Month: March 2019

A new study explores attitudes toward performance-enhancing drugs in the ultrarunning world

Let’s do a quick word-association test. I say “drugs” and “marathon,” and you say… “EPO,” right? But when I say “drugs” and “ultramarathon,” you say… “marijuana?” There’s a massive cultural shift that takes place somewhere around 26.3 miles—or at least, that’s the perception. But as ultrarunning has slowly evolved from an insular hippie niche to a corporate-backed mass-participation sport, the boundaries have started to blur. There’s money in the sport now—and where there’s money, it’s reasonable to wonder if hardcore performance-enhancing drugs can be far behind.

A new study from researchers at the University of Utah, published in Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, takes a tentative first stab at figuring out how common performance-enhancing drug (PED) use is among ultrarunners. There have been some previous informal attempts to gauge PED use in the ultra world: a 2015 survey of 705 ultrarunners by Ian Torrence for iRunFar, for example, found that 9 percent of respondents admitted to using PEDs in training or competition. But that didn’t differentiate between injecting EPO and eating a pot brownie. The new study digs a little deeper, in an attempt to figure out just what’s going on out in the mountains and on the trails.

The study consisted of a fairly simple anonymous online survey, distributed via the Facebook pages of Ultrasignup and the Western States Endurance Run, which received 609 responses. The questions collected a bunch of demographic data plus details on exactly what PEDs the runners had tried or heard of their friends trying, and assessed their attitudes toward the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

The main result was remarkably consistent with Torrence’s findings: 8.4 percent of the respondents admitted using PEDs during training or competition. But there were some additional wrinkles. Another 18.5 percent said they personally knew of someone else, not including themselves, who used PEDs during ultrarunning. (That presents an interesting mathematical dilemma. Either everyone who uses drugs tells several different people about it, or the respondents aren’t being entirely forthcoming about their “friend’s” PED use.) In addition, 18.7 percent reported using PEDs for social reasons and 19.8 percent reported using them for medical reasons. It’s probably safe to assume those two groups aren’t talking about EPO.

When you combine medical, social, and running-related use, the most popular PED choice was—sure enough—cannabinoids, used by a total of 13.3 percent of respondents, followed by narcotics (6.4 percent), and stimulants (3.0 percent). Rounding out the list were glucocorticoids, anabolic agents, and (with just one person each) peptide hormones and diuretics. Interestingly, none of the demographic data—things like sex, age, weekly mileage, longest race completed, race frequency, and years of participation—seemed to have any particular impact on the likelihood of drug use.

There are all sorts of problems with data from anonymous online surveys, which I won’t bother belaboring. Still, there are a few interesting points to make about this data. First: yes, lots of ultrarunners smoke (or eat) pot. That story has been making headlines for a few years now, with lots of debate about whether it’s actually a performance-enhancer for ultrarunners or whether it just feels that way. Personally, I liked Jenn Shelton’s quote from a Wall Street Journal article back in 2015: “The person who is going to win an ultra is someone who can manage their pain, not puke and stay calm. Pot does all three of those things.” I’m far from convinced that it’s really helpful—at best, I suspect it’s highly individual and dependent on temperament. But these results bolster the anecdotal case that a non-negligible number of ultrarunners are toking.

One surprise to me was that less than 2 percent of respondents reported using anabolic steroids. Along with “ultrarunners smoke pot,” one of the familiar narratives that circulates in athletic circles is “male masters athletes abuse testosterone.” Testosterone patches are aggressively marketed as an anti-aging panacea, and pretty much all it takes to get a prescription is to head to a friendly doctor and say you don’t feel quite as virile as you used to. Given the demographics of the survey (three-quarters male and almost half over 40), I expected to see a lot more “medical” use of testosterone, but perhaps that narrative is overstated, at least among ultrarunners.

As for the near-total absence of peptide hormones like EPO, that’s encouraging… but really not surprising. While few details about performance level are given, the survey respondents appear to be mostly recreational ultrarunners: only a quarter report finishing in the top 20 percent of their races, and there’s no indication of whether any of them would be classified as elite or professional. If you finished in the top 20 percent at Western States this year, your race time could still be more than 50 percent slower than the winner. Aside from a few bizarre anomalies, the only people likely to invest in a PED like EPO are those competing for prize money and sponsorships. There has been an increasing push to make drug testing more widespread in ultrarunning, and races like Comrades and Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc have had some high-profile busts. But this survey doesn’t tell us anything about that world.

The final element of the survey was the Performance Enhancement Attitude Scale, a battery of 17 questions assessing people’s feelings about the use of PEDs in sports. Those who reported using PEDs also had significantly more positive attitudes about doping. While this may seem obvious, it conflicts with the idea that doping in ultras is just an accidental byproduct of the clash between ultrarunning’s countercultural roots and the new rules imposed by the encroaching forces of commercialization. Instead, it suggests that at least some of the people in the survey are choosing to deliberately take drugs to enhance their performance.

While that attitude appears to be limited to a tiny minority, it’s worth calling it out for what it is: cheating. Shelton, in the Wall Street Journal article, said she sometimes trained with marijuana, but never raced with it because she believed it would be unfair. That’s consistent with revised anti-doping rules that ban marijuana in competition but not in training. For many runners, ultras are voyages of personal discovery, where the only opponents are themselves and the distance. These runners are unlikely to encounter any doping tests. But if you’re competing against other runners, vying for places and prizes, then playing by the same rules as your competition seems like the only fair way to go.

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My new book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, with a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell, is now available. For more, join me on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for the Sweat Science email newsletter.

Falls put 3,000 climbers a year in hospital, costing more than $20 million, according to a new study

Since 1930, a total of 31 people have died on Yosemite’s majestic Half Dome, thanks to improperly secured harnesses, lost anchors, avalanches, lightning strikes, tangled chutes, and one case of “slip and fall on mossy rock.” These deaths, tallied in a study published in this month’s Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, often make headlines in newspapers and on websites like this one. For some reason (and I’m not judging), deaths under extreme circumstances exert a powerful fascination.

But these headlines represent only a tiny fraction of the overall picture of climbing accidents. Another study in the same journal issue, from a research team led by Joseph Forrester of Stanford University, zooms out to explore just how many climbers end up in the emergency department each year, how they get there, and what happens to them. The findings offer a reminder that climbing’s ongoing boom in popularity comes with a cost—and may convince you to freshen up your safety check routine next time you head out.

The study involved combing through a database called the National Emergency Department Sample, which is a huge collection of records from about 1,000 representative hospitals of all types across the country. Records for any patients older than 16 whose diagnosis code corresponded to mountaineering, rock climbing, or wall climbing between 2010 and 2014 were extracted and analyzed. From this sample, they were able to estimate that there were roughly 3,023 climbers who presented to an emergency department in the U.S. each year during that period. Notably, that’s a 34 percent increase since a study that ended in 2007.

The climbers showing up in emergency had an average age of 33, and were 62 percent male. They were pretty well off, with 38 percent reporting an income in the top quartile relative to their zip code, and mostly (63 percent) in the West census region. The majority of the patients (60 percent) came in with injuries to multiple body regions, while 32 percent had isolated extremity injuries to the arms or legs, and just five percent had head or neck injuries. Taking care of all these patients isn’t cheap: the total billing cost of these hospital visits was just over $20 million a year, and that doesn’t include subsequent rehab and medical appointments.

One interesting detail: during the entire four-year sample period, only 2 of the 3,275 patients in the sample died. As the Half Dome stats make clear, that doesn’t mean climbers weren’t dying during this period. It just means that those who died were almost always dead before they made it to the hospital. There’s an important lesson here for rescuers, the researchers suggest: “Although rapid transport of survivors to definitive care is important, this should not occur at the cost of rescuer safety.”

So how common are these injuries? Well, the Outdoor Industry Association’s estimate is that there were more than 6 million indoor and outdoor climbers in the U.S. in 2016, which suggests that you have a 1-in-2,000 chance of ending up in the emergency department in any given year. Some contexts and climbing styles are more risky than others, of course. In fact, it’s possible that a few wild climbers are having accidents once a month and being counted multiple times in the database, skewing the numbers. Still, that seems like a reasonable baseline estimate.

In practice, the more common medical issues encountered by climbers are chronic overuse injuries. I come from the running world, where there’s lots of handwringing over the fact that pretty much everyone gets injured eventually, no matter what supposedly magical shoe (or lack thereof) you use. The stats in climbing don’t look much better. In a survey-based study of more than 700 climbers published last year, the average number of reported injuries in the previous two years was 2.0—pretty grim odds. Moreover, more than half the subjects reported returning to climbing before their injury was fully healed, and 45 percent of them reported developing chronic problems related to the injury. Ugh.

One of the motivators for the Half Dome study was the fact that overcrowding has led to a permit system for the cable handrails for hikers that lead up the back of Half Dome. In fact, only one of the deaths turned out to have any possible link to overcrowding or bumbling hikers; instead, the main source of deaths was accidents befalling skilled climbers. There’s no way to turn climbing into a zero-risk activity, and it seems reasonable to assume that plenty of people wouldn’t want it that way anyway. But the stats suggest that many of the injuries we currently see, both acute and chronic, are preventable. Take an occasional day off, and check your harness—twice.

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My new book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, with a foreword by Malcolm Gladwell, is now available. For more, join me on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for the Sweat Science email newsletter.

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On Monday, a trail runner in Colorado was attacked by a mountain lion. While fighting to defend his life, the man managed to kill the lion. This is how he did that. 

The reports I read this morning were almost unbelievable. I’d heard of people fighting off mountain lions and surviving attacks, but the idea of someone managing to kill the apex predator with their bare hands? I was skeptical. But here was the official report from Colorado Parks and Wildlife:

“The victim of the attack described hearing something behind him on the trail and was attacked by a mountain lion as he turned around to investigate. The lion lunged at the runner, biting his face and wrist. He was able to fight and break free from the lion, killing the lion in self-defense. The runner sustained serious, but non-life threatening injuries as a result of the attack.”

“We’ve had a few false reports here of animal attacks there didn’t turn out to be factual,” Rebecca Ferrell, a public information officer for CPW, told me. “In this case, everything that the runner told us was completely credible. The injuries he sustained, as well as the injuries we found on the body of the mountain lion, corresponded with his story. We have zero reason to believe that anything he told us was false.”

Ferrell explained that there were two main factors in the runner’s ability to survive the attack: The age of the animal and the runner's preparedness.  

“We’re still trying to get an official size and weight through the necropsy process,” she said. “That’s a tricky one for us in this particular instance because mountain lions do tend to exhibit cannibalistic behavior, and from the time the gentleman was attacked to when we got there, its body had already been fed on. So several of his organs and entrails were already gone.”

They do know that the mountain lion was younger than a year old. Most mountain lions are born between June and October, which would make this one anywhere from three to eight months old, according to the CPW. They haven't yet determined the lion’s gender, so that would put this one anywhere from 20 to 60 pounds.

https://twitter.com/CPW_NE/status/1092872490026582017

The lion's youth helps explain both the man's ability to fight it off, as well as the attack in the first place. “There are a couple of things that we assume when these sort of attacks happen,” said Ferrell. “It’s either a very young mountain lion that’s still learning its hunting skills or it’s very old and has lost its abilities.” In this case, the very young mountain lion was still learning to hunt and hadn’t yet gained the experience necessary to know to avoid humans. Mountain lion attacks on humans are very, very rare; this particular animal didn't know any better. 

CPW isn’t releasing the identity of the trail runner, as he’s still recovering from non-life threatening injuries at a hospital and “processing what he went through both physically and mentally,” said Ferrell. She described him in his early 30s, “in very good shape,” and as someone who’s done his homework on how to survive an encounter with a mountain lion. “He remembered reading about the situation in Washington, where two friends were out mountain biking when they were attacked by a mountain lion.” She says he’d read advice online “and followed every piece of advice exactly.”

Ferrell related the man’s account of the attack. He told her he was running along a trail outside Fort Collins when he heard a noise behind him and turned around. “When he first saw the cat, he turned toward it and tried to do a bit of a stare down,” she says. The man started to back away, while trying to make himself look big and shouting. But the cat still pounced. 

“His adrenaline was obviously off the chart, his instincts kicked in, and he used whatever it was that he had at his disposal to survive," Ferrell said. The man was unarmed, without even a knife. So he used rocks to pound at the mountain lion before he was able to get his hands around its throat. “He used his hands and feet to basically choke the animal,” Ferrell said. 

https://twitter.com/CPW_NE/status/1092794804658876417

Even a very young, very small mountain lion must have made a fierce opponent. “[The runner's] injuries are serious, but not life threatening,” Ferrell says. “Considering what he went through, he’s in pretty good condition.”

Ferrell also said that the man has received “a few marriage proposals online” since the incident. She described his actions as nothing short of “heroic.”

How we exploit big trees, big game, and even extinct creatures

Hot take: We’re abusing the heck out of our planet’s natural resources. These great new books investigate the ways—insidious, institutional, and illegal—those exploitations shake out, from the globalization of poaching to the legal knottiness of fracking in the Northeast.

‘A Cast in the Woods’ by Stephen Sautner

When Stephen Sautner bought a cabin in the Catskills to be close to trout water, he didn’t expect energy developers to come creeping around his doorstep. He quickly entered the fight to ban fracking in the area, in part because it affected the fish he was casting for. Sautner is primarily a fishing writer, but the strength of the book stems from his ability to look up from the stream and identify the shifting baseline of use and abuse on the rivers he loves.

‘Big Lonely Doug’ by Harley Rustad

The Doug of Big Lonely Doug is Canada’s second tallest tree, which, on a whim, a logger decided not to fell. Rustad, an editor at the Walrus, looks at how this one old-growth Douglas fir became a symbol of the backlash against large-scale logging in coastal British Columbia and beyond. Rustad grew up in the area, and his microscale descriptions of the landscape and how commercial forestry has changed it bring you into the depths of Vancouver Island. He digs into logging’s inherent instability and the battles between timber companies, tribes, and environmentalists. More than anything, Big Lonely Doug’s story is a reminder of how much the ecosystem has been altered when we’re down to caring about one particular tree.

‘Poached’ by Rachel Nuwer

Nuwer ticked through 12 different countries, African killing fields, and restaurants serving pangolin to trace the supply and demand of wildlife trafficking and what can be done to prevent it. Wildlife poaching and species conservation is siloed from other trans-border crimes—biologists, not border agents, deal with animal-related offenses—but the crimes happen on a similar scale as drug or arms trafficking. To curb international poaching, Nuwer says we have to take it seriously and get to its roots, and she gives a clear view of what’s at stake if we don’t.

‘The Dinosaur Artist’ by Paige Williams

In a story about trafficking much older forms of wildlife, Paige Williams traces the rise and fall of fossil hunter Eric Prokopi, who in 2012 illegally sold a million-dollar dinosaur skeleton that had been smuggled out of Mongolia. Based on a 2013 New Yorker article, the story covers Prokopi’s bumbling foray into high-value specimen collecting, as well as the wider world of commercial paleontology and how it pits science against commerce and countries against each other. Williams pings between different groups of obsessive seekers and tries to find the line where treasure hunting goes too far.

If You Like Those, Revisit These

‘The Golden Spruce’ by John Valliant

Recommended if you liked Big Lonely Doug but want more crime and intrigue (and, fair warning, a story about death in the woods that you will never not be able to think about). John Valliant tells the story of Grant Hadwin, the logger turned environmentalist who chopped down a singular golden spruce in the northern British Columbia islands now called Haida Gwaii. Hadwin’s story alone would be enough to carry the book, but Valliant brackets it with the get-rich-quick history of logging in Canada, the embedded battles between the tribes and the loggers, and the symbolism a single tree can hold.

‘The Orchid Thief’ by Susan Orlean

One of the many joys of reading Susan Orlean’s writing is her needle-sharp descriptions of people and subcultures. (If you haven’t read her Outside story about surfers that became the basis Blue Crush, start there.) In The Orchid Thief, where she investigates a ring of criminal Florida orchid poachers, those details pull you into an underground world of fanatical flower freaks.

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The Trump administration is trying to remove Clean Water Act protections for at least 60 percent of streams and up to 110 million acres of wetlands across the entire country. That’s bad, but before they can pull it off, the Environmental Protection Agency has to solicit and consider public comment.

So you should go tell them what you think of the plan right now.

To repeat: This redefinition of what are considered Waters of the United States (WOTUS) would strip Clean Water Act protections from 60 percent of streams and 110 million acres of wetlands. In the end, that's really all you need to know. The majority of Americans could lose access to clean drinking water. Much of the protections wetlands offer against flooding could be lost. Fish and animal habitat would be devastated, as would the recreational hunting and fishing and commercial fishing industries. Recreating in and on clean water would become a relic of the past. This is by far the most environmentally harmful proposal put forward by the Trump administration to date. "Big polluters could not have crafted a bigger free pass to dump if they wrote it themselves," says Blan Holman, of the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The politicians pushing for the proposal aren’t describing it so simply. We detailed the plan and its potential ramifications here. To recap, the Clean Water Act was a landmark piece of bi-partisan environmental legislation that was passed back in 1972. Amending it would take an act of Congress, but it turns out that there’s a loophole that has caused much legal consternation. While one can’t amend the act itself without Congress, an administration can tweak the areas to which the act applies by altering the definition of WOTUS.

Two conflicting Supreme Court rulings on the subject created a major legal headache for private individuals and corporations seeking federal permitting under the act. The Obama administration set out to remove that headache once and for all with a new definition backed by 1,200 scientific reports. Adding clarity also added protections to an additional two to five percent of stream miles. Trump seized on that while on the campaign trail, whipping up fury over what he portrayed as government overreach into the private property of small farm owners (who continue to benefit from a wide ranging set of exemptions). So here we are today, about to lose one of the foundational things that makes America great: Our clean water. 

But don’t believe me. Believe Ducks Unlimited, the enormously successful and influential waterfowl conservation nonprofit run by hunters. Here's what DU wrote in an official statementt: 

We are deeply concerned that the 2019 Proposed Revised Definition of WOTUS and the accompanying analysis are not consistent with existing science. There is clear scientific evidence that shows wetlands provide important societal benefits to our nation's waterways by managing hydrology, reducing peak flows, reducing flood damage, improving water quality and sustaining economic activities that depend on clean water. While we champion voluntary, incentive-based conservation to preserve and restore wetland habitats, we also recognize the importance federal regulations play in maintaining the health of our nation's waters as well as the diverse wetlands-dependent wildlife treasured by generations of Americans.

The Southern Environmental Law Center has put together the best explanation of the proposed WOTUS definition in the video above. SELC also makes it very clear how important it is that you make your voice heard by commenting on the regulation. “This will be the only chance for the public to take action to stop this dangerous proposal,” it states. 

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Jeff Scott’s life as he knew it ended on a bluebird spring afternoon at Revelstoke Mountain Resort insoutheastern British Columbia. On the last day of the ski season in 2010, the then 25-year-old hit a roller gap he’d been eyeing all morning. He came up short, landed flat, and was knocked out cartwheeling. The crash left him aC5–6 quadriplegic, with no feeling below his collarbones or in his triceps,and limited hand movement.

Scott would no longer lead his wildland firefighter team in the summers or spend his winters exploring the backcountry on his sled and snowboard. He’d snowboarded since he was a kid in Burns Lake, in northern B.C., and started pushing limits on drops and speed in the relatively undiscovered big-mountain landscape around Revelstoke in its early days as a resort town. “The mountains are a part of who I am,” Scott says. “I grew up with them being my playground. That freedom and exploration that the backcountry represents…” He pauses for a long moment. “You can’t ever have that returned. But maybe you can at least experience the feeling of bottomless powder.”

That’s why, eight years after his accident, 33-year-old Scotthas become a pioneer on one of the last frontiers of snow: backcountry adaptive skiing.

Anyone trying to get into sit skiing will encounter scant resources and abundant obstacles—and that’s before heading off-piste. Adaptive skiers can’t just walk into the ski shop and choose a sit ski, because there are few companies making such equipment, and it often needs to be customized to the level and type of injury. James Eger, head of Revelstoke Adaptive Sports, likens it to ski boots, which should be well fit and without play to best control the ski. “Same with a sit ski: it should fit snug on the body to the level of the athlete’s ability,” he says. “If the injury level is low on the spine and you have [the use of] abs, chest, and back muscles, then the sit ski probably doesn’t have much of a back, and the skier can muscle that around. If the injury level is high, you need a lot more of it attached to you.”

This need for specific performance based on body shape and balance points, unique to mobility levels, is also why there’s no market for sit-ski rentals. Adaptive ski programs have become common at most major resorts in the last two decades, and some of the biggest such programs, like those in Crested Butte, Colorado, and Park City, Utah, sometimes have enough equipment in their kit to outfit an adaptive athlete with a sit ski—if it matches the specifics of the user’s needs. That’s a big if.

Sit skis can range from $3,000 to $12,000 for advanced customization. Some organizations subsidize this cost for people looking to overcome this massive barrier to entry—like the Live It Love It Foundation, which promotes the progression of adaptive adventure (Scott became its executive director a few years after his accident). 

Scott made his way back onto the snow a year and a half after his injury, working through a steep learning curve. “To be put in a body that doesn’t move the same way and learn a new sport was straight-up challenging,” he says. “Just the physics of it is complicated: In not having triceps, I can’t recover from any fall on my own. I have to be very calculated in my movements. And in not having sensation, I have to anticipate movements, because I can’t always react in time.”

Scott’s injury is high on his spine, and because of the limited feeling in his hands, he can’t hold outriggers for balance and direction the way many sit skiers can. He drives the ski’s motion with his upper body, using his arms as rudders; another person skis behind him, holding a pair of handlebars on Scott’s customized sit ski, taking cues from his movements. That person is often Eger, one of Scott’s partnersin expanding the landscape of adaptive skiing, who rides a pair of antiquated tele skis that hang off his boots at improbable angles for landing the jumps that he and Scott favor.

The pair met in 2013 when Eger relocated to Revelstoke from Crested Butte, where he’d volunteered with the Adaptive Sports Center. Eger began running lessons for Revelstoke Adaptive around the same time that Scott took the helm as executive director of the Live It Love It Foundation. With their shared taste for extreme adventure, they partnered Revelstoke Adaptive and the Foundation to build a big-mountain sit-ski camp at Revelstoke Mountain Resort (RMR). Whereas most adaptive ski programs are teaching more beginner to intermediate levels on a regular basis, the RMR camp teaches athletes to expand their comfort zones in the mountain’s steeps, cliffs, and famously deep powder. 

But Scott still yearned for the backcountry. Existing models for getting a sit skier into the backcountry generally involve snowcats, helicopters, or occasionally sleds if the level of injury permits. “I’ve done these scenarios over the years, and it’s always a major production,” says Eger. “You get someone from their wheelchair into the cat, load the sit ski, load everyone else, get the ski off, unload the person, fit them up in their sit ski, make sure they’re sorted, and redo it all for the next run.” Devoted friends have carried skiers into the backcountry on their shoulders or lined them up snowfields on ropes. Some programs, like DREAM Adaptive Recreation’s Powder Camp, use plywood ramps and several volunteers to muscle a sit skier into a cat while still in the ski, to at least eliminate the step of transferring an athlete in and out of the sit ski.

But the bottom line in every case is that those methods are exhausting and time-consuming, and the adaptive skier has to rely heavily on others to move them around. The biggest problem, in Scott’s view: there’s usually only one sit skier in a group of able-bodied skiers,and with so much energy and attention focused on them, it robs the adventure of any feeling of normalcy.

Scott came face to face with these problems on his first day in the backcountry after the injury; one friend had a mini cat, and several others joined in to take Scott on a few runs in the mountains above Revelstoke. “I was blown away at the lengths my friends were willing to go to,” he says. “Knowing that not everyone had friends with those kinds of resources or experience was disheartening.” 

He wanted to figure out how to get a sit skier easily into the backcountry and—better yet—do it with a group of sit skiers to normalize the adventure.

The solution he envisioned was a one-of-a-kind trailer that sat with its belly on the snow. It would have a flat ramp so sit skiers could simply slide into it at ground level on their own with minimal assistance, and it would close into a tailgate to secure skiers inside while in motion. It would be towed behind a snowcat and hold up to four sit skiers. Over the course of three years, Scott raised funds through Live It Love It for the design and build. It finally emerged in early 2017, looking like a teardrop trailer on steroids, with sled skis instead of wheels, aluminum siding with open-air windows, a windshield to protect against any snow kicked up by the cat, and a ground-level ramp that closed into a tailgate. He christened it the Lunchbox.

Its maiden mission was slated for that April at Mustang Powder Cat Skiing in the heart of B.C.’s Monashee Mountains. Scott had pitched the ideato the operation the year before, choosing Mustang for its location, noteworthy variety of terrain, and generosity in donating time, guides, and lodge space. Scott assembled a team of athletes to help him test the Lunchbox: Samson Danniels, the 2012 Winter X Games mono-ski cross gold medalist who has figured out how to surf, speed-fly, and snowmobile since breaking his back in 2005; Josh Dueck, the famed Paralympian who was the first to pull off a backflip in a sit ski; and Amanda Timm, the first woman to sit-ski theexpert-only Delirium Dive terrain at Banff’s Sunshine Village ski resort.

Despite last-minute rigging with plywood and wrenches and the threat of high mid-April freezing levels that threatened to abort the entire mission, the trailer performed without a hitch. The sit skiers shredded several lines through bottomless powder with an efficiency that represented a new independence of movement.

The test was deemed such a smashing success that Scott took the Lunchbox public this year for a three-day cat-ski trip at Mustang. Live It Love It raised funds, and Mustang kept costs low so the trip would be freefor participants (a regular three-day cat-skiing trip at Mustang costs $3,500). Live It Love It ran a lottery to give seats away, and sit skiers could also win one through 2018’s Live It Love It Send It adaptive competition at RMR—the first-ever big-mountain adaptive competition in the world, to Scott’s knowledge. The grand prize was a three-day trip to Mustang with a seat in the Lunchbox the following week. 

“Democratizing backcountry access for adaptive athletes is a huge factor in the operation of the Lunchbox,” says Scott. “Anyone can take the big-mountain camp at RMR, enter the competition, and win a seat.Or they can enter a lottery to win a free seat. In my mind, that’s the epitome of openness.”

There’s one other, more subtle, factor that differentiates Scott’s project from existing models like snowcats, helicopters, and sleds.“The real glue that we didn’t even think about coming into it is the time we get in the lodge after skiing,” says Dueck. “Anyone who’s had a good day in the mountains knows that the stoke level is like a runner’s high, with a clarity of mind that allows for profound realizations. Sharing that is what mountain culture is all about: what nature provides as a teacher that makes us better people for it.”

That feeling is even more profound as an adaptive skier, Dueck explains. “The backcountry is about experiencing something they never thought possible. There’s still a component of fear, but you find a way to get down the mountain and realize your capacity for overcoming challenges. You come out with an elevated perspective, so that now some of those everyday challenges in life seem a little more manageable.”

Scott is already moving on to his vision of creating the first-ever adaptive-backcountry competition, where sit skiers find a zone, pick their lines from the bottom, and ski them, all rider judged.

“Backcountry adventure is about progression,” he says. “That’s what the Lunchbox can offer. It opens it up for sit skiers to go as far as they can go. We’re blazing trail, and the ideas are endless from here.”

How to break it to your risk-averse family that you’re trying the whole “quit your job and travel the world” thing

Welcome to Tough Love. Every other week, we’re answering your questions about dating, breakups, and everything in between. Our advice giver is Blair Braverman, dogsled racer and author of Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube. Have a question of your own? Write to us at [email protected].

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I am fortunate enough to have a stable job that pays pretty well in an industry not known for its stability or pay, but I am pretty unhappy in it and somewhat disenchanted with my field of work as a whole. When my apartment lease is up, I’d like to quit this job and travel for a bit. I never really got to do that post-college, because I was always going from one thing right into another. I’m thinking of doing a thru-hike or pursuing some other extended outdoor adventure for a few months—something physically and mentally challenging—then figuring out career next steps.

Here’s the problem: My family really values stability and consistency. They don’t take risks, financially or physically or life plan–wise. I’m worried about how they’ll react to these plans—not the “woman adventuring alone” part so much as the “throwing stability and certainty to the wind and taking a big plunge into unknown adventure with an unforeseen destination.” I’ve thought a lot about how this’ll work financially, and I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to find freelance work in my field to make ends meet post-adventure until I find a full-time job again. But still, I suspect my parents will frame this announcement as “she’s running away from her problems” or “she doesn't know how good she has it.” Meanwhile, I’m framing it as “I feel stuck in one area of my life, I’ve worked on improving it, and it hasn’t really changed, so now I’m going to focus on a totally different goal for a while.” How do I have this conversation with them?

It sounds like your family did a great job of instilling their values in you, because you’re being super-responsible in your adventure planning in both the medium term (how to afford your adventure) and the long term (how to have a sustainable career after you’re done). You’ve made the thoughtful, courageous decision to leave a field that makes you unhappy, and you’re taking the chance to build yourself up along the way. You may or may not hear this from your family, so let me tell you now: You’re doing an incredible thing and should be proud of everything you’ve done to get here. I’m excited for you!

On the day you tell your family the news, let a friend know what you’ll be doing, then ask to meet your parents at a restaurant or other neutral space. That’s not because you’re likely to fight, but because there’s nothing like sitting between your parents on your childhood couch to make you feel like you’re 12 years old again—and in this case, you’ll want to remember that you’re an adult informing other adults of your life decision. Know that you’re not asking their permission, nor are you apologizing. In fact, you’re doing something far better: You’re sharing good news.

Expect them to balk; even the most open-minded parents do. Take time to answer their questions, outlining the steps you’ve taken to plan the trip responsibly. Let them know that you do take your career seriously, and that this decision is another way of prioritizing your life goals. You can suggest plans to take a hike or watch a thru-hiking documentary together so they have the chance to conceive of the trip from a different angle. (It might help them to hear about it from someone other than you; some parents will always treat ideas from their child as ideas from, well, a child.) Tell them you feel happy about your decision and that it would mean a lot to have their enthusiasm and support. Then give them a hug, tell them you love them, and leave.

Now call your friend, meet up for beer or cheese fries, and either celebrate or vent about the evening’s conversation. You did a tough thing and deserve to decompress with someone supportive.

Maybe, once they’ve slept on the idea, your parents will come around. In that case, great! But you should be emotionally prepared for the possibility of embarking on this journey without their blessing. It doesn’t mean they’re not proud of you or that you’re running away from your problems (well, except for this particular one). It just means you’ll have to move forward on your own. Nobody’s family agrees with their decisions 100 percent of the time, and if you’ve done the work to take care of yourself and break the news to them with compassion, you’ve done your part well. If, during your travels, you still feel the burden of your parents’ judgment, send them postcards rather than making phone calls. They’ll still hear from you, but you’ll be protecting yourself from the weight of their disapproval.

In the long term, it could be that the only way to reassure them is to do the trip and be okay. People’s narratives change. Once you get home and your life is stable again—at least by their definition—you might hear them talking about your adventure as if they approved from the beginning or even came up with the idea in the first place. If that happens, just smile and embrace it. It may be annoying, but it means they’re coming around. They taught you how to live, and you’re teaching them, too.

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Today, CEOs from more than 50 prominent outdoor-oriented companies—including the North Face, Patagonia, and REI—convened at Outdoor Retailer in Denver to sign a pledge committing to gender equity, inclusion, and diversity within their companies. This comes hot on the heels of a study released by Camber Outdoors. On January 29, the Boulder-based leadership organization published the first part of what it says is the most comprehensive study on gender equity in the outdoor industry to date. Its findings show an unfortunately unsurprising gap between women’s and men’s views of gender discrimination.

Out of the 1,500 active-outdoor professionals surveyed, from entry-level employees to executives, men tended to consider their workplaces fair and supportive while women viewed the same environments as less equitable. For example, only 31 percent of women surveyed thought their company deals with sexual harassment and discrimination appropriately, compared with 49 percent of men. As the study politely puts it: “Men think their companies are doing a pretty good job supporting diversity; women see more room for improvement.” 

“The outdoor industry is looking at itself in a mirror right now,” says Deanne Buck, executive director of Camber Outdoors. “I think it’s a good dialogue to have.”

Camber collaborated with the outdoor-focused Breakaway Research Group to conduct the 15-minute online survey, which looked at five core topics: workplace values, leadership and advancement opportunities, family-career balance, compensation equity, and discrimination and sexual harassment, the latter of which is the focus of the new report. It distributed the survey mainly through Camber’s network of associated companies and organizations, including Interbike, the Outdoor Industry Association, and Snowsports Industries America.

Camber is facing some backlash on Twitter for calling the CEO pledge the first of its kind. Diversify Outdoors previously called for a similar commitment; their pledge did not receive nearly the level of support from high-profile companies. 

Camber notes that the survey is not intended to be representative of the actual demographic makeup of the outdoor industry as a whole. People who identify as women represent 60 percent of responses, but the pool of respondents was far less diverse in terms of ethnicity, with 88 percent of respondents self-identifying as white or Caucasian. “We need to do a better job of reaching out to a more diverse audience base,” Buck says. “There’s still work to do.” 

The bicycle industry stood out as being perceived by survey respondents as the most discriminatory toward women. Respondents’ experiences point to a general culture of gender-based exclusion and toleration for disrespectful actions based on gender. 

According to the report, 55 percent of women working in the bike field said they had been directly or indirectly affected by behavior or comments that are discriminatory or biased based on gender. That’s in comparison to 20 percent in the running industry, 35 percent in the snow industry, and 36 percent in other outdoor industries. 

Thirty-seven percent of bike-industry professionals felt that their industry has a general culture of not taking some employees or their perspectives seriously because of their gender, compared with less than 21 percent on average for the other groups. (In some cases, the report lumps together responses from running, snow sports, and other miscellaneous outdoor activities, which had fairly homogenous responses. Camber considered the bike-industry statistics striking enough to warrant highlighting on their own.) 

Sexual-harassment statistics are more nebulous, in part because the survey questions were framed to avoid clinical-sounding legal definitions, which Camber felt can exclude people’s actual experiences with harassment. Still, the report concludes that only 51 percent of women felt their company had a no-tolerance policy and a clear reporting process for instances of sexual harassment, while 55 percent of men agreed with that statement. 

“I don’t think it’s great,” says Buck. “But it can help us make smarter decisions. I think we can be the lead.”

If your kid’s under five and you want to spend a night under the stars as a family, you’re gonna have to embrace extravagant camping

Camping used to be simple for my husband and me: load up the gear in a backpack and hit the trail. The lighter, the better. Once, Mark even rigged a stove from a used tuna fish can by punching holes in it and pouring in white gas.

Then we had a baby.

While it’s still possible to hang tough when you have a baby, I have to admit that I’m loving our current glamping ways. When you have everything you need to make camping comfortable for your kid, it’s easier to go more often. We’ve been getting out at least a few weekends a month. These five things will make it easier on you when spending nights outdoors with kiddos under age five.

Get a Camping Community

A few weeks ago, I camped with a bunch of friends just 40 minutes from my house. Even though I could have driven home in a moment, and I regularly see those friends, it felt like an adventure because only a few of us had camped together before.

Some people think that just because you’re camping, you need to have a remote, solo experience. With toddlers it’s nice to have others around to help you endure (or even prevent) tantrums in the woods. Find a group, make a plan, and keep it close to home, so if it’s not working out for one of the families, they can bail.

In our case, we went to Oregon’s Oxbow Regional Park. It’s quiet (lights out by 10 p.m.), no alcohol is allowed (keeps the rowdy partiers out), a day fee keeps it fairly uncrowded, and there’s always a decent amount of staff around, which makes it unattractive for those who don’t want to abide by the rules.

A Cozy Sleep System

My son, Mason, is a terrible sleeper. He is sensitive to light, he is particular about his pillow, and he rolls around a lot. Last summer we tried Coleman’s Carlsbad 6-Person Darkroom Tent, and from the start I could tell it would be a winner. The size is great for a three- to four-person family and all of your stuff, but it isn’t such a big footprint that your tent takes up the whole campsite. With the fly on, it’s noticeably darker than traditional tents, which makes it a little warm for really hot locations but ideal for shut-eye.

Blankets are also key. In Oregon, we have some pretty warm evenings that get cooler as dawn approaches, so being inside a mummy bag isn’t always a nice way to start out your sleep. For a while we just pulled bedding from our house, but what we really wanted was something we could get dirty and not have to clean right away. Rumpl blankets, a cross between a sleeping bag and a comforter, are fairly weather resistant and toddler-proof: Mason often drags his baby version through our campsite and it doesn’t pick up much dirt. They’re very light and compact into a stuff sack, so I also like to throw one on the stroller for walks around the campground.

Shelter from the Elements

These days we have two shade structures, for storms or superhot weather. A fast-pitch one, Alps Tri-Awning, is lighter and more portable—great for the beach. We also have a superdeluxe version, Coleman All Night Instant Lighted Shelter, which fits the whole group and has LED lights, so it’s easier to cook, clean, and play games at night. This latter structure is pretty hefty to haul around, but it makes the decision to camp on a weather-questionable weekend a nonissue. 

A Well-Planned Camp Kitchen 

Cooking with a tiny backpacking stove when you have an impatient toddler sucks. Two-burner stoves normally feel excessive and clunky, but when you can crank out food in ten minutes after a long day or running around in the woods, you’ll be grateful. I often pack my little Jetboil as emergency backup in case our stove breaks (this happened to us a few months ago) and for times when I don’t want to deal with the whole stove because we pulled in late and just want to quickly heat soup. But my main stove seems to keep getting bigger. I like the Coleman Frye Commander 3 in 1—it’s easy to set up and has screw-on legs so you don’t need to rest it on a table. You can also pop off the burner and replace it with a grill, so I cook mac and cheese on one side and sausages on the other.

Usually, I cook and my husband washes the dishes. He’ll bring two large metal buckets with handles that we can fill at any water spigot and carry back to camp for cleaning up.

Meltdown Management

My husband used to laugh at my insistence on bringing toys camping. Then he did a solo trip with Mason and was glad I forced him to bring a bag of Legos and books. While you can hope your children will be so enamored with nature that they won’t need toys, they will probably get bored from time to time and act up. Bring plastic ones you can wash, like big Lego blocks and cars and trucks, as well as balls to kick around, bubbles, and crayons.

Also have a rough idea of what you’re going to do every day, especially if your child is used to a home schedule. If at daycare your kiddo goes to the playground at 10 a.m., then naps at 1 p.m., make that your camp schedule, too.

No time for slow cooking? These simple, quick meals take the time and stress out of good nutrition.

We’d all like to be organized enough to start a slow cooker in the morning and come back to a home-cooked meal at night. But let’s be honest: You’re probably scrambling to get ready for work, sneak in some exercise, or get the kids to school with just enough time to slam a cup of coffee on your way out the door.

But thanks to the Instant Pot, which retails for under $100, you can reap many of the same benefits without as much advanced planning. It’s an active person’s godsend. Here are a few easy recipes from the kitchens of professional athletes to let simmer during your afternoon workout.

If You Have 2 Hours: Pulled Pork

Pulled pork is one of Rally Cycling racer Nigel Ellsay’s favorite picks for a weeknight meal. The 20-year-old loves spending time in the kitchen when he’s not out riding. “Pulled pork is great because you can put it in the Instant Pot at 4 p.m. and be ready for dinner soon after,” he says. To make it, simply stick a pork shoulder in the Instant Pot with about an inch of water in the bottom, set it to “meat,” and seal. (If you want to add some carbs to your meal, throw in a couple halved potatoes.) When it’s done, use two forks to shred the now-tender meat. Add barbecue sauce to taste, toss it on a bed of greens, and you’re ready to go.

Pro Tip: Weekly meal prep makes for even easier Instant Pot dinners. Pre-chop ingredients, combine in a plastic Ziploc, and stash it in the fridge or freezer. To cook, just plop the bag of ingredients into the Instant Pot and press the start button.

If You Have 1 Hour: Tomatillo Avocado Chicken

Chicken cooks quickly and stays moist and tender in a pressure cooker. Cyclocrosser Ellen Noble’s go-to recipe is simple. “I combine a premade tomatillo salsa with a couple slices of avocado (for creaminess), a few chicken breasts, plus whatever vegetables I have in the fridge,” she says. Add water or chicken broth so there’s about an inch of liquid covering the bottom, then program the pot to the manual setting on high for 15 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally, and set the pot to stay warm when finished so you can do your full workout without dinner getting cold. When you’re ready to eat, use two forks to shred the chicken. Top it with fresh cilantro and a spritz of fresh lime and enjoy. Serve atop tortilla chips with a bit of melted Monterey Jack cheese for a healthier take on nachos.

Pro Tip: Experiment! “The Instant Pot has become one of my favorite ways to make food for the week,” Noble says. “Sometimes I make specific recipes, or I’ll just throw in whatever’s in the fridge that needs to be used up and make a ton of delicious food for the week.” (Ellsay is also a fan of the “everything but the kitchen sink” stew.)

If You Have 30 Minutes: Rice Bowl

Noble and Ellsay both admit that they primarily use the Instant Pot to make rice in record time. Unlike a rice cooker, the Instant Pot’s correct ratio of rice to water is 1:1. The pot has a rice setting and will take between five and 25 minutes, depending on the type of rice you’re cooking. Before a race, Noble likes to top a bowl of rice with almond milk, jam or maple syrup, and almond butter. For a more savory option, add canned black beans, chunks of avocado, and plenty of greens and fresh salsa for a do-it-yourself burrito bowl.

Pro Tip: If you’re a fan of heartier, more nutrient-dense grains, the Instant Pot reduces the cook time of farro from 20 to 40 minutes on the stovetop to just ten minutes. Pearl barley, which traditionally takes nearly an hour, is done in just 25 minutes.