Month: March 2019

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Oh, you treat your dogs better than you would human children, too? Well, then you've come to the right person for advice on what your dog resolutions should be for the new year. 

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People might scoff at the idea of putting jackets on our three thickly coated adventure dogs, but I actually think they’re a crucial tool for taking them outdoors in winter. An insulated jacket helps Wiley, who has the thinnest coat of the three, stay comfortable for longer in very cold conditions. He’s noticeably perkier through long snowy hikes when he has it on. And, for all three dogs, their insulated jackets provide a perfect, packable sleep system. On cold nights, they stay off my sleeping bag and sleep more soundly when they’re all zipped into their Ruffwear Powderhound puffy coats. And, versus the puffy quilts and other solutions I’ve tried, the coats actually stay on them all night. 

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I also like to put jackets on the dogs during hunting season. Wrapping them almost completely in blaze orange makes them visible more than half a mile away, maximizing their safety in the woods. That added visibility helps me too; a few weeks ago I was able to spot Bowie from that distance after we surprised a herd of mule deer, and he gave chase. I still had to sprint after him for a solid 20 minutes, but at least I knew I was sprinting in the right direction. The Hurtta Rambler vest is made from neoprene, so it doesn’t absorb any water, and shrugs off abrasion. I’ve noticed that ours help keep mud off the dogs through snowy hikes, too.

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After a bunch of instances of horse euthanasia drug ending up in even very expensive kibble, and after struggling to find a solution for Wiley’s chronic skin irritation, I switched the dogs to a raw meat diet last year. Doing so perceptibly improved their health immediately, cured Wiley’s skin problems, and is actually saving me money. But, the thing about going raw is that it takes a little more care, time, and attention than just throwing a bowl of kibble on the floor. I learned all the ins and outs from Kymthy Schultze’s book, Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats. 

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In a 35 mile-per-hour car crash, an unrestrained 60-pound dog will become a projectile with 2,700 pounds of force. That doesn’t just risk their lives—it might kill the car's human occupants, too. I explored that issue in depth in this article, but the short version is that the Ruffwear Load Up harness is the safest, and most convenient way to enable your dog to ride along with you safely. 

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This is actually what I have given Wiley for his birthday every year for the last five years: a solo wilderness trip with dad. Your dog will like nothing better than exploring the backcountry with you, running leash-free for days at a time, laying around a campfire, and guarding the tent at night. Heck, you might even have a good time, too. 

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Climbing rope makes the best dog leashes. It’s strong, dogs can’t bite through it, and it doesn’t absorb water or dirt. But, all of the commercially available options are single strand, which as you’ve probably learned, is incredibly uncomfortable to hold. So, I make my own. 

You’ll need 20 or 30 feet of eight-milimeter accessory cord, one small locking carabiner, and one large locking carabiner. I follow the below instructions (they’re for paracord, but work just fine), and attach the small locking carabiner at the beginning, as the hasp for connecting the leash to your dog’s harness. The larger ‘biner I clip to the handle loop, and use to tie the dogs up when I go in stores, or if I need to tether them to something during a hike. Use proper weight-rated climbing equipment, and you’ll create a leash that will be capable of safely restraining your dog for years of hard use. 

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You don’t still pull your dog around by his neck, do you? A harness will shift those forces to their torso, which isn’t just safer and more comfortable, it will also help train them not to pull. With three big dogs, I’ve tried virtually every harness available over the years, but it’s the Ruffwear Front Range that works the best. Where other designs can come out of adjustment too easily, and rub the dog’s armpits raw, or just wear out over time, the Front Range fits much more securely, and is made to stand up to all the mud, brush, and wrestling your dog encounters every day. 

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Do you understand what motivates your dog’s behavior, good or bad? Is your dog as well-trained as you’d like? Do you feel like your relationship is close and sympathetic to your dog’s nature? For my style of dog ownership, I’ve found that the Monks of New Skete offer the best guidance. Start with the Art of Raising a Puppy, if you’re new to this. Their latest book, Let Dogs Be Dogs, co-authored by professional dog trainer Marc Goldberg, is currently helping me refresh my methods as I raise my third puppy, and evolve my relationship with my older dogs. 

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Over the course of three days starting on November 17, 15-year-old Connor Herson freed the Nose on Yosemite’s El Capitan, a sweeping polished line of piton scarred cracks and face climbing, with the support of his father, Jim.

Thousands of teams have aid-climbed the Nose over the years, but a free ascent—where gear is used for protection but not for upward progression—is extremely rare. Connor’s ascent marks the sixth overall, and by far the youngest, free ascent of the line.

Freeing the Nose is difficult because of its 3,000-foot length and steepness. Two cryptic sections make up the crux. The Great Roof, pitch number 21 of 31, requires shoving one’s fingertips under the bottom of a 20-foot right-traversing feature. This vertical section offers few footholds, forcing the climber to paste the front of their climbing shoes onto fingernail edges on the face. The even more difficult Changing Corners comes a few pitches higher, where the wall steepens and where many of the world’s best climbers have failed. Lynn Hill, who in 1993 became the first person to free climb the Nose, named the sequence required to get through here “the Houdini.”

Tommy Caldwell and his then wife Beth Rodden became the second and third to free the Nose when they completed it in 2005.

Connor’s father, Jim, is a robotics engineer out of Silicon Valley with 30 years of experience climbing big walls in Yosemite. He’s held speed records on both El Cap (including the Nose) and the Regular Northwest Face on Half Dome. He’s also freed El Cap’s Salathé Wall (but not in a continuous push). Connor’s mother, Anne Smith, is also a climber and works as a software engineering manager. Connor’s sister Kara, 20, also climbs and did Half Dome in a day with her father in winter at age 12 and the Nose in a day at age 14.

Kara and Connor’s first big wall was the 2,000-foot-tall Regular Northwest Face on Half Dome, which they climbed with their father before they were teenagers.

Connor’s free ascent of the Nose with his father’s help was bittersweet. The two dedicated the climb to their friends Tim Klein and Jason Wells, who died earlier this year in an accident on El Cap.

“Here we are at the top of the Captain,” says Jim, off camera, in a phone video he recorded at the top. “Connor, what did you just do?”

“I just freed the Nose,” Connor says, a bit bashfully.

“Good job, man,” Jim says. “Was it hard? Was it fun?”

“Yeah,” Connor says, “it’s a good route.”

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Could saving our nation’s natural heritage be the issue that unites a divided country? It looks that way, at least in New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District, where a pro-public-lands Democrat achieved a narrow upset over a pro-Trump, anti-monument Republican. 

Xochitl Torres Small, a 33-year-old attorney and first-time Congressional candidate, just won her bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in a massive region that’s 99.6 percent rural and about 60 times the size of Rhode Island. She’ll be the first woman ever and only the third Democrat in the last half century to represent the district. (Her win also makes New Mexico the only state in the West with an entirely Democratic U.S. House and Senate.) 

https://twitter.com/XochforCongress/status/1049409511016919040 

To be fair, Torres Small mostly campaigned on key issues such as immigration, health care, and education. But she's also been consistently vocal about protecting the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, a 776-square-mile preserve made up of wild, rugged mountains that's located in her district. Designated by President Barack Obama in 2014, the monument is popular with locals, but was nevertheless the target of efforts by President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to shrink several national monuments last year. 

“The community invested over a decade to carefully study, document, and negotiate protection of these Wild West lands,” Torres Small wrote in an open letter to Zinke in June. “The result is a stunning national monument that receives overwhelming local support and attracts national and international acclaim, and the accompanying tourism dollars that come with that. Please, don't interfere with our hard-earned source of local pride. Let us keep our Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument.”

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Her Republican opponent, Yvette Herrell, served as a state chairperson for the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit that has aggressively sought to privatize public lands. 

Torres Small is just one success story in a broader wave of candidates who have embraced protecting our public lands as part of their campaign platforms. With the nascent success of conservation as a national issue that can turn out voters and swing campaigns, I hopeto see more politicians from both parties jumping on the public lands bandwagon in 2020 and beyond. 

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Bags are the workhorses of your closet. They take the abuse that comes with being used day in, day out. They carry our clothes on business trips, our ski gear to the slopes, and our dirty waders after a day of fishing. No matter how much junk you need to schlep, United By Blue probably has a bag for you, and they’re all on sale through 11/2. These are our favorites. 

The Mt. Drew is a long-standing staple of the United By Blue collection for one reason: its no-nonsense construction and packability make it an easy choice for any weekend trip. 

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A compact and handsome travel bag that’s just the right size for all your weekend essentials plus a few extras.

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With a 12-liter capacity and organized interior pockets, the Lakeland is a versatile work piece. Plus, it includes a water-resistant storm flap that provides extra security during wet commutes.

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A sturdy and reliable everyday pack with a padded laptop sleeve, a small zip compartment for easy access to frequently used items, and a variety of well-organized interior and exterior pockets.

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Classic and simple with countless uses, this pouch is the perfect stowaway to keep small valuables organized and easy to find.

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A new podcast, “Mothers of Invention,” spotlights women fighting climate change

Mary Robinson, the first female president of Ireland and a former UN high commissioner, has spent the past three decades traveling the globe, trying to find solutions to human rights issues. During those travels, in places like Sudan and Syria, she noticed that women in those countries were the most impacted by climate change—and the most impactful in trying to find ways to counter the creep of sea-level rise, drought, and man-made disasters. They were addressing problems that trickle into everything from economics to education.

Robinson didn’t think people were talking about it enough, so she teamed up with Irish comedian Maeve Higgins, who also has a podcast about U.S. immigration, to start a new conversation. Together, they host Mothers of Invention, a biweekly podcast that launched at the end of July about women working for climate justice.

The women’s back-and-forth is as charming as their accents, but the real glory is in their storytelling. Robinson and Higgins show the history, scope, and scale of the climate movement, with each episode focusing on one topic and weaving together interviews with multiple women. Guests have included 350.org executive director May Boeve, Native American environmental rights activist Tara Houska, and Australian-Bangladeshi human rights lawyer Tessa Kahn, co-founder of the Climate Litigation Network.

Higgins told us about going on the air with the woman who became her president in 1990, when Higgins was eight, and their mission to spotlight women in the world of climate justice.

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On podcasting with your former president: “[Mary Robinson] feels such an urgency around pushing the facts about people on the ground countering climate change, so she went to a production company to try to make a movie. They told her, ‘We could do a movie, but it’ll take two years, or we could do a podcast right away.’ She was like, ‘Great! What’s a podcast?’ So that’s where I came in. She is infectious, to the point where our whole team has made changes. A lot of us have stopped eating meat. I just divested from Chase Bank—they hung up the phone on me. I don’t have a lot of money, but it does make a difference.”

On looking at the bright side: “As a surface-level consumer of news about climate, I had been paralyzed. I felt like it was hopeless until I met all these people. Now I think there are absolutely things I can do. Ninety-eight percent of coverage of climate is negative, and I don’t think that’s fair. The time for lamenting is over. Let’s focus on people who are actually making changes for the better.”

On listening to women: “Our tagline is that climate change is a man-made problem with a feminist solution. It’s quite a provocative statement, but I think it’s totally true. We’ve all been living in these patriarchal societies. Mary really understands how power works, and through her work on human rights, she saw that women are first and worst affected by climate change. Women tend to die more in forest fires and floods or monsoons. They’re the ones that it’s happening to the most, but on the ground, in her experience, they’re the ones coming up with the solutions. We’ve gotten some blowback, but I think everyone can be a feminist. Please, you’re welcome.”

On learning on the job: “This was my ignorance from being a white person who grew up in the global north, but I saw people in Bangladesh or Australia and thought, ‘They’re the victims of climate change, it’s not me.’ But they’re also the heroes; they’re the ones who know what to do and are coming up with the solutions.”

On intersectionality: “We talked to Sarra Teakola, who is getting a PhD in climate science but who is also a Black Lives Matter protester. Now the intersection is so obvious to me, but she had to spell it out at first. For instance, you’re more likely to die in a heat wave in Los Angeles if you’re black.

“The women’s movement doesn’t always talk about climate, and climate justice itself isn’t a widely known term, so we want to bring that to the forefront. It touches on so many things. So much of human migration is driven by climate change.”

On amplification: “Women have to be told to toot their own horns. No one is going to toot it for you. Meanwhile, there are men out there with air horns on their cars.”

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You can divide a successful ski day into two equally important parts: skiing and après-ski. Your attire for the après portion of your ski day is just as crucial as the shell you wear on the mountain. You’re going to want to slip into the softest, most comfortable sweatpants known to man. There are lots of options out there, so we’ve picked five of our favorite men’s sweatpants based on personal testing and online reviews.

These sweatpants are all about the plush fleece lining, which takes lounging capabilities to another level. Tapered cuffs keep you stylish when you have to run out for more beer, but really, it’s all about that fleece.

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The Ponto pants are great for workouts, thanks to the lightweight, breathable polyester-spandex blend, which has four-way stretch and moisture-wicking chops. They’re soft and light and have a tailored cut for a modern aesthetic.

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The Rival’s fabric is mostly cotton (80 percent cotton and 20 percent polyester), so the emphasis in these pants is on lounging. Nothing fancy here—just really soft sweatpants when all you want to wear is really soft sweatpants.

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Easily the most stylish sweatpants on this list, the Sunday lounge pants transition seamlessly from après-ski lounging to lazy morning coffee runs. The lightweight flannel contains 3 percent spandex for stretch. An interior drawcord plus a button-and-zip fly give these pants a more tailored look. Think of them as your fancy sweatpants.

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The low-profile fit of these pants make them ideal for layering during adventurous pursuits on the coldest days, but the velour fleece gives them a next-to-skin softness that screams naptime. Zippered pockets keep your cellphone in place when you’re totally horizontal.

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The call volume at the Surf Station picked up dramatically on Friday, September 21. Thanks to a concerned customer, employees at the Saint Augustine, Florida, store had known for about two days that a scammer was impersonating their business online, but Friday was when things “got heavy,” says manager Tony Berracol.

The problem: A scammer had grabbed assets like logos and photos from the legit Surf Station website, then set up a quick-hit copy on a similar URL. Brand-new boards from premier makers like Channel Islands, Firewire, and Lost were advertised at 70 to 90 percent off. Four other doppelgänger sites, likely from the same scammer, also appeared.

Berracol says the scammers bought ads on Facebook—a common tactic among crooks—to target potential victims. It worked. “We must have gotten 100 phone calls that Friday,” he says. “Some were people who were about to buy [products] or had already checked out. It’s slowed down since then, but people are still getting ripped off.” Some of his customers called wondering when an order would be shipped, while others were concerned they had gotten scammed. Still others were simply tipping off the shop to the existence of the other sites.

Outdoor gear is undeniably expensive. Coolers for $300. Jackets that cost $750. Road bikes that routinely run to five figures. But it isn’t cheap to make. “You can’t even manufacture surfboards for the cost these guys are charging,” says Berracol. “People are unaware of the real price.”

The industry has struggled with scams like this for years. “I saw my first outright scam site in about 2010,” says Andrew Love, the longtime director of brand security for Specialized Bicycles. Love’s job is to battle criminals trying to capitalize on Specialized’s business. Much of his work involves trying to shut down online sellers hawking counterfeit goods. But he also has to fight scammers who have no intention of delivering any products, even fake ones. “I’ve knocked down hundreds of these,” Love says.

The scammers sometimes imitate a company’s own site, under the factory-outlet ruse. But they also impersonate retailers like the Surf Station. Their modus operandi follows a pattern: the scammers set up a site with assets like photos, logos, and product copy lifted from legitimate sources, offer jaw-dropping discounts, and then flood Facebook and other social-media platforms with ads. Because advertisements aren’t expensive, they can be targeted to particular demographics and optimized around user activity or even browser history, like searching “surfboard sale” on Google.

Love is currently battling a site that advertises S-Works tarmac discs for $260, a nearly 98 percent markdown from the admittedly astronomical retail price of $11,000. That discount is completely unhinged from reality. But scammers play on human psychology, appealing to narratives like how the traditional retail model involves too many middlemen, and that you can save 70, 80, or 90 percent with their direct model.

Specialized isn’t the only bike-industry target; previous victims include Scott and Trek. In outdoor apparel and shoes, Salomon has been hit, as has the North Face. One site capitalized on high-end cooler brands, including Yeti. It’s a persistent enough problem that Trek recently posted a page on its website detailing how consumers can determine whether a seller is legitimate or not.

Early scam sites were often poorly done, but today’s versions are becoming increasingly sophisticated. “A [Specialized] retailer in the UK had a similar situation” to the Surf Station, Love says. “The scammers even copied employee headshots.” Some scammers will generate a tracking number for shipping. Others will send a physical item of some kind, perhaps a keychain or other trinket, intended to show that a product—though not the one that was ordered—was in fact delivered, says Eddie Toy, the Surf Station’s web developer. That helps the scammers fight back legally when jilted buyers lodge complaints.

Scammers use social-media ads for the same reason legitimate companies do: they’re a cost-effective way to reach specific audiences. (This year 66 percent of digital advertising dollars will be spent on Google and Facebook properties, according to Salesforce.) “We’ve noticed that a lot of this starts on Facebook and Instagram, because there’s a lower barrier to entry for placing ads on those platforms,” says Trek spokesman Eric Bjorling, adding that Trek actively advertises on several social-media platforms. “You can make an ad that’s similar to the real brand’s ad, and it’s hard to tell the difference when you’re scrolling your feed.” 

“Facebook prohibits advertisements that are deceptive, false, or misleading,” a Facebook representative told me via e-mail. She said that Facebook unpublished the fraudulent Surf Station ads and disabled the account promptly, noting that none of the ads were reported for intellectual-property violations. But Surf Station staffers provided Outside with a copy of an IP violation report submitted to Facebook on September 24, and said they continued to get reports of buyers throughout that week. It’s possible that the scammer had multiple accounts set up to purchase ads, according to Toy. The Facebook spokesperson told me that all ads go through an automated review process that includes an analysis of ad text, images, and website landing pages that the ads lead to, and in some cases a human review as well. But the Facebook system missed the clear signs in the Surf Station case, such as promised discounts of up to 90 percent, and a landing page with weak SEO presence that had been live for less than two weeks. The system doesn’t catch everything, the Facebook spokesperson admitted, but she contended that Facebook continues to add staff and resources to fight the problem of scams.

Although Facebook instituted a mandatory identity-verification process earlier this year for political ad buyers and certain commercial ads (such as cryptocurrencies), it has not yet expanded that to commercial ad buyers in general.

How can you tell when a site is not legitimate? Some clues our sources have mentioned: beware if a site’s content includes sloppy product copy or pixelated, low-resolution images, product specs don’t match those of the manufacturer, and the only contact information is an online form. Legitimate sellers list phone numbers and e-mail contacts. Another telling sign is if the site is brand-new, but a WhoIs search will show its country and date of registration, even if other contact information is hidden.

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If you see a scam, there are several things you can do: Alert the manufacturer or retailer. Flag the ads on social media. And if you got scammed, file a report with the FBI and dispute the charge with your credit-card provider. (They should communicate quickly and directly with you, but don’t expect much from other organizations.) Despite concerted efforts by the Surf Station staffers, it took almost two weeks to knock the scam sites offline. They told me that they didn’t receive more than an automated-form response to their requests from the hosting company, Facebook, and the FBI. The scammer, meanwhile, has registered over 3,000 domains this year, says Berracol.

It’s hard to avoid the almost instinctual response to a great deal, and sources we spoke with were sympathetic to the lure that these sites offer. Love says that even though he does brand protection for a living, he’s been suckered. Innovations like Amazon’s dynamic pricing make determining a fair cost even harder. “Yesterday my daughter lost her Crocs, and I’m looking for a pair on Amazon, and I don’t know what’s real and what’s not,” he says, laughing. He saw shoes ranging from $15 a pair to $50.

And scammers prey on victims’ passion for their sports. “People are just trying to get a great deal,” says Trek’s Bjorling. “They’re trying to enjoy something that would normally be unattainable to them.”

American sprinting, Shelby Houlihan, Caster Semenya. The list goes on.

This year’s track season kicked off on a grim note when it turned out that the latest doping Icarus was none other than Kenya’s champion 1,500-meter runner Asbel Kiprop. Back in May, it was reported that Kiprop had tested positive for EPO. So far, he has insisted on his innocence (and fired off a few cryptic Tweets) but I’m not holding out hope. 

Fortunately, if you’re looking for something to get excited about this track season, there are plenty of viable alternatives.

U.S. Men’s Sprinting Has Its Groove Back

Last year saw the curtain descend on the Usain Bolt show and we all had a good cry. During the decade of Bolt dominance, it sometimes felt as if the most noteworthy news about American male sprinters was the way they seemed to bungle the handoff at a championship 4X100 meter relays again, and again, and again… and again. (It also didn’t help that Bolt’s two main U.S. challengers, Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay, both failed drug tests.) But now that the great man has moved on to teasing us with intimations about a burgeoning soccer career, a new generation of U.S. sprinters is making a name for itself. Christian Coleman (age 22), Noah Lyles (21), and Ronnie Baker (24) have all run well below the ten-second benchmark and are arguably the three best sprinters in the world at the moment. Here’s to the future.

Caster Semenya Is Unbelievably Focused 

In May, the IAAF announced that it would be reinstating its controversial policy to set an upper limit on the testosterone levels of female athletes. To justify the decision, the athletics world governing body cited a study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which concluded that female athletes with higher T-levels had a “significant competitive advantage.” This month, however, news emerged that the BJSM study was littered with bogus data points—leading some to call for a retraction of the study. Meanwhile Caster Semenya, the South African 800-meter runner who is presumed to be hyperandrogenic, has stated that intends to challenge the IAAF rule in court. Through it all, Semenya has continued to race—and win. As of this writing, her unbeaten streak in the 800-meters stands at 37 races. In June, she ran a personal best of 1:54.25—the fourth fastest time ever. 

Shelby Houlihan Is Throwing Down

In recent years, the most intriguing rivalry in U.S. women’s middle distance running has been Jenny Simpson vs. Shannon Rowbury. They were the only American women consistently capable of running under four minutes in the 1,500-meters—the unofficial standard to make it into the upper ranks of world class metric milers. But there’s a new sheriff in track town, and her name is Shelby Houlihan. This has been a breakout year for the 25-year-old Iowan, who completed a rare 1,500/5,000 double at the USATF Outdoor National Championships in June. Impressive as this was, Houlihan trumped herself earlier this month, when she won the 1,500-meter event at Lausanne’s Diamond League event in a PB of 3:57.34. (In doing so, she vanquished a several of the best middle distance runners in the world, including Sifan Hassan, Laura Muir, and, yes, Caster Semenya.) And then, last Saturday, Houlihan set a new American record in the 5,000 when she ran 14:34.45 in Belgium. 

Ajee Wilson Deserves More Respect 

It’s not easy to make a name for yourself in the women’s 800 during the Caster Semenya era, but Ajee Wilson is doing a pretty good job. Despite Semenya’s continued steamrolling of her competition, Wilson has quietly put together an admirable 800-meter resume of her own. In fact, she’s put herself in good stead to be considered the best American half miler we’ve ever seen. And she’s only 24 years old. Following successive gold medals in the 800 at the 2011 World Youth Championships and the 2012 World Junior Championships, Wilson accrued multiple national titles (indoors and outdoors), as well as a Diamond League win at a time where the competition in the women’s 800 is arguably as hard as it’s ever been. Last season was Wilson’s best to date, as she medalled in the 800 at the IAAF World Championships and ran a national record of 1:55.61. For context, prior to this season, the fastest Caster Semenya had ever run was 1:55.16. Could Wilson deliver the upset of the decade by taking down Semenya later this summer? Stranger things have happened—though I’m not sure what they are.  

Jakob Ingebrigtsen Is Norway’s Boy Wonder 

It’s probably a stretch to assume that I could convince an American audience to watch the European Athletics Championships, which will be taking place in Berlin from August 7 to August 12. (It’s enough of a challenge to get Americans to care about stateside track meets.) But this year’s iteration of the biennial competition is especially intriguing, thanks teenage sensation Jakob Ingebrigtsen. The Norwegian 1,500-meter specialist caused a stir last year when he became the youngest sub four-minute miler in history, running 3:58.07 at the 2017 Pre Classic as a 16-year-old. This year, at the advanced age of 17, Ingebrigtsen has taken his perverse precociousness to another level, improving his mile PR to 3:52.28 and clocking 3:31.18 in the 1,500-meters. As things stand, Ingebrigtsen has a legitimate chance to crown himself European champion as an adolescent. The awkward years aren’t awkward for everyone, it seems.  

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After 12 years of dogsledding, four years of training my own dog team, and two years of qualifying races, I’ll be entering my first Iditarod in less than three months. This is no time at all, especially considering the 1,500 miles of training I plan to complete between now and then. All the things I’ve encountered up to this point—the blizzards, the moose, the 30-below mornings—pale against the specter of the big race itself: a thousand-mile trek across the Alaskan interior, which crosses the jagged Alaska Range, goes alongside the bone-cold Yukon River, and ends with a three-day push along the frozen Bering Sea.

I live in Wisconsin, but before I even registered for the Iditarod, I knew I wanted to train for it in Alaska. “I know a place you can stay,” a friend told me this summer, “but you’ll be, like, all in.” It sounded good. What else was I going to do before my first Iditarod: think about other things?

Which is how I, along with my husband, Quince Mountain, and our handler, Chrissie Bodznick—a wildland firefighter and longtime friend—ended up renting a tiny cabin on a steep hill, overlooking 29 wooden doghouses, which in turn overlook the white Susitna River. The cabin is part of Alpine Creek Lodge, a wilderness camp along the Denali Highway, which is impassible to cars all winter. From November on, the best way to get to the lodge from the closest plowed road, which is almost 70 miles away, is by snowmobile or dogsled.

If you can get to it at all, that is. The first time we tried, exhausted after two weeks of driving from Wisconsin (and stopping to let 29 dogs in and out of the truck four times a day), we encountered some mushers at the end of the plowed road. The snow was light, but Denali Highway was blanketed with glare ice—too slick for driving and mushing. Attempting to navigate the road was “death defying,” the mushers told us solemnly, and these weren’t the kind of guys who used words like death defying lightly. We and the dogs ended up living out of the truck for four frustrating days, until snowfall brought softer trails.

When Claude and Jennifer Bondy founded Alpine Creek Lodge in 2008, friends advised them not to cater to mushers. Mushers smell like dog poop. They fall asleep in public and stuff their pockets with snacks. They’re usually broke, and their huskies howl at two in the morning.

“Sounds like my kind of people,” Claude said. In the years since it opened, the lodge has become a hub for Alaska’s mushers and handlers, who use the adjacent snow-covered highway to train for races. Tourists come out for northern-lights viewing or hunting trips and find themselves across the communal table from former Iditarod champs, spooning moose-aroni out of paper bowls. The Bondys’ teenage son, Bob, leads gold-prospecting trips near the lodge when he’s not running his trapline. He’s turning 16 next year, so he’s moving into his own cabin, which he’ll build using beetle-killed-spruce logs from a nearby forest. His Jack Russell terrier puppy, Ruby, bounces at his heels while he works.

In our short time at the cabin, we’ve already established a routine. We live most of our waking hours by headlamp and run the team for as many hours as we sleep, dancing to stay warm on the thin runners of a tandem dogsled. Then we scoop poop and mash up thawed beef while the dogs rest in their wooden houses. We fetch water from a creek below the cabin and carry it up a steep hill to warm on the lodge’s woodstove. We doze off in our boots. We stack food for the dogs on pallets—400 pounds of kibble and 700 pounds of ground beef (we’re working on buying 1,000 pounds of chum salmon)—and then watch those stacks dwindle with alarming speed. “Some people dream about this kind of self-sufficiency,” Chrissie observed the first time she hauled a cooler up the icy hill from the creek. “Personally, I think it’s inefficient in the modern era.”

Everything here is inefficient in the modern era, but that’s kind of the point. Dogsledding is itself a rejection of modernity. The sport reached its heyday a century ago, when communities across the north used sled dogs to transport mail and supplies. Old-timers still remember when every family had their own dog team. But by the 1950s, when the Iditarod was barely a gleam in the eye of legendary musher Joe Redington, the sport was already dying out. Twenty years later, in partnership with historian Dorothy Page, Joe and his friends organized the first Iditarod—then a monthlong trek from village to village, with racers stopping to bargain for beaver and caribou meat along the way. The purpose was threefold: to preserve a historic gold-mining trail, to honor a turn-of-the-century dogsled relay that brought diphtheria vaccination to Nome in time to prevent an epidemic, and to save long-distance mushing from disappearing altogether.

Today, the Iditarod is the sport’s marquee event, its Wimbledon and Daytona 500 combined. Top teams finish in eight to ten days, averaging more than 100 miles per day on the trail. Sure, you can drive a snowmobile now, or even a car, and spend your winters waiting inside for spring. You could “be warm and have money,” as one Iditarod veteran (optimistically) imagined the non-mushing life during a recent conversation. Or you could cross the Last Frontier at a dog’s pace, step by step, your mukluks gliding inches from the ground, staring at your best friends’ butts by the glow of your headlamp. I know where I’ll be.

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Feet without their owners attached seem to be turning up all over the place.

On November 16, a person looking for returnable bottles found a foot clad in a gray Nike running shoe in a dumpster at a boat ramp at Rogers Landing Park, located on the Willamette River, about 20 miles southwest of downtown Portland, Oregon, the Yamhill County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a Facebook post. 

The foot was found in a large, clear plastic trash bag with other flotsam, which has led investigators to think the sneaker was perhaps tossed there by a Good Samaritan who had cleaned up one of the islands in the river, says detective Todd Steele. It’s possible the person picked up the shoe without even knowing a foot was inside, he says. 

The shoe and sock visually match those found on the shore of a nearby riverside park last July, he says. DNA work on the foot is now being done at a crime lab.

“It’s fairly clear at this point that we have a body somewhere, and that body is probably in the water,” Steele says. But the Willamette passes through several cities. “We have no idea where these feet went into the river,” he says, so the location the shoe was first picked up could be useful to police. (If you have any leads, contact Steele at 503-434-7349 or [email protected].)

Once you start looking for them, though, severed feet really do seem to be everywhere. Consider a few headlines from just the last year or so around North America:

• In May 2017, in South Carolina, a shoe containing a human foot was found on a dock at the Charleston City Marina. 
• In September 2017, hikers in a Missouri park discovered a foot in a red sneaker along the banks of the Mississippi River. (It was later matched up with a man whose wrecked car was found on the riverbank, about 40 miles from where the shoe was found.)
• In November 2017, a plumber who was closing up a cottage on Georgian Bay, a large bay of Lake Huron in Ontario, Canada, found a human foot in a Reebok sneaker, about a yard from the shore.

Greater Vancouver, British Columbia, though, remains the epicenter of foot-finding. At last count, 14 dismembered feet have been uncovered since 2007, the most recently last May, when a foot in a hiking boot was discovered in a logjam on an island west of the city. That foot, and most of the others, have been identified.

Is there anything nefarious, ahem, afoot? 

Not likely. As a forensic pathologist explained to Outside nine years ago in our definitive look at the foot-loose phenomenon, our hands and feet are like kites, attached only by a few tendons. Underwater, they flap around and come off pretty easily when body tissues break down. “It doesn’t mean someone is running around with an ax, chopping feet off,” says Steele.

If there’s a trend, experts say, it’s the way sneakers are now made: light, foamy, buoyant. “It really didn’t come up until we had running shoes that floated so well,” coroner Barb McLintock told Canada’s National Postin 2016. “Before, they just stayed down there at the bottom of the ocean.” Experts working on the Vancouver-area foot cases have found no signs of any foul play. “In every case, there is an alternate, very reasonable explanation,” McLintock says. 

But as Outside pointed out years ago, we humans crave patterns. It’s how we make sense of the world. So forget Occam’s razor—the principle that the simple explanation is the most likely one. We’ll choose the unlikely and the macabre if it explains our experience. Even a killer on the loose is somehow more assuring than the fact that sometimes people die. And we find them.