Southern Indiana Trails

For one of surfing’s top competitors, it only took a moment to go from performing at the peak of his ability to nearly losing it all. In March 2020, big-wave world champion Billy Kemper was surfing in Morocco when a wave unexpectedly threw him from his board and onto rocks on the coast. Left with a broken pelvis that caused near-fatal complications, Kemper was saved from the frothing waters by a rescue team and sent to heal in his home state of Hawaii. The six-part documentary series Billy  takes us through Kemper’s long road to recovery and the physical and emotional struggles he’s faced throughout his successful career. Don’t miss the series finale on Sunday.  How to watch Billy : Live Sunday at 9 P.M. EDT on Outside TV+ via Dish, RedBox, the Roku Channel, Samsung TVPlus, Sling, Stirr, Vizio WatchFree, Xumo, and the free Outside TV app . On demand or live on outsidetv.com and in the free Outside TV app available on Android, Fire TV, iOS, and Roku devices....

Dear Sundog: At my local backcountry ski spot, there’s a steep, narrow section of tight trees where the only way down is the skin track. Sometimes downhill skiers come careening toward uphill skinners in the track. Who has the right of way?   —Ups and Downs Dear Ups: Sundog hates nothing more than descending the skin track. First of all, in Sundog’s book, every foot of elevation gained through huffing and puffing deserves a reward of buttery turns, if not outright cold-smoke face shots. Second, it hurts his damn knees, which, let’s face it,   are not what they were 25 years ago, when he clamped his first pair of three-pin leather boots onto straight skinnies. Hurtling downhill with skis locked parallel in a deep, slick groove is like the Olympic luge where the only medal is getting to the car without busting your lip on a branch.  It’s not only confounding but also dangerous, as Uphill Skinner is often hyperventilating, unaware, unable to quickly ex...

Want to see what goes bump in the night? Curious what animals might be visiting your property? There are a million reasons why you might want a motion-sensor camera, and for just $150, this one is as good as it gets.  My reason for wanting a camera was to see what might be visiting my family’s cabin in northern Montana while we’re there—and when we’re not there,   I didn’t want to wait for those images, so I needed the information to be live.  But things got a little more complicated than simply installing a doorbell camera. I was looking for an angle that could show me more than the view out the front door, and the electricity and satellite internet connections at the cabin are spotty at best. What I needed was something that ran on batteries and was capable of instantly uploading photos to the internet using a cellular data uplink. In other words, I was after a game camera.  Game cameras use infrared motion sensors to capture images of ...

For thousands of years, cultures around the world have engaged in the time-honored ritual of sweating it out. Ancient Romans had baths. Russians have banyas , the Japanese have communal sentōs , the Turks have steamy hammams, and the Finns have dry saunas. It’s the latter style, the wood-fired schvitz , whose popularity has been heating up over the past few years and has hit new highs in the United States this dark winter. Since 2016, sales of in-home saunas have been growing by double digits, according to Mark Raisanen, general manager of Finnleo , North America’s largest supplier of saunas. In 2020 alone, that growth doubled year over year. “For folks who enjoy hiking, camping, biking, and simply being outside, having the chance to complete those activities with a sauna—there’s nothing better,” Raisanen says. But with an entry price of $4,000 for a traditional wood-clad hot room —some skyrocket past $20,000, depending on extras—it raises...

For as long as I’ve been hiking, finding trail pants that really fit has been a fruitless endeavor. A trip to the REI dressing room with potential options typically ends one of three ways: with too-baggy bottoms that make me look like a dad on vacation;   with yet another pair of restrictive, sweat-trapping leggings;   or with lots of tears and empty-handed. Whichever outcome, I’m left feeling ashamed of my body and cursing whatever genetic combination resulted in an extra-large butt being attached to   a medium frame.  While curvy celebrity queens like Beyoncé and plus-sized outdoor stars like Mirna Valerio have helped turn my source of middle school insecurity into my biggest asset (pun intended), the outdoor clothing industry has been slow to catch up. Major brands like Patagonia and Marmot only recently began carrying extended sizes , and even so, finding active pants for curvy people that aren’t leggings is nearly impossible. Spandex can be a passable ...

While hiking in the Adirondacks earlier last year, I came upon a scared teenage boy who was lost in the  High Peaks Wilderness . He and some friends were home from school and bored during the early months of the pandemic, so they decided to do the 15-mile trek up Mount Marcy , the tallest mountain in New York State, at 5,344 feet tall. This is a hike suited for experienced adventurers, and this kid did not fit that description: he didn’t have proper layers and had no food, water, or headlamp as the sun was setting. He was disoriented, likely due to exhaustion and mild dehydration. Fortunately, we were only a few miles from the trailhead at that point. I was able to reunite him with his group and bypass a potentially dangerous situation. That encounter is just one of countless examples of unprepared and uninformed hikers heading into the Adirondacks and other wilderness areas around the country. According to the American Hiking Society , trail usage saw an increase of ...

“Just trust me” book recommendations are great: you already know that a friend or another   reader with good taste loved it, and it’s best to dive in without knowing a lot of details. I’d guess that translated books have among the highest “just trust me” hit rates. Publishers usually decide to release a work in additional languages only when it’s gotten an amazing response in its original language or when the author has already gained plenty of praise and fans. These three newly translated titles seem to prove the point. They and their writers are already beloved, and now it’s English-speaking readers’ turn to get on board. These three books—two novels and one nonfiction travelogue—each take a very different approach to exploring the natural world, but all happen to be as playful as they are philosophical. Bonus points if you can read any in their original Chinese, Spanish, or French—or set it as your aspiration for knocking out those Duolingo sessions. ‘American Deliri...