Southern Indiana Trails

On February 1, the Bureau of Land Management released a final environmental impact statement (EIS) for ConocoPhillips’ Willow project in northern Alaska. Recommending the Biden administration proceed with permitting, the EIS finds the project will release at least 287 million tons of carbon dioxide over a 30-year period. That’s more than double the 129 million tons of carbon pollution the administration hopes to save through renewable energy development on public lands. “No other oil and gas project has greater potential to undermine the Biden administration’s climate goals,” Karlin Itchoak, Alaska Senior Regional Director at the Wilderness Society , said in a press release. In 2021, President Biden announced an ambitious new target to achieve a 50 to 52 percent reduction in nationwide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030, from 2005 levels. This included plans to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy, and 25 gigawatts of solar, onshore wind, and geothermal energy on public l...

The first time I teetered to the top of a fourteener, I spent the descent daydreaming about a second kind of mounting. (Yes, I’m talking sex here.) But after I’d downed my celebratory kombucha at the base, climbing on top of my partner was the last thing I was in the mood for. As personal as it seemed, my lack of interest in sex after my taxing trek wasn’t just a me problem. It’s a fairly common phenomenon among outdoor aficionados who train long and hard. Research indicates that too much or too little exercise can make sex unappealing. Exercise adheres to the “Goldilocks principle,” explains Lyndsey Harper, MD, the founder and CEO of Rosy, a sexual health wellness technology platform. Like in the well-known fairytale, it’s all about finding the right balance. Why Outdoor Activity Supports Your Sex Drive Exercise impacts sex drive in a number of ways, according to Harper. For starters, movement supports the circulation of blood throughout the body, she says. “Blood flow to the gen...

Hypothermia, falls, losing your way—there are a lot of hazards hikers need to be aware of when they step onto the trail in New Hampshire’s White Mountains . Thanks to a new bill wending its way through the state’s legislature, officials may need to add a new one: losing their driver’s license. New Hampshire is the only state in the country that regularly charges rescuees for search and rescue operations. While a handful of states, including Hawaii and Maine, have laws that allow them to bill hikers who they claim acted irresponsibly for the cost of their rescue, those rules are rarely, if ever, invoked. (Some counties in Utah also periodically charge visitors who require rescue, though there’s no statewide policy.) In contrast, New Hampshire authorities send a bill to roughly 6 percent of the hikers they rescue annually, alleging negligence or lack of preparation.  Currently under consideration, SB 13 would allow the state’s Fish and Game Department and Division of Motor Vehicl...

When Nike was hyping the launch of its Vaporfly 4% running shoe in 2017, there was some skepticism about the company’s claims of having invented a product that would dramatically improve running economy. As it turned out, however, all the noise about the ur-super shoe was empirically validated; athletes of every level who wore it were suddenly running faster times. Clock don’t lie. Soon, every major running shoe company developed a premium racer whose design seemed to follow the blueprint of offsetting max cushioning with a stiff plate. For better or worse, it was impossible to deny that Nike had spawned an industry-wide shift in racing shoes. The company makes a point of emphasizing how much this seismic innovation is indebted to input from elite athletes. The Vaporfly has a tweaked version of one of Nike’s slogans printed on its upper, informing us that it’s been “Engineered to the exact specifications of world-class runners.” On the one hand there’s nothing particularly new or ...

Esther Nakajjigo, a 25-year-old Ugandan human rights activist, was killed in a horrific accident at Arches National Park on June 13, 2020. On Monday, a federal judge in Utah ruled that the U.S. government must pay her family more than $10 million in damages  The amount was far less than the $140 million Nakajjigo’s family originally sought. But an attorney for her parents and husband said they were grateful for the judgment, which represents the largest federal wrongful death verdict in Utah history, the Associated Press reported . Nakajjigo married Denver man Ludovic Michaud in March 2020. As recreation areas in eastern Utah reopened that summer, Michaud was excited to take his new wife to Arches National Park, and the two drove there in June. The couple was leaving a park parking lot to get ice cream when a metal traffic control gate swung into the road, piercing the passenger side of the couple’s rental car and severing Nakajjigo’s head. In their legal complaint, Michaud an...

Twenty-four-year-old Cat Runner  of Louisville, Kentucky, waved warmly to a full house—and a standing ovation—at Colorado’s Boulder Theater on the night of Thursday, January 26 following the airing of the finale of HBO’s rock climbing reality show The Climb . The eight-episode series featured ten climbers vying for a $100,000 grand prize plus a one-year sponsorship from PrAna, also worth $100,000. The show, which was produced by climbing veteran Chris Sharma and Hollywood star Jason Mamoa (yes, Aquaman), cast competitors who climb routes rated between 5.11 to 5.12 or V4 to V6 (considered intermediate-level climbs). Producers cast amateur climbers rather than professional or top-level ones in an effort to make the show relatable to experts and casual fans of the sport. The morning after the event, Runner, who is 24, met me for breakfast in Boulder. “I love breaking beta—it’s the most fun,” Runner told me. In climbing parlance, the phrase refers to finding a new method for climb...