or the $46,900 Volvo XC90 if you’re not. The latter is possibly the safest car on sale today.

Worried about going off-road? If all you’re doing is driving dirt roads to reach trailheads and campsites, virtually any vehicle can handle that. A little more ride height will help you avoid damage, while a set of all-terrain tires will add both puncture resistance and traction. Worried about getting stuck? Pack a pair of Maxtrax in your trunk. They work equally well in snow, mud, or sand. I’m sending a buddy off to Baja in his Subaru this weekend and loaned him my Maxtrax so he could be confident about driving onto the beach. Most people buy way more capability than they actually need or use and suffer for it. Take it easy, take precautions, and your crossover will perform just fine.

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What I noticed, in the moments before I saw the shark, was the silence. It was a deep silence, full of myth and primordial fear. That’s the one thing that everyone who’s encountered a great white agrees on: Before you see it, you feel its presence. A single animal emits a vibe that raises the hairs on the back of your neck, long before it shows itself. And though I didn’t know it at that moment, there were at least five great whites circling me.

I sat in a small boat—a 17-foot Boston Whaler—with two scientists who were determined to crack the great white’s secrets. Their work was noble and occasionally terrifying; white sharks are among the ocean’s most mysterious and misunderstood creatures. Certainly, they’re the only ones that come equipped with their own scary theme music.

The scientists had found the perfect place to conduct their research: Southeast Farallon Island, a remote outpost 30 miles due west of the Golden Gate Bridge, where each autumn a large population of great white sharks gather to hunt elephant seals. Technically, the island exists within the 415 area code, but its jagged rocks, dark water, and plain spookiness evoke another planet. I’d made my way out there after seeing a documentary about the place that haunted me. In the three years since I’d glimpsed them on film, the Farallon great whites topped my list of marine obsessions.

Dangling off the stern like a lure, a six-foot surfboard bobbed on the light swell. Typically, to get a great white’s attention, more substantial bait is required. But not here. The sharks are so numerous, so hungry, that the mere suggestion of a seal draws them in.

It was drawing them in now.

“Shark approaching,” the first scientist said in a low voice. He’d seen the big boil made by a great white’s tail fin as it swims just below the surface. Then, suddenly, I saw it, too. A strong wake, a swirl of disturbance, then the dorsal fin rising like a periscope, headed directly for us. The shark swam alongside the Whaler, then dove beneath us and bumped the back of the boat. I was struck by its massive girth, the many scars and scrapes and divots on its body, and its color: Viewed from above, these white sharks were jet black. Only their undersides were white. Three more sharks approached, also midsize males, investigating the boat. One raised his head from the water and bit a corner of the outboard motor almost delicately. The Whaler rocked. Then, at once, the males vanished, and in swam a huge female. She was 18 feet long and seven feet wide, a sublime predator shaped by 400 million years of evolution. I felt a very old part of my brain snap to attention—the amygdala, a bean-shaped bundle of neurons that processes fear. But I wasn’t scared—I was awed.

It was only later, when the awe subsided and I began to think about what could have gone wrong, what bad things might have happened when surrounded by a small herd of great white sharks, that fear settled back in. Later, when life became ordinary again. Later, when the scientists laughingly revealed to me their boat’s nickname: the Dinner Plate.

Susan Casey is the bestselling author of The Wave, The Devil’s Teeth, and two other books.

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At 13, I was sure I was the only American boy who hadn’t yet gotten his mouth onto someone else’s mouth. They were doing it on the school bus and down at the teen center, really kissing. It was so serious, so sickeningly actual: kids my own age engaged in that full-on, gnawing oralness I’d only seen in movies and had chalked up to trick photography. Kissing frightened me, but I knew that not to have kissed was a deadly social deformity whose only corrective serum was teenage saliva. I had to get it done.

At camp that summer in Vermont, I attempted to compensate for my shameful truth with even more shameful lies. I put it around that I’d had some needle-drug experience. I claimed I played guitar for a well-known hardcore band. The sexual résumé I falsified was thicker than the phone book of my hometown.

And then, on the last afternoon of a camping trip through a riverine gorge, I wound up in the orange gloom of a tent with Jen, a girl far too wise and pretty for a creep like me. My courting strategy was a literal impersonation of Pepé Le Pew. By unguessable magic, it worked.

Of the kiss itself, I have no memory, because what I mainly wanted to do was stop and ask the other kids who were also necking in the tent, “Hey, guys, could you watch us, please? Are we actually doing the thing? Does it look like on TV?” I also wanted to get Jen to sign something or at least verbally attest that the kiss had taken place. And I wanted Jen to explain how this impossibility had happened, not understanding that fate’s bestowal of make-outs would forever remain an occult phenomenon beyond the powers of inquiry.

A counselor soon broke up the business, I suspect to everyone’s relief. Children again, we went swimming in the gorge, a setting the moment’s production designer had overdressed with the fitments of a coming-of-age tale. The water-sleekened canyon walls were a scaled-up model of the sculpture Ruth Gordon fondles in Harold and Maude: “Stroke, palm, caress, explore.” On tentative feet, we minced through sparkling pools beneath a cable footbridge whose swaying shadow belabored a theme of perilous crossings. The river itself was a standard-issue metaphor of time’s ungraspable flux and constancy. It culminated at a cervix formation in the channel into which you could lodge yourself while the river bothered itself into a fizzing pile at your back.

But time and the river could be balked only for a pressurized second before they blasted you downstream like a champagne cork. There you floated, feigning bliss, belly to the sun. But already you felt the river broadening, its current straying into less coherent patterns. The protective cushion of water thinned out. You had to wrack and stiffen your now-older body to slip past the sharp rocks, the adult debris of beer bottles and auto parts, and the forsaken lines and hooks of luckless fishermen.

Frequent Outside contributor Wells Tower wrote about Great Smoky Mountains National Park in May 2016.

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If you haven’t run a marathon by your 50th birthday, you may think that opportunity has passed. Think again. “While aging may make it harder to recover from extreme exertion, that doesn’t mean that, with the right training, you can’t tackle the distance for the first time after 50,” says Jay Bawcom, who has coached dozens of senior runners in the Run SMART Project, an online program that pairs you with a running coach.

“Certainly folks around this age need to be aware that they’ve got a few more years of wear and tear on their bodies, so there are things to watch out for,” Bawcom says. You should talk to a doctor about any cardiac or musculoskeletal issues before you start training. Assuming you get a clean bill of health, you’re perfectly safe to start training for your first marathon, so long as you do so deliberately, carefully, and with a promise to yourself to listen to whatever your body’s telling you throughout the process.

Here’s how to make it happen.

If you’ve been fairly fit your whole life, your 50-year-old self will likely run your first marathon slower than you would have at 30. That’s OK. While it’s all highly individualized, aging can change hormones, metabolism, and other aspects of the body’s physiology that seriously hinder its ability to perform and recover, Bawcom says. All that means is you have to adjust expectations.

Another thing you can do to help your case: Pick the right race. Bawcom recommends “a fast course with simple logistics,” such as the California International Marathon. The race has a smaller field, making organization easier, and a fast, net downhill course. Then there’s temperature. “Heat also seems to impact runners more as they get older, and this can make training for early fall races a challenge since it means doing big miles during the peak of summer,” Bawcom says. If you live in a place with harsh summer temps, try a winter race like the Houston Marathon or Surf City Marathon, which would allow you to clock your 20-milers in milder weather.

When you’re younger, you can usually train for a full marathon safely in 12 to 14 weeks. For an older runner, however, Bawcom suggests setting aside 18 to 20 weeks to add more recovery time in between your longer runs and harder workouts.

As an older first-time marathoner, it’s important that your training runs focus on quality miles. To survive the marathon training cycle, work from either end of the spectrum—focus on shorter runs significantly faster than marathon pace and longer runs significantly slower than marathon pace, Bawcom says. “Trying to do too many long runs at or close to marathon pace or chasing an arbitrary weekly mileage goal can really beat a person up.”

Finally, supplemental workouts like yoga, Pilates, and cycling can really help older athletes. “I worked with an over-50 athlete who was extremely prone to injuries,” Bawcom says, “and he managed to run under 2:50 by running two to three times a week and cycling the rest.”

Marathon training at any age is somewhat all-consuming. But when you’re over 50, making certain choices beyond your running is key to getting to the starting line healthy and avoiding wearingdown your body completely during the training process.

First, there’s diet. “A lot of runners seem to focus on avoiding certain foods, but diet should be more about inclusion than exclusion,” Bawcom says. “Healthy proteins and fats, foods with high-quality caloric content, and great hydration should all be part of the plan to keep you fueled.”

And then there’s sleep. This is the place where many of my runners fall short, Bawcom says. “When you’re trying to balance running with the rest of life’s demands, you often cut corners in rest and recovery, but that’s a big mistake.” According to Bawcom, you’re often better off dropping a mile from your run—and, in doing so, reducing a bit of stress—than you are getting up when your body’s telling you to sleep a few minutes longer.

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When the engine on my ultralight cut out, I was supposed to be ready. Pilots aren’t pessimists, but we practice worst-case scenarios over and over. I’d been flying for years, yet I hadn’t practiced for that sucker punch of adrenaline, the way my hair stood on end, the shock of the sudden silence.

Training does kick in. A Captain Kirk–like voice quickly slapped my frazzled nerves, bringing them to attention, and then gave cool, calm commands: Engine out. Option one, attempt restart. Option two, don’t get distracted, look for landing place.

I went for option two. Really, you sure? yelped a competing inner voice, Fear. She’s sure, Captain Kirk snapped back. He was right. I was flying low over California hills dotted with scrubby trees and granite in a rinky-dink machine—just a seat on wheels suspended under a hang-glider wing and powered by a lawn-mower motor. Now all that was left was a dubious glide ratio and the promise of an open field. Kirk reminded me that I had clocked a suitable landing zone before the engine quit, because that’s what you do as a pilot. Always look for somewhere to put down, Just in Case. Now Just in Case was here, and the spot I’d chosen was one you picked only when you thought you wouldn’t really need it: an incline hemmed in by trees. I frantically looked again.

OK, there—a field between two hills, seemingly clean of rocks and flat enough. But is it? whined Fear. Shut up, Captain Kirk said, then reminded me to set up like it was any other runway—downwind leg, base leg, final approach. Dropping fast, I checked the field again. It suddenly looked pocked and uneven. Focus, said Kirk. You’re fucked, said Fear.

The wheels touched down perfectly. There were no rocks. But there were deep ruts in the hard ground. The tiny ultralight thudded and bounced but remained gamely intact, then came to a stop. I got out on shaky legs, straightening my flight suit, pulling off my helmet. What to do next? Finally, we all agreed: Kneel on the ground, dummy, and exhale a big thank you.

Caroline Paul is the author of The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure.