Southern Indiana Trails

Whether you’re exploring backroads just to see new places or heading to a specific destination, trailhead, or campsite, pulling off a successful adventure starts with proper planning—and the right vehicle. Ride along as pro mountain bikers and off-road enthusiasts Joey Schusler and Kyle Strait show how the new Tundra is capable of tackling virtually any terrain. The post Off the Beaten Path in the 2022 Toyota Tundra appeared first on Outside Online . by mmiranda via Outside Online

The key to pulling off an epic ride? Getting yourself and all your bikes and gear to the trailhead in style. No one knows this better than pro riders and off-road enthusiasts Joey Schusler and Kyle Strait, who are always exploring the remote roads and backcountry areas in search of new trails to ride. The post The Ultimate Rig for MTB Adventures appeared first on Outside Online . by mmiranda via Outside Online

Video loading... LifeStraw, the backcountry water-purification brand best known for its award-winning Personal Straw filter, is kicking off hiking season with a bang. This spring heralds the launch of five brand-new filtration products, including a total redesign of the iconic Personal Straw. Every one of the new  Peak Series  filters boasts ultra-fast flow rates and more durable materials than ever before. Bonus: As with previous product lines, this one is backed by LifeStraw’s Give Back program. For every filter sold, the brand provides safe drinking water for one child in need for a full year. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the most exciting new filters coming at you this spring. Peak Series Personal Straw Premium materials, a new look, and a more versatile design make the Peak Series Personal Straw one of the smartest personal filters to hit the market yet. The new straw is re-engineered to reduce clogging from silty water sources, and it’s faster and more adaptabl...

I learned to kayak at the same time I learned to walk. For the first few years of my life, my dad was a park historian on Isle Royale National Park , off the coast of Minnesota in Lake Superior, just south of the Canadian border. My family would spend summers on the island, and on calm days I would sit in his lap in his Old Town kayak and pretend to grip the paddle as he propelled us forward. This was the closest thing to daycare in my outdoors-obsessed family.  As far back as I can remember, my dad has loved being outside. Often, it’s the little things he enjoys the most—wolf tracks, bird calls, the changing seasons. My parents tried their hardest to share that love with us: Mom and dad took us on backpacking trips in Alaska, weeks canoeing in the Boundary Waters , and spring breaks on “vacation” to parks around the country. These adventures weren’t technical or aimed at big objectives. My family spent the majority of our time batting at mosquitoes and slogging through muskeg, n...

Metabolic flexibility is a buzzy topic, particularly among biohackers —people who use themselves as an experiment in an effort to be healthier or perform better. Being metabolically flexible means that you’re able to switch between burning carbs and burning fat for energy, which helps your body consistently function at its best, both in everyday life and during exercise. But even though metabolic flexibility is important, do you need a tool to track it? Lumen , the company behind what it calls “the first device to hack your metabolism,” claims it can do just that, helping customers burn fat, lose weight, and naturally boost their energy in the process. The premise is simple: users breathe into the device within 30 minutes of waking, and the Lumen app creates a meal plan for the day based on whether the user is burning more carbs or more fat. The gadget, plus six months of app access, costs $249; subsequent months require an additional subscription. Despite Lumen’s big ...

It’s healthy to remember that even the most seasoned outdoor athlete was once a bumbling, stumbling noob . No matter the activity you pursue, you are guaranteed to crash, or get lost , or make a really silly equipment choice at some point in the early stages of your progress. Outside editors are no different. Here is a collection of our best tales of newbie blunders to remind you that everyone has to start somewhere. Crash Course on the Slopes The first time I tried downhill skiing was in the 1980s at Snowshoe Resort in West Virginia. I was there with the same co-ed group I went to the beach with twice every summer—an intelligent and cultured bunch of East Coast young adults who, alas, boozed it up just as hard as the shirtless males on the Ocean City boardwalk. Some of the group knew how to ski but I did not. Instead of taking a lesson—too expensive!—I asked an alpha male from New England to explain how skis worked the night before our big first day on the slopes. He did a thorou...

At 5:38 p.m. on January 26, 72 cell phones from Portland Mountain Rescue (PMR) and 67 from the  Hood River Crag Rats mountain rescue team rattled and hummed. “Fallen climber, Devils Kitchen,” read the messages. I cringed with consternation and frustration. Someone was in trouble again on the mountain, and my evening, night’s sleep, and next day of work would be trashed. The most popular route up Oregon’s Mount Hood, an 11,249-foot active volcano, passes by two giant cavities that exhaust lethal sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. The Devils Kitchen fumarole sits just climber’s right of Hogsback, a steep snow ridge that runs from 10,500 feet up to the Pearly Gates, the final chute to the summit. The Hot Rocks fumarole, where the heat from the earth never allows snow to accumulate, is just climber’s left. On a clear, windless day your eyes water and your nose stings from the sulfur that wafts across the flank of the most frequented area—collectively called the South Side Routes—...

A Norwegian climber named Kristin Harila is well on her way to breaking Nirmal “ Nims” Purja’s speed record for ascending the world’s 14 mountains above 8,000 meters (26,000 feet).  On Friday, Harila, 36, reached the summit of 27,766-foot Makalu, less than one week after she’d hiked Mount Everest and 27,940-foot Lhotse in one push. She has now climbed six of the world’s highest peaks in just 29 days.  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd5UmgqqAhs/ “It was a struggle. The weather got worse, but [there] was no turning back,” Harila said in a post on social media. “I am tired, but very happy.” According to Explorersweb.com , Harila’s ascended the six peaks two days quicker than Purja did in 2019. She chose for support the guiding company 8K Expeditions, and she ascended Makalu with guides Dawa Songchu Sherpa and Pasdawa Sherpa. Harila’s expedition marks the first serious challenge to Purja’s record, which the Nepali-British mountaineer set three years ago by ascending the 14 pe...

Earlier this month, Jakob Ingebrigtsen , the reigning men’s Olympic 1,500-meter champion, gave a post-race interview at the Sound Running Track Meet in California. The 21-year-old Norwegian had just vanquished a quality field in the 5,000-meters despite still being, as he put it, in the “basic training” phase of his season. After answering a few questions about his upcoming schedule, Ingebrigtsen was asked about winning Olympic gold last year. Had the emotional payoff been what he expected? “It’s really strange because I trained for that specific race for basically my whole life,” he replied. “The peak is really high, but also right after the peak there’s a big low. Because I’ve done it. So what’s the meaning of going back and doing all the shit work that’s needed to get back into the same shape?” Heavy. One minute you think you’re in for another banal exchange about stacked fields and race prep and then you have the young idol of the international athletics world confessing his ex...

Welcome to Ask a Gear Editor, a monthly column where we answer readers’ most puzzling gear questions. Have a burning question of your own? Become an Outside+ member  to  ask an Outside expert for advice . I’m an avid runner but mostly stick to shorter distances. This year I’m shooting for my first 50K. How will I know when it’s time to replace my trail-running shoes, since I’ll be tackling lengthy, high-volume training? FYI, I’m also on a budget. — Ultra Newbie Dear Ultra Newbie: Trail-running shoes can be expensive—upward of $200 a pop. So I tend to run mine down to their last lugs before I commit to new kicks.  Last year I trained for my first ultramarathon , and over nine months, I bagged trails coast to coast, from Washington’s Columbia River Gorge to North Carolina’s Appalachia. The terrain varied from rough limestone-shale fields to swampy singletrack to slick red sandstone.  About 700 miles in, on the same pair of Salomon Speedcross 5’s , I noti...

It’s almost summer, and in my house, that means one thing: it’s time to go backpacking. Because gear is such a major factor for both comfort, I set out to find the highest-performing clothing possible.   For help I reached out to John Barklow, an Alaskan, former Navy diver, former wilderness survival trainer for Special Operations Forces, former gear designer for SOF, current product developer for Sitka, a high-tech hunting apparel brand that’s recently been making more mainstream gear. Barklow used, designed, or commissioned any clothing technology worth talking about, and his new monthly newsletter, Knowledge From Storms , is a master class in getting the most out of your gear.   Barklow has a magic number for layering systems: eight. “It doesn’t take a lot of layers to stay warm and dry in the wilderness,” he says. “Eight pieces are the foundation for outdoor pursuits.”     View this post on Instagram A post shared ...

A friend of mine who ran for the great University of Arkansas track and cross-country dynasty of the 1990s once told me a story about training paces. When eager freshmen showed up each fall for their first workout with the team—five by a mile, say—they’d sidle over to the upperclassmen and ask nervously, “So, um, how fast are we supposed to run these miles?” And the seniors would cock an eyebrow and reply, “I don’t know, how fast can you run them?” That approach works pretty well ( within limits ) for hard workouts. But it fails for easy runs, which might make up 80 percent of your training and by definition are done more slowly than you’re capable of. As a result, there are some radically different schools of thought about exactly how easy “easy” should be, from super relaxed to the semi-brisk Zone 2 training that’s currently popular. And there’s a more nihilistic school of thought—one that, on reflection, I’ve subscribed to for most of my running career—which assumes that easy ...