Month: March 2019

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Tom Gathman was solo camping in the high mountains just west of the Grand Teton National Park boundary last summer when he woke suddenly at 2 a.m. With the intensity of a man caught in a house fire, he scrambled for his phone and dialed Mountainsmith’s lead backpack designer, Cody Durham. The call went straight to voice mail.

“I’ve had a terrible dream,” said Gathman. “I was hiking the last leg of the Colorado Trail, reaching for something in my pack but to no avail. It went on for miles. Bad conflict—stopping would cost me the record. I awoke trembling, cold with sweat. The meaning is obvious: the Zerk needs more quick-access pockets!”

Then he fell back asleep. The heavily bearded Gathman, who is known as the Real Hiking Viking, was fresh off a 100-day thru-hike of the Pacific Crest Trail and had been training for an attempt at the Colorado Trail’s unsupported speed record. He’d spent the previous seven months working with Durham and Mountainsmith to create what he calls “the Rolls Royce of ultralight backpacks.”

The 1.5-pound Zerk 40 is the result of more than 1,000 miles of personal on-trail testing, hundreds of text messages, dozens of late-night calls, seven major iterations, and innumerablebeer-fueled meetings at Mountainsmith’s headquarters in Golden, Colorado. The pack was released in January via an ongoing Indiegogo campaign and will be available at select retailers this spring.  

“I make a living designing boutique outdoor gear, and many of my friends do the same,” says Durham. “And I can tell you with 100 percent surety: this thing with the Viking was the most out-of-the-box, intensively hands-on design project I’ve ever heard of.”

Gathman jokes that the project was, by and large, self-serving. He’s lived almost entirely on trail since 2013 and logged around 20,000 miles. A veteran of the American Triple Crown and a winter Appalachian Trail thru-hike, among others, Gathman averages anywhere from 30 to 50 miles a day. Sustained for months on end through some of the toughest conditions and terrain in the world, the pace is hell on gear.

“I’ve been sponsored by lots of great companies and worn tons of different packs,” Gathman says. But nothing was ever quite right. Though weight was a primary concern, he was wary of ultralight models—their minimalism sacrificed too much durability and function. “I started making a wish list of features for [a modified ultralight] about halfway through my first AT hike,” he continues. “Over the years, that list got stupid long. Something would go wrong, and I’d get pissed off and say, ‘If I could design my own damn pack, I wouldn’t have these problems.’”

The opportunity presented itself in January 2018. Mountainsmith project manager Torie Palffy phoned to ask about teaming up for a signature pack. As a brand ambassador, Gathman was familiar with the company’s 40-year history and had been carrying its camera bags since 2014. He reasoned that Mountainsmith was big enough to fund a high-end project yet small enough to embrace a perfectionistic vision.

“I don’t think I let her finish the sentence,” Gathman recalls with a laugh. His response was an emphatic yes. “I thought, Ye gods, here’s my chance! Forget commercial success, I wanted that idea out of my mind and into my hands.”

A meeting was scheduled for later in the month. There, Gathman made quite an impression.

“He came in and basically just took over,” says Palffy. The Viking’s presentation began with an open letter outlining their “mission objective.” A PowerPoint presentation followed, where he listed nearly 100 desired features—including pro-con analyses and photographic examples for each. “His enthusiasm and depth of thought was incredible. It was a matter of tweaking an extremely specified vision to yield a cost-effective but uncompromising design,” Palffy says.   

Studying the suggestions, Durham identified a theme. The Viking wasn’t after the world’s lightest pack. As a long-distance fastpacker, his goal was efficiency. He aimed to combine the benefits of ultralight technology with features that enabled him to carry more gear and keep it within reach.

“When you’re trying to put in 50-mile days, stopping is your worst enemy,” says Gathman. Pausing to grab a camera can snowball into a 20-minute break. “You lose your concentration and realize how tired and hungry and miserable you are, which in turn makes it harder to get going again.” Spread those losses across 2,000 miles and they add up quickly.

Within six weeks, Durham had crafted a prototype. He says the design focused on “an ideal combination of weight, durability, comfort, and accessibility.” Gathman field-tested the unit and its subsequent iterations while hiking the PCT, Wind River High Route, Tetons, and Colorado Trail throughout 2018. Communication between Gathman and Durham was constant throughout.

“The Viking would text with nitpicky details like, ‘Raise the front strap loops by five millimeters,’” says Durham. Cataloging the suggestions, he divided them into categories like shoulder straps, weight distribution, storage, and so on. From there he’d head to the drawing board, figure out what was possible, and incorporate solutions into the next design. “The devotion to getting it right was uncanny, fanatical even,” he says. “As a designer, it was an ideal scenario. I could make changes, have them overnighted to him, and get feedback really fast. That streamlined our progress and enabled us to scrutinize every last nuance and detail.”

After nearly a year of testing, they arrived at the Zerk (short for berserk). Palffy accurately describes the result as a hybrid “unlike anything else on the market.”

Inspired by ultrarunning rigs, its shoulder straps are wide and feature dual mesh pockets with elastic drawstrings and lashing points. Similarly, the sides and back are outfitted with multiple layers of XXL pockets. Roll-top webbing allows for added storage atop the bag, with center lashing points that increase carrying capacity. To cut weight, the hipbelt is removable and there is no standard frame, frame sheet, or aluminum stays. Instead, support is provided by EVA and Atilon foam paneling encased in breathable mesh. Maximizing durability—and trimming additional weight—are Spectra fibers; woven into the fabric, they are 15 times stronger than steel but light enough to float.

Durham hopes the pack, which will retail at around $225, will serve as Mountainsmith’s inroad to the thru-hiking community. Gathman agrees, but with a slight caveat.

“Yes, I want other hikers to love it, but I’d be lying if I said that was my primary motivation,” he says. “This is literally my dream pack. The idea was gestating in my head for five freakin’ years. And now that it’s here in my hands? I feel like we’ve given birth to a miracle.”

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Conservationists are celebrating the Tuesday passage by the Senate of the massive Natural Resources Management Act, one of the most significant and sweeping pieces of conservation legislation created in years. The bill designates some 1.3 million acres of wilderness, creates six new National Park Service units, and most importantly, permanently reauthorizes the venerable Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), ensuring conservation acquisition funds for generations to come.

“Given the contentious and partisan nature of politics in Washington, this is a huge moment,” says Adam Cramer, executive director of the Outdoor Alliance, a consortium of outdoor recreation advocacy organizations. “That the one thing all those senators can agree on is conservation makes this doubly sweet.” The bill passed by a vote of 92 to 8 and is moving on to the House of Representatives, which is expected to pass the legislation.

The 662-page bill is a conglomeration of some 100 pieces of legislation. Though it was largely championed by western lawmakers like senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Ron Wyden of Oregon, the bill does provide conservation benefits for every state through the LWCF, which helps federal agencies, states, and local communities purchase land for parks and access to open spaces. That’s why experts believe it has been the rare issue with bipartisan agreement during the Trump administration. As with all large congressional bills, however, the National Resources Management Act is an act of compromise that leaves some wary of its effects.

The legislation most conservationists are skeptical of is the Alaska Native Veterans Land Allotment Equity Act introduced by Murkowski and fellow Alaska senator Dan Sullivan. The legislation would allow Native Alaskan armed-services veterans who missed a historic 1971 homesteader land allotment to claim 160 acres of federal public lands. The problem, according to critics, is that it’s a wrong that was already righted in 1998 and currently there’s nothing to stop beneficiaries from selling their land to developers. That puts some 448,000 acres at risk.

“Alaska’s public lands often tend to be the political grease for land-conservation initiatives in the Lower 48, and that’s wrong,” Adam Kolton of the Alaska Wilderness League told the Outside contributing editor Christopher Solomon in an article for the Washington Post. “These are the last fully intact ecosystems in the United States. They shouldn’t just be trade-bait to pass broader public lands bills.”

While most conservationists, including Cramer, didn’t like the Alaska Native Veterans Land Allotment, they didn’t view it as a poison pill for the larger act. Cramer particularly lauded the breadth of conservation tools used in the bill—it creates new national park units, new national monuments, new wilderness areas, new wild and scenic river sections, and a new national recreation area, and it withdraws the right to develop minerals in two separate watersheds.

“It’s a much more modern and precise approach to conservation,” Cramer says.

Similarly, Cramer points out that the bill’s bipartisan support probably came down to the way that most of the individual legislation was created—by convening multiple stakeholders, including those on opposite sides of the issues, to help hash out agreements. No single piece of the puzzle illustrates that approach better than the Emery County Public Lands Initiative, which createsin a single Utah county some 660,000 acres of wilderness, a new national monument, a new national recreation area, and designates two new sections of the Green River as part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. 

The bill was crafted over some 20 years by stakeholders as diverse as ranchers, offroaders, the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, and wilderness advocates. The basic idea was that in order to preserve traditional uses like ranching and four-wheeling on nearby public lands, locals would agree to create huge swaths of wilderness and forge no new motorized routes, traditionally an anathema to rural Utah residents. As recently as late October, the notoriously hard-line Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance decried the bill as “a step backwards for conservation” and organized a protest of some 300 people against the bill. Yet on Tuesday, SUWA executive director Scott Groene praised the bill as “a tremendous step forward.”

So what changed in the meantime?

In November, Illinois senator and noted wilderness champion Dick Durbin negotiated an additional 100,000 acres of wilderness, adding acreage in Utah’s Muddy Creek and Labyrinth Canyon areas. That was enough for SUWA to bless the deal, despite provisions like releasing some acreage currently protected as a wilderness study area so that a coal mine can be expanded.

“Creating 660,000 acres of wilderness is huge,” says Groene. Similarly, Emery County public lands director Ray Petersen says that locals are happy to have the land quarrels of the past close to settled. “There’s still some trepidation about creating wilderness around here,” he says. “Once people realize that they can still go out and do what they want to do, I believe they’ll all be happy.”

Petersen isn’t celebrating too much yet. He’s been waiting 20 years for this, and he acknowledges that although his political contacts have indicated President Trump will sign the bill if it passes through the House of Representatives, Trump’s actions have been hard to predict. The House is expected to take up the bill after its upcoming weeklong recess, assuming the government doesn’t shut down again.

When someone rolls into the campsite next to yours, go say hi. You probably have something in common.

Public lands—our national forests and state trusts and parks and monuments—have become a solace for me and my wife, Jen, since we took up residence in our Airstream. Unlike home, where there are appointments to keep, errands to run, people to see, and traffic jams to endure, the woods mean quiet and seclusion—it nurtures my inner hermit. When we go to the trouble of finding an isolated spot, we like it to stay isolated.

A few weeks ago, Jen and I had settled into a lonely camp at 9,000 feet in northern New Mexico’s Carson National Forest with the intention of staying two weeks. When a truck rolled in on day two and set up camp down the road, I almost spat out my bourbon in disgust.

Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t begrudge this newcomer his experience. He had as much right to be there as we did. I just felt protective of mine. That defensiveness was amplified by the fact that we’d come to this spot, in part, to hunt elk. Our new neighbor wasn’t only imposing on our peace—he was direct competition.

Jen and I took up hunting only six years ago. We had no background or family history of hunting, just the determination that if we were going to continue to eat meat, we’d like to harvest our own. We’ve since come to love it for much the same reasons that we appreciate living in the trailer: Hunting is quiet and methodical. It puts us in places and situations we otherwise might not reach. It forces us to slow down. It helps to distill the beauty in our day-to-day existence. Hunting is mostly just walking slowly, almost imperceptibly, through the wilderness and trying to meld with the land. In that context, the nearby camp—with its oversize truck, flatbed trailer, yurt-style tent almost big enough for a circus, and pair of ATVs—felt as distracting as the persistent chime of email.

For the first few days, we all tried to preserve the reverie by simply ignoring one other. But on day four, after we’d each passed each other’s areas looking the other way a few times, Darrell gave up on politesse and drove his ATV straight into our camp. “If we’re both going to be here, there’s no sense in gettin’ in each other’s way,” he said.

A New Mexico native, he’d been hunting these mountains for 25 years, he informed us, and we’d taken his longtime camp. As we talked, he studied our rigs, sizing up our fat bikes, featherweight backpacking equipment, and Airstream, a far cry from his quad bike and tent. He didn’t know any better what to make of us than us of him, and he never got off his ATV or proffered a hand to shake. Doug, his buddy, was friendlier, asking about the trailer and our approach. I told him where we’d been hunting and gave him intel on what we’d found. But the interaction still felt more like a preemptive strike than a neighborly visit. When the two left, we figured that our future with Doug and Darryl held nothing more than curt nods.

Darrell returned the next afternoon. Apparently skeptical that I’d been trying to throw him off some hunting spots, which wouldn’t be unheard of among notoriously tight-lipped outdoorsmen, he’d gone up and found the places just as I described them. Now his whole demeanor had changed. He was engaged, chummy even. We were no longer on opposite sides; it was now us against the elk.

From that afternoon forward, Doug and Darrell stopped by our camp daily, or Jen and I stopped by theirs. We traded stories about the day’s hunts and shot the shit about our favorite wilderness in New Mexico. As we all got used to each other, Darrell passed on a bunch of insights about hunting that he’d gleaned in his quarter-century of doing it. He even shared a few of his favorite calling techniques, which is like a magician showing you how he fit that rabbit into his hat. If it hadn’t been for Darrell’s overture on day four, we might never have spoken, which now seemed funny and slightly sad.

Going into the woods and tuning out other people is tempting, especially in these days of political and social division. But for that time in the woods and probably well beyond, Darrell and Doug and Jen and I had more in common than we had differences. The same goes for your campground neighbors who insist on running the generator nonstop or those folks cranking tunes at the crag or beach. We’re all on the same team, out there to enjoy the escape. With public lands under fire, finding solidarity with everyone who values wild space is more important than ever. I’m not saying I’m planning to introduce myself at every nearby camp in the future, but I’ll always consider it.

Darrel and Doug got an elk during the next to last day of the two-week hunt. When I saw their headlamps on the hillside after dark, which I knew meant they would be working into the night to clean and carry the animal, I was happy for them, not jealous and slightly bitter as I might have been if we hadn’t met. The next morning, we congratulated them, traded emails, and talked about toasting their success someday back in civilization over whiskey. I didn’t get my elk this year, but I drove away from the mountains with something better: knowledge and new friends. Might just be the best hunt I’ve ever had.

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Early last week, Bloomberg published a piece by Brandon Presser on the secret lives of Aspen, Colorado, ski instructors. Covering $50,000 tips, secret clubs with $250,000 induction fees, difficult clients, and snotty celebrities, it featured all the decadence and upper-class excess you’d expect from one of America’s swankest ski resorts. But as a former instructor myself, I could not relate less. Then again, I worked at Mount Baker, a undeveloped ski area in the North Cascades beloved for its steep chutes, unbelievable powder, and rustic charm. It’s just a three-hour drive away from Seattle but a million miles away from Aspen’s A-list. 

When I worked at Baker as a snowboard instructor during the 2015–16 season, you’d likely find me standing in the one corner of the lodge that had cell service while checking my dilapidated bank balanceinstead of slurping down thousands of dollars’ worth of champagne with my clients. And I bet that’s an experience more instructors can relate to. So without further ado, and with all due respect to Mr. Presser, I’ve responded point by point to his Bloomberg story to show you what it’s really like to teach skiing or snowboarding for a living.

A whale is a high-spending client, and Presser reports that the average tip in Aspen is an unspoken $100 a day, though some instructors have snagged as much as $50,000 or a brand new Jeep. My biggest tip ever? $20.

Since tips—and therefore the financial windfalls Presser chronicles in his Bloomberg piece—are mostly nonexistent at Baker, the best perk we could hope for was getting out of a morning lesson so we could ski pow.  

There are really only two ways to do this. First you tell a tale of grandeur to one of the younger part-time instructors about what they could do with all that extra money if they took your spot. That never really works, so your second option is to never be assigned a lesson in the first place.

Lessons were delegated by our manager at the 8:45 A.M. check-in. They would call out the name of the instructor that had be chosen, who would apathetically sulk to the front to take their burden. Superstition held that if you stood in the back of the crowd and avoided eye contact with the manager, you may just be forgotten about and spared. However, you also wanted to seem aloof, like you didn’t care if you got a lesson or not. Taking that logic to an extreme, a controversial approach employed by a brave few was actually the opposite: stand at the front and never break eye contact, eager to be chosen. Ultimately the decision was already made. We were just searching for something that could give us a sense of control over our meek existences.

Presser starts off his piece with examples of how the instructors at Aspen size up their clients before they even get off the first lift of the day. And while that’s universal among instructors, at Baker that reconnaissance started well before our clients even got to lift. We’d scope them out before they'd even leave the parking lot, often from the back window of a camper shell after a good night’s sleep. Some are scouting out the known ice patches, looking to get a live view of the day’s first casualties, but mostly we’d watch the parking lot fill up and make estimates on how many lessons there’d be that day. 

Aspen’s clients apparently prefer “fun young guys” with Australian accents as guides because, as Presser writes, “Women want to date them; men want to bro out with them.” In my experience, the best guides are ones who are good with kids. Group lessons at Baker often resemble a day care more than a ski school. Powder-hungry parents are ready to charge, so instead of wasting the morning cruising greens with their kids, they’d delegate that responsibility to a totally capable college freshman.

One time a parent skied up to me with about ten minutes left in the lesson, said it was too good of a day to ski with a kid—in front of his kid—and asked if it was cool if he took another lap. I agreed, hoping for a better tip, but as the dad skied off I turned to see the kid staring down at his snowboard in a way that seemed to suggest he was experiencing his first existential crisis. We didn’t do another lap—I took him inside for a hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. When the dad returned, he thanked me for buying the little dude a drink but didn’t offer to reimburse me, much less tip me. I mean, I had gotten the hot chocolate for free, but he didn’t know that.

At Aspen, instructors may be paired with clients through a process akin to matchmaking. At Baker, group lessons were assigned more or less by luck of the draw. And since most of the group lessons were for kids, the most consistent adult interactions I had were the short conversations with their moms.

Moms were unequivocally the best, and not just because they are consistent tippers. They’re also patient with their kid’s progress, punctual for pickup times, and will even ask after your own physiological needs. This being the case, it is advantageous to flatter them and attribute all the positive qualities of their children to the maternal lineage. And maybe tease Dad a bit—I mean, men, am I right? Even if you don’t get a monetary tip, you might snag a snack and a juice box, which is what I’d buy with the money anyway.

You won’t hear any celebrity name dropping in the Baker locker room. Instead the best client may be the kid whose family gave you a lift to the base village that morning. With some help from your thumb and a family-friendlysmile, it’s usually easy to make it to work on time after waking up in a random house in Glacier (the closet town) wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Still, sleeping off the rest of your hangover in the back of a minivan while a ten-year-old gazes at you in a way that implies both curiosity and disappointment doesn’t make for the best morning. That kid will only be more disappointed when they see you again in your green instructor jacket and realizes you’ve been trusted with teaching them a highly specialized skill in a formidable environment.

Ah, Aspen’s famed après scene, where champagne flows like water. This slope-side ritual is not really anoption for Baker’s instructors. If you happened to receive a meager tip, you could buy a beer at one of the two base lodges, but they would usually empty out by 5 P.M. As for sustanence, dinner was served at the employee lodge at the senior-citizen-special hour of 5:30 P.M. It happened that early because many employees were required to rise before dawn, and the rest were so burnt out that they were asleep by 8 P.M. anyway.

Presser equates Aspen’s rival gangs of instructors to secret societies. That’s not true at Baker, though it’s certainly a popular opinion.

A friend once told me that he hated the instructors because “they’re so full of themselves, always together, with their green jackets,” before quickly adding that I was one of the few cool ones. I can confirm that I am in fact somewhat cool, and that instructors did in fact wear green jackets. But those jackets didn’t mean we were some sort of exclusive group. We just stuck together because we did the same job on the same mountain. And I can tell you that if there was a secret society, I was definitely not invited.

If there was one exclusive group on the mountain, it wasn’t the instructors. Ski patrollers had their own shuttle, their own lodge, and they got all the girls and guys. But, they deserve it. The patrol at Mount Baker is a bare-bones staff of badasses. They have to be in order to keep this rowdy, gnarly, and amazing place under control.

So don’t beat yourself up about it

The June when Mason was three, we went hiking in Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge. At one point, Mason stopped in a bright yellow wildflower field, and I photographed him rolling around on the side of the trail. Then I made the mistake of posting that picture on my personal Instagram account.

I immediately found myself at the center of a social media storm. People argued whether or not it was OK that I had clearly let Mason wander off-trail and into the flowers, against Leave No Trace ethics, and then had the nerve to post about it. I understand that this maybe wasn’t good modeling on my part as the founder of Hike It Baby, especially since the field is a highly trafficked area and we have a lot of followers who could have been inspired to do the same. But it also got me thinking. When getting outside with kids, it’s hard to rigorously stick to Leave No Trace all the time. How bad should we feel about that?

Kids in early development are very tactile. Everything goes into the mouth or gets torn up by pudgy baby fingers, and they find nothing more thrilling than squashing, mashing, and breaking up nature, then taking the mess home in their pockets.

I get why we want to teach our children to be highly sensitive to our impact on Mother Earth, but I also see the argument for experiential learning in nature. At what age should you start teaching environmental impact? And what does that look like to a baby or toddler? I know we all have varying opinions on this, so all I can do is share my own and offer Hike It Baby’s community guidelines to help you figure out the right path.

Know the Landscape Before You Go

Understand the outdoor space you’re venturing into. If it’s an incredibly fragile environment where it’s hard to see the barriers, such as an open desert that might have a lot of cryptobiotic soil you don’t want to impact, that’s a hard concept for your little one to understand. In the case of the desert, you could make a game of it: say that the sides of the trail are hot lava and you have to stay on the trail so you don’t touch it. 

Pack It In, Pack It Out

When I talk about “pack it in, pack it out” for parents, I ask people to consider taking your diapers and trash home versus leaving it in the park dumpsters. An estimated 3.5 million tons of diapers go into the landfill each year. While you aren’t improving the statistic by taking your diaper home, consider that park services are already heavily understaffed and overburdened, especially with the increase of people using parks. It’s great to see that so many people with young children are getting out there on trail, but a hike with a handful of families all dumping diapers can really fill a trash can quickly in a morning.

Respect Wildlife

Animal encounters are a natural fascination for kids. Help your children understand how to keep a safe distance from wildlife. Quick movements and loud noises are stressful to animals as well, so encourage a whisper policy when an animal is present. Model it by dropping your voice as soon as a you come upon a deer or a group of birds. The one rule to take extremely seriously is to never feed animals, no matter how tempting or seemingly tame the animal is.

Leave What You Find

This can be difficult for kids. When your kid discovers a cool rock or finds the perfect hiking stick, it can be really hard for them to leave it behind. With toddlers, a first step can be to limit trail treasures to one item, and talk to them about the cumulative negative impact of picking flowers and leaves. For older kids, you can give your child a camera to take photos of the treasures they find, or have them carry a nature journal to record their discoveries. Print those up at home and help them make a nature diary.

Picture-Perfect Moments

While it’s so tempting to get that perfect shot in a field of wildflowers, we now try to remember that little kids look adorable no matter what. Placing them in that wildflower field trains them from a young age that it’s OK to stomp on wildlife. That said, on a number of trails I hike, there are trees that kids like to climb. I have seen a substantial impact on these trees after years of kids climbing, and there’s no going back and fixing those naturally occurring spots. Recognize where those highly impacted places are and encourage stopping there versus a more pristine area, especially when hiking with groups.

Goeocaching and Painted Rocks

Geocaching and painted rocks are hot topics in the Leave No Trace world. While they are so cool for little kids to find, they also alter the landscape. If you’re a fan of them, consider placing your own on the trail for the hours you’re hiking, then looping back around to pick them up before you leave the area. We recently found our first geocache, and while it was cool to find this treasure chest with things that were 15 years old, I was also disappointed that someone put a marijuana pipe in there for my five-year-old to find. He had no clue what it was, but it was a reminder that it’s worth thinking twice about what you’re leaving behind for others to find.

Treat Nature as Your Friend

Encourage kids to be respectful, courteous, and polite when playing outdoors. Turn nature into a living being. Tell them to view nature as their friend, and help their friend stay healthy by picking up trash and treading lightly. Talk with them about human actions that disrespect nature, like graffiti, and why we like to keep nature untouched and pristine.

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Taking a good photograph requires paying attention to more than just the exposure settings on your camera. Before you fiddle with your aperture and ISO, you have to make decisions about your subject, the surrounding landscape, the light, and how you want to arrange all of those elements within the frame. A lot of the learning process comes down to trial and error: take a photo, see what you did wrong, then try again a little differently until you come up with something you like. But a few guidelines go a long way to speeding up that process.

In search of some actionable practices that beginners can use to hone their photography skills, we reached out to Jennifer Davidson, a professional travel photographer who spends several months a year on National Geographic Expeditions cruises in the Galápagos Islands, Cuba, and Southeast Asia teaching participants how to use their cameras to capture the environments they explore. Here are her tips.

Many of the places people take their cameras in the outdoors, like forests, crags, or canyons, provide complex backdrops for photos. In these locations, trying to capture too much will cause your image to look busy. “Often beginners think that capturing the feeling of the place means getting it all,” Davidson says. “But there are different ways to show how a place looks or feels without showing everything.” If you’re in a forest, this might mean shooting just the trunks of aspen trees and their shadows or a few fallen leaves. “A detail shot can still tell a story,” she says. “It can tell that you’re in a forest in the fall without showing the entire scene.”

 The next time you’re out with your camera, pick a few details and practice photographing them in a way that evokes the feeling of the whole place. Identify the qualities of your location that you want to try to capture—whether it’s a smell, an emotion, or a type of geography—and the specific things that give the landscape that quality. Then shoot close-ups of those details without worrying about capturing anything else. 

When shooting people or animals, use the natural features of the landscape to draw the viewer’s eye to your subject. One way to do this is through what Davidson calls a leading line. “A trail can be a great leading line to the subject,” she says. “You see that a lot in photographs of hikers or mountain bikers. In photos of skiers, the leading line is often the tracks that they leave in their wake.” Davidson also suggests paying attention to the shapes in the landscape, whether it’s nearby trees or distant ridgelines, and positioning your subject so that they’re framed by those shapes.

Find a scenic section of trail and a friend willing to run or walk laps on it, then shoot from different angles, using the singletrack to direct the focus toward the subject. Or practice setting up shots using different natural elements as a frame, like a branch to outline the person’s body or face or the silhouette of mountains to draw the eye to your subject. 

Dramatic lighting usually yields the best photos, whether it’s sunset-hued, soft and partly clouded, or high contrast. But there is more than one way to use it to your advantage. Davidson suggests looking for interesting shadows. “The shape of the shadow is really important,” she says. Shadows often show up black in photos, since cameras can’t see as wide a dynamic range as humans can. In other words, they’ll be more noticeable in your photos than they are in real life, creating eye-catching effects or even acting as a frame or leading line for your subject.

As you move through a landscape, pay attention to where the light falls and how it moves over time. Then pick out interesting shadows and look for the landscape elements creating them. Photograph that feature in contrast with its shadow to enhance it. 

When a photo doesn’t turn out the way you wanted, it’s tempting to just delete it. Fight this urge. Davidson recommends holding on to bad photos so you can study the metadata—the settings you used for things like shutter speed, aperture, and ISO—and learn what you did wrong. “If a picture didn’t work but you love the quality of light, keep that picture,” she says. “The next time you’re in that scene, you can use your photo as a queue to try something a little different [with your settings] to try to get that same kind of feel.” Above all else, never delete in-camera photos. Davidson points out that people have emotional attachments to their experiences in the outdoors. If you’re having a really bad time on a trip, you’ll probably be tempted to delete good photos—or photos with elements you want to duplicate next time—simply because you’re eager to forget the type-three fun. Wait a few days or weeks so you can sift through your shots with a clear, analytical mind.

 Wait until you get home to your computer, and ideally give yourself a few days or weeks before processing your photos. When you do sit down to look through your images, keep the ones that didn’t turn out great. Take notes on what worked and what didn’t in each, so you know which settings to duplicate and which ones to fiddle with next time.

When it comes to killing with cars, anything goes as long as you’re sober

In August, Madison Jane Lyden, a 23-year-old tourist visiting the U.S. from Australia, was cycling along Central Park West. At around West 67th Street, a car-service driver pulled into her bike lane, forcing her into traffic. The driver of a private sanitation truck then struck and killed her.

Felipe Chairez, the driver of the truck, was charged with driving while intoxicated. (Police found three empty beer cans in the truck, though his attorney claims the alcohol was neutralized by a chicken sandwich.) However, the driver of the car service was charged with nothing, even though it was his action that put Madison Jane Lyden in harm’s way in the first place.

I'm not surprised that 50 percent of the team responsible for Madison Jane Lyden’s death will walk. The truth is that it’s very difficult to get in any serious trouble for hurting or killing someone with your car—unless, of course, you’ve been drinking. This is because drunk driving is pretty much our only motor-vehicular taboo. Menacing other road users in a grossly overpowered vehicle? No biggie. In fact, menacing behavior is so acceptable that we use it to sell cars. As long as booze isn’t involved, potentially fatal recklessness is basically just a form of self-expression.

DWI’s rarefied status as our one and only driving no-no is in no small part due to the efforts of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), the grassroots advocacy group started by Candace Lightner in 1980 after her daughter was killed by a drunk driver. In the ensuing years, that group's efforts have resulted in numerous laws designed to discourage drunk driving, including the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. Even more significantly, they’ve influenced social norms by reframing drunken driving crashes as acts of criminal negligence as opposed to mere “accidents.” The effect of this has been profound, and overall drunk driving deaths have declined by 50 percent since the organization was founded.

The fact that we now take drinking and driving seriously is obviously a good thing, and nobody’s suggesting we should be more tolerant of it or repeal laws against it. (Well, almost nobody.) At the same time, the very seriousness with which we take DWI can be frustrating sometimes, inasmuch as it underscores how little we seem to give a shit about the full suite of irresponsible motorist behavior. Hence, Madison Jane Lyden’s killer gets the book thrown at him, while the driver who initiated the sequence of events that culminated in her death doesn’t even have so much as a pamphlet waggled at him admonishingly. 

In a country that cherishes the mutually exclusive values of freedom and car dependence as much as America does, it’s pretty remarkable that we've agreed to legislate and demonize drunk driving to the extent that we have. So how did MADD pull it off? The tempting answer is that MADD was a reaction to tragedies involving children, and that we’ll do anything to keep our kids safe—but the reality is we’re quite adept at ignoring that sort of thing when it suits us.

No, the real reason we’re willing to be so tough on DWI is that it represents an attractive bargain: by investing all our efforts in fighting this one infraction, the rest of us get to feel good about ourselves no matter how irresponsible we are. Better still, we’re allowed to be irresponsible. Legally speaking in most jurisdictions, you’re way better off killing a cyclist or a pedestrian while sober than you are getting caught behind the wheel after you’ve had a tipple, even if you haven’t hurt anybody. It may not make much ethical sense, but it’s mindlessly simple in the way orders from a parent who can’t be bothered are simple: “I don’t care what the hell you do, just leave the goddamn booze alone!” Sure, whatever you say, I’ll just go back to lighting fires in the backyard.Not only that, but by focussing so relentlessly on DWI we make it much easier to blame the victim—and Americans love blaming the victim. See, the way we figure it is, once you rule out alcohol it naturally follows that whatever happened is the fault of the person to which it happened. Driver was sober? Driver stuck around? Oh well, the cyclist must have “veered” or “come out of nowhere” or pulled off one of those other Siegfried and Roy-worthy illusions that drivers are always attributing to cyclists. Come to think of it, what was the cyclist even doing on the road in the first place? Probably had it coming—especially if the cyclist wasn’t wearing a helmet. 

Despite our acquired contempt for DWI, motor vehicle deaths in America remain quite robust at around 40,000 per year. What we should be doing is building on what MADD accomplished by working to change the social norms around other forms of reckless driving. Instead, we’re trying to graft the MADD approach onto pedestrians by trying to make “drunk walking” a thing. (Looking for something to blame for increasing pedestrian deaths? Blame giant SUVs.)

In the 1970s, children in the Netherlands were dying as the country became overrun with automobiles. This led to protests and a movement called Stop de Kindermoord, or Stop the Child Murder. Cities took back their streets and now Dutch kids are the happiest in the world.

Taking on drinking and driving was a good start. Now let’s work on murdering and driving. It may seem like a hard bargain, but it’ll pay off in the long run.

Thanks to massive powder conditions, Wolf Creek will be the first ski area to open this season. Here’s what you need to know, plus the resorts we think could be turning chairlifts next.

With a reported 20 inches of powder over the past week, a midway base of 14 inches, and a bit more snow on the way, southwestern Colorado’s Wolf Creek will open this Saturday, October 13—a full 20 days before the resort’s previous projection. That’s good enough to win the race for earliest opening day and beats other perennial first-chair favorites like Arapahoe Basin. The best part? It’s almost entirely natural snow, says Davey Pitcher, CEO and president of Wolf Creek. “There is quite a bit water in the snow, too, so it’s quite supportive even off-piste if people want to go exploring,” he says. “We’ll have a variety pack of good terrain open—some expert terrain, a lot of intermediate terrain, and some beginner terrain.” Lifts include Treasure Stoke, Bonanza, and Nova, but they'll only be running on weekends for another few weeks. Still, it's a big change from the previous two seasons, when the resort struggled to open in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. But it really shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. This remote, family-owned ski area has a reputation for getting nailed with early season snow, but those storms usually come in November, not mid-October.

If you can’t make it for opening day, there are plenty of other reasons to visit later in the season. Wolf Creek sees a whopping average annual snowfall of 430 inches, the most in Colorado. Plus, this winter, a new high-speed quad will make access to the 900-acre Alberta area even easier and will open up plenty of new sidecountry runs like the north-facing Lake Chutes. Motel SOCO, 25 miles away in Pagosa Springs, was recently renovated and the bar serves local craft beers on tap and house cocktails (rooms from $94).

If Wolf Creek is a bit too remote, these five resorts may be your best bet for an early season chair.

Loveland and Arapahoe Basin

Colorado

Arapahoe Basin and Loveland have a friendly competition to see which resort can crank the lifts earlier (see #racetoopen). A-Basin snagged the win last year, opening on October 13. This year, thanks to cold temperatures, it started snowmaking on September 21, the earliest snowmaking date in the past decade. New this winter, A-Basin will open a lift into the Beavers and Steep Gullies, a 468-acre expansion into coveted steep terrain. There’s no lodging at the base of either ski resort, but the Hotel Chateau Chamonix in nearby Georgetown has in-room espresso machines and homemade croissants delivered to your door each morning (from $164).

Mount Rose

Nevada

With a base elevation of 8,260 feet, Mount Rose towers over the casinos of Reno and is one of the highest ski resorts in the Tahoe area, meaning it tends to open among the earliest. The ski area is in the midst of investing $2 million in improvement projects, including an updated snowmaking system with 17 new snowmaking towers and upgrades to the main lodge. The resort is scheduled to begin winter operations on October 26. Stay in downtown Reno—the Whitney Peak Hotel has a 164-foot outdoor climbing wall on one side of the building (from $350).

Killington

Vermont

Killington tends to be one of the earliest ski resorts to open in the Northeast; this year it hopes to open before November, pending conditions. Ahead of this winter, Killington announced $25 million in mountain upgrades, including a new six-person chair on Snowdon Mountain, a relocated and updated Snowdon Quad in the South Ridge area, and $1 million in snowmaking improvements. The Killington Grand Resort Hotel has ski-in/ski-out access, ski lockers, and a heated outdoor pool (from $175).

Lookout Pass

Idaho

Unlike many larger ski resorts on this list, Lookout Pass doesn’t have a robust snowmaking system—it just gets graced with snow early in the season. Last year, the ski area opened on November 4, making it the earliest to open in the Northwest. You’ll come for the 400 inches of average snowfall per season and the low-key, family-friendly vibe. There are only 540 acres and four lifts, but the ski area is in the process of expanding lift service to Eagle Peak, which will increase vertical to 1,650 feet and skiable acres to 1,023. The retro Stardust Motel has clean, basic rooms steps from downtown Wallace (from $110).

Mammoth Mountain

California

Mammoth Mountain has already announced its opening date: November 8. With a base elevation of nearly 8,000 feet, this eastern Sierra Nevada resort has reliably good early season conditions. Opening-day festivities include free coffee and hot chocolate at 7 a.m., a lively countdown to first chair, and a beer toast and live music on the deck at 11 a.m. The High Sierra Hotel, a Best Western located downtown, recently underwent a $1.2 million renovation with a refurbished café and lobby (from $167).

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The humble push-up is one of the greatest general conditioning exercises for the outdoor athlete, and you can do them anywhere, no equipment required. “You always have ground,” says Steve House, co-founder of mountain athlete training program Uphill Athlete. Push-ups target the chest, shoulders, and triceps and work your core, back, and legs. They pack a serious punch for such a seemingly simple exercise, but you aren’t doing yourself any favors if your form isn’t dialed.

Great push-up form starts with a rigid plank. Your arms should be fully extended, with your hands, elbows, and shoulders all in line, and your feet should be no more than 12 inches apart—the closer together, the more difficult the push-up, because it requires more core activation for stability. Throughout the push-up movement (unless otherwise specified by a variation), your spine should be neutral, so that your body forms a straight line from your feet to the crown of your head. Remember to engage your core and thighs to keep your hips flat and level.

You can bend your elbows out to the side in a T formation, which fires up your pecs, or keep them tucked in along your rib cage, which biases the triceps, says Jared Vagy, a doctor of physical therapy and a certified strength-and-conditioning specialist. House coaches his athletes to always keep their elbows tracking back in the more triceps-oriented position. As an outdoor or endurance athlete, he says, “You’ve got to carry the engine. You don’t want unnecessary weight.” For functional movements, you rarely need bulging pecs, but the triceps are important—think poling when skiing, mantling when climbing, and maintaining balance as you move through uneven terrain. The elbows are also sensitive, especially for climbers who are prone to elbow pain, so having them track backwards can reduce the stress on the joint.

To protect your shoulders, Vagy recommends that you lower your chest just past the level of your bent elbow so that your upper arms are parallel to the floor. Dropping any farther increases stress on the anterior capsule of the shoulder.

As for speed, there’s no reason to pound out 30 fast ones. Proper form is much more important. Always move slowly and in control. Make it meditative, and focus on your breathing: breathe in when lowering; breathe out when pushing back up.

Once you’ve perfected your form, push-ups are an excellent way to warm up at the crag, and they’re great mixed into workouts for general conditioning. Plus, there are endless ways to modify them for your own specific needs. Here’s a guide to the classic push-up and our 12 favorite variations, in more or less ascending order of difficulty.

Strengthens the upper body—primarily the chest, shoulders, and triceps—as well as the core and back muscles.

Start in a standard push-up position (as described above), with your feet together or no more than 12 inches apart, hands flat on the ground below your shoulders, and arms straight. Breathe in as you bend your elbows—keep them tracking back alongside your body—to lower your chest to slightly below the level of your bent elbow, and then breathe out as you push back up to the starting position for one repetition.

Strengthens the upper body and core, with more focus on the pectoral muscles.

Do a strict push-up, as described above, but with your hands farther out to each side, roughly 2.5 to three feet apart (the farther apart, the more difficult). Keep your elbows tracking back throughout the movement.

Strengthens the upper body and core, with more focus on the triceps.

Begin in a plank position, with your hands together and angled inward at 45 degrees so that your index fingers and thumbs touch to form a triangle (or diamond). Keep your elbows tight to your body and bend them to lower your chest toward the triangle. Reverse the movement to the starting position for one repetition. Keep the triangle directly below your chest throughout the movement.

Strengthens the upper body and core, with more focus on the shoulders.

Begin in a downward dog yoga position, with your feet and hands just wider than shoulder width. Keep your hips high, heels low, and maintain the inverted-V position as you bend your elbows and lower your head toward the floor between your hands. Reverse the movement to the starting position for one repetition.

Works the shoulders, triceps, and core and improves flexibility.

Slowly swoop from downward dog to cobra pose: from the downward dog position, bend your elbows and lower your nose to the floor between your hands, like a pike push-up, but then, without rising, continue moving your torso forward to slide your chin, chest, and then rib cage between your hands. As your ribs meet your hands, begin to arc your head and torso upward. Continue this upward arc until your arms are straight, hips are pressed toward the ground, and your back is hyperextended in cobra pose. Reverse the movement exactly until you’re back in downward dog.

Trains the push-up muscles asymmetrically across the body and requires more core activation for stability.

From a standard push-up position, move one hand forward and the other backward so they’re offset by about six to 12 inches (the farther, the more difficult). Bend your elbows to lower your chest until it is slightly below the level of your bent elbow, and then extend your elbows to push back up to the starting position. Keep your elbows tight to your body throughout the movement. After one or more repetitions, switch the fore and aft positions of your hands to work each side evenly.

Strengthens the upper body and core, with more focus on the triceps.

Start in a plank position, with your forearms flat on the ground, shoulder-width apart and parallel. Push up with your triceps to lift your elbows off the ground; continue until your arms are fully extended, then lower your elbows until just above the ground (don’t weight your forearms again) for one repetition. The farther forward you place your arms, the more difficult.

Strengthens the core in addition to the typical push-up muscles.

Assume a standard push-up position. As you lower yourself toward the ground, simultaneously bring one knee out to the side and up to touch your elbow, with your leg parallel to the ground. Your knee should touch your elbow at the lowest point of the push-up. Reverse the movement to the starting position and repeat on the other side.

Strengthens the upper body, with more focus on the core, hip flexors, and shoulders.

Assume a standard push-up position. As you lower yourself to the ground, simultaneously pick up one leg and cross it beneath your body as you rotate your hip toward the ground. Reverse the movement to the starting position and repeat on the other side.

Applies a higher percentage of body weight to a single arm, while the opposite arm assists (a good way to build up to a one-arm push-up).

Assume a push-up position, with wide hands angled outward at about 45 degrees. Lower yourself at an angle to one side so that you bring your shoulder down to your hand of the same side, while the other arm stretches to become fully extended. (It’s okay if your hands pivot during the movement.) Push back up to reverse the movement and return to the starting position. Repeat to the other side. It might help to keep your feet wider.

This variation is similar to the archer, but instead of returning to the starting position between every push-up, move your chest from side to side horizontally along and just above the ground, while fully extending the opposite arm each time.

Develops power in the chest, triceps, and shoulders.

From a standard push-up position, lower your chest until it’s slightly below the level of your bent elbow, and then push upward with enough force so that your hands leave the ground by a few inches. Land with soft elbows in push-up form and continue the lowering motion toward the ground. Repeat. Make sure to keep your back flat and hips level throughout the movement.

Once you get a handle on power push-ups, you can progress the exercise by adding in claps, which require more power to achieve the necessary airtime. For regular clap push-ups, perform a power push-up but with even more upward force. While your hands are in the air, clap below your chest. Like before, land with soft elbows in push-up form and continue lowering until your chest is slightly below the level of your bent elbow. Repeat.

Do the same exercise, but clap behind your back instead of below your chest. Be careful not to bend at the hips (cheating), and watch your face on this one.

Do the same exercise, but clap under your chest, then behind your back, and then under your chest again, all before touching the ground.

Develops even more dynamic power.

Like with claps, start in a standard push-up position and lower your chest until it’s slightly below the level of your bent elbow. Then explode upwards and lift both your hands and feet off the ground. Try to keep your back as flat as possible, but you may need to lift your hips slightly to generate momentum. It also helps to keep your feet wider. Land with soft elbows in push-up form and continue lowering toward the ground. Repeat.

Do the same exercise, but clap your hands and feet together while in the air. Requires more airtime and power.

Do the same exercise, but while in the air, fully extend your arms in front of you so that your body is in a single plane, parallel to the ground, like a flying Superman. Requires even more airtime and power.

Doubles the weight on a single arm and further activates the core for stability.

Just like it sounds—perform a push-up with one arm centered below your chest and the unweighted arm behind your pack. This one takes a bit more balance; it helps to keep your feet wider. Maintain a flat back and level hips (don’t let them twist one way or the other) throughout the movement. If you want an added challenge, opt for a two-point push-up: assume a standard push-up position with wide feet, then raise the opposite hand and leg to form a two-point plank. While maintaining a rigid plank, perform a push-up. Keep your back flat and hips level throughout the movement.

Many of these moves can be made easier or harder with these modifications, although not every modification will work with every type of push-up.

• Perform push-ups on your knees instead of your feet to ease the difficulty on your upper body. This is a great way to build up to more difficult variations.
• Elevate your hands on a bench, chair, or table—the higher above your feet, the easier.
• Utilize the lowering phase of a push-up (when muscle fibers elongate under load). “Muscles can handle a heavier load under eccentric contraction than they can under concentric contraction,” says Scott Johnston, a master coach at Uphill Athlete and the co-author of Training for the New Alpinism and Training for the Uphill Athlete. Therefore, he says, “[Negatives] are able to stress the muscle to a much higher degree, so you get a bigger strength-training effect.” In other words, if you’re not yet strong enough to do some of these push-up variations with proper form, perform only the eccentric phase (the lowering half) to build up strength for the concentric phase (the pushing-back-up half), when muscles shorten under load.

• Cross one ankle over the other so only one foot is on the ground. This requires more core activation for stability.
• Elevate your feet on a box, bench, or step to increase the activation of the upper chest muscles and the front of the shoulders (anterior deltoids). The higher your feet, the more difficult.
• Wear a weight vest or have a friend place a weight plate on your back for an added strength challenge.
• The benefits of the eccentric muscle phase are twofold. First, as stated above, negatives are a good way to build up to more difficult exercises. But because you can handle a heavier load under eccentric contraction, you can lower yourself slowly (over three to five seconds) to milk the eccentric phase for added training effect.
• : You can also add external weight during the eccentric phase for a greater strength-training effect. Start in a standard push-up position and have a friend place plate weights on your back. Lower yourself until your chest almost touches the floor (eccentric phase), and then have your friend remove the weight (or some of it) before you push back up (concentric phase).
• Transition between different types of push-ups. For example, go back and forth between narrow and wide hands or the fore and aft positions of staggered hands. Get creative.

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The motorcycle world is full of contradictions. On one hand, innovation is relatively inexpensive. It can cost as little as $5 million to $6 million to develop a new motorcycle, whereas for a car, that number is closer to $5 billion or $6 billion. On the other hand, motorcycle riders are incredibly conservative and don’t typically welcome change. 

Adding to that conundrum, motorcycles make ideal personal transportation for the increasingly congested roads in our increasingly urban world, but our society is becoming so averse to risk that motorcycles are seen and used as dangerous toys—not practical transportation. 

All that explains why we saw a boom in the development of electric motorcycles a decade ago, before electrification really took off in the car world, then a stagnation in available electric motorcycles over the last few years, even as electric cars started to become more commonplace. Now the largest motorcycle brand in the United States—Harley-Davidson—is finally putting its first electric bike on sale. If you’ve got $30,000, you can order the LiveWire right now for August delivery.

Why has it taken so long to get an e-bike from Harley, and why does it cost so much? I think I’m uniquely positioned to answer both questions. 

Back in the late 2000s, when the first electric motorcycles were beginning to hit the roads, I started a little motorcycle blog as a side project. I was eager to create content for it but couldn’t compete with the big motorcycle magazines for access to the Ducatis and Hondas of the industry. But those same magazines were incredibly skeptical of electric vehicles, so I was able to leverage my enthusiasm for seat time on those. I ended up reporting on a bunch of electric tech developments during what ended up being a time of exciting change for the motorcycle world. 

Because it was so much cheaper and simpler to develop electric motorcycles, a host of innovators saw them as a way to try new ideas and develop expertise around batteries, electric motors, and the software that controls them. The idea was that, by building some really neat bikes, they could then sell all that intellectual property back to the much richer car world once the inevitable electrification took hold. And that competition to develop electric vehicle (EV) technology led to real-world competition, as those innovators started taking to racetracks in an attempt to prove who had the best ideas. Electric motorcycles went from dorky little commuter bikes to unprecedentedly fast-racing prototypes in just a couple of years. 

While the hope for a big payday remained that a car maker might come knocking, that the rapid pace of innovation and the racetrack success began to make the prospect of a mainstream-production e-motorcycle seem viable, too. Someone just needed to figure out how to pack a feasible range into a fun package and bring that to market at a price people would pay. 

The first manufacturer to bring a genuinely good electric motorcycle to production was a little startup called Brammo, based out of Ashland, Oregon. Its Empulse was the first electric bike you could buy that had a maximum range of over 100 miles and a top speed of over 100 miles per hour. On top of that, it was an absolute blast to ride, something I discovered in the mountains above its headquarters, where I spent a couple of days carving up twisty roads with Brammo’s in-house racer, Eric Bostrom. Thanks to the relatively quiet nature of electric motivation, it was the first time I could actually hear the leather peeling off my knee sliders as they scraped along the asphalt through corners. It felt like the future had finally arrived. 

That ride took place in August 2012, a date which feels particularly relevant because it was exactly seven years before deliveries of the LiveWire would begin, and it was around that same time that Harley started development of that bike. Also, the new LiveWire appears to be shockingly (get it?) similar to that old Empulse. 

The LiveWire’s top speed is claimed to be 110 miles per hour. I maxed out an Empulse at 105. Measured under the Society of Automotive Engineers’ test cycle, Harley says its LiveWire will have a maximum urban range of 110 miles. The same metric for the Empulse was 121 miles. While Harley isn’t releasing the capacity of the LiveWire’s battery, we can extrapolate from the similarity in performance and range that it will be close to the Empulse’s 9.3 kilowatt-hours. Batteries remain the most expensive single component on electric vehicles, so this transitions us nicely into a discussion about price. 

Most signs pointed toward the Empulse becoming a success. Brammo had secured the investment necessary to put it into production. It was winning races around the world. The company signed major manufacturing partnerships that could have given it the scale necessary to respond to huge demand. But that demand never really materialized, in large part because, at nearly $20,000, the Empulse cost more than twice as much as the internal-combustion-engine bikes Brammo identified as the competition. Rights to the Empulse were eventually acquired by Polaris, which sold the bike under its Victory brand. When that brand went under a couple years ago, it took the Empulse with it. 

I was taken by surprise, then, when Harley announced that the LiveWire would cost $29,799. Back in 2012, EV batteries cost about $800 per kilowatt-hour. Today, Tesla has whittled that cost down to $190 on its Model 3, while the Chevy Bolt’s batteries cost General Motors $230. Surely, given the economies of scale Harley is able to leverage (it sold about 230,000 motorcycles in the U.S. last year, while Brammo never sold more than a couple hundred) and the time that has passed, Harley should be able to sell this bike for substantially less money. So I called up Marc McAllister, Harley-Davidson’s vice president of product planning and portfolio, and asked him what gives. 

“We don’t expect mass-market adoption,” McAllister says. In addition to parts and materials, the price of a new motorcycle is a function of the cost it takes to develop it, spread across the projected-sales volume. Because this is Harley’s first electric motorcycle, the cost of new-production processes, equipment, and facilities, as well as employee training, are also a factor. McAllister wouldn’t tell me the number of sales Harley is targeting for the LiveWire but, at $30,000, we can assume that number will be fairly low. 

Rather than sell the bike in huge volumes, McAllister tells me that it’s the LiveWire’s job to drive interest in the idea of an electric Harley, because more of those are on the way. “The LiveWire is the beginning of a portfolio of electric motorcycles,” he says. “We see this portfolio ranging from a few thousand dollars all the way up to LiveWire.” Harley has already shown an electric scooter and an electric dirt bike it plans to put into production soon, and its future range of EVs could include everything from pedal-assist electric bicycles to heavy cruisers. The idea is that a lot of people will be interested in buying a $3,000 electric scooter from the brand because it shares some of the excitement of the $30,000 LiveWire. 

The big question hanging over the LiveWire, then, isn’t its cost, but whether it will be exciting enough to shine a halo on the rest of the company’s forthcoming EVs. The rest of the motorcycle world hasn’t taken the last seven years off. Right now you can buy a $19,390 electric bike from Zero Motorcycles that has an urban range of 223 miles and similar performance to the LiveWire. Lightning Motorcycles will sell you an electric bike with a 218-mile-per-hour top speed for $38,880, and it just announced that a new model, coming in March, will have a 150-mile range, a 150-mile-per-hour top speed, and cost just $12,998. 

I asked McAllister what the LiveWire (or other future Harley EVs) will offer that the cheaper, faster competition does not. “First of all, we’re bringing an authentic Harley-Davidson experience to an electric motorcycle that handles and develops power in a great way,” he says. “We also bring 115 years of experience of how to service customers, and we bring a lot more support and capability at ensuring riders have a great experience wherever they are.” 

McAllister says that, later this year, the LiveWire will be available at a network of over 200 Harley dealers nationwide, a number the company hopes to grow over the coming years. Neither Zero nor Lightning sells more than a handful of bikes (they don’t release exact numbers) and have scarcely any dealer presence. If you need service or support, or just want to take a test ride, odds are you’ll have a Harley dealer who’s able to help you nearby. No other electric-motorcycle brand can say that. 

Why hasn’t another major motorcycle brand put together a mainstream electric motorcycle yet? To understand the answer to that question, you have to understand Harley’s unique position in a rapidly changing market. Motorcycle sales are in the toilet here in America. The industry focused almost exclusively on selling luxury bikes to baby boomers in a prerecession economy where credit was cheap. When the housing market collapsed in 2008, it took American motorcycle sales with it. Foreign brands like Honda were able to refocus their efforts on stable markets like Southeast Asia—but Harley sells the vast majority of its motorcycles here in America. The company tried for years to market its existing product range to a new audience, before acknowledging that, in order to survive, it needs to find new ways to reach that new audience with new products. And those new products in the U.S. are going to be EVs. 

McAllister is keenly aware of the barriers to entry that have prevented his brand from reaching new riders and is pitching this new portfolio of EVs directly at those barriers. Getting a motorcycle license is expensive and time-consuming, so he says Harley will sell products small enough that they can be legally ridden on the road without a motorcycle license. Think of those as a gateway drug to faster, more expensive Harley electrics. Motorcycles can be intimidating to ride, and in the hands of the inexperienced, they can be dangerous. So Harley is adopting forward-thinking safety tech like Bosch’s cornering antilock-brake system. That’s present on the LiveWire, which is also fitted with programmable riding modes that alter everything from traction control intervention levels to the motor’s power delivery in order to make the motorcycle both safe for beginners and exciting for experts. The American public’s buying power is now concentrated in cities and in a younger generation, both of which are unwelcoming to the brand’s traditional cruiser archetype. As a result, Harley is exploring ways in which it can translate its brand recognition to an entirely new generation of products that will exist across categories Harley has never before considered. 

Just like the wider motorcycle world, Harley’s path to success in an electric future is full of contradictions. It needs to sell affordable e-motorcycles, but in order to make you want an affordable electric motorcycle, it has to not sell you an expensive electric motorcycle first. If you want a LiveWire, but can’t afford one, then Harley has succeeded.