Month: March 2019

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There’s nothing quite like waking up in a tent in the woods. Here are our favorite camping products on sale now during Backcountry’s Labor Day sale, which runs through September 3. 

After testing 29 different stoves, our gear editor deemed the WhisperLite one of the best, thanks in part to its ability to run on multiple types of fuel (including isobutane, white gas, and unleaded gasoline). It’s virtually indestructible and every piece can be either replaced or repaired.

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The Hubba Hubba NX has the best mix of light weight and livability of any two-person tent available. The tech that makes it possible: light zippers, which also allow big doors and thinner fabrics. And durability? The Hubba Hubba tolerated three weeks of abuse without a scratch. As one tester summed it up, “It’s the perfect backpacking tent.”

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The Lumina is a marvel of ultralight design. Weighing in at just 1.8 pounds, it’s the lightest pack we’ve seen with legitimate hauling capabilities. And Osprey achieved that without sacrificing features: there’s an aluminum frame, a fixed top lid, a stash pocket on the front, removable side compression cords, and ample lash points.

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Leave the glass bottle at home and pack your wine in this collapsible wine-preservation system. The bag is specially designed to eliminate exposure to oxygen by creating an airtight seal. (Oxygen can tarnish the taste of your wine.) It weighs under one ounce, so it doesn’t add much heft to your kit.

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We find the 2.5-liter bladder to be the perfect size for backpacking. It carries a large amount of water without adding too much weight. We love Osprey’s hydration bladders for the magnetic sternum-strap hose holder, which keeps the hose attached firmly to the chest so we never have to search for it.

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Satisfy your hunger far from the comforts of home with the Mountain House Chili Mac with Beef. The 2.5-serving entree makes backcountry cooking a breeze, thanks to its streamlined carrying and just-add-water simplicity. It contains a hearty 12 grams of protein per serving, as well as 31 grams of carbohydrates to replenish your tired muscles after their hard day on the trail.

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Adventure Medical’s Ultralight & Watertight Series consists of four differently sized medical kits specifically designed for multisport adventures that last anytime between a couple of hours and four days. The largest and second largest (.9 and .7) kits accommodate four people on trips that last for four days, and the .5 and .3 sizes are suitable for solo trips lasting one to two days. Every kit contains bandages, instruments, medicines, and treatments for burns, blisters, cuts, scars, headaches, and broken bones.

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The 80-lumen Apollo shines bright enough to illuminate a picnic table. By pulling on the dome lens you can adjust the spread of the illumination. It also has two hooks on top for hanging.

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Take this backpacking if you value your morning coffee over weight savings. At nine ounces, it’s an indulgence that more than makes up for the amount of space it takes up with the joe it puts out. 

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Rated to hold 500 pounds, this hammock is big enough for two backpackers. Plus, the Python straps are also 30 percent off right now. 

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At 21,000 feet on Mount Everest’s south side, inside a tent pitched beside a glacier at Camp II, Willie Benegas jabbed a needle into the arm of his climbing partner Matt Moniz. He was trying to get a blood sample, but Moniz’s veins had shriveled into threads because of the dehydrating effects of altitude. The freezing air temperature compounded the problem, causing Moniz’s body to shunt blood away from his extremities to warm his vital organs. Add in the fact that Benegas is a mountaineering guide, not a phlebotomist, and it’s not hard to imagine the whole episode as a macabre game of high-altitude darts, with Moniz’s arm as the target. “It was my payback for convincing Willie to do a science experiment while trying to summit Everest,” Moniz says.

Both Moniz and Benegas were collecting their blood—with the “vampire kit,” as they nicknamed it—as part of an ambitious new study that aims to understand the genetic changes that occur at extreme altitude. To differentiate between the changes caused by the climbers’ time on Everest last May and, say, the normal everyday changes of aging, scientists will compare the duo’s genetic code over time against the ultimate control subjects: the climbers’ twins. Moniz’s fraternal twin, Kaylee, and Benegas’ identical twin, Damian, provided blood samples from their homes at or near sea level.

“We know that time spent at high elevation will, for example, cause the body to produce more red blood cells to carry more oxygen,” says lead scientist Christopher E. Mason, PhD, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Department of Physiology and Biophysics. “What we don’t know is what’s happening at the detailed molecular level—which genes are creating that adaptation, which genes are responding to that stress, which genes are activated specifically when you climb the world’s tallest mountain?”

From Moniz’s and Benegas’ hard-earned blood samples, Mason will extract DNA, RNA, and plasma, the components needed to document each mountaineer’s genetic code, using sophisticated biomedical and computer technology. This genetic code determines how a person’s body makes cells and how those cells respond and adapt to the environment.

Mason took a similar approach when working on the 2017 NASA Twins Study. For that research, Mason compared the genetic code of astronaut Scott Kelly, after he spent one year living on the International Space Station, to the genetic code of Kelly’s identical twin brother, Mark, an astronaut who remained on Earth as a control subject. One of the early takeaways from that study is that Kelly’s “DNA repair genes” activated during his time in space, indicating that his body was experiencing ongoing damage, most likely from the heavy increase in radiation exposure. “We learned that there are indeed what you could call ‘space genes’ activated from the stressors of space travel,” Mason says.

Similarly, Mason suspects there are also “Everest genes.” That’s why foreign mountaineers cannot train themselves into the same level of fitness as a Sherpa. The advantage Sherpas have on Everest isn’t just sports physiology—it’s literally in their DNA. “Sherpas have an optimized genome that has evolved over thousands of years to create more red blood cells to be better at oxygen metabolism at extreme elevations,” Mason says. Being able to pinpoint the early adaptions happening in these two climbers’ genetic codes while on Everest puts us one step closer to the day when all climbers will be able to edit their genes to gain the same genetic advantage on Everest as Sherpas. The more immediate goal is better understanding of the genetic changes our bodies undergo in extreme circumstances, but Mason is optimistic about the long-term possibilities. “It’s still too early to say when,” he says. “It’s the early days for our understanding of such evolutionary selection and individual adaptations, but they light the way toward fundamental understanding of and protection for future climbers.”

For the Everest study, Mason is interested in the mountaineers’ microbiomes—the bacteria, fungi, viruses, and single-celled organisms that live in and around the human body, which scientists now know play nearly as important a role in how our genes are expressed as the genetic code itself. While on Everest, and before and after the climb, Benegas and Moniz swabbed the inside of their nostrils and the skin on their faces and collected fecal samples. Mason intends to use cells from the samples to chart the climbers’ microbiomes, creating a massive list of which species were found, how many, when, and where in the body. “It’s like taking a microbial census,” Mason says. It’s possible he’ll identify previously unknown microorganisms interacting with the human body on Everest.

While serving as lab rats on Everest was a new experience for Moniz and Benegas, they’re no strangers to extreme environments. Benegas, 50, is the co-founder of Benegas Brothers Expeditions, a renowned guiding company. He had a dozen Everest summits on his extensive climbing résumé before earning his 13th during the experiment. Moniz, 20, a student at Dartmouth College, began climbing at a remarkably young age. He summited Mount Elbrus and Mount Kilimanjaro by age ten and earned National Geographic Adventurer of the Year honors at age 12 for summiting the highest points in each of the 50 states. Moniz and Benegas first met on Mount Rainier in 2012 and have been climbing together ever since. Prior to the Everest experiment, they had climbed two other 8,000-meter Himalayan peaks together: Makalu and Cho Oyu.

The biggest challenge for Moniz and Benegas on Everest proved not to be drawing blood (which they did at Base Camp, Camp II, and back at Base Camp immediately after summiting). Instead, it was the logistics of getting their laboratory specimens off the mountain during the expedition. They had a 48-hour window from the time of collection for their biological samples to arrive in Kathmandu and be centrifuged and frozen at minus 80 degrees Celsius. “It was aggressive but possible, as long as everything went exactly as planned,” Moniz says.

To make the deadline, Moniz and Benegas made their collections in the early morning, well before the notorious afternoon weather rolls in, which typically grounds all helicopter flights to and from Everest. They placed the vials in a special collection box designed to keep them upright, and then sent the box with one of the helicopters on its way back to the village of Lukla after it delivered food and supplies to the mountain. A colleague picked up the sample box from the airstrip in Lukla and transferred it to a fixed-wing plane for departure to Kathmandu, where another colleague picked it up and drove it to the lab for processing.

“It wouldn’t have been possible without years of experience on Everest, without the network of friends who were really excited about what we were doing and willing to help us any way they could,” Benegas says.

Mason is currently waiting for the shipment of specimens from Kathmandu, where they’ve been held up for several weeks in the freezer as the required paperwork goes through—proper protocol when conducting scientific research on live humans. As for the participants, Benegas says the Everest twins study marks his official retirement from the world’s tallest peak. Moniz, meanwhile, is just getting started and hopes to continue mixing science and high-altitude mountaineering—although he’d prefer not to have to deal with the vampire kit again.

Score everything from hotel rooms to concert tickets to dinner reservations on the online marketplace

A decade ago, Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia started renting out air mattresses in their cramped San Francisco apartment to visitors who needed a place to stay. That simple idea, of course, would become Airbnb and change the way we travel. Just look at the numbers: In 2008, the year the site launched, some 400 people booked lodging through the company. Since then, more than 300 million travelers across 191 countries have used the service.

Now, with a slew of new categories being rolled out, like upscale, preinspected homes and houses geared toward families or business travelers and new experiences including private concerts, workshops, and dinners at the best restaurants in town, the company wants to change the game again by making it easier for you to travel like a local, wherever you go. Here’s a breakdown of all the new things Airbnb can do for you.

Rent Nicer Homes with Hotel-Like Amenities

Airbnb Plus is basically a curated list of unique homes that have been vetted for quality. Each house approved for the service has to pass a lengthy checklist to ensure it features comforts like fast internet, quality linens, sleek design, clutter-free closets, and a well-stocked kitchen. And while there are currently around 2,000 Airbnb Plus homes in 13 cities—Austin, Barcelona, Cape Town, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Melbourne, Milan, Rome, San Francisco, Shanghai, Sydney, and Toronto—more cities are on the way by the end of the year.

The homes average $250 a night—about $100 more than a standard Airbnb rental—but many promise a spectacular experience. Check out this farmhouse on a vineyard ($312 a night) in Cape Town, South Africa, which has a pool, massive backyard, and an on-site host who will pour you a glass of locally made wine. Or this eclectic bungalow ($130 a night) steps from the beach in Venice, California, that comes with surfboards to borrow.

Or Just Stay at an Actual Hotel

While Airbnb already allowed users to book rooms at select hotels and inns, new features are being added soon to make them even easier to find. To supplement the current categories (entire place, private room, or shared room), the site will be rolling out four new filters this summer that will let you sort specifically for bed and breakfasts or boutique hotels, as well as vacation homes and unique spaces like treehouses, yurts, or backyard Airstream trailers.

Until then, you’ll just have to work a little harder to book one of the five poolside, midcentury modern rooms at the Amado ($175 a night) in Palm Springs, California, or a bunkbed at the Bivvi ($39 a night) in Breckenridge, Colorado, where breakfast comes included.

Find a House Your Kids Will Love

Airbnb’s new collections, launched with lists of bookings curated for families and work trips, will expand this summer to include catalogs of venues specifically selected for weddings, honeymoons, group trips, and even dinner parties.

Under the families collection, you’ll find homes highly rated by parents with perks like cribs, bunk beds, and spacious backyards. Our favorites included this kid-friendly getaway in North Carolina’s Outer Banks ($89 a night), which comes with games, children’s movies, a high chair, and ample beaches nearby, and this sleek cabin ($450 a night) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which has a bunk room and an extraordinary porch.

Listen to a Live Concert in a Yurt or on a Boat

While you’re booking housing, you can now sign up for local experiences and activities, such as surf lessons in Bali, guided hiking with mountaintop yoga in Los Angeles, or monitoring sea turtles in Costa Rica. You can also make restaurant reservations in many major cities.

The coolest new feature, however, is this: Airbnb just added concerts, where you can join small gatherings in 25 select cities to hear musicians perform live music in unique venues like yurts, distilleries, steamships, and churches.

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Last week, I argued that hunters should leave the NRA. Despite its pro-hunting rhetoric, I wrote in the piece, the NRA betrays sportsmen and women by donating money to anti-hunting politicians and falsely claiming those politicians work in hunters’ best interests.

On Monday, the NRA published two videos attacking me and that article. In those videos, the organization continues to lie about its contributions to hunting. Let’s fact-check the most egregious falsehoods.

The first comes from a segment on Dana Loesch’s NRA TV show. In it, she alters my words: I never called a tweet “unconscionable,” just the NRA’s policies. Whatever. The real lies crop up in a follow-up video she shot with Cam Edwards, which is currently only available on NRA TV’s website. You can watch that here. 

Forty seconds into that video, Edwards states, “The NRA is supporting in some cases Senators who support returning federal land grabs back to states.” 

In actuality, there were never any “federal land grabs.” The vast majority of federally managed public lands never belonged to the states—an arrangement that was included in the enabling acts that created the Western states. 

Edwards repeats the language President Donald Trump espoused during his campaign to justify the shrinking of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. Since then, we’ve learned that the move to reduce the size of these protected lands was influenced by energy extraction companies, ignored scientific evidence, and largely disregarded the public’s voice—including that of of various hunting groups.  

This claim comes up again 1:26 minutes in, when Loesch claims:

“He doesn’t fully understand the issue of the federal land grab…some of these lands that are called into question, it’s not that they’re just doing away with any sort of access, they’re taking regulation and management of this land from the federal government, and returning it to the states. Because, for instance, 84 percent of land in Nevada falls under federal regulation, and that’s Nevada’s land.”

Again, there is no federal land grab: the states never owned or managed the land in question. Following the Mexican-American War, the United States obtained most of the North American continent between Texas and the Pacific Ocean. It attempted to give away much of this land to its citizens through the Homestead Acts. But most of Nevada was unsuitable for small, independently owned farms and it remained unclaimed until 1864 when Nevada became a state. When that happened, these unclaimed lands fell under federal management. Nevada’s constitution reads: “That the people inhabiting said territory do agree and declare, that they forever disclaim all right and title to the unappropriated public lands lying within said territory, and that the same shall be and remain at the sole and entire disposition of the United States.”  

At 50 seconds, Edwards asserts, “[Wes] doesn’t bring up any of the anti-hunting moves of the Obama administration. Back in 2015, for example, when the Obama administration imposed additional rules and bans on hunting in Alaskan preserves, moves that were undone by the…Trump administration, actually opening up hunting where the Obama administration had restricted it.”

This is textbook whataboutism. He’s talking about a ban implemented in 2015 within Alaskan national preserves that restricted certain very uncommon traditional hunting methods employed by some Alaskan natives. It had virtually no impact on the ground, but did generate some political controversy over the balance between state and federal regulation of hunting rules. 

At 2:30, Edwards says, “With state control, it becomes a case of states and localities knowing what’s best.”

Counterintuitively, federal management actually mandates far more local input than state management does. High profile laws like NEPA, FLPMA, and NFMA, which govern federal land management, all provide significant requirements and systems for local input in management decisions. In contrast, state governments are free to implement changes to their lands without soliciting input from their citizens at all. 

Several seconds later, Edwards claims, “The NRA’s agenda is ensuring that hunting is accessible… Unless you know somebody with a lease, unless you’ve got that spot to hunt that’s going to be a big barrier. The NRA has been instrumental at ensuring access and availability to hunting lands.”

And he’s right. Access to public lands is what ensures that hunting remains accessible for Americans of any income level. As Field and Stream wrote, privatizing those lands leads to the new owners charging money for access, making hunting accessible only to the wealthy. And yet, as I detailed in the article Edwards attacks, the NRA sponsors the campaigns of politicians who have publicly declared that they want to sell off public lands. 

Perhaps the most frustrating assertion comes later in the video, when Loesch says, “I wish that people would do more to educate people about hunting, and the tradition of it, and conservation…I wish that people would talk more about that instead of try to shame people, like this guy did.” She continues: “It would have been better time spent, if he had actually tried to educate folks about the value and importance of hunting, than about trying to tear down some of the biggest protectors of hunting.” 

Here’s what I wrote in the first paragraph of the article in question: “Hunting is possibly the proudest outdoor tradition our country has.” I went on to explain that it funds wildlife and land conservation and produces the healthiest possible food. I’ve also taken on more controversial pro-hunting topics. For example, in 2015, amid the Cecil the lion scandal, I appeared on CNN to defend lion hunting in Africa. 

Bottom line is that if you can’t argue with facts, then you don’t have an argument. These two videos are more evidence that not only is the NRA working against the interests of hunters, it’s also continuing to lie about this fact. To repeat the conclusion of the article they're attacking: It’s time for hunters to leave the NRA. 

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Last winter, I drove down to Baja, Mexico, with my wife and two small kids. We caravanned with friends who also have a young daughter. Our vehicles—two purpose-built Toyota Tacomas—were tricked out with every piece of off-road gear you can imagine: meaty mud-terrain tires, lockers, Maxtrax, etc.

One night, we rolled onto a wide-open beach south of San Felipe looking for a camping spot. My buddy, who was leading, drove off the flatter section of the beach down a small hill that angled toward the water. I followed—and immediately got stuck when I tried to climb back up. I put the truck in four-wheel drive low, turned on my rear locker (a mechanism that locks the rear differential and increases traction), and proceeded to make things worse as my rear wheels, weighed down by all the gear in my bed, dug in. At this point, my four-year-old daughter, sitting in the back seat, proceeded to scream that she had to use the bathroom “right now!”

After a potty break on the sand, I consulted with my buddy, who told me to stay calm. Luckily, he’s a certified off-road driving instructor and has seen much worse. He had a winch on his truck that could pull me out, and we both had shovels we could use to dig. But then he said he had a better idea: the ARB E-Z Deflator.

The Deflator—which costs less than a nice dinner out—is a tire air-pressure gauge designed to safely and easily remove your valve core and rapidly air down to a specific PSI, before reinstalling it. With less air inside, the tires flatten out, increasing their contact patch and therefor traction, as well as massively improving ride quality. (The same concept applies to plus-size mountain bike tires that can run a lower PSI.) By pulling the valve core, the Deflator lets air out much more rapidly, and with much less hassle, than you could achieve by simply depressing that core. That's doubly convenient, given the very large volumes of air contained in up-sized off-road tires.

Working by headlamp with my truck tilting toward the Sea of Cortez and buried in the sand, it took us only 15 minutes to let the air out of all four tires. Back in the driver’s seat, I gave the truck a little gas and immediately felt it move in the right direction. Thirty seconds later, we were up on the shelf and ready to make camp. (We refilled my tires the next day with an onboard ARB compressor mounted under my hood.)

Needless to say, as soon as I got home, I bought an ARB E-Z Deflator, which now lives in my truck full-time. Last month, I saw the device in action yet again when we used it to air down Jeep tires before driving over the giant rocks that litter the Rubicon Trail—North America’s most difficult four-wheel-drive road. Now, with more practice, I'm able to take my tires from road to dirt pressures in just a couple of minutes. And that means that airing down is something that's now quick and convenient for me to do every time I go off-road, before I get stuck.

Of course, I still recommend driving with good tires, a shovel, and, ideally, four-wheel or all-wheel drive if you like play off-road. But the Deflator is an additional piece of affordable gear that will always come in handy.

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Why go to all the way to Africa to gaze at big game when you can drive yourself through New Mexico?

When Jen spotted our first ibex, a nanny goat clinging to the shade on the west side of a slickrock arroyo, the creature was 800 yards out and so well camouflaged that, even with Jen’s description, it took me ten minutes to find her. As we watched, more and more animals emerged from the craggy hillside, like shapes on those Magic Eye 3D puzzlers. We counted a herd of at least a dozen ibex. After GPSing their location, we eased into the arroyo—and out of their sight—and began picking our way toward them on foot for a closer view.

We’d come to New Mexico’s Florida Mountains (pronounced flow-REE-duh), a few miles north and west of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, in search of these Persian ibex. This 15-mile-long chain of dry mountains on the border is the only place in the country where these animals roam free. Outside the United States, you’d have to go to ranges between Turkey and Afghanistan to see them.

The Persian ibex is just one in a trio of exotic game species that you can seek out and track in New Mexico. Farther east, in the Tularosa Basin and beyond, mask-faced African antelope called oryx range the Chihuahuan Desert. And in the southeast corner of the state, North African Barbary sheep have taken hold and begun to spread northward through the mountains. If you factor in less-exotic species, such as elk, mule deer, and sandhill cranes, the Land of Enchantment turns out to be one hell of a destination for a domestic safari.

Two of the exotics, ibex and oryx, trace back to Frank C. Hibben, an avid hunter and chairman of the New Mexico Game Commission in the late 1940s and ’50s who advocated importing big-game species to bolster the state’s hunting opportunities. Starting in 1969, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish (NMDGF) began releasing 93 oryx onto White Sands Missile Range with the idea they would take hold and maintain a small population of around 600 head. That same year, 15 ibex, of an eventual total release of 73, were introduced in the Floridas.

The population of Barbary sheep began their tenure in New Mexico as a pet project by an eccentric rancher named Joe McKnight. They were then stocked in the 1950s by the NMDGF. In all three cases, the creatures flourished beyond expectations, partly due to a dearth of natural predators, which has created large populations (around 4,000 oryx and 600 ibex) that are managed for hunting. Barbary sheep are now so profuse in the southeast mountains that they aren’t even surveyed.

Just because there are a lot of these animals doesn’t make them easy to find. For one, you have to work around hunting season, roughly November to March, since you can’t wear blaze orange if you’re tracking wild animals. But more important, all three of these species favor harsh, brutal desert and scratchy, rugged mountains, which makes tracking and finding them a challenge. Not unlike chasing elk or deer, you have to start well before sunrise or be willing to stay out past sunset, move quickly yet stealthily in harsh country, and have a lot of patience. Even when you put yourself in the right spots, you can expect to spend long hours glassing the surrounding mountains with your binoculars, as we did in Barbary country, before the animals materialize.

Having tracked—and found—barbs, oryx, elk, and deer over the years in New Mexico, this spring, as we were traipsing around the desert southwest, we decided we’d try our hand at ibex, which is how we ended up south of Deming. There’s nice camping at Rockhound State Park, on the northeast flank of the Floridas, as well as fairly reliable ibex viewing in nearby Spring Canyon. But we wanted a more exploratory experience, so we took advantage of the public lands encircling the range, which offered up plenty of quiet boondocking opportunities for Artemis the Airstream, and spent much of our days in the southern part of the sky island.

The mountains here are steep, desiccated, and flat-out savage. Though we spent the better part of our first day trundling up and down 55-degree scree slopes, through grabby stands of Gambel oak, and over volcanic outcrops, we saw absolutely zero animals. That’s why our day two sighting up the rocky arroyo was such a thrill. Ibex are reclusive and notoriously difficult to find; their eyesight is around seven-power compared to humans. Even seeing them briefly at such a distance felt like a win. And though wild goats may not sound like an exotic sighting, billies (the males) weigh up to 200 pounds and sport scimitar-like horns that can grow up to five feet long. They cut an imposing figure, especially when you see them scampering across cliffs as easily as we’d traverse a sidewalk. By the time we’d snuck into a better position, our herd was already moving off, though we got another short glimpse of two big males with their dramatic horns silhouetted against the sky as they crested the ridge above us.

We could have gone home happy, but we headed out again a few mornings later—and good thing. At dawn, Jen spied another herd. The ibex were far off again, around 750 yards, but this time we had better cover and were able to move into position. We eventually set up in some rocks on a ridge above a rocky defile, where we watched the animals graze across the far slope.

Having grown up in Nigeria and gone on countless safaris, I can say that our ibex experience was just as rewarding, if not more so, than any game drive. The simple act of negotiating big, difficult country is part of the appeal. And it’s satisfying to find wildlife on your own and move stealthily enough that you go undetected. For a short time, you become part of the environment rather than just a clumsy human looking in.

For half an hour, we watched the herd, which had seven or eight big billies, until it trickled around the side of a cliff and out of view. Then, in the tangerine light of dawn, we pulled out some sausage, cheese, and a flask of coffee and savored a simple breakfast in big country.

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If You Go

Ibex, like most big game, are most active at dawn and dusk; begin well before sunrise and plan to be out past dark. Look for signs, including hoofprints and droppings, which can direct your search. As a rule, though, the goats favor the highest, rockiest, most gnarly terrain available for safety from predators, so plan to do a lot of vertical. (For the quickest sightings, try the state park at Spring Canyon, where the animals often congregate.)

The best tactic is to hit high ground very early, take cover in rock outcroppings or beneath a tree or bush, and then get out your binoculars. A set with high-quality glass, such as the Maven B1, is key to success, and a spotting scope like the Maven S-1 series can help push your glassing range from 700 or 800 yards to double or triple. Divide the hillsides into a grid and study them carefully. Movement will be the best giveaway, but also look for body shapes and, especially, horns, which can look out of place. Most of all, be patient. You can spend hours looking with no success, and then suddenly animals could appear. If you get tired of sitting, hike up to another high point to change your vantage and start again. These rules mostly hold true for all game animals in New Mexico, including oryx, Barbary sheep, elk, and deer.

A running-obsessed owner. Tons of track memorabilia. What’s not to love?

This weekend, two events promise to unleash a stumbling mass of humanity into the streets of New York City. On Sunday, the NYC Half Marathon debuts a brand-new interborough course, and 22,500 runners are expected to christen the route from Brooklyn to Manhattan, finishing in Central Park. Meanwhile, on Saturday, the Feast of St. Patrick will transform Midtown into a Guinness-fueled inferno. I’m getting sentimental just thinking about it.

Given the occasion, it’s only appropriate to tout an establishment that’s long been a fixture on the New York City running and drinking scenes. Coogan’s is an Irish pub in the Washington Heights neighborhood of northern Manhattan that opened in 1985. A sign outside reads: “America’s #1 Runners’ Restaurant.” (It might also be America’s only runners’ restaurant, which is even more impressive, as far as I’m concerned.) It shares a city block with the Armory, the nation’s premier indoor track and field venue and home of the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. For years, this proximity has meant that runners make up a significant portion of the pub’s clientele—imagine a Gotham equivalent of the Eliot Lounge (the long-defunct “unofficial finish line” of the Boston Marathon). Though I was never a regular, I spent some time in Coogan’s when I lived in nearby Inwood for a year.

Heeding the call of journalistic duty (and a desire to eat mozzarella sticks and drink beer in the early afternoon), I paid Coogan’s a visit on Sunday. I sat in a booth by the bar, near a framed photograph of 1,500-meter Olympic champion Matthew Centrowitz Jr., who, on at least one occasion, has demonstrated his karaoke talents in this very spot. Not long after I sat down, a high school girls’ track team, fresh from competing at the New Balance Nationals, convened for a team lunch.

I was soon joined by Coogan’s ebullient co-owner and running enthusiast Peter Walsh, who immediately shared some thoughts about the virtues of his favorite sport.

“If you go up to Van Cortlandt Park and watch a cross-country race on a December day, you’ll see a 12-year-old kid, snot coming out of her nose, pee running down her leg, mud on her face—that’s what our future leaders look like! That’s running!” Walsh said. He proceeded with a mini anthropology lecture that’s impossible to summarize but ended with a modest assertion that “running is the basis of everything in life.”

Unsurprisingly, running is also a dominant theme of the decor at Coogan’s. Posters above the bar advertise annual editions of the Salsa, Blues, and Shamrocks 5K, a competitive local race that Coogan’s started in 1998 to “take back the streets” from neighborhood drug dealers. There are signed singlets from pro runners like Jenny Simpson and Bernard Lagat. There’s a discus that belonged to four-time Olympic gold medalist Al Oerter. In one room, every single issue of Sports Illustrated that had a track and field cover has been framed. (And it’s more than you think. I didn’t count, but I’m guessing there are at least 100 issues.)

The Coogan’s experience is a little bit like visiting a runner’s equivalent of the Hard Rock Cafe, just without the excessive branding and with better food. Most of the desserts are named after middle-distance runners. Order a Drew Hunter (the national high school record holder in the indoor mile) and you get a sundae with chocolate sauce and whipped cream. It used to be called the Alan Webb, after the first high-schooler to break the four-minute mile indoors.

As Peter Walsh tells it, Webb wasn’t pleased.

“Alan calls me up and says, ‘Hey, what the hell is this? What happened to my dessert?’” Walsh said. (As a compromise, the Alan Webb sundae remains on the menu, with the addition of chopped nuts, to distinguish it from the Drew Hunter.)

Back in January, it looked like this winter would be Coogan’s last. New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which owns the building that houses the bar, was going to raise the monthly rent by $40,000, effectively forcing the hangout to shut down. When Coogan’s announced it would soon be closing, there was a massive response from locals who didn’t want a beloved institution to be priced out of a neighborhood it had helped build. After all, Coogan’s had always abided by a “hire local” policy (Walsh: “If they can walk to work, we hire them first”) and offered a sanctuary during the 1980s and ’90s, when Washington Heights was a far more violent place than it is today. As Jim Dwyer of the Times wrote about Coogan’s in January, “Where others saw a broken neighborhood and city, they built a sprawling, homey space that erased ethnic, class, racial and religious boundaries, fully embracing and embodying the promise of New York.”

That may sound a tad wistful, but the decision to close Coogan’s clearly struck a chord with the community it had been part of for more than three decades. A petition to “Save Coogan’s” drew thousands of supporters in a few hours. It worked.

Facing a public relations nightmare, New York-Presbyterian offered Coogan’s new, more favorable terms—the details of which haven’t been made public—allowing the bar to remain open. (For a more detailed account, check out Jon Michaud’s New Yorker story.)

Until this weekend, I hadn’t visited Coogan’s in more than a year. The last time I did, there were hundreds of running shirts and singlets suspended from the ceiling. Noticing their absence, I asked Walsh if he had removed them when it seemed like the place would be closing.

“You mean my Irish laundry line?” Walsh asked. “No, it was the fire department that made us take those down. I wasn’t here that day. If I was, I would have gotten the guy up to the bar, we would have had half a bottle of whiskey, and he would have forgotten why he was here.”

At this point, we were standing near the entrance, and Walsh was greeting groups of kids in tracksuits.

The New Balance Nationals were winding down next door. Coogan’s, meanwhile, was filling up. There were Dominican and African-American families. Old Irish guys. College kids. Hospital staff. Groups of runners engaged in a post-race team meal, track spikes dangling from the back of their chairs. It felt like an old-timey idyll of what a locals’ lunch spot should look like—an advertiser’s jealous fantasy of where kids celebrate after a Little League game. In the age of turbo-gentrification, the scene felt vaguely improbable—like the very notion of a “runner’s restaurant.”

“You come here to find out what’s happening in the neighborhood,” Walsh said. “Because you’re not going to find out at Starbucks.”

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So far, the Ferguson Fire has burned 96,810 acres in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains since it ignited 35 days ago. It’s cost two lives and injured 19 people. The actual price of fighting it will be measured in the tens of millions of dollars. All that doesn’t even put it on the top 10 list of the most destructive fires in California's history, but it is still going to be a fire that people talk about for years. Why? It closed most of Yosemite National Park for three weeks. 

Yosemite is the fifth most-visited national park and, as such, it's a major economic engine in the region. July and August are the park’s most popular months: last year, they accounted for 32 percent of the park's annual visitation—1,193,339 people. The park itself is massively backlogged with deferred maintenance costs and relies on entry fees to help fund critical projects. Currently, Yosemite has a $582,670,827 backlog of deferred maintenance. Even though it didn’t burn much of the park, the Ferguson fire will add millions to that backlog by reducing revenue this year. On top of all that, many local businesses depend on the income park visitors generate during the summer to keep lights on the rest of the year.   

I called Lynne Koontz, who works as an economist for the National Park Service and is the co-author of a report that assessed the total economic impact of parks on their surrounding communities. She explained that calculating the financial and economic impact of the Ferguson Fire is going to be difficult, and that the Park Service doesn't yet have data on how many visitors it lost during the closure. While the Yosemite Valley itself—by far the park's biggest draw—was closed, some visitors were able to reach the park's more remote areas in other ways, further complicating the data. "But you can look at visitation data, and extrapolate some broad strokes," she explained. So I did just that. 

Last year, 4,336,890 people visited Yosemite, bringing a total of $589 million to the local economy, according to Park Service estimates. This year, most of the park was closed for 20 days, reopening Tuesday. If we remove 20 of July and August’s 62 days, we can assume the park lost 384,948 visitors—or nearly nine percent of its annual total. The actual impact on visitation numbers will likely be greater, as the length of closure was announced as “indefinite,” likely causing tourists traveling from far away to cancel future trips. Plus, smoke from the fire choked park visitors for days before the park closed, which also likely impacted visitation. "I would think visitation number would be down for a good period before and after the closure," Koontz told me. 

The latest data on total entry fee revenue available comes from 2014, when Yosemite made $18,790,000 from its visitors. Eighty percent of entry fee revenue remains in Yosemite and pays for maintenance to roads, campgrounds, trails, and other infrastructure. If we continue with the estimate of a nine percent decrease in visitors, we can assume the park lost at least $1,691,100 in entry fees alone. 

In 2014, the Park Service made $10,974,000 from franchise fees paid by concessions operators in Yosemite. We can also assume the Ferguson Fire will knock at least nine percent off of 2018’s total—$987,660—which will impact the budget of the entire Park Service. That includes its ability to address its $11.9-billion maintenance backlog. If you’re driving through Smokey Mountain National Park next year, and get a flat tire after hitting a pothole, you might consider blaming the far away Ferguson Fire for that. 

But Yosemite and the Park Service will carry on. We may not be able to say the same about local businesses that depend on park-driven tourism to survive. 

In 2017, the Park Service calculated that visitors to Yosemite spent $452 million in the communities that surround the park. That supported 6,670 jobs, creating $205 million in labor income. Knocking nine percent or more off any of those numbers is going to hurt—by at least $40,680,000. Labor income in local communities could drop by $18,450,000.

Already, stories of hardship are filling media outlets nationwide. “If I hadn't had savings, which is depleted, I'd be scrambling for money or I wouldn't have a business,” local hotel owner George Shaw told Business Insider. He says the park closure cost him $200,000 in lost revenue, forcing him to fire eight of his 43 employees. 

"Money that was in our bank we now have to turn around and refund people on an experience we were not able to offer,” Scott Gehrman, who runs a local tour company, told Time. The closures came during his company’s busiest time of the year. The magazine estimates that local businesses could suffer a far greater impact than just the number of visitors lost to the three week closure. Because more visitors come to the park from far away during the summer, they fill hotels outside the park disproportionately during that season. Lost revenue estimates for that industry may be as much as 20 percent of their annual total. 

Add all those numbers up, and the financial impact is simply massive. The park itself will lose at least $2,678,760,  while the local community will lose businesses and jobs. The AP reports that the total economic impact on local businesses could be $50 million. And that's before we event talk about the cost of fighting the fire itself. 

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With this week's re-opening of the park, local businesses have launched a social media campaign designed to inform potential visitors that the park is good to go. #YosemiteNow is full of photos of smoke-free skies, and the park’s epic vistas. “Thank you to all the men and women that helped protect our piece of heaven in the Sierras,” reads one post. 

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Shackets, also known as shirt jackets, occupy a unique space in the gear world. They’re not quite jackets and they’re not quite shirts. But they are a great layer of warmth that’s perfect for cool nights around a campfire or days in a chilly office building. Simply put, they’re a fall wardrobe essential. Here are our favorite shackets specifically designed for women.

We’ve owned this shacket for a couple seasons now and love all the small details Duluth Trading Company put into it. The flannel outer is backed by 200-gram fleece to trap body heat in chilly environments. The integrated glasses-cleaning cloth on the bottom right seam proves useful time and time again. Plus, the back panel has two optional button cinches so you can choose to wear it more fitted or less.

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The exclusive use of bison-fiber insulation means this shacket sits on the higher end of the price spectrum. But it’s worth noting that the insulation is designed to keep you über-warm, almost down to freezing temperatures. If you’re looking for a piece that will keep you toasty while maintaining style points, this is the best option out there. 

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Part puffy jacket, part flannel, this shacket is reversible, allowing you to flip between the two styles depending on the situation. The flannel side has two chest pockets, while the puffy side has two waist hand pockets. The cuffs have two snap closures so you can roll them or keep them fastened. 

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There’s nothing better than a thick wool flannel on a chilly fall day. This shacket from Smartwool checks that box for us. Made from 79 percent merino wool and 20 percent nylon, it has four pockets to help you keep essentials close. 

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A redesign from an original REI 1978 piece, this shacket is as functional as it is stylish. The wind-resistant nylon and cotton shell has a durable water-repellent finish to shed light rain and snow, while a thin layer of polyester insulation keeps you warm. The drop-in front pockets with snap button closures make sure your keys stay exactly where you put them.

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The books, movies, music, and podcasts we couldn’t stop talking about

The beginning of April feels a little like taking the training wheels off after winter—maybe we should wait one more weekend to store the skis? But the end of April feels like barreling full speed ahead into backpacking and climbing trips, summer race training, and hammock lounging. But we already had plenty of momentum going when it came to reading stacks of books and binge-listening great new podcasts. (No joke: online managing editor Abigail Wise got halfway through the podcast The Habitat within a day of its release.) These picks made a lasting impression.

What We Read 

I've been reading The Harder They Come, T.C. Boyle’s 2015 novel about guns, sovereign citizens, and violence. Set in the forests of Northern California, it follows a few converging story lines—a retired school principal who kills a mugger while on vacation, his mentally ill survivalist son, and his conspiracy theorist older girlfriend. It’s Boyle at his best. Shockingly inventive language, perfect pace, plots that keep you moving from the next page to the next. I’m 50 pages from the end and already regretting it’s not longer.

—Jonah Ogles, articles editor

This month, one of my favorite newsletters, The Hustle , launched a weekend edition where they report an original story, rather than sharing curated links and the latest business and tech news. I especially loved the first story on the unlimited, first-class ticket for life American Airlines sold in the early 1980s. They needed a lot of money, and fast, so they came up with this inventive offering and sold 28 passes for $250,000 each. But what AA failed to account for were “super-travelers” who would take over 10,000 flights in 25 years, and cost the airline millions. If you don’t already subscribe, I highly recommend it. 

—Jenny Earnest, social media manager

Is it sad that I read all day and go home and read more at night? My excuse: I’ve been following the top ten book lists of famous folks posted regularly by bookstore One Grand and decided to tackle the favorites of Greta Gerwig, whom I admire. Her choices include a lot of inherent feminism and storylines involving coming-of-age revelations, and the authors hail from various parts of the globe. I loved Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and Joan Didion’s The White Album, Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women (a fantastic finale!), and The Death of the Heart (what a great title) by the late Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen. I hated Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, though. Still have another five to get through, and then maybe I’ll hit the lists of Tom Hanks or Alice Waters.  

—Tasha Zemke, copy editor

I read Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest years ago, but I hadn’t heard of the Oregonian’s second book, Sometimes a Great Notion, till recently. I’m about three-quarters of the way through it now (and it’s a big one, at over 600 pages), and I have to say, I like it even better than the first. Kesey dedicates long, lyrical paragraphs to descriptions of the Pacific Northwest’s dense forests, which become as much a character in the book as the human protagonists—a tough logging clan staking out a claim on the banks of an Oregon river outside the fictional town of Wakonda. It's a world to get lost in during long hours reading on the beach this summer. 

—Axie Navas, executive editor

What We Listened To

I binge-listened to all the episodes of “No Filter,” a series from WNYC and The Cut about women and the internet. The cast of interviewees is totally stacked on its own (think Christiane Amanpour, Barbara Kruger, etc.), plus host Manoush Zomorodi also has big-name writers from The Cut, like Ann Friedman and Allison P. Davis, come on to discuss the interviews afterward. The conversations cover a wide variety of subjects—politics, art, media, tech, and more—so there's something for everyone, even if you're not the kind of person who’s constantly scrolling through Twitter (as I am). I’m surprised the series hasn't gotten more buzz—don’t sleep on it!

—Molly Mirhashem, associate editor 

Kacey Musgraves’s new album, Golden Hour, makes me feel like I’m 13 and listening to Taylor Swift’s namesake album for the first time. Musgraves has a way of dealing in well-worn themes like crushes, love, and heartbreak that casts everything in a fresh light. Perfect for driving through the desert with the windows down, crying your way through a breakup, or dancing around the kitchen. I never thought I’d care for country-pop after middle school, but I was hooked when I heard “Space Cowboy,” a genius, genre-blending breakup song. Then I listened to the whole darn thing three times in a row. The first track, “Slow Burn,” is another standout.

—Abbie Barronian, assistant editor

Remember MTV’s The Real World, in which a bunch of strangers lived in a house and we watched to see how they got along? Gimlet’s new podcast The Habitat is like that, except on fake Mars. That is, a remote Hawaiian volcano that apparently resembles Mars, where NASA sent six volunteers for a year-long experiment in 2015. I’ve listened to three episodes so far, and I’m hooked. Host Lynn Levy introduces the participants and helps us understand why they’re there: Crew commander Carmel from Whitefish, Montana, loves the outdoors and wants to see what kind of plants will grow in HI-SEAS, the name of the habitat. Growing up, engineer Andrzej watched the cheesy ’80s film Space Camp and decided he wanted to become an astronaut. The crew sends recordings to Levy, and she mixes it all with recordings from real space missions throughout history, giving listeners a feel for what it’s like to eat, exercise, and unclog a toilet in space. For someone who grew up going to space camp—not the cool kind with flashy gadgets like zero-gravity machines, but the ultra nerdy kind where we were quizzed on facts about the papier-mâché planets we crafted—this podcast is the dream. 

—Abigail Wise, online managing editor

I've spent the last few days listening to Bob Dorough, a jazz pianist and singer who passed away at 94 earlier this month. If you’re familiar with Schoolhouse Rock!, then you’re familiar with Dorough’s music. He composed many of its songs, including the classic “Three Is a Magic Number.” Although that’s his most recognizable credit, he also played with Miles Davis and is responsible in part for bringing together a community of jazz musicians in the Poconos. You could walk into the Deer Head Inn, a jazz club/inn in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, and see a hiker or two from the Appalachian Trail, a top-notch jazz performance, and Dorough hanging out at the bar. 

—Will Gordon, assistant editor

What We Watched and Otherwise Experienced

The Giro d’Italia starts on May 4, and I’ll actually be able to watch the race live from my desk. That’s because FloBikes is expanding and adding events like the Giro, Tour de Suisse, Amstel Gold, and Il Lombardia to its streaming schedule. In the past, bike race coverage was a mess: a weird mix of illegal streams, paid apps, and way-too-short TV highlights. Some races like the Tour de France aren’t available on FloBikes, but the company’s expanded schedule is a move in the right direction for fans. It’s not cheap, but for $150 a year or $30 a month it’s finally possible to watch some of the most exciting races of the year in one place.

—Scott Rosenfield, digital general manager

I’m just over two decades late in watching Contact, but I finally did after a visit to the Very Large Array in southern New Mexico, which features fairly prominently in the movie. Contact is about an hour and a half too long (much of it spent on an unconvincing romance between Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey) but it does make a great case for getting a Ph.D. in astronomy. Foster’s character, inspired by real life SETI director Jill Tarter, gets to travel to the lush surroundings of Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, the dramatic desert of the VLA, and—spoiler alert—a wormhole. I struggled (with enthusiasm!) through astrobiology lectures, but Contact has me wishing I were smarter so I could live in such beautiful locales and spend my days listening to outer space.

—Erin Berger, senior editor

After watching the season two premier of Westworld, I am very excited about the robot buffalo. Longhorn cattle appeared as glorious valkyries alongside badass heroine host Maeve in a season-two trailer; the buffalo made a brief but impactful debut in the premier. And given that a white buffalo is also showcased in the season’s new opening credits, and that this is going to be an official Summer of the Megafauna, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a stampede reckoning that cries vengeance for a thousand sport hunts.

—Aleta Burchyski, senior copy editor