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BEYOND THE ORDINARY

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BEYOND THE ORDINARY

HEROES 2020 Why WNBA stars NATASHA CLOUD and Renee Montgomery sat out a season to fight for social justice

SIX MORE INSPIRED GAME CHANGERS

THE RED BULLETIN 12/2020

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BEYOND THE ORDINARY

U.S. EDITION DEC. 2020, $5.99

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

HEROES 2020 Why WNBA stars RENEE MONTGOMERY and Natasha Cloud sat out a season to fight for social justice

SIX MORE INSPIRED GAME CHANGERS

THE RED BULLETIN 12/2020

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Using only the wizardry of natural light and reflective glass, photographer Jim Krantz captures the interplay of the iconic buttes of the Navajo Nation and the waters of Lake Powell. The image belies the historic challenges the Navajo people have experienced accessing clean drinking water, a struggle heightened by the pandemic.

That’s why the work of the Navajo Water Project, a small but mighty nonprofit led by indigenous people, is so heroic. To learn more about their life-changing efforts, read our story on page 36.

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JIM KRANTZ

IT IS WATER THAT DEFINES CIVILIZATION. THAT’S WHY GIVING INDIGENOUS PEOPLE ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER IS SO IMPORTANT.

EDITOR’S NOTE

CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE

To put it gently, this has been a hard year, marked by a pandemic, economic ennui and toxic political debate as historic problems of racism and social justice have exploded in the national conversation. Amid this backdrop, it’s a fair question to ask: What makes a hero?

Is it enough to win championships or hold righteous positions? In the issue you’re holding, we’ve reserved that honor for changemakers—people who have taken action and achieved positive results in these uncertain times.

ANN-DERRICK GAILLOT

ACTION HEROES

Gaillot profiled three muralists who are honoring Black and brown victims of police violence. “I was struck by how these artists center relationships in their work,” says the Montana-based writer, whose work has run in Rolling Stone and The Fader. “That’s how they keep the heart in all they do.” Page 28

BILL GIFFORD

“Traveling to the Navajo Nation was eye-opening—it’s six hours from my home in Salt Lake City but felt like a different country,” says Gifford, the author of Spring Chicken and a contributing editor at Outside. “On the reservation, the lack of water defines life in many ways.” Page 36 Photographer Jim Krantz shoots portraits of Emma Robbins (left) and Shanna Yazzie of the Navajo Water Project, whose work is changing lives on the reservation.

Correction: In our October/November edition, a photograph intended to show Zeb Powell mistakenly showed another rider. Powell is pictured on page 85 of this issue.

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TAMRYN SPRUILL

Covering the social justice work of two WNBA stars was tough for the Boston-based writer. “Truth meant wading into a concentrated form of the trauma I live with daily,” says Spruill, who is writing a book about the WNBA. “Yet the anguish this project triggered underscored its necessity.” Page 20 THE RED BULLETIN

MADDIE IVEY (COVER)

Our cover story, “Critical Assist” (page 20), profiles two WNBA point guards who opted out of the 2020 season to pursue social justice work. We also feature artists and an athlete who speak truth to power about racism, a chef and a founder fighting for equity, and Indigenous innovators bringing clean water to the Navajo Nation. These heroes offer hope—and a road map to a better world.

CONTENTS December

FEATURES 19

36

Heroes of the Year

Learn how WNBA stars Natasha Cloud and Renee Montgomery, artists Thomas Evans, Hiero Veiga and Brandan Odums, nonprofit founder Steve Larosiliere and chef Justin Sutherland are all changemakers transforming the world we live in.

Heroes 2020: Navajo Water Project

On America’s largest reservation, a nonprofit is bringing lifegiving water to Indigenous people hardest hit by the pandemic.

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Heroes 2020: Joseph Gray

The 18-time national champion mountain runner is speaking out for equity in his sport and racial justice in the world.

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Blood Runs Cold

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Into the Underworld

In Canada, a one-of-a-kind endurance event, the Numb Bum 24, attracts racers willing to brave brutal, subzero temps.

50 FORGING AHEAD

Champion runner Joseph Gray is leveraging his success to speak out about his experiences as a Black athlete.

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MADDIE IVEY, JIM KRANTZ, CHIP KALBACK

Meet the explorers unlocking the secrets of the world below us.

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THE

DEPARTURE

Taking You to New Heights 9 Adaptive athlete Trevor

Kennison has big goals

12 MotoBASE jumping in the

dunes of the Mojave Desert

14 Soaring above the peaks

in the Czech Republic

16 Skip Marley’s top tracks by

his late grandfather, Bob

20

STRONG ASSISTS

WNBA point guards Renee Montgomery (left) and Natasha Cloud opted out of the 2020 season to fight for social justice.

36 NATIVE SOIL

The Navajo Nation has long lacked access to clean water, but locals are making strides to change that.

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17 An AR app that turns your

environment into a gallery

GUIDE

Get it. Do it. See it.

83 Travel: Three mountain

towns worth checking out

86 Fitness tips from MTB star

Hannah Bergemann

88 The best watches and fitness

gifts for the new year

96 The Red Bulletin worldwide 98 Breaking with birds in Japan

NEED TO CONQUER A MOUNTAIN OF WORK? FREE

Gain insights to improve the way you work at

AS

SE

SS

MENT

LIFE

&

STYLE

BEYOND

THE

ORDINARY

JOSH BERMAN/LEVEL1

THE

FLYING HIGH

“I made some really extreme goals from the get-go,” says Kennison.

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Last year, adaptive ski racer Trevor Kennison stunned the world’s best snow athletes by launching into a legendary chute at Jackson Hole. But he’s got more in store—way more.

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H

e honestly can’t remember his fifth goal. There was the backflip, the road gap, gold in the Paralympics and Corbet’s Couloir, Jackson Hole’s iconic drop into a cliff-lined chute.

They were huge goals, especially for a guy more immediately focused on things like faster transitions in and out of his wheelchair.

“I just had a dream and a vision,” says Trevor Kennison, 28, from his home in Winter Park, Colorado. “I made some really extreme goals from the get-go.”

On November 14, 2014, Kennison fractured his T11 and T12 vertebrae, punctured his spinal cord and dislocated his back after catching an edge on a jump while he was snowboarding the backcountry near Vail Pass.

Paralyzed from the waist down, he spent five weeks in Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colorado. While there, he tried to stay positive and plan around the confines of his injury. “So many people will tell you that you can’t do something. But you know what? I can if I build a jump this way, or if I need more speed that way,” says Kennison. “Watching all these people pioneer their sports, it was like, Why can’t I do that?”

Less than five years later, Kennison became one of those pioneers. On February 12, 2019, he competed at Kings and Queens of Corbet’s, an

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invite-only event featuring 24 of the world’s best skiers and snowboarders. At the top of the couloir, he made a sweeping left-hand turn, lined himself up with a distant mountain peak and launched blindly off the cornice—in his sit ski, he was too low to see over the edge. He felt his stomach drop. For nearly 2 seconds he hung in the air, his arms and outriggers (adaptive ski poles) making tight, controlled revolutions as he dropped to the landing below. When he hit the snow, his suspension bottomed out just as he’d anticipated, then launched him back into the air. On his second landing he disappeared in an eruption of powder. His goggles flew off.

Ride it out, he thought. Just ride it out. He couldn’t see a thing. But he could hear the roar of a crowd whose collective mind had been absolutely blown.

It was the moment the world learned what Kennison and his closest friends had known all along—that it’s not a question of whether he will meet his huge goals, only a matter of when.

“Trevor is showing that disability doesn’t mean that talent goes away,” says Roy Tuscany, 39, founder and CEO of High Fives Foundation, an organization that provides resources and hope to those who suffer life-changing injuries in an outdoor sport.

“He’s become a celebrity in a community that isn’t usually celebrated. Folks with disabilities aren’t sexy, and adaptive athletes don’t usually compete on the same level as able-bodied athletes. But Trevor’s not being seen in a way that’s like, ‘We let him into this event.’ He’s being seen as, ‘Shit, I might lose to Trevor.’ ” The pair first connected while Kennison was still in the hospital, and since then, they’ve become each other’s greatest champion. Tuscany can’t remember that fifth goal either, but he’s never doubted Kennison’s ability. “He’s one of

JOSH BERMAN/LEVEL1

T H E D E PA RT U R E

At the Kings and Queens of Corbet’s competition in 2019, Kennison won the Riders Choice Award.

“WATCHING ALL THESE PEOPLE PIONEER THEIR SPORTS—WHY CAN’T I DO THAT?”

those people that no matter what he touches, he becomes an expert,” says Tuscany, who founded High Fives to provide the same support and hope to injured athletes that he received from his local community after suffering a spinal cord injury in 2006 while pursuing his dream of becoming a professional skier. The foundation covered some of Kennison’s medical expenses, provided him training grants and access to adaptive camps and purchased his sit ski—a mono ski with a tight, rigid-yet-responsive shell in which the athlete sits, all supported by a suspension system built like “a brick shithouse,” says Tuscany.

To date, Kennison has accomplished most of those early goals—and added many other achievements. He’s backflipped more times than he can count, gapped service roads and finished in the top five in both super-G and slalom at the World Para Alpine Skiing World Championships. He excels in the backcountry, skiing cliffs, piles and steeps. He’s picked up big-name sponsors like Eddie Bauer and GoPro, becoming the first male adaptive athlete for the action camera company’s Snow Team roster. And he’s now working on a documentary with Level 1 Productions based on his idea of returning to do a backflip at the site of his accident in Vail Pass.

And that’s why he’s so excited about what’s next.

So much has happened since Corbet’s, but (sorry!) the details are under wraps because they’re part of the documentary.

“My life after Corbet’s, yes, it changed, but I’ve worked so hard to continue to change it,” he says. “People I’m sure think, ‘Corbet’s, oh cool. You just did that one thing.’ No. I’m on a mission. The movie comes out next fall, but I’m not stopping after that. I’m just so hungry, and there’s so much to be done.”

—Christine Fennessy 11

Mojave Desert, California

DUNE BUG Bradley “Slums” O’Neal is a MotoBASE jumper—in fact, he pioneered the sport with a parachute-launching dirt bike of his own design. But even by O’Neal’s standards, this stunt—the world’s biggest desert jump, executed at the Mojave’s Dumont Dunes—was off the chain. “Every moto-photo instinct told me this wasn’t right, knowing he might die,” says photographer Chris Tedesco, who reached the finals of Red Bull Illume’s Special Image Quest with this spectacular shot. “We were hours away from medical [assistance], with no cell service, and I almost dropped the camera when I saw him launch.” bradleyslums.com; Instagram: @tedescophoto

CHRIS TEDESCO/RED BULL ILLUME

T H E D E PA RT U R E

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Krkonoše, Czech Republic

ABOVE THE FRAY

May was a month that saw the world in lockdown, but the pilots of the Salzburg-based Flying Bulls aerobatics team took physical distancing to a higher level. The squad made the most of a day of fine weather by taking their XtremeAir XA42 aircraft for a spin over the Krkonoše (“Giant Mountains”) range on the Czech-Polish border. This serene image was captured by Czech action photographer Dan Vojtech.

Instagram: @danvojtech

DANIEL VOJTECH/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

T H E D E PA RT U R E

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T H E D E PA RT U R E

Playlist

SONGS OF FREEDOM

This year, reggae icon Bob Marley would have celebrated his 75th birthday. Here his grandson Skip Marley picks four essential tracks from a powerful back catalog.

L

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“REVOLUTION” (NATTY DREAD, 1974) “We’re going through a revolution right now, and this song is still relevant because it talks about truth. Songs like this constantly remind us of the fire in my grandfather’s belly. We remember him every day. We’re the family, we all live together in love, we are him. And we keep growing his legacy. Love can’t take a day off.”

“THE HEATHEN” (EXODUS, 1977) “This was one of the first songs where I learned to play it all: drums, bass, guitar, piano. ‘The Heathen’ is the real raw roots.

Living is a fight. We have to keep fighting and keep getting up. We have to keep surviving. We’re going through a struggle right now. We have to keep firm and push through and be assured in The Most High.”

“REDEMPTION SONG” (UPRISING, 1980) “One of my favorite childhood memories is being on the beach with my family and us all singing along to ‘Redemption Song.’ It’s a song that changed the world, you know? It’s a worldwide anthem, a story of survival and fight and redemption: ‘Old pirates, yes, they rob I, sold I to the merchant ships.’ The song just sticks with you differently.”

THE RED BULLETIN

JACK MCCAIN

“NATTY DREAD” (NATTY DREAD, 1974) “My grandfather influenced the way I live and think. He instilled the mission in me, and that’s why I love ‘Natty Dread.’ It’s like an anthem for the Rasta man: ‘Don’t care what the world seh, I’n’I couldn’t never go astray.’

Whenever I listen to the song, it just affirms the mission. It’s a song that has always stuck with me heavy.”

WILL LAVIN

ike so many members of his illustrious family, 24-year-old Skip Marley has carved out a career in music. After stepping onto the scene in 2015, the Jamaican singersongwriter returned to the spotlight last year with the singles “That’s Not True” and “Slow Down,” the latter of which features Grammy Awardwinning R&B star H.E.R. This year would have seen the late reggae legend Bob Marley turn 75—he died in 1981 at just 36—and Skip remembers the impact of his grandfather’s music. “It changed the way people think,” he says. “His determination, his discipline and his work ethic influenced the world, including me and the music I make.” Here are four of Skip’s favorite Bob Marley tracks. Skip Marley’s new single, “Make Me Feel,” is out now.

T H E D E PA RT U R E

NANCY BAKER CAHILL, JOY ASICO, JULIAN MACKLER

LOU BOYD

A

s the opportunity to visit real-world venues vanished earlier this year, much of the culture we consume—music, theater, art at galleries and museums—went virtual. L.A.based multidisciplinary artist Nancy Baker Cahill was perfectly equipped for this transition; for years, she has employed the mediums of VR and AR (augmented reality) in her work as much as she has paint and sculpture.

Cahill’s 2018 project 4th Wall, a free AR art app, feels like it was designed for this moment. Via the screen of their mobile device, users of the app can view her artwork inhabiting the physical space around them. They can change the size of each work and even walk into it to see the piece from every perspective.

“It was created to challenge what public art could be,” says Cahill (pictured below).

“Viewers can not only see my work in 360°, in the context of their choosing, they can move through my studio and experience a volumetric capture of me talking about the conceptual underpinnings.”

In July of this year, Cahill took the project further with a new exhibit titled Liberty Bell, which features a hovering animation of the Philadelphia landmark, reimagined in red, white and blue ribbons and swaying to a soundscape of tolling bells. The artwork was

THE RED BULLETIN

Sight specific: Cahill’s Liberty Bell art project as seen on the screen of a smartphone using her 4th Wall app at the Washington Monument.

geotagged to six locations associated with historic fights for freedom, from the site of the Boston Tea Party to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where the famous 1965 civil rights march took place.

As a virtual exhibit it brings a new sensibility to the notion of public art, something that Smithsonian Magazine noted as timely at “a unique point in American history when communities are reckoning with the racist legacies of historical monuments across the country.”

Cahill hopes her work can foster inclusiveness in these times. “AR art invites creative collaboration with the broadest audience and automatically democratizes access,” she says. “It amplifies unheard voices, tells untold stories and engages new audiences in impactful ways.” nancybakercahill.com

4th Wall

RINGING THE CHANGES

One artist has liberated her work from the gallery—and even reality—creating a whole new kind of “public art.”

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These brave game changers stepped up for social justice and people in need

HEROES 2020 featuring

NATASHA CLOUD RENEE MONTGOMERY BRANDAN ODUMS THOMAS EVANS HIERO VEIGA STEVE LAROSILIERE JUSTIN SUTHERLAND THE NAVAJO WATER PROJECT JOSEPH GRAY

THE RED BULLETIN

19

CRITICAL ASSIST

Why two standout pro point guards, Renee Montgomery and Natasha Cloud, opted out of their WNBA seasons to pursue social justice work.

Words TAMRYN SPRUILL

Photography MADDIE IVEY

HEROES 2020

Montgomery (left) and Cloud, who both have pursued fulltime social impact work this year, were photographed in Atlanta and Chicago, respectively, in early October.

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HEROES 2020

“IT’S SCARY.”

Natasha Cloud is not discussing the threats she has received because of her outspoken activism on social justice issues. She’s discussing basketball.

Cloud opted out of the 2020 WNBA season to put her full energy into social justice work in the District of Columbia, where she plays. “I’ve been working out,” she says. It is early October as Cloud prepares to leave for Italy, where she will play her overseas season in the EuroLeague Women. “I haven’t played live basketball in about almost a year now,” she adds. “This could be either really good or really bad.”

Following a summer of intensive social justice work, the Washington Mystics guard is looking forward to shaking off some rust—and a change of scenery. “It’s been the one place that I’ve always wanted to go visit since I was young,” she says of Italy. “I even took Italian in college because I wanted to go so bad. Experiencing a different culture was always my favorite thing about playing overseas. There’s beauty in our differences.”

Yet in 2020, other kinds of differences tore apart American society. Video of George Floyd, pleading for his life, killed beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer, went viral. And there was Breonna Taylor, a Black ER technician who had been killed in March inside her Kentucky home by police officers attempting to serve a warrant on Taylor’s former boyfriend. Millions of Americans were outraged, including Cloud, who made the difficult decision to opt out of the season to work full time to end racism and police brutality.

“I’ve never been this exhausted during the season, even with winning the championship in D.C.,” Cloud says. “As a Black American, it takes a different type of drain on you, to have to continuously be vulnerable and emotional with people in talking about what’s going on in our country right now and how it directly 22

“I’ve never been this exhausted,” says Cloud about her social justice work this year. “I’m not even gonna put on a front.

I really struggled.”

affects us. I’m not even gonna try to put on a front. I really struggled.”

It was quite a different struggle for Renee Montgomery. For her, the summer away from the court was packed with appearances and interviews scheduled weeks in advance, all while moonlighting as a broadcaster at TMZ Sports. “It’s been crazy,” says Montgomery. “I have back to back to back right now—11:00, 11:30, 12:00, 12:30. It’s like that every morning.” To allow her days to go smoothly, Montgomery has simply

surrendered to staying in makeup all day and maintaining gratitude for the opportunities that keep arising. “Every day when I wake up something new pops up. My manager will hit me and be like, ‘Hey, so-and-so just hit me. Do you want to do this?’ ” While Cloud and Montgomery were working outside of the “bubble” of IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, where the 2020 season was played because of the pandemic, the WNBA, its players’ union and the league’s 12 individual teams had THE RED BULLETIN

agreed to dedicate the season to social justice and support the Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name campaigns.

As the season began in July, delayed two months due to the pandemic, the league played on courts emblazoned with BLACK LIVES MATTER on the sidelines, and players wore jerseys bearing Breonna Taylor’s name on the back. After Atlanta Dream co-owner and U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler opposed the

WNBA’s support of BLM, Montgomery, a free agent who last played for the Dream in 2019, penned a poignant open letter to Loeffler. “Your comments hurt deeply because it was a veiled ‘All Lives Matter’ response,” she wrote. “It’s not that you’re tone deaf to the cry for justice, but you seemingly oppose it. And you are speaking from a position of immense influence as a team co-owner in our league and as a U.S. Senator.”

Neither Montgomery nor Cloud would be deterred by such challenges. They would instead rely on the on-court talents that brought them success in college and in the pros, including championships and copious individual awards. Now an 11-year veteran, Montgomery’s star twinkled brightly during her run at Connecticut, where she captained the Huskies to a perfect 39-0 season her senior year and a National

Cloud has learned that speaking truth to power comes with risks. “I get threats every time I speak out.”

Montgomery launched an initiative that funds students at a historically Black college in Atlanta.

Collegiate Athletic Association Women’s Tournament title. She was chosen fourth in the 2009 WNBA draft and then helped the Minnesota Lynx to win two championships, in 2015 and 2017.

Cloud took a subtler path to winning the 2019 WNBA Championship with the Mystics. Instead of attending a basketball powerhouse, Cloud committed to St. Joseph’s in Pennsylvania, where she ranked second nationally in assists per game. Cloud was drafted in the second round of the 2015 draft by the Mystics.

In the 2019 playoffs, her average of 13.1 points per game made a difference but 24

her 6.2 assists per game perhaps made the difference in the Mystics’ ability to pull off a Game 5 win in the finals over the gritty Connecticut Sun. Though they have different styles of play, both guards flaunt versatile games based on strength, will and sharp court vision. Like any good point guard, Cloud and Montgomery don’t just make plays— they pull the strings on the offense in a way that shifts the action, resulting in collapsed defenses and buckets for their respective teams. They think moves ahead and plan accordingly; they also make adjustments on the fly.

It is this perspective of problemsolving that Cloud, from the seat of government in D.C., and Montgomery, from the birthplace of the civil rights movement in Atlanta, brought to their seasons away from the court in pursuit of racial justice. But stepping away from the WNBA season while under contract meant Cloud and Montgomery had to forgo their salaries, a choice rife with potential fallout that each woman was willing to endure. WNBA players bring in middle-class salaries that pale beside the lucrative paydays of their male counterparts. It is why Cloud and most THE RED BULLETIN

HEROES 2020 of her peers spend their so-called WNBA offseason competing in leagues abroad, where salaries are better.

It’s also why NBA star Kyrie Irving swooped in last July to commit to pay the salaries of WNBA players who opted out of the season, to ease at least their financial burdens as they set about the difficult work of fighting for social justice. “[Kyrie] made sure the women

Montgomery started a major campaign to increase voter registration and election literacy in her community.

would see some type of compensation, to make sure they were protected, that their families were protected,” Cloud explains.

As with any must-win game, neither woman caved to exhaustion or adversity.

The urgency of the moment—a modernday reckoning around race and police brutality—called for nothing less. When it came to the fight against racism, they were there to make a critical assist.

O

ne hundred and fifty-seven years ago this November, President Abraham Lincoln dedicated the battlefield at Gettysburg a national cemetery to honor those who “gave their lives” fighting for “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

In just 272 words, Lincoln went well beyond honoring the dead. He implored the living to complete the “unfinished work” of those who perished. He urged those gathered to “resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.” In that spirit, Cloud doesn’t want Breonna Taylor’s death to be in vain. “She hasn’t received justice,” Cloud says. “But that doesn’t mean that we’re not gonna continue to fight for her to receive justice.”

Taylor, a 26-year-old who was not a suspect in the investigation and had no criminal record, was killed when police, serving a warrant at her address (whether they knocked remains in dispute), shot her multiple times. While an officer injured in the incident was rushed to a hospital, Taylor bled to death in her hallway without an effort to render aid.

“When you’re talking about police brutality, it’s very daunting because they are untouchable,” Cloud says. “We don’t ever see justice. Even in this case of Breonna Taylor, if you held those cops accountable for their actions, it changes how policemen and women go about their day. It changes how they handle situations with Black and brown men and women because they understand they can’t just do what they want anymore. Whether it is violence within the community or police brutality, there’s a lack of concern in value for life, and a lot of these lives are Black and brown. So for me, it’s the hardest thing: How do we bring back that value for life? How do we bring back people’s empathy and sympathy and humanity?”

For Cloud, a reclamation of dignity is only possible with a change in national leadership. “Where we are right now in 2020 with [the election on] November 3rd, we’re so stuck in, ‘I’m a Democrat.

I’m a Republican,’ ” she says. “I don’t give a shit about that. Are you a good human being? I know things have been bad in our country in the past, but I’ve never felt so divided by race this much.”

Admitting she doesn’t have all the answers, Cloud sought to control what she could. Topping her to-do list was inviting marginalized communities—in particular in Wards 7 and 8, where the Mystics play—into the voting process.

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HEROES 2020 “The voter suppression has been terrible there for years,” Cloud says.

“There’s been voters who said that they have waited five hours in line just to cast a vote. So our first initiative was to get Capital One Arena, which is where the Wizards play, available as a polling location. And we got that done.”

Cloud also wanted to secure the Mystics’ home arena as a polling location.

“I found out that the Entertainment and Sports Arena had said no to being the poll location for Wards 7 and 8. I immediately took to social media to make sure that all my followers knew that this is what was going on, but also to put pressure on the CEO of the Entertainment and Sports Arena. For me, it was holding them accountable.”

As Lincoln stated at Gettysburg, the nation is meant to be “of the people, by the people, for the people.” Yet Cloud has learned that speaking truth to power comes with risks. “I get threats every time I speak out,” she says. “I get crazy-ass stuff sent to me. There was points in D.C. when I was taking on gun violence and being threatened because I was coming at certain figures within the community.”

Cloud, who is Black and was raised in an all-white family, doesn’t consider herself a hero. “I don’t look at myself in that light,” she says. “I look at myself as someone that is grounded, who is passionate about helping her community.”

She is quick to apply the label to her parents, however: “Your heroes start at home. I acknowledge how much they’ve done for me to live out my dream and the opportunities and resources that I had because of them. I want the same for every other child.”

It is the “unfinished work” Lincoln spoke about at Gettysburg. And like many citizens who fought for racial equality before her, Cloud’s endgame is to realize the nation’s founding principles. “I said it once before, and God, it brought tears to my mom’s eyes,” Cloud says.

“But if I have to go down for this fight, I will if that’s what it takes,” she adds. “I will not be deterred. This is the job I have to do. This is the fight I have to fight.”

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rdinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble,” John Lewis, civil rights icon and U.S. Representative for Georgia, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that was published on the day of his funeral.

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Montgomery is also engaged in an effort to improve how school textbooks reflect Black history.

Televised images of a much younger Lewis being beaten nearly to death by a police officer punched the gut of a segregated society and generated momentum for passage of the Voting Rights Act, which abolished a prior law requiring Black people to take literacy tests as a prerequisite to voting and ensured them access to the polls.

Momentum is something Renee Montgomery knows a lot about. Whether in a close game or in society at large, a singular moment can galvanize positive energy that can be sustained. Much like Congressman Lewis did in his youth, Montgomery has concentrated her efforts on engaging disenfranchised groups in the voting process. To that end, THE RED BULLETIN

“I will not be deterred. This is the fight I have to fight.” she is teaching her community about election literacy through the Renee Montgomery Foundation’s “Moments Equal Momentum” campaign.

“What we’re doing is twofold,” she explains. “There’s a voting registration campaign called “Remember the 3rd.”

A lot of people feel passionate about different things happening, but they THE RED BULLETIN

don’t let that passion carry them all the way over to the actual polls and vote.”

In a video posted to her foundation’s website, Montgomery explains her solution. “ ‘Remember the 3rd of November’ will not talk about who to vote for, but instead break down what local and federal government officials’ responsibilities are,” she says in that clip.

“We want to connect the dots to how those responsibilities affect voters’ everyday lives.”

Some may wonder why, if the Voting Rights Act became law in 1965, there is a pressing concern in 2020 over voting.

But many Black voters still question whether they’ll get to vote at all. Gone are the literacy tests of yore, but states have found new ways to dissuade Black and brown voters from casting ballots: requiring voters to have a driver’s license, denying convicted felons the right to vote, removing polling locations, disabling postal infrastructure and numerous forms of voter intimidation.

A graduate of the University of Connecticut and daughter of a university professor, Montgomery understands how education can empower—and how traditionally marginalized groups can fall through the cracks. After hearing her mother’s stories of students making it to their final semester in college but not graduating because they ran out of money for tuition, housing or even books, Montgomery launched “The Last Yard” initiative, which raises money and disperses it as grants to students at Morris Brown, a historically Black liberal arts college in Atlanta founded by African Americans in 1881. She’s also working to get a technology center built on the Morris Brown campus. Fittingly, one of Montgomery’s biggest heroes is LeBron James, who has done invaluable work with his I Promise School to pave a way for students to go to college.

Montgomery is passionate about the need for her community to understand how decisions at the ballot box impact all aspects of our lives, including what kids learn in school. When it comes to U.S. history, she says, too many textbooks have been slanted toward the narrative of the oppressor, which is why she supports the 1619 Project’s mission to educate students on Black history, which has traditionally been omitted, altered or erased.

“You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story,” Lewis wrote. “Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.”

Lewis was talking about people like Montgomery and Cloud, two strong women providing assists to their communities while “finishing the work” laid out by Lincoln.

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HEROES 2020

THE ARTISTS

BRANDAN “BMIKE” ODUMS, HIERO VEIGA AND THOMAS “DETOUR” EVANS Although separated by 1,000 miles, the creators behind two different art projects are building community and celebrating Black and brown lives with their exuberant murals.

This summer in Colorado, a temporary mural portrait of Elijah McClain looked out over a Denver alleyway. The young man’s face was serious but warm—pinks, oranges and blues attesting to his vibrant spirit. Many who passed by the mural immediately recognized the portrait was of McClain, the 23-year-old Aurora, Colorado, resident who was killed by police in August 2019 as he was walking home. Just as many walked by the mural not knowing it was McClain, but either way, the mural pushed viewers to bear

witness to McClain’s spirit and his personhood, someone worth knowing, celebrating and memorializing.

Painted by street-art duo Hiero Veiga and Thomas “Detour” Evans, who work under the collective name of their art project, Spray Their Name, the McClain mural was just one of a handful they’ve put up in the Denver area in recent months honoring Black and brown people killed by police and gun violence. Though the context is a tragic one, their murals use arresting color

and floral motifs to pay tribute to lives cut short. “There always needs to be light in it,” says Veiga of their memorial collaborations. “I try to use glowing colors and fluorescent tones so they feel vivid and lifelike, energized and not so drab and gaunt. It’s very much here in the now.”

A thousand miles away, in New Orleans, another mural shares in Spray Their Name’s artistic mission to uplift Black life and Black joy in the face of widespread tragedy. In NOT Supposed

In New Orleans, Brandan “BMike” Odums is known for his murals of historical figures and everyday people.

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THE RED BULLETIN

JUSTEN WILLIAMS, BLAKE JACKSON

2-BE Here, the first-ever solo show of celebrated street artist Brandan “BMike” Odums, a 28-foot mural of a Black boy takes center stage in Tulane University’s Newcomb Art Museum. Though younger than McClain, the boy, too, wears glasses and a knowing expression. He exudes joy, holding his arms out Superman style as he crowdsurfs on brown hands that at once exalt and propel him. Odums nods to his roots with a blue, graffiti-pastiched background. It’s just one of his many murals over the past several years marrying street art with celebrations of Black resistance and pride.

The vast majority of Odums’ work lives outside gallery walls in New Orleans’ streets, walls and ruins. His murals pay homage to many Black people who inspire him, from icons like Martin Luther King Jr. to people from the community, like a group of former Black Panthers or a little girl he met who has a vibrant spirit. For the past four years, Odums’ headquarters has been Studio BE, a 35,000-square-foot warehouse that he and his collaborators have turned into a combination studio/gallery/ educational community arts center.

It was there that, four years ago, he painted a mural of Trayvon Martin, who was killed by racist violence in 2012, on one of the warehouse walls. Hearing of the mural, Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, came to visit the piece, asking to take a photo with it. The experience left an imprint on Odums. “In that moment, there was this genuine emotion in the air.

I can’t even describe it,” he remembers.

“Those moments help me realize that it’s more than just painting a portrait of someone who’s no longer with us. It’s more than just dancing in despair. That there is value, there is importance, in honoring these lives and making sure that their stories are told.”

Odums and Spray Their Name have never met. Yet both have spent this troubled year transforming their communities through their art and the connections it builds. Their projects tap into a distinct current desire for places of communal mourning, remembrance and collaboration. “A lot of the stuff that we do is really about, How do we get the community activated?” says Evans. “How do we tell that story of this individual in a way that gives honor to their memory?

How do we tell that story so that, when people come across it, they want to know more or investigate more about the individual? That’s the goal for me.”

THE RED BULLETIN

Thomas “Detour” Evans (left) and Hiero Veiga launched the art project Spray Their Name to honor lives cut short by violence.

Amid a ravaging pandemic and violent responses to the nation’s rising anti-racist movement, Spray Their Name and Odums draw from a long legacy of African American artists who used street art and murals to honor community members and amplify Black history. In their murals of Black people, both widely honored and locally beloved, they challenge the contemporary flood of cell phone and livestream images of Black suffering and tragedy.

Odums’ journey to today has been a series of leaps of faith into the unknown.

After several years in filmmaking and a music video production career, the New Orleans artist casually began spray painting the walls of his hometown with friends. The medium stuck and he soon gravitated to creating portraits of African American icons. Just as immediately, he latched on to street art’s educational power. After first creating a semi-legal mural exhibit he called Project BE in 2013 in a flooded-out 9th Ward housing

complex, Odums moved on to his second large-scale installation in 2014, which became the biggest public art exhibit of its kind in the South.

Titled Exhibit BE, the project took on an even greater scale than its predecessor as Odums collaborated with dozens of others in New Orleans’ streetart community to transform a Hurricane Katrina ruin into a celebration of Black life and culture. Artists from across the city covered the walls of a five-story vacant housing complex with dazzling murals, including many of African American leaders, as well as expertly rendered graffiti tags and large-scale paintings. The standout piece was Odums’ multistory, blazing blue mural of George Carter, a New Orleans teen who was murdered in the city in 2014.

Exhibit BE attracted thousands of visitors, raised Odums’ profile as an artist and set him on the path to opening Studio BE, which sits across the street from his former high school, the New 29

Orleans Center for Creative Arts. “I love the fact that right across the street from this school where a student like me left thinking art was not for them,” he says, “right across the street is an example of how one could potentially sustain and create and why they should create.”

Meanwhile, Spray Their Name began in the summer of 2020 with an Instagram DM. Evans and Veiga, both longtime street artists, had admired each other’s work from a distance via social media, keeping up through posts and occasionally meeting at mural festivals. One day, Evans, based in Denver, reached out to Veiga, who was

then based in Boston, with a casual invitation: “If you’re ever in Denver, let me know. Let’s build together.” Veiga did so in June, as Black Lives Matter protests swelled in cities across the country. Veiga was in Denver, thinking of moving there, just as Evans was beginning a new mural. The subject was George Floyd, who had been killed by a Minneapolis police officer a week earlier, sparking international outcry.

Together, Evans and Veiga rendered Floyd’s portrait, partially in black-andwhite and partially filled with life via bursts of pinks, reds, blues and purples against a backdrop of roses, lilies and

After closing due to COVID, Odums is reopening his studio with a new exhibit featuring images of local teens’ dreams of the future.

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cherry blossoms. They put their distinct celebration of Floyd’s life on a wall near the state Capitol building, where the city’s protests were centered.

Fittingly, Evans marked the start of their partnership with an Instagram post of Veiga in front of the mural in progress.

The caption speaks to the immediacy of their connection: “Two black muralist … coming together in Denver to let their art speak. Hoping to usher in the next generation of artists, and especially black artists, that will use their art to make change in society.” They went on to create more portrait murals in the area, including one of a young woman named Isabella Thallas, a 21-year-old who was shot and killed in Denver this summer. Her family and friends visited as they put the mural up, adding messages of their own to the wall.

“Through the language of street art, we’re heard, we’re seen,” says Veiga.

“People that don’t even know these people get beautiful walls. People that know them get a space to heal, [where they] don’t have to go to a graveyard to see their loved one.”

Odums, Veiga and Evans operate with a deep faith in the transformative power of public art. Studio BE and Spray Their Name both create spaces for human connection to develop organically, and the artists behind them look forward to continuing to do so. Odums is reopening Studio BE to the public, after closing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with a brand-new exhibit featuring the gallery’s artists’ interpretations of local teens’ dreams for society’s future. “In this moment, as we’re struggling to respond and cope with what’s in front of us, it’s an opportunity for us to kind of use our imagination to see what could be ahead of us,” Odums says.

Similarly looking forward, Spray Their Name is in the process of becoming an official nonprofit, with plans to take their collaborative murals to communities beyond Denver. “It started organically and really it’s just continuing to listen to stories and bringing them to places that really need it,” says Evans. Veiga agrees, emphasizing Spray Their Name’s continued focus on honoring individuals, intentionally and in collaboration with their community. “These are people’s lives we’re talking about, people with family members, brothers, cousins,” he says. “I think about the family. It adds a lot of pressure, and that’s OK. That’s what I chose.” —Ann-Derrick Gaillot THE RED BULLETIN

BLAKE JACKSON, JUSTEN WILLIAMS, TOBIAS KRAUSE

HEROES 2020

Although the Elijah McClain mural was part of a rotation of Denver street art, the paintings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor remain.

Evans and Veiga (pictured), who had admired each other’s work from afar, started painting murals together in June of this year.

THE RED BULLETIN

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HEROES 2020

THE ADVISER

STEVE LAROSILIERE On a winter afternoon in 2004, Steve Larosiliere was

snowboarding the steep, challenging terrain of Whistler Blackcomb outside of Vancouver. It was the latest in a series of trips to the mountains that year. Each day, Larosiliere recorded what he learned from his sessions in his journal and thought about the many ways that those lessons from the mountain might apply to his life.

At the time, Larosiliere worked as a mentor to innercity kids in New York City, but he felt frustrated by how little he could accomplish indoors, sitting across the table from the kids he was trying to help. On his last run that day in Whistler, Larosiliere wished the boy he mentored could be there with him.

“I was growing so much,” he recalls. “I couldn’t imagine what would happen to a young person doing something like this.”

The following year Larosiliere founded Stoked, bringing his idea to life. Now in its 15th year, Stoked offers inner-city kids mentoring and the opportunity to learn snowboarding, surfing and skateboarding. The hope is that they’ll learn life lessons at the same time, just as Larosiliere feels he has.

A city kid who grew up in Queens and Brooklyn, Larosiliere dreamed of snowboarding from the time he

Larosiliere’s idea for Stoked grew out of a desire to share his love of the outdoors with city kids in New York, L.A. and Chicago.

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was 12 years old. One day at the supermarket, he found a mail-in coupon for a Burton catalog. “I mailed it in and when I got it back it was the most amazing thing I ever saw,” he says. Larosiliere dreamed about snowboarding for years, until his friend Ouigi invited him to come along on a trip to Hunter Mountain in upstate New York.

“I knew my friend was Black just like me, so it made it possible, because I saw someone like me doing it,” he says. “When I got there, there were Latino kids and other Black people and a whole community.”

Then 24, Larosiliere owned a marketing agency in the music industry. A chance meeting on a New York subway led him to read No More Prisons, an essay collection by William Upski Wimsatt. “I felt like up until that moment, I’d been the recipient of a lot of stuff,” Larosiliere says.

A desire to give back took hold that 9/11 intensified.

Larosiliere began working full-time for Mentoring USA. Three years later came the inspiration for Stoked.

Stoked currently offers mentorship programs for kids in grades 5 through 12 in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a shift to online programs for now, but in the future Stoked expects to return to a more typical lineup of after-school programs and projects, including building a skateboard, brainstorming solutions to community problems and creating a brand from the ground up.

Still, it’s the weekend trips that allow kids to learn snowboarding, surfing and skateboarding. Through trial and error—and with the help of their mentors— they can acquire new skills, but doing so requires a willingness to fail. After all, very few people can stand on a surfboard the very first time they try. Standing up requires falling down, not just once but over and over.

It also requires getting back up each and every time.

Larosiliere believes that action sports teach powerful lessons about resilience and determination. And he wants more kids who look like him to carry those lessons with them not just out to the mountain or the skatepark or the surf lineup but everywhere they go, for the length of their lives.

“I feel like I have an unfair advantage in business and in life because of snowboarding, and that’s why Stoked exists,” Larosiliere says. “I want to give Black and brown kids an unfair advantage.” —Jen See THE RED BULLETIN

ZOE RAIN

Fueled by his own experiences, the former marketing exec founded an organization that teaches inner-city kids how to love boardsports—and learn life lessons.

“I feel like I have an unfair advantage in business and life because of snowboarding,” says Larosiliere. “And that’s why Stoked exists.

I want to give Black and brown kids an unfair advantage.”

THE RED BULLETIN

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“All I’ve done most of my life is food and feed people, so that’s my love language,” chef Justin Sutherland says. “That’s how I communicate.”

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THE RED BULLETIN

HEROES 2020

THE PROVIDER

JUSTIN SUTHERLAND When the pandemic and protests hit the Twin Cities, the chef and restaurateur rolled up his sleeves and put food on the table for thousands of locals, free of charge.

When Minnesota announced it was temporarily

USO, ELIESA JOHNSON/THE RESTAURANT PROJECT

shutting down restaurants to temper the spread of COVID-19 back in March, the first thing Twin Citiesbased chef and restaurateur Justin Sutherland did was panic. The next was find a new way to do what he does best: Feed people.

“Of course, I was terrified at the beginning, but I’m not very good at sitting still and being stagnant,” says Sutherland, who was operating seven restaurants at the time. “Rather than dwell on my own misfortune, we decided to help other people get through it as well.”

With his perishables languishing in coolers—items he normally would have used to create his contemporary Southern and global fare—he teamed up with other local restaurateurs in the same boat, unwilling to watch it all go to waste. Together, they transformed Sutherland’s Public Kitchen + Bar in St. Paul into a makeshift market where everything had the same price tag: free.

“We realized the severity of what was happening and that a lot of people were going to be out of work and out of food,” he recounts. “There were lines wrapped around the block twice. A lot of people were struggling.”

Thanks in part to the 36-year-old’s local celebrity as a Minnesota native at the forefront of the burgeoning Minneapolis-St. Paul food scene (and his stints on Iron Chef and Top Chef), the market garnered plenty of media coverage, prompting area purveyors to donate

On a USO Tour in 2019, Sutherland made a stop in Wyoming to serve as a coach for a cooking challenge with the military chefs at the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base.

THE RED BULLETIN

more foodstuffs and allowing the volunteer-staffed market to remain open for three weeks.

Then, after hearing from a nurse that she and her colleagues were often surviving on apples and protein bars during their grueling shifts, Sutherland turned his focus to overwhelmed hospitals. He launched a GoFundMe campaign called Chefs Feed Our Frontlines to fortify healthcare workers with free meals while giving out-of-work members of the restaurant industry temporary jobs cooking and making deliveries.

The program ran daily for three months and now weekly; at last count it’s served more than 30,000 meals.

“It was phenomenal,” says Sutherland. “We got stacks of thank-you letters, videos. They were pretty blown away because, to them, they were just doing their jobs.”

And this summer, when Minneapolis became ground zero for what would become a worldwide movement against police brutality after the killing of George Floyd, Sutherland joined the protests and then shifted once again into chef gear. He and business partners Brian Ingram and Leo Judeh loaded up their food trucks and spent the next month feeding thousands during both marches and cleanup efforts. “All I’ve done most of my life is feed people, so that’s my love language. That’s the way I communicate,” Sutherland says. “Especially in my city and being a person of color and being closely tied to some of these social issues, it hit home for me on many levels. It was just kind of my way to be a part of it.”

After some recent rejiggering, Sutherland now operates six different restaurants. He reincarnated his former whiskey and oyster joint, Pearl and the Thief, as a pop-up, shut down Public and relocated his first restaurant, Handsome Hog, to a space formerly occupied by his deep-dish pizza operation. That move gave his signature restaurant a much larger dining room and an expansive outdoor patio, two welcome amenities amid limited capacity and social-distancing orders.

Still, many Twin Cities restaurants haven’t survived, erasing the huge strides the local culinary scene has made in recent years and, more worrisome, leaving thousands in the industry unemployed. With so much uncertainty ahead, Sutherland co-founded the North Stands, a relief fund for struggling hospitality workers.

“There’s still a big fear and possibility that we can get shut down again,” he admits. “Once winter comes and you take the patios away, most restaurants can’t survive at 50 percent capacity. It’s devastating.” —Lizbeth Scordo 35

HEROES 2020

Life on the Navajo Nation is elementally defined by the absence of clean water. That’s why the locals who power the Navajo Water Project are heroes.

M O N U M E N TA L E F F O R T On the Navajo reservation, a tiny nonprofit is bringing life-giving water to the Indigenous people hardest hit by the pandemic.

Words BILL GIFFORD

Photography JIM KRANTZ

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D

eep in the heart of the Navajo Nation, a dozen miles from the nearest paved road, Donovan Smallcanyon pilots a white Ford F-350 down a two-track lane that winds through the sagebrush. Up ahead, the land drops away toward the Little Colorado River, which soon joins its bigger brother to form the Grand Canyon. But the landscape is as brown as dried tobacco. The only water in sight is sloshing around in an enormous, eggshaped plastic tank that sits on a trailer behind Smallcanyon’s truck.

To a local observer, Smallcanyon and his partner, Steven Chief, look like just another pair of Navajo “water haulers,” ferrying the precious liquid to livestock watering tanks or to the homes of family or friends. Pickup trucks sagging under the weight of barrels of water are a common sight on the reservation. But this one is on a different sort of mission.

Finally, the road dips into a hollow and a small compound comes into view, with a traditional round earthen dwelling called a hogan, as well as a more modern homestead made of stone and brick. Howard and Lily Dugi, Navajo sheep ranchers who are in their 80s, are busy tending a woolly flock of sheep and goats. Emma Robbins and Shanna Yazzie, two Navajo women in their 30s, pop out of their follow vehicle and approach the couple, wearing masks and greeting them in Navajo: “Yá’át’ééh!” they sing.

Robbins is the director of the Navajo Water Project, an innovative nonprofit whose mission is to bring clean running water to residents of the Navajo Nation who lack it, like the Dugis. Yazzie is the project manager for this area of the reservation, which sprawls across Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, occupying an area larger than West Virginia. Both grew up nearby.

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Howard pops open a wooden gate and the animals pour out of the corral, racing for a drinking trough about 50 yards away. Their coats are shaggy, ready for shearing. One sheep limps off in a different direction, and Howard sighs, grabs a lasso and jumps on his quad to chase after her.

Twirling the rope gracefully, he snares the truant with one expert throw.

“This is Navajo wealth,” jokes Yazzie, her eyes twinkling.

It is September 11, 2020, six months into the pandemic, and the Navajo and Hopi nations have been among the hardest-hit areas in the country. More than 10,000 Navajo have been diagnosed with the disease, and 571 have died to this day, among them a Navajo Water Project staffer who likely contracted the disease at a religious revival in Arizona. New cases have dropped off sharply, but the community is still on lockdown, with nightly curfews. The local economy has been crushed. Signs on the roads urge “STAY HOME. PROTECT OUR ELDERS!” Howard and Lily have received occasional supply drop-offs from their children but no long visits. We are the first outside visitors they have seen in months.

Making matters more difficult, it has not rained in two months, Lily Dugi tells Yazzie, in Navajo. Their ancient water cistern, located atop a small rise next to their house, is almost dry. Her husband is getting older, she continues, and having a hard time keeping up with the chores on their ranch. Keeping their flock alive has become the sole focus of their lives.

Our cargo—a brand-new, plastic tank filled with 275 gallons of water—is most welcome. Smallcanyon and Chief maneuver their trailer into position and go to work.

HEROES 2020

MORE THAN ANY OTHER MODERN “CONVENIENCE,” IT IS WATER THAT DEFINES CIVILIZATION.

Donovan Smallcanyon, who works with the Navajo Water Project, fills a cistern on the reservation.

HEROES 2020

F

ive years ago, Robbins was working in an art gallery in Chicago when she read a story about a nonprofit called DigDeep that was trying to tackle the problem of water access on the Navajo Nation. Then in her late 20s, she was intimately familiar with the water issue, having grown up on the reservation herself. Her father is Navajo but her mother was Jewish and moved to the reservation from Chicago, making Robbins a self-described “Nava-Jew.” Although her gallery and her own artistic career were thriving, part of her felt the pull of home. She emailed the founder of DigDeep, a fellow millennial

The Navajo Nation has been hard hit by the pandemic, which in turn has made the water supply issue even more critical.

named George McGraw, offering to volunteer. “For people who are from the reservation, there’s this constant yearning to come home, either to help our people or come back and be with your family,” she says.

McGraw, now 33, was an unlikely founder: He had grown up on a lake in northern Wisconsin, as far from the Navajo Nation, in many ways, as one can get. “I spent my life surrounded by water, playing with water, living by water,” he says. “Only later did I realize that a billion people in the world don’t have it.”

His family was wealthy, conservative and religious; he was gay, and closeted

until his late 20s. “I didn’t grow up in a place that fully embraced me or protected my happiness and dignity,” he says. “Fundamentally, that led me to be more empathetic with others who were facing insurmountable challenges.”

Life without water represented the ultimate challenge. After studying water development in graduate school, he founded DigDeep when he was 25, focusing on projects in the South Sudan.

“This is the part that’s slightly embarrassing,” he says. “I got on a plane and flew to Africa to solve someone else’s problem. I didn’t bother to look in my own backyard.”

Head heroes: Emma Robbins (left) and Shanna Yazzie have deep local roots and lead the Navajo Water Project.

A $50 donation prompted him to change his focus. In 2013, he got a call from a woman named Karen Reynolds, who had been helping to build houses on the Navajo reservation, where she was surprised to find that the homes had no kitchens or bathrooms. That was because they did not have running water, she was told. She looked up water charities and found McGraw’s group. She offered to give him $50, but only if McGraw would use it to improve the water situation on the reservation.

He traveled to New Mexico, where Reynolds introduced him to her local connections. McGraw saw that DigDeep needed to shift gears, and the Navajo Water Project was born. Its first project was to improve a well for a community near Grants, New Mexico, to supply the chapter’s water truck that made deliveries to homes that were not connected to municipal water. At a town meeting to discuss the project, a woman got up to thank him for the effort: “She said, ‘Thank you, this is great. I’m sure it will help these families to have 300 gallons a month instead of 200 gallons,’ ” he recalls. “But then she said, ‘My kids go to school with kids who took a shower this month. We don’t need more water in a barrel at our front door. We need hot and cold running water in our houses.’ ”

M

ost of us outside the reservation take running water for granted in 2020, but according to a 2018 report by DigDeep and the Water Alliance, some 2.2 million Americans— from El Paso to Appalachia—do not have

running water or a flush toilet in their homes. Another 44 million, in places like Flint, Michigan, lack access to safe, reliable drinking water. On the Navajo Nation, the problem is especially severe: Few homes on the arid reservation have their own wells, and local community wells are often fickle or contaminated.

Around one-third of Navajo households do not have indoor plumbing to boot, and need to bring in water and store it for later use—including Yazzie’s.

“I use windmill water for my washing and my animals, but I bring it in for us to drink,” she explains. By “windmill water” she means water from her wind-powered well, a dodgy supply that is likely contaminated by a shuttered uranium mine not far from her home (one of hundreds on the reservation). She’d just as soon not drink it. “It’s just normal,” she shrugs. “It’s our way of life.”

It’s a way of life with bitter historical roots. More than 100 years after the Navajo Nation was established, tribal claims to precious water rights have still not been finalized. The Navajo settled with New Mexico in 2010, but lawsuits continue; negotiations with Utah and Arizona have not yet been written into law. Thus, while the reservation is bordered by the enormous Lake Powell, the Navajo are not allowed to use any of its water. And while much of rural America benefited from massive, publicly funded water projects that sprang out of the New Deal in the 1930s, those projects did not make it onto the reservation—or indeed, many other Black and brown parts of the country.

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HEROES 2020

ABOUT ONE-THIRD OF NAVAJO HOUSEHOLDS DO NOT HAVE INDOOR PLUMBING.

Thus, many residents of the reservation are forced to drill wells into dwindling aquifers, or rely on water haulers.

The vastness of the landscape and the remoteness of homes like the Dugis’ only adds to the challenge. But it also renders the problem more or less invisible to the rest of America. Most of us reading (and writing) this would tend to take running water for granted, to the point where we rarely even think about it. More than any other modern “convenience,” fast Wi-Fi connections, cable TV or even electricity, it is water that defines civilization: clean water coming in, dirty water going out. The advent of indoor plumbing a century or more ago brought about a large jump in human life expectancy, reducing the risk of deadly infectious diseases such as cholera, influenza and typhoid. And now, COVID-19.

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DigDeep’s Navajo Water Project hit on a creative solution to the problem, borrowing some things that locals were already doing and improving on them.

In pre-pandemic times, DigDeep would have helped a household like the Dugis’ get a new underground storage cistern holding 1,200 gallons, connected to the house via PVC pipes and a $30 electric pump, like those used in RVs. Flip a switch and shazam—running water.

Permanently.

The key ingredient, though, is intangible: local ownership. After his experience in Africa, McGraw realized that the Navajo Water Project had to be owned and operated by Navajo people.

“It was obviously not ideal for me to come in, as a white, rich, cis-gendered queer male who lives in Los Angeles, and tell them how to solve their problem,”

McGraw says. “We started hiring on the Navajo Nation with the goal of making it an Indigenous organization, led by an Indigenous person. And that person was Emma Robbins.”

Within weeks after meeting McGraw, Robbins and her partner had moved to Los Angeles, and she had a job as director and first full-time employee of DigDeep’s fledgling Navajo Water Project. At the time, she didn’t even have a driver’s license; now the 34-yearold drives back and forth between L.A. and the reservation in an F-150 pickup she calls the Truckasaurus, emblazoned with DigDeep’s slogan: “Every American deserves access to clean running water.” She often finds she has personal connections with the people she serves, either through family or because many of them know her father,

In Navajo culture, sheep are a symbol of prosperity, but keeping a flock hydrated and healthy is an arduous challenge.

a longtime local employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Working with the local chapters and community health aides, Robbins and her team identified homes in need and installed more than 200 of the cistern systems in households across the reservation, beginning in New Mexico and moving into Arizona and part of Utah. The residents would own their water systems, and they would be responsible for maintaining them.

The actual water would be delivered by local “chapters,” as local governing bodies are known on the reservation, for a nominal fee. “We don’t do relief work,” says Robbins, who is compact and quietly forceful. “We do long-term water access projects.”

But then the pandemic hit, and everything had to change.

O

ur day began at the Tuba City Fairgrounds, where Smallcanyon and Chief were loading their trailer when I arrived at 9 a.m. The fairgrounds should have been bustling with preparations for the annual Western Navajo Fair, one of the biggest events of the year. Instead, it had been turned into a staging ground for aid organizations. In a trailer, three workers coordinated public-health responses to the coronavirus pandemic; in an enormous nearby tent, normally used for the fair, other workers packed food items into cardboard boxes, to be distributed to families affected by the disease. Everyone was wearing a mask.

Robbins pulled back a curtain to reveal cases upon cases of Arrowhead bottled water, left over from a huge donation by Nestlé in the early stages of

the pandemic, which had forced DigDeep to stop installing its water systems. It no longer seemed safe for plumbers and technicians to work inside people’s homes for long stretches. At the same time, the pandemic only heightened the need for water. Nestlé’s gift of “a shitton” of bottled water was welcome, says Robbins, but it didn’t solve an underlying problem: How are you supposed to wash your hands with bottled water?

DigDeep hit on a clever stopgap: Instead of installing water systems inside people’s homes, as they had been doing, they would place temporary water tanks beside people’s homes. Once again, this was something the locals were already doing: Nearly every home on the Nation, particularly in the more remote areas, has some kind of water storage system, from the ubiquitous blue-plastic

HEROES 2020

Alberta Yuzzie (far left), Metric Smith and Kaitlin Harris are among the small Navajo Water Project staff who are changing the lives of families on the reservation.

Metric Smith fills up a 275-gallon tank at a home on the reservation.

Recipients get to own the tanks but ultimately are responsible for keeping them maintained and full.

55-gallon barrels to galvanized-metal tanks that dot the landscape.

DigDeep opted to use cube-shaped plastic tanks housed in metal cages, which were already in widespread use. They hold 275 gallons and are durable and easy to stack on a truck. DigDeep improved on the existing design, adding an on/off spigot and elevating the tank, to make it easier to fill buckets. Of course, 275 gallons represents less than two days’ consumption by the average non-Navajo Arizonan, but it would have to do for now.

“We’ve been on a huge learning curve,” says Robbins.

Later, at the Dugis’ ranch, Smallcanyon levels a square of earth with a shovel, and Chief, the less experienced of the two, lugs cinder blocks and a slab of plywood from the truck to build a small platform for the tank to sit on. Together they lift the tank from the trailer and set it in place, then run a thick blue hose into the top, spraying it first with a bleach solution to avoid contamination.

Yazzie presents the couple with an agreement to sign, patiently explaining in Navajo: The tank will be theirs to own and their responsibility to maintain. It will be refilled by DigDeep every few weeks until the end of December. After that they will have to supply their own water. She advises them to cover the tank with a tarp to prevent the growth of algae and to rinse it out at least once a month with a diluted bleach solution.

Then Smallcanyon cranks a small gaspowered pump to life, and clear pure water gushes into the tank. The Dugis’ faces brighten. Who doesn’t love the sound of running water?

“The thing I love about this job,” he tells me later, “is watching people’s faces light up like that.”

T

he Dugis live in relative luxury compared with some of the places we visit. Their home is permanent, not a busted-up trailer, and they have intact windows and a functioning door— and sheep, of course. Navajo wealth. As the day progresses, we see far worse situations. I’ve traveled and reported in Africa and South America, but I’ve rarely seen poverty as desperate as I do over two days following DigDeep crews. We conceive of poverty as the lack of money, but lack of water represents a far more profound level of need.

“When you live without water, that’s a definitional challenge,” McGraw says.

“It determines how you organize your whole day. You wake up thinking about, How am I going to get enough water for me and my family?”

Many people on the reservation, like the Dugis (and even Yazzie), have longterm, structural water problems. They live in remote places where there just isn’t much water to be had. Or if water is available, it is expensive: A family can spend close to $300 per month on hauled-in water, campground showers and gas for the water truck, says Yazzie.

The need on the reservation is vast: Just in the small community of Dilkon, Arizona, there is a waiting list of nearly 200 homes that need water systems.

DigDeep managed to install nine before the pandemic shutdown. But even 1,200 gallons is not enough to run washing machines or dishwashers, let alone water a lawn or, for that matter, a baseball field.

For other people we meet, their water problems are situational. A few bad breaks in life have put their access to this life-sustaining resource in danger. That’s the case with our first customer today.

Just outside of Tuba City, we pull off the 45

Pre-pandemic, the program was installing cisterns that gave recipients running water, but it has pivoted to this tank system to minimize health risks.

HEROES 2020

main road to a shack, maybe 10-by-20 feet, painted brown. Homer Bancroft emerges, a graying ponytail snaking down from underneath a teal ball cap.

His pants are held up by a nice leather belt with a silver buckle, but the rest of his situation conveys hardship. His trailer was burned down by an arsonist last year. Then he was critically injured by a drunk driver in a hit-and-run, which totaled his car. He went to visit his children in Utah to recuperate, and now he is back, living in this shack. Other relatives have been taking care of him.

Homer shows me his plastic water barrel, inside a plywood shed next to his home. One wall of the shed leans against a string of old appliances. A friend delivers water every week or so, he says.

A path leads to a weathered wooden outhouse facing the highway. Now that his car is gone, he walks out to the road to hitch rides into town, hardly a safe proposition in a pandemic. He can survive without the car, or a functioning dishwasher, but not without water.

Over two days crisscrossing the Navajo Nation, I see versions of this struggle playing out. Navajo who worked or lived off-reservation have drifted back home, living with family members, further straining the available resources, liquid and otherwise. Lionel Nebitsi had been working in a refinery near Salt Lake City when he was diagnosed with cancer 46

and moved home; now he is in a walker, unable to work, and vulnerable to the virus thanks to his underlying sickness.

A few miles away, Roy Hale had held a good job installing plumbing and HVAC systems in hotels and Walmarts in the Southwest. “My boss doesn’t like to hire white guys, only Navajo,” he says. “He says white guys smoke too much.” But his boss hasn’t called him for work in six months. Now he is back living with his mother and other relatives at their old homestead, near a crimson butte locals call Red Rock. “I was working 17 years,” he tells me. “Seventeen fuckin’ years.” He pauses. “You want a piece of fry bread?”

The reservation itself remains on extended lockdown, making it almost impossible to find work. In the town of Kayenta, Arizona, near Monument Valley, normally a mecca for tourists from around the globe, I stay in a 300room hotel with maybe a dozen other guests. All of the tribal parks and trails are closed, and many dirt roads off the main highways are blockaded by signs proclaiming “CLOSED. NO VISITORS.” It hasn’t rained in two months. The washes and creekbeds are all dry; even the Little Colorado is a muddy smudge.

Coronavirus has hampered water deliveries, and some people I speak with haven’t had water in months. Animals are suffering, too: On the way back from one drop-off, we pass a wild horse lying

in the dirt by the roadside, its hips and spine protruding, panting and dying of thirst. We press on, too late to help.

O

ur last stop is a round wooden dwelling at the end of yet another long rocky road—a modified, modern-day hogan, Yazzie says. A sign taped to the door warns “THE PATIENT HAS A RESPIRATORY ILLNESS. PLEASE DO NOT ENTER. THANK YOU.” Yazzie and Robbins walk around the house to assess the situation. There is an underground cistern, but it looks low.

The water truck, an old red Ford, sags onto a pair of wooden logs. They decide to leave the last water tank, just in case.

Smallcanyon and Chief get to work. I think of something that Robbins had told me: “Every time we lose an elder, we lose a huge part of our culture.”

Eventually, the door opens and an old woman appears, wearing a mask. She approaches tentatively, and Yazzie goes over to her to talk. It turns out that she knows Yazzie’s family. The door opens again and her husband emerges, clutching his walker, hunched over with age, bound for the outhouse. They are the Netzsosies, Bessie and David. He recently was in the hospital; hence the sign on the door. Their daughter lives in a nearby trailer, but she is at work now.

Shuffling back, David settles heavily into a chair, his head hanging down. We keep THE RED BULLETIN

“When you live without water, that’s a definitional challenge,” says George McGraw, the founder of DigDeep, which funds the Navajo Water Project.

HEROES 2020 “ONE OF THE WORST THINGS YOU CAN DO TO A NAVAJO IS TAKE US AWAY FROM OUR LAND.”

our distance as, in a loud voice, Bessie begins explaining what we are doing.

She is halfway finished when she begins to cry. The water tank is the first good news they have had in months.

We talk more, and it turns out that David is 100 years old—or close to it, anyway. Birth certificates can be vague here. What is more certain is that David was a runner in his youth—the Navajo are famed distance runners, covering dozens of miles across this harsh terrain.

No way, Yazzie says; my grandfather was a runner, too. It turns out they ran

together, in the old days, wearing leather moccasins. David is smiling now, living in his memories. So is Yazzie.

As we talk, a skinny black horse ambles up, as if to join the conversation.

His name is Sweetie Boy, Bessie tells us, and he is 15. From the looks of him, he does not have much longer to go: His backbone sags and his ribs stick out. I edge away, spooked by the look in his eyes. But Robbins moves into action. She marches back to her truck and grabs a jug of Arrowhead water, from the Nestlé donation. She empties it into a plastic

bucket and proffers it to Sweetie Boy, who gulps it all down. Smacking his lips happily, he lopes back toward his corral.

“The first question is often, Why don’t they move?” Robbins says later. “If they moved, could they have their traditional way of life, and their horse? No, of course not. One of the worst things you can do to a Navajo is take us away from our land, after we fought so hard for it.

It’s like dying a different way.”

The water will let them stay here, in this silent, beautiful, bone-dry land, for at least a little while longer.

Lily Dugi, who is in her 80s, lives with her husband on a remote sheep ranch. They have seen few visitors since the pandemic began.

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HEROES 2020

GOING THE DISTANCE

Mountain runner Joseph Gray knows all about grit and perseverance. Now the 18time national champion is leveraging those strengths to speak out for equity in his sport and racial justice in the world.

Words TRACY ROSS

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Photography CHIP KALBACK

“If you are a person who has a platform and you are silent, you are being selfish,” says Gray, who was photographed in Colorado’s Blodgett Peak Open Space on September 22.

HEROES 2020

J

oseph Gray was having a day familiar to him, one in which he was high on running and winning, high on the feeling of inhabiting a life of his own making.

It was August 24, 2019, and Gray had just won the grueling Pikes Peak Ascent running race, a 13.3-mile course that climbs 7,815 feet and ends at the towering Colorado mountain’s 14,115-foot summit.

All bets had been on Gray, the most decorated mountain runner in the niche sport’s 35-year history. He was a 28-time member of the USA World Mountain Running Team, an 18-time national champion and the winner of the 2019 World Mountain Running Championships.

He was the U.S. record-holder of the iconic Mount Washington Road Race and he’d already won the Pikes Peak Ascent twice.

On this latest race up Pikes Peak, Gray had suffered, after taking a two-month break from running. His buildup to the race had been short, and he’d come to the start with shaky confidence. He wasn’t sure he could run the course fast. Yet as usual, he did. Mountain racing was second nature to him. The ground fell away beneath each of his piston-like strides. He looked like he was floating, as

if he was being pulled up the endless steep grade by invisible wires.

The race starts in the town of Manitou Springs, winds up a series of grueling switchbacks with sharp changes in elevation and moves through a section known as the 16 Golden Stairs, with frequent loose-gravel step-ups of 10 to 15 inches. Much of the trail is narrow, so passing is difficult or impossible, but Gray led from beginning to end with a time of 2:08:59; only one finisher crossed the line in the next 15 minutes. This triumph was made possible by his extreme fitness and his ability to shut out everything but the terrain before him. “In order to be an Olympic-caliber athlete you need extreme focus,” says Nancy Hobbs, executive director of the American Trail Running Association. “And Joe is laser focused.”

Now he was back in Manitou Springs, jogging to cool down after his third Pikes Peak victory. His spirits were high. And then a dirt-smeared van pulled up beside him, and a man stuck his head out the window. The guy spat “N-----!” at America’s most decorated trail runner.

When he heard it, Gray felt enough energy surge through him that he could

have done another Pikes Peak Ascent.

Acting on pure instinct, he did something you might call reckless at a time when hate-crime violence is at a 16-year high, according to the FBI. He started sprinting after the van, intent on reaching it at a nearby stoplight. He imagined himself opening the door, dragging the racist out and giving him “no words, just thumps.”

Thankfully, the light turned green before he caught up, and the van sped off.

Even Gray says “thankfully,” because the guy could have pulled a gun on him, or the police could have showed up. And a third “thankfully” is apropos, because Joseph Gray is set on delivering a broader and more constructive message about justice and racial equality to his sport— and to the world.

For years he hesitated to speak out about his experiences both as a Black man and as a uniquely successful elite Black athlete in running. It’s no wonder: Even in mainstream sports, hall-of-fame caliber Black athletes like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and LeBron James have faced backlash as they spoke up and took action and changed the world. Gray knew it would not be easy.

That’s why Gray is glad he never got the short-term satisfaction of giving that asswhooping. Now he’s focused on paving the way for future Black runners to kick ass.

T The discipline of mountain running typically involves racing up long, uphill trails and dirt roads.

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his didn’t begin for Gray in 2020. It is, of course, the year that the Los Angeles Lakers took a knee behind the Black Lives Matter slogan at the start of the NBA season, and that the NFL allowed players to protest during the national anthem. Back when Gray first felt the call to speak out about racial injustice, it was 2016 and Colin Kaepernick, after six seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, couldn’t get a job. But the sum total of Gray’s upbringing, early running life and experiences walking the world as a Black man would push him in Kaepernick’s direction whether he wanted to or not.

Compared to many African American childhoods, Gray’s was idyllic. He was THE RED BULLETIN

For years Gray hesitated to speak out about his experiences both as a Black man and a successful Black athlete in an almost entirely white sport.

Gray is a perennial U.S. national titlist and winner of the 2019 World Mountain Running Championships.

HEROES 2020

Gray has created a program called Project Inspire Diversity to motivate young Black athletes to excel at trail running.

born the second child to Thomas and Donna Gray on Fort Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee border. When Joseph was 6, Thomas was transferred to the 7th Medical Command in Heidelberg, Germany, and there the Grays blended with the diverse families that are common on U.S. military bases. Gray says that he and his friends knew no racial divisions; they’d gather in a pack and race through the base’s forest playing a tag game called Manhunt. “There were no trail signs, no directions,” he recalls. “You’d have to figure out where you were. Those kinds of adventures were the foundation for my running interest later in life.”

Thomas made sure to teach his son about Black cultural heroes, feeding him a steady diet of their biographies.

Joseph took an interest in three in particular—Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Nat Turner. “Don’t get the wrong idea about me and Nat Turner,” Gray says now. “Yeah, he hated white people, but I admired him because he was defiant and fearless, unafraid to do what was necessary.”

These stories gave Gray “an understanding that our history was about more than slavery and captivity.”

He adds that not all of the kids he grew up with felt the same. “There was one kid, he didn’t have a father teaching him Black history. So he only learned blips of it, negative ones, and he saw himself as inferior. I understood that we are descended from kings and queens—not just those who came off of slave ships. It helped me to understand that I wasn’t lesser than a white person.”

Another hero he worshipped was Jesse Owens: “He shows up in this stadium where people are doing Nazi salutes and clearly disrespecting him. He doesn’t respond, doesn’t call anyone names, he just handles business,” Gray says. “He got the job done and came home with medals.”

By 1992, the Grays were back in the States, now living on a base in Tacoma, Washington. Joseph’s racially diverse childhood continued there, but he did get a taste of the inner city when he spent summers with extended family in Baltimore. “Where I came from in Tacoma, I felt like I was Billy Badass,” he says. “We’d fight, and a lot of times I’d win those fights, and people would be afraid.

But in Baltimore I was the outsider and I took some ass-whoopins. It humbled me.

But another thing I got very quickly was

that people aren’t the same everywhere.

I’m very grateful for my travels and exposure to different people. I’ve never had racism in my heart because I was taught never to judge people based on the color of their skin.”

Exposure to racism would come soon enough—once he started running.

B

y middle school, Gray was a troublemaker, quick to engage in a fight. Coming up in lower-class neighborhoods, he says, “You have to have thick skin and be tough. If you’re weak you’re gonna get slapped.” It was the mid-’90s, gangs were big, and if someone disrespected you, you jumped them. Fortunately, a coach named Mark Brinkhaus saw Gray’s potential when he tried out for the track team in 7th grade.

That school was also very diverse. But Gray stood out. “He was very talented, one of the kids who by the end of the season was running five and six miles,” Brinkhaus recalls. “He was motivated to do whatever workouts I gave him. And he was very committed.”

Gray liked how every race resembled the end of a close basketball game. “With running, it could be like that every moment,” he says. “Every race was on your shoulders. And even when the people you’re racing aren’t going to beat you, you challenge yourself because it’s you against your expectations.”

High school was tougher. Suddenly he was the only Black runner on the crosscountry team. “I didn’t have anybody who grew up like me or understood what my life was like,” he says. And the white runners found external inspiration where he didn’t. When they looked in the media, everyone in distance running resembled them, at least in the U.S. “It’s not that I didn’t get support,” he says, “but I didn’t have that same inspiration.”

Yet he channeled Jesse Owens and kept at it. “It was a strange feeling being the only Black guy out there, but it gave me fuel for the fire. I was the outsider, so I made sure I handled business,” he says.

He eventually beat the best runner on the team. But it didn’t stop a kid in the stands yelling the N-word at him after a race.

Gray felt the most rage he’s ever felt in relation to running when that happened.

“It really got me going. I was so pissed.”

His friends corralled him onto the team bus. The experience was a revelation. “I said to myself, ‘People 55

HEROES 2020

aren’t happy seeing a Black athlete in a predominantly white sport.’ I told myself, ‘If you keep running, these things will happen.’ I said, ‘Do you love it enough to keep doing it?’ And I answered, ‘Yes. I love it. Just because someone calls me a name I’m not going to stop.’ ” As an upperclassman, Gray helped his team win a state title by podiuming in the 2-mile, and he finished second in the state cross-country meet. He was near the top of his class academically. He was strong, fast, wisened—and committed to a life of running.

F

or college, Gray headed to Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. OSU had seen some recent racial blemishes, including a 2002 incident in which three students were photographed at an off-campus fraternity party appearing to depict a Ku Klux Klan lynching. Gray, who started school there in 2004, was unaware of the episode. “My college experience was mostly drinking, partying, chasing girls, studying and running a lot,” he says. “I did, however, understand that being in Oklahoma and talking politics was asking for an argument if you had views outside of a conservative perspective.”

He also avoided entering restaurants in small towns near Stillwater. “I remember walking into one town where everybody looked at me like, What the hell are you doing here with a white girl?” he says.

Gray waited outside while the girl went into the restaurant to order.

Once he was racially profiled. An officer had stopped a car that his friend was driving. As the lone Black man in the vehicle, he says he was singled out. “He looks at me in the back seat and says, ‘You going to call your gangster homies on me?’ He makes me get out and he’s being very aggressive. There’s a crowd watching, and I say, ‘You only said that because I’m Black.’ With the people watching and listening, sure enough, he let me go.”

When he ran, everything was different.

He still stood out in a nearly all-white field, but he was dominant in most races.

He was close to a 4.0 student and an Academic All-American who made it to nationals six times. He decided he would pursue a career as a professional runner.

That changed when he was in grad school at OSU. Simon Gutierrez, a threetime winner of the Mount Washington 56

Gray, 36, shown here training in Ute Valley Park, decided in high school that he was committed to a life built around running.

Road Race, invited him to a trail race up a mountain in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Gray took Gutierrez up on his offer. On that day in 2007, he discovered a running discipline in which the major component is significant elevation gain or loss. The sport is further defined by surface, distance and terrain. A mountain run can be on paved surfaces as long as significant elevation change is present.

And distances range from a vertical kilometer to ultramarathon distance.

In that first race, he ran horribly: He wasn’t smart; he wasn’t ready for the altitude or distance. But it was an eyeopening experience and he soon fell in love with the physical, technical and tactical challenges. The next summer he’d do the national championships on Mount Washington. He’d finish fourth, good enough to make the national team.

R

“People don’t like you challenging the status quo. But things can’t change without structural and policy changes.”

ichard Bolt met Gray a year later at the Northwest Mountain Running Championships in Mount Hood, Oregon. Bolt had been the team leader for the U.S. Mountain and Trail Running Team since 2003. He initially thought of Gray as “another talented young runner eager to learn and make the transition from trail to mountain from a strong cross-country and collegiate background.

I never thought about his color.”

Yet Gray stood out in the cosmos of his new sport. “Black runners and African runners are extremely common in track and field and marathons,” says Bolt. “But in mountain running it’s extremely unusual—there have been racers from Uganda, Ethiopia and Eritrea and some European teams with some non-white runners, but the fact that I can name them on one hand proves that it’s very unusual to find a Black runner at our sport’s highest level.”

In 2008 in Switzerland, Gray became the first Black American to make the USA Mountain Running World Team. The next year, he won gold in the U.S. Mountain Running Championships. More trail and mountain running national titles followed—several dozen between 2009 and 2019. His secret to winning, he says, is “constantly falling in love with personal challenges. I was extremely motivated to continue after finding success. I had goals in mind and I knew, as my dad would say, “Anyone can win once or twice.’ So I wanted to keep going and pushing toward bigger goals in the sport.”

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For some elite athletes, the excitement, glory, money and relative fame would be enough to keep them striving to maintain their standing in the game. But there came a time, around 2014, when Gray started to face the painful truths of being a Black man maneuvering his way through the world and a Black runner in his nearly all-white sport. His life experience had included marginalizing, singling out, racial slurs, racial profiling and a consistent feeling of unease simply because of the color of his skin. But up until that point, he now 58

says, he was “afraid, a coward in some regard” to tell his story, or speak out about racial injustice.

Gray’s greatest fear was losing sponsors—his means of supporting his family—and not without reason. He says that with some executives, “I’d show up to a meeting and quickly understand that I should keep my mouth shut about certain matters. I knew with one person that it was not in my interest to talk about political things. It was like [Fox News host] Laura Ingraham telling LeBron to ‘Just shut up and dribble.’ ”

T

here were more reasons to start speaking out, and Gray finally did.

It was in 2015, when he and his cousin were having deep conversations about their lives. “We spent a lot of time talking about social and political issues.

My cousin told me, ‘You should talk about this—you feel heavily about it.’ I was afraid of how people would take it, but when I started to have a consistent level of success, I noticed that I didn’t get as much exposure for my accomplishments as non-Black folks did.” He started saying things—on his Instagram feed, in THE RED BULLETIN

HEROES 2020

After years of public silence, Gray began tentatively speaking out about race in 2015. Now, he says, there is no looking back.

“I think the point of human nature is to be selfless and bring one another up.”

THE RED BULLETIN

magazine interviews, on podcasts—about his life and running experiences.

At first his posts were gentle. In 2015, on his Instagram page, he wrote, “When thinking about Martin Luther King. WOW, what a courageous, selfless and loving man! Despite an ugly last few months in terms of racial issues in our country, I’m optimistic our country will let his dream live on!” As time went on, Gray’s statements got more pointed, more outspoken, more political.

Predictably, feedback was mixed, a lot of it negative. In particular, he got flak for saying that trail running needs more diversity. He posted a video in collaboration with shoe brand Hoka One One, in which he says, “Sometimes I feel like people are happy seeing a Black guy winning in a predominantly white sport.”

Commentators wrote back, “Running a white sport??? Hello? Anyone checked the front pack of just about every city marathon in the world?”

Gray was ready for it. “People don’t like you challenging the status quo,” he says. “Do it and they start saying you’re playing a victim. I just say how are we supposed to progress if you tell me that I wasn’t a victim and then don’t acknowledge the problem I’m presenting to you? It’s tough because it’s like we have the stats, the data, the history.

We’ve seen things like Jim Crow laws.

But things can’t change until we make policy and structural changes.”

These sometimes confrontational conversations solidified changes he already was making. “My main thing with negative comments wasn’t that they hurt me but made me angry,” he says. Up through his adolescence, he’d relied on his fists to settle debts. Now a softer, more tender side of himself needed to emerge.

Certain things made this easy. Like one letter he received from a Black high school distance runner from Kentucky.

The boy wrote about how his team treated him unfairly, how he was never invited to group outings. How they made Black jokes in front of him and he couldn’t say anything. “That kid’s story struck a nerve in me,” Gray says.

Perhaps the most important thing that story, and others like it, did was inspire Gray to create Project Inspire Diversity.

It came together after years of him witnessing shortcomings regarding racial diversity within his sport and years of the media and running-related journals

excluding Black American trail runners from their coverage. “How can I or other Black athletes inspire the next generation of Black trail runners if we aren’t seen?”

In that vein, Gray wrote an op-ed in 2019. “Being that the media controls what’s ‘trending’ in the sport, it’s safe to say less Black athletes receive assistance from a grassroots level to help them further develop into athletes following collegiate careers. Part of my project is bringing this issue to the forefront and using a few of my sponsors to provide running-product support to a few young up and coming Black American athletes who compete in distance events.”

Those sponsors, including Hoka, make up a “rainbow of faces.”

“When you’re a minority and you sign to a brand like that you have confidence, you feel the appreciation,” Gray says.

Maybe the cultural landscape had changed with a Black president, with NFL players kneeling, with the Black Lives Matter movement, but it’s more complex than that. If you look back through history, you can also see many instances where Black athletes spoke out and then endured enormous friction and threats from teammates, fans, media and political leaders. These are the people Gray nods to even more than sponsors when he steps into the spotlight of our current cultural and political landscape and takes a stance for diversity and racial equality.

Right now, as we stare into our ongoing racial divide, Gray says lots of people are reaching out to hear his thoughts, ask for ways to improve diversity, have him pen op-eds, invite him to speak on panels. Without a doubt, he is up for the task. “I realize that if you are a person who has a platform and you are silent, you are being selfish,” he says. “I think the point of human nature is to be selfless and bring one another up. So if you aren’t making efforts toward peace and equality, what are your efforts going toward?”

His extra efforts are clearly going toward being the most dominant force in mountain running, Black, brown, yellow, or white. And to attempting to make the world a safer, more equal and more just place for all colors. The sad fact is that this may be harder than running the fastest-known times on endless peaks day after day after day. But Joseph Gray is going to keep on trying.

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BLOOD RUNS COLD

On a frozen lake north of Edmonton, Alberta, a one-of-a-kind endurance sport attracts racers willing to brave brutal, subzero temps—all for the glory of being crowned champion of the Numb Bum. Words KAITLYN KRASSELT

Photography PHILIP VUKELICH

Endurance 101

Winning the Numb Bum 24 isn’t just about speed. The team that completes the most laps wins, so it’s a true test of endurance. The victor is likely whoever can last the longest in subzero temperatures, wind, snow, sleet and everything else Mother Nature whips up in Sandy Beach, Alberta.

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Finding Friction

Maintaining traction on ice is no easy feat. Racers use special tires with inchand-a-half spikes that dig into the ice. But the same spikes that get them around the track require riders to take extreme precautions. Tragedy struck the Pembina Dirt Riders Association in 2015 when a racer caught one of his legs in the rear tire and slashed his femoral artery.

The rider didn’t survive, and a new rule was added requiring wheel guards over the tires to prevent deadly injuries.

On Track

“That lake doesn’t look good without a track on it,” says race organizer Dan Cheron.

No two Numb Bum tracks have ever been the same. It takes several men almost a week to plow and map the course, and as conditions change and riders wear through the ice, the course is altered throughout the event, adding an extra challenge for competitors.

In the world of extreme sports,

there are few challenges that even the most adventurous won’t attempt, but the Numb Bum 24 Hour—one of the world’s longest, coldest, grittiest motorsports races—is one of them. While ice racing (usually on a motorcycle or quad) is a common sport across states and provinces in North America that spend much of the year buried in snow, few ice racers would dare to compete in the middle of February for 24 straight hours. “You have to be a little crazy,” says longtime race organizer Dan Cheron.

The 2020 Numb Bum, which kicked off on February 15 near Sandy Beach, Alberta, was of particular significance to Cheron. The race had been canceled in 2019 due to a decline in the number of directors and volunteers available, a need to invest in new equipment and, like so much these days, local politics.

Determined to restore the event to its former glory—one that once attracted Evel Knievel to compete—Cheron set about raising $30,000 to put on the race.

And he succeeded. Cheron, as part of the local racing club Pembina Dirt Riders

Association, was not only able to raise the funds necessary to continue the race but also attracted riders who’d never even competed on ice before. Riders paid $250 each as an entry fee, but for the winners—the team that completes the most laps in 24 hours—the only prize was a trophy and some bragging rights.

That’s enough for people like Tab Sydor, whose team won this year’s race.

It wasn’t even his first Numb Bum victory, but it was no less sweet. “Of course we’ll do it again,” he said, grinning after the race. “Now it’s time for a nap.”

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The race begins with a Le Mans-style start. Once the green flag drops, the first rider on each team runs 20 yards to their motorcycle or quad, starts their engine and takes off. Losing precious seconds here can be frustrating, but with 24 hours to catch up, a bad start isn’t always detrimental to success.

Dan Cheron is the heart and soul of the Numb Bum. Though he hasn’t raced in years, he is still dedicated to planning and organizing the race, including securing sponsors and working with the provincial government for approval to host the event on the lake. It is a true labor of love.

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Nightfall brings lower temperatures and reduced visibility, making racing and repairs even harder.

More than half of the race is completed in the dark.

Nightfall brings lower temperatures and reduced visibility, which makes racing more challenging and repairs even harder. Drivers are required to race with taillights and headlights once the sun sets, and an electrical malfunction means time wasted off the track and fewer laps on the scoreboard.

Teams typically switch drivers every hour or two, allowing them to refuel, take a nap, warm up and ease their truly numb bums.

This year, Luke Sydor (pictured) attempted to complete much of the race by himself, succeeding for 13 hours before blowing a transmission. Sydor raced under the name “Biking for Boobies� to raise money for cancer research in honor of a beloved relative.

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Alone Together

There are several classes of racers all competing at the same time: a professional motorcycle class, an amateur motorcycle class, a quad class and a “Red Eye” class for riders who only compete during sunlight hours. With miles of track, it’s rarely overcrowded.

When the sun sets on the Numb Bum, the riders’ lights can be seen for miles and the sound of roaring engines echoes across the lake.

The weather takes its toll on both man and machine. The 2020 Numb Bum was mild by comparison, with temperatures averaging a balmy 14 degrees.

In 2017, a blizzard dropped 10 inches of wet snow overnight, and riders were frozen to the bone. The 2017 race is legendary among racers as the toughest, nastiest Numb Bum ever contested.

Sandy Beach, Alberta, an hour northwest of Edmonton, is mostly a summer community with a year-round population of around 270 people. So when the sun sets on the Numb Bum, the lights from the riders can be seen for miles and the sound of roaring engines echoes across the lake. Those with lakefront property get a front-row seat to view the action.

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“Nick Moir is a genuine soul who loves to document Mother Nature in all on.”

A fleet of plow drivers keep the course safe during the 24-hour race, smoothing out the track surface where the spiked tires have formed ruts in the ice and removing any snow that accumulates.

It takes the plows, which are constantly running, about 30 minutes to complete a loop, and spectators can ride along for the best—and warmest—view on the lake.

Teams go through hundreds of gallons of gas throughout the race, and most must fuel up every 60 to 90 minutes. Some, though, have installed larger gas tanks, requiring fewer stops on pit row and allowing more time on the racetrack.

The downside is longer shifts on the track for riders to endure the elements.

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Everything you need to know about the conditions is in the name of the race.

Leading the Charge

Nick Moir battles against a dust storm in Texas. “I trusted Nick and his 20 years of experience,” Wright says. “The rest of us were storm-chasing rookies. I wholeheartedly believe that Nick could get anyone interested in storms with his infectious attitude.

Numb Bums

The event’s name is a reference to the effects of frigid temperatures and grueling weather, but the length of the race also causes that unfortunate side effect.

It’s not uncommon to see riders stand up to ease the pain while riding, especially after a series of sharp turns takes its toll.

Team Spirit

Every Numb Bum race begins with the same tradition: Before a single rule is read or sponsors are thanked, competitors turn to a stranger and introduce themselves.

Racers may be rivals on the track, but in the pits they’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who won’t offer to help, whether that’s with a hot cup of coffee or a spare engine.

On the lake, even the toughest competitors are friends.

Legendary stories about the grueling challenges of the race attract first-time competitors from near and far.

A total of 20 teams and 75 riders competed in the 2020 Numb Bum, with teams driving from thousands of miles away. An American team from Wisconsin drove 29 hours through the night just to compete in their firstever 24-hour ice race because they’d heard stories of the challenge and wanted to see it for themselves.

Tab Sydor, of winning squad NASTE Shrinkage, crossed the finish line after his team completed 109 laps in 24 hours, 3 minutes, 12.56 seconds. The team has won the race several times, but the thrill of victory never loses its punch.

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INTO THE UNDERWORLD ROBBIE SHONE

Meet the “underground astronauts” whose subterranean adventures are helping to illuminate our past—and shape our future.

Words MARK BAILEY

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Inside a circular shaft at India’s Um Ladaw Cave, where scientists last year discovered a new species of subterranean fish.

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We all live our day-to-day lives on the surface of our planet.

But beneath this familiar crust is a mysterious labyrinth of caves, crevasses, sea caverns and subterranean lakes.

W

e have explored the poles, the mountains and the moon—and yet more than half of Earth’s caves remain undiscovered. As the writer and academic Robert Macfarlane relates in his 2019 book Underland: A Deep Time Journey, this secret world feels impenetrable and unknowable: “Look up on a cloudless night and you might see the light from a star thousands of trillions of miles away, or pick out the craters left by asteroid strikes on the moon’s face. Look down and your sight stops at topsoil, tarmac, toe.”

Even the world’s largest known cave, Vietnam’s So’n Đoòng, was first mapped as recently as 2009.

At 38.5 million cubic meters (about 1.35 billion cubic feet), it could house an entire block of 40-story skyscrapers. Yet last year explorers discovered that the cave is 1.6 million cubic meters bigger than previously thought. This cave has its own river system, jungle and climate, with 30 million trees, 70 million stalagmites and crystallized “cave pearls” the size of baseballs.

Deep in the underworld, scientists have found organisms that produce antibiotics; microbial life akin to the earliest life forms, in existence billions of years ago; and fantastical rocks and dunes as alien to us as the deserts of Venus. In 2017, NASA experts revived microbial life forms that had lain dormant in gypsum crystals in a Mexican cave for up to 50,000 years, raising hopes that alien organisms could be found in extreme environments on distant planets.

“I’ve caved all over the world and seen some of the most spectacular things,” says cave explorer and microbiologist Dr. Hazel Barton, who worked with NASA in Mexico. “And my eyes were the first to see those [microbes]. When you think about the first moon landing by Neil Armstrong … that ‘first man on the moon’ experience is a rare phenomenon. But in caves you can do that on a regular basis.”

Cavers must squeeze through narrow cracks and navigate in total darkness. Just knowing where to start is hard enough. “Caves are unique in that you can’t see them,” says Dr. Barton. “Mountains can be seen, space can be seen. Perhaps the best comparison 74

we have is the deep ocean, but you can map that with sonar. Ground-penetrating radar systems are lucky to pick up anything 30 meters underground.

So the only way to do it is human exploration.”

Humans are drawn to the darkness. It’s where cavers seek life-affirming thrills and where families bury their dead. It’s where we store valuables but dispose of waste; where we extract precious metals but install dark-matter laboratories. As Macfarlane explains, “The same three tasks recur across cultures and epochs: to shelter what is precious, to yield what is valuable, and to dispose of what is harmful.”

But as climate change and pollution increase, ice caps melt and drug-resistant infections proliferate, exploring the underworld has never felt more urgent.

Glaciologists are rappelling into ice holes to monitor melt rates, microbiologists are going deep in search of new antibiotics, and divers are plunging into caves to expose the vulnerability of our drinking-water supplies. Macfarlane says the underworld invites a “deep time” perspective that extends far beyond our own relatively short lifespans. Paleoclimatologists are studying stalagmites that shed light on climate change 650,000 years ago, while European Space Agency astronauts are crawling into lava caves as training for a possible mission to Mars.

Caves are also a metaphor for the gaps in our everyday knowledge. “Out of sight, out of mind —that’s the problem,” warns environmental anthropologist Dr. Kenny Broad. “We have trouble envisioning that more than 95 percent of the world’s drinking water is stored beneath our feet as groundwater.” With less than 1 percent of accessible freshwater stored in surface rivers and lakes, invisible groundwater is the primary lifesupport system for all human and animal life.

But as we continue to pollute and poison the planet, the amazing discoveries of cave explorers are helping to raise awareness of the beauty and fragility of the underworld. They force us to reflect on where our water comes from, where our trash goes, and how much we still have to learn. Here we celebrate the “underground astronauts” who are finding visions for the future in the darkness of the underworld.

ROBBIE SHONE

THIS IS HUMANKIND’S F O R G OT T E N F R O N T I E R .

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Barton in Lechuguilla Cave, where she found potentially lifesaving microbes.

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The microbiologist DR. HAZEL BARTON

Dubbed the “Lara Croft of microbiology,” Dr. Barton has explored caves on six continents, from Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico, with its 145 miles of passages, to the vast Cloud Ladder Hall in China’s Er Wang Dong—caves so big they have their own weather system.

“I work out every day—you need to be in top shape for this,” says the 48-year-old, who directs the Integrated Bioscience Ph.D. program at the University of Akron, Ohio. “I took a yoga instructor caving and she said it was like a sixhour yoga session. The Lechuguilla expeditions usually last eight days underground. Carrying 40-pound packs, we squeeze and rappel through tight spaces. I’ve hacked through the Borneo jungle to caves that are 75–80°F. They’re full of leeches, you’re waist-deep in water, and swifts are banging your head. Like anything in life, for 100 percent effort you might get 3 percent return. But that 3 percent is worth it.”

Dr. Barton’s headline research is in antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics—derived from natural compounds made by microbes in soil—help treat infectious diseases. But their overuse has led to harmful microbes developing resistance, making it harder to treat conditions such as pneumonia

and tuberculosis. The United Nations has warned that deaths from drug-resistant infections could reach 10 million per year by 2050, calling it “one of the greatest threats we face.” But Dr. Barton made a discovery in the almost 1,600-feet-deep Lechuguilla Cave that could help scientists and doctors fight back.

“I knew that no one had ever been in this passage,” she says. “It’s pristine. For rainwater to percolate from the surface, it takes 1,000 years—long before the 1940s, when the first antibiotics were used to treat infections. So we tested the bugs in this pristine environment and they were resistant to every type of antibiotic used in medicine. Yet this cave has been isolated since it formed 4 million years ago. It suggests antibiotic resistance is hardwired and ancient.”

As cave microorganisms must fight for limited resources, they use “chemical weapons”—or antibiotics—to defend themselves from rivals. These rivals then mutate to build resistance. “Learning how these mechanisms

“Cave exploration is very similar to science, as you’re solving problems and developing perseverance.”

evolved buys us time to find new ways to prevent this happening in medicine,” says Dr. Barton.

She also plans to screen a million different cave bacteria to find novel microbes that could form the basis of new antibiotics.

The British-born academic began caving at the age of 14 and loved the thrill of exploring in three dimensions. While earning her doctorate at the University of Colorado, she would visit caves in South Dakota and New Mexico. And it was during postdoctoral research with the eminent microbiologist and caver Professor Norm Pace that she realized she could fuse her two passions.

“A lot of scientists aren’t interested in doing these epic, sweaty, scary trips, so it gave me an opportunity to go to caves that a microbiologist had never visited,” she says. “That’s when I began finding new things. Cave exploration is very similar to science, as you’re solving problems and developing perseverance, and cavers think outside the box. Nothing is intimidating or scary [to us], so we try things no one has done before.”

A thirst for exploration remains central to Dr. Barton’s work. “About 70 percent of our sample sites are just places where I’ve seen something that looks weird and decided to go back and sample it. Then you find something amazing.”

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ROBBIE SHONE

Barton studies a centuries-old gypsum formation in Lechuguilla Cave.

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“I had a vivid reaction to the darkness and adrenaline of the underground world the first time I went caving.”

Enormous stalagmites in China’s spectacular Er Wang Dong—with caverns so vast they have their own weather system—as shot by British caver and photographer Robbie Shone.

The subterranean photographer

ROBBIE SHONE

ROBBIE SHONE

British photographer Robbie Shone captures stunning cave images that he hopes will inspire a sense of wonder and respect for the world beneath our feet. His highlights include Georgia’s 7,257-foot-deep Veryovkina Cave—the deepestknown on Earth—and Borneo’s vast 1.77-millionsquare-foot Sarawak Chamber, which is long enough to house eight Boeing 747s nose-to-nose.

“When I began caving, it was for the thrill, and I still get a rush from hanging on a rope in total darkness,” says Shone. “But I especially love photographing caves where no one has been. On New Britain, an island in Papua New Guinea, I explored caves formed long before the dinosaurs were around. They had never been seen by human eyes before.”

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Shone, now 40 and living in Innsbruck, Austria, began caving in the Yorkshire Dales while studying fine art and photography at Sheffield Hallam University in the U.K. “I had a vivid reaction to the darkness and adrenaline of the underground world,” he says. He later deployed his new rope skills when cleaning skyscrapers as a way to fund caving trips, before magazines and scientists began commissioning his work.

“Some caves are like a giant obstacle course,” he says. “One minute you’re rappelling into the dark, then at the bottom the passages might be so tight you have to turn your head sideways just to squeeze through.” On his 2018 expedition to Veryovkina, he was caught in a freak flood pulse. “I remember the noise of the water like a Tube train coming toward me.

When I climbed out the chamber, the water was pummelling me. I had to keep my head horizontal just to breathe, as the lip of my

helmet created an air space. The experience affected me for months. I got drunk. Even sleeping was difficult.”

He regained his confidence through self-talk.

“I reminded myself that caves are normally super safe. The walls don’t move. They don’t cave in like mineshafts built by humans. But I also took an open-water diving course to build up my confidence. The Veryovkina team now always have someone on the surface. Forecasts aren’t enough for a two-week trip underground.”

Shone enjoys documenting the work of microbiologists, scientists and geologists—he even accompanied ESA astronauts into the lava tubes of Lanzarote, where geologists taught them how to collect rock samples for a future mission to Mars. “Meeting scientists has filled a void and brought extra meaning to my work.

I hope my photographs inform the public and reveal the amazing scientists who are helping us to learn about—and save—this planet.”

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The glaciologist DR. SAM DOYLE

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ROBBIE SHONE

Around 10 percent of Earth’s land surface is covered in ice caps, ice sheets and glaciers, the movement and melt of which is critical for the study of climate change and sea-level rises. To analyze glaciers in Switzerland, Greenland and Antarctica, Dr. Sam Doyle—a field glaciologist at Aberystwyth University in Wales—rappels into vertical ice shafts known as moulins, which are formed when meltwater carves out a hole in a glacier over time.

“It’s extremely physically demanding, cold and wet,” explains Dr. Doyle, 34. “You’re in a confined, slippery space and there’s always the risk of water rising or coming down. So we do this at 2 to 3 a.m. in the autumn when it’s freezing cold, because you don’t want melt while you’re down there. Using skills from caving and ice-climbing, we seek out the holes that mountaineers try to avoid. On Gorner Glacier in Switzerland, we explored a vertical moulin to a depth of 86 meters [282 feet]. Our super-skinny 7-millimeter ropes—which we were using to save weight—became iced up, so our descending devices started to slip unnervingly. The descent became very fast and hard to control.”

Dr. Doyle also bores holes with hot-water jets so he can deposit sensors to monitor changes in water pressure and movement.

“Surface melt flows to the bed and can speed up or slow down a glacier, depending on the conditions,” he says. “My research is asking: Is the ice sheet going to speed up if the climate warms? And is more ice going to be discharged into the ocean?”

Working at night in temperatures of 15°F can be daunting. “You have to control any fear by assessing the risks and having the right knowledge,” says Dr. Doyle, who grew up caving in Sheffield and Scotland.

“But going below the ice is incredible.

Everything is a striking blue. And ice structures form much faster than in rock, so they are often bigger. The moulins are spectacular, but some glaciers have long canyon systems and elaborate [frozen] waterfalls.”

With more than 600 million people worldwide living in coastal areas less than 30 feet above sea level, Dr. Doyle hopes people wise up to climate change. “What happens to glaciers and ice sheets has big consequences for society as sea levels rise when the ice melts,” he says. “We now need to make progress in reducing emissions and changing behavior.”

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“It’s extremely physically demanding, cold and wet.

We seek out the holes that mountaineers try to avoid.”

Ice on the ropes presents a very real hazard for Doyle and his team while rappelling a vertical moulin on Switzerland’s Gorner Glacier.

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The paleoclimatologist DR. GINA MOSELEY

Caves are time capsules that help scientists explore the past—and forecast the future.

“They’re connected to, but protected from, the surface, so they trap information about climates over hundreds of thousands of years,” says Dr. Gina Moseley, a paleoclimatologist at the Austrian-based Innsbruck Quaternary Research Group. “We have unprecedented, rapid climate change right now, but we can look back at when the climate has changed quickly in the past—with CO2 released into the atmosphere—and ask, ‘What happened? What were the effects?’ ” For the past 2.6 million years, known as the quaternary period, the Earth has varied between glacial (ice age) and interglacial (warm) cycles, driven by the planet’s orbit relative to the sun.

Warm periods trigger ice melt and suck C02 out of the deep ocean and into the atmosphere, which accelerates the warming, and studying these helps predict future climate change.

Dr. Moseley currently leads the Greenland Caves Project. The Arctic region is especially

vulnerable to climate change, but the consequences there will be felt worldwide through rising sea levels and changing weather systems. To reach the remote Greenland caves, Dr. Moseley has endured multiday hikes and boat journeys, carrying drills, hammers and rope. On one trip, she found and ate the contents of an old tin of U.S. Army rations (Best Before date: 1955).

“I research stalagmites—the candlesticks you find on cave floors, formed by dripping water.

That water brings with it a chemical signature of temperature, how wet it was, if there were trees above the caves and any human influences.

All this information is trapped in the stalagmite, so we cut it open and analyze it. Our timescale is 650,000 years, so we get long records. In Greenland, we found beautiful flowstones formed by thin sheets of flowing water. They prove that although the land is covered in permafrost, it must have been warmer and wetter in the past.

We use this information to see what might happen if temperatures change again.”

Dr. Moseley, originally from the U.K., first tried caving while on a family holiday in Southern England, at the age of 12. “I got the bug,” she

“By exploring caves, we can look back at times in the past when the climate has changed quickly and ask, ‘What were the effects?’ ” recalls. “I’d save up my paper-round money to go caving.” She later explored caves in the Bahamas for her Ph.D. in geographical sciences at Bristol University: “When I found out it was possible to work in caves as a science, everything came together.” The extreme isolation of caves teaches her self-reliance, she says: “In remote places, you learn to get on with what you have.”

Dr. Moseley sees adventure and science as twin weapons in the battle against climate change. “People might have their eyes opened by the adventure side of things,” she says. “But if that gets them interested in climate change, I’m happy.”

ROBBIE SHONE

Caves such as Lechuguilla unlock the past for paleoclimatologists like Moseley.

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Broad dives through the Blue Holes of the Bahamas.

The environmental anthropologist

WES C. SKILES/NATGEO

DR. KENNY BROAD

Dr. Kenny Broad is not your typical professor.

The 53-year-old scientist flies helicopters, has worked as a Hollywood stuntman and prefers scuba gear to slide shows. As an environmental anthropologist at the University of Miami, he dives into underwater caves everywhere from the Bahamas to Mexico to study climate change, evolution and freshwater management.

“Exploring caves is like entering Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, but instead of walking on a path you’re weaving up into the arches and down into a minute feature,” says Dr. Broad. “It’s a sensory overload of beauty, but you’re also multitasking. ‘Am I breathing the right gas? Where is my buddy?’ There’s an amazing feeling of flow.”

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A former National Geographic Explorer of the Year, Dr. Broad learned to dive as a boy, and the hobby has become central to his research.

The sediment and stalagmites in marine caves contain vital clues about past climate change, and the anoxic (oxygenless) environment preserves fossils; his team has found the remains of previously undescribed birds and vertebrates.

Dr. Broad dives into “blue holes” (submerged marine caverns) in the Bahamas that serve as important analogs for ancient oceans. “The life forms there are linked to the earliest forms of life, from 2 and a half billion years ago. They are also as close as we can get to what may be going on in other planets. I spoke to someone from NASA, because there might be something equivalent [a subsurface ocean] under the crust of Europa [one of Jupiter’s moons]. They’re very interested in extremophile forms of life.”

He also explores freshwater caves to monitor groundwater supplies threatened by pollution

and saltwater intrusion as sea levels rise: “People don’t think about it, but this is our drinking water.” Population growth also has an impact: Draw too heavily from coastal freshwater wells and saltwater starts to seep in, contaminating drinking water. “This is happening in coastal areas around California and Florida,” he says.

Dr. Broad also enjoys sharing his research with schools and businesses. This is as important as the science, he says, “because it won’t be another paper on ‘climate reconstruction from the late Holocene’ that changes public policy or individual behavior on water use.

Despite the potential hazards of cave diving, Dr. Broad believes that deep-water explorers such as himself bring valuable life lessons back to the surface. “When diving, you get so close to the fundamentals of being alive. Every breath matters. Then it hits you: ‘I’m swimming through our water supply—the veins of the Earth.’ It reminds you how fundamental and fragile life is.”

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guide

KAT CANNELL/VISIT SUN VALLEY

Get it. Do it. See it.

WINTER PLAYGROUNDS Even though ski resorts are prepared for an uncertain season, there’s no doubt that these three mountain towns will be humming.

Words EVELYN SPENCE

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The winter-fun options in Ketchum, Idaho, are off-thecharts good.

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G U I D E

Do it Ketchum’s charming downtown has more grit than glitz.

Ketchum, Idaho

“I’ve been all over the world and to every major resort in the United States,” says skimovie legend and AMGA guide Mike Hattrup. “But when I decided to live in the mountains, it was an easy decision: Ketchum.” It’s downto-earth, and still feels more old mining town than purpose-built Bavaria. And while Sun Valley Resort lacks the machismo test pieces of a Jackson or a Snowbird, it’s still pretty steep, with perfect 3,400-vertical-foot fall lines.

“The grooming is meticulous and the runs are wide with long sight lines, so you can ski incredibly fast,” Hattrup says.

Even if you skip the ski hill, the Wood River Valley has world-class action: super-easy access to the backcountry around Galena Summit, where locals ski lower peaks and trees in winter and 11,000foot ski-mountaineering objectives in spring. Nordic skiing—130-plus miles of it— is primo, too. In town, there’s a 2-acre outdoor ice rink with free admission and gear. If you want to whittle down your bucket list, Sun Valley Heli-Ski offers half- and full-day trips.

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Truckee, California

And come March, try a winter double-header: ski in the morning, fly-fish the Big Wood River all afternoon. But somehow the place is far from overrun. “I’ve skied here for 30 years,” says Muffy Ritz, who coaches Nordic skiing.

“The longest I’ve ever waited in a lift line was five minutes.”

Stay For nostalgia—photos of Hollywood stars, Hemingway references—the refurbished Sun Valley Lodge is worth a stroll even if you decide not to crash there. For amenities, the Limelight Hotel is hard to beat: fire pits, live music, outdoor pool and complimentary fat bikes and snowshoes.

Eat The Dirty Hippie breakfast burrito (steam-scrambled eggs, black beans and crème fraiche) and Keith Richards (Mexican hot chocolate with four espresso shots) at Java on Fourth will fuel you all day.

For breakfast or lunch, Ritz loves Perry’s, a local fixture.

The Pioneer is quintessential Idaho: steaks, trout and huge Idaho baked potatoes.

Drink An iconic hole-in-thewall, Grumpy’s has been around since 1978—really good burgers, 32-ounce beer schooners. The Cellar Pub has

dozens of whiskeys and feels kinda like Cheers. For live music, Whiskey Jacques is the best bet in town.

Guide Avalanche education, backcountry tours, ice climbing or guided overnights into the terrain around the Williams Peak yurt: Sawtooth Mountain Guides can do it all.

As a member of the U.S. Ski Team, downhiller Travis Ganong chases snow nine months a year—but nothing compares to his hometown, where the flakes come down in feet. “During big storm cycles, we get up, ski powder all day, celebrate, sleep and do it all over again,” he says. And his favorite hill, Squaw Valley—which plans to limit ticket sales this winter in the name of social distancing—is cluttered with gullies, chutes and bowls. From Truckee, it’s easy to access almost a dozen other ski areas, from tiny Soda Springs up to master-planned Northstar. Backcountry options are endless; the Castle Peak area has great chutes, spines, glades and south-facing lowangle slopes, and resorts like Sugar Bowl sell single-ride tickets for lift-accessed routes.

Royal Gorge is the largest cross-country resort in North America (120 miles of trails), with Tahoe Donner adding 60 miles. And, when the lateseason freeze-thaw cycle

The Nordic options near Truckee are worth your contemplation.

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TORY TAGLIO/VISIT SUN VALLEY, PAUL HAMILL, BRIAN NEVINS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, CEDAR HOUSE

EVELYN SPENCE

Mountain Towns

starts, backcountry crosscountry skiing is a thing.

Woodward Tahoe, a 33,000square-foot warehouse of foam pits, trampolines, concrete skate features and a pump track, is the place to perfect your tricks alongside freestyle skiers like Eileen Gu. But even though it’s crawling with pros, Truckee is low key.

“It’s simple here,” says Ganong.

“In work/life balance, life takes center stage.”

Stay Upcycled, unrefined and modern, the Cedar House Sport Hotel is the classiest place to crash downtown. The owners of Donner Lake Inn B&B are super friendly and make a killer breakfast. For a cheap bed, Redlight—a former brothel—has hostelstyle options and the bar serves beer ice cream floats.

Eat “You’ll typically find me at Wildflour with a warm cookie in hand,” says freeskier Michelle Parker (locals call the bakery, at Squaw’s base area, simply “the cookie shop”).

If you have more time, visit Donner Lake Kitchen and cross your fingers that the stuffed French toast is on special. For a splurge, cozy PlumpJack Café does California seasonal right. A former ski lodge, Cottonwood was built from salvaged railroad ties in 1928 and overlooks downtown Truckee.

Drink Former pro snowboarder Ralph Backstrom started

The Cedar House is modern, upcycled and unpretentious.

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Local star Zeb Powell rips the terrain at Killington.

roasting coffee with a stovetop popcorn popper—and now slings espresso and nitro brews at Pacific Crest Coffee Company (owned with Ganong). For après, Le Chamois—aka the Chammy— is one of skidom’s best bars.

On the main drag, try Old Town Tap for cocktails and beer or Uncorked for wine.

Guide Alpenglow Expeditions can help you explore the Skyline Traverse, from Donner Summit to Squaw, or the liftaccessed backcountry at Squaw and Alpine.

Killington, Vermont

“Ask anyone who grew up skiing and riding in the East about Killington and nine times out of 10 they’ll tell you about that wild night at the Pickle Barrel or Wobbly Barn,” says Randy Elles, whose family has owned First Stop Board Shop since 1979. “The après and nightlife here are unrivaled.” And when it comes to resort size (1,500 skiable acres), length of season, variety of terrain (massive bumps, wide cruisers, a Burton Stash park, double black diamond glades with rock drops), the Beast

stands tall. Sure, weekends can be crowded, and the Access Road lacks Norman Rockwell charm, but that’s more than counterbalanced by sheer cray-cray. And it’s not that hard to find your own space. “The uphill scene at Pico is legit,” says Elles of Killington’s little sister. “You can skin up before sunrise and well past sunset and you’ll see a steady stream of headlamps ascending and descending along the way.” Nordic skiing or fat biking at Mountain Meadows or the Woodstock Nordic Center is perfectly New England: frosted hardwood forests, rolling pastures, warming huts. If quaintness is your thing, nearby Woodstock is crawling with country stores, antique shops and cozy restaurants. Or just plan to visit K-Town on weekdays, when its true colors come out.

“The resort feels massive, the lift lines are nonexistent and you can find true peace,” says Elles. “It’s one of the last great ski towns people can actually afford to live and play in.”

Stay For convenience to both skiing and partying, the new Mountain Inn—which has its own distillery—sits near the

base of the resort. For charm, the 1890s-era Jackson House Inn in Woodstock takes the kitsch out of the New England B&B—and its restaurant is a culinary destination of its own. The elegant 142-room Woodstock Inn & Resort, on the town green, has private ski trails and working fireplaces.

Eat Hannah Hardaway, a former Olympic mogul skier who grew up skiing here, loves Sushi Yoshi for creative rolls and hibachi. Lookout Tavern is just right for après: huge burgers and local beers on tap. In Woodstock, Worthy Kitchen is a grass-fed, linecaught kind of diner.

Drink Snoop Dogg, Wu-Tang, Blues Traveler: They’ve all played at the Pickle Barrel, a four-bar, three-level club. Elles loves Vermont’s oldest Irish bar, McGrath’s, where he sits on the boulders (yes, inside) and orders a Vermont Half & Half (half Long Trail Ale with Guinness floated on top) and a shepherd’s pie.

Guide With more than 5,000 miles of maintained trails, Vermont is a world-renowned snowmobiling destination— and Snowmobile Vermont can show you some of the best.

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G U I D E

Do it

GET FIT LIKE A PRO

“I LOVE THE WHOLE PROCESS OF PROGRESSION” Freeride mountain bike star Hannah Bergemann reveals how she trains for big airs and hard slams.

When Hannah Bergemann started riding mountain bikes in high school, she tried racing. It wasn’t for her.

“It quickly turned into me wanting to hit jumps and find bigger stuff to jump off of,” she says. Bergemann grew up freeskiing at Mount Hood in Oregon, where she discovered an affinity for chasing big airs and pushing her limits. “I learned what it’s like to see something you want to do, then work up to it.” Now 24, Bergemann lives in Bellingham, Washington, a magnet for freeride, thanks to its intense terrain and talented community of riders. She divides her time between training and working for her sponsor, Transition Bikes.

At last year’s Formation women’s session in the Utah desert, Bergemann rode one of the biggest lines with flawless style. “I love the whole process of progression and the creativity that comes with the sport,” she says.

And she’s not afraid to take the inevitable slams.

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“There’s a lot of crashing and failing,” says Bergemann. “You can’t be afraid to look silly. You have to be able to not take yourself too seriously.”

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Fitness

FITN ES S

“I don’t really plan workouts” “I like to be on my bike at least once a day. The rides around here are inherently challenging and I usually have to do a couple thousand feet of climbing to get to the trails I want to ride. I don’t really plan workouts, I just gauge how I’m feeling and adjust my effort to fit.

In the gym, I like to focus on upperbody strength. When you take a big hit, you compress into your bike, so you need to be able to use your arms as suspension. I like exercises like squats with overhead presses, so I get a little bit of everything.”

S KI LL S

PARIS GORE/RED BULL CONTNET POOL, KATIE LOZANCICH

JEN SEE

“I’m always looking for ways to improve” “I’m always switching up where I ride and looking for what will be beneficial for progression.

If there’s a rock feature that I haven’t ridden in a while, I’ll make a point to go ride it. Sometimes I’ll focus on one aspect of my jumping.

Maybe I’ll work on my preload or getting amplitude on the jump. The pump track bike helps with bikehandling skills, like learning how to manual. A dirt jumper is great for dialing in jumping technique, like how to preload, because you have a lot less forgiveness without suspension.”

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M E NTAL FOC U S

“I try to visualize the whole process” “I take deep breaths before I drop into something and make sure my heart rate is low. After 10 years of practice, I don’t really think about it anymore. What has helped me is learning to do dialed visualizations.

If I can see myself doing the thing that I want to do, I usually know I can do it. If I’m having a hard time visualizing something, I know to walk away from it. I just work on it in my head until it makes sense.

And maybe I have to go back to the drawing board and work on certain skills until it clicks.”

“I WANT FUEL THAT IS SMART—AND DELICIOUS” “Before a big training day, I love eating waffles with a ton of toppings. I’ll make a big protein waffle—basically oats, eggs and bananas. And then I’ll put a bunch of stuff on it, like almond butter, yogurt, honey and fresh fruit.

If I’m going out on my trail bike for a long ride, I’ll make a PB&J. I think it’s easy to overthink stuff. I try to be in tune with what my body is feeling.”

R EC OV E RY

“I force myself to take rest days” “I definitely have taken a lot of slams, so I have learned to dial in my process of recovery. The hardest part for me is taking time off the bike, because I never want to stop riding. So I have to force myself to take a rest day after a long week of riding, a crash or if I feel sore. In those cases, I do yoga sometimes, but mostly, I just do stretches that feel good or that will work the muscles that need stretching. I do cold-therapy stuff as well, like cold showers and ice baths. I also go see my massage therapist.”

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1. BREITLING ENDURANCE PRO

Ironman legend and Breitling ambassador Jan Frodeno is among the athletes who inspired the brand’s newest sports watch, perfect if you’re seeking an ultralight timepiece that combines strength with accuracy.

Water-resistant to 100 m, this 44 mm chronograph features the proprietary (and scratch-resistant) Breitlight case that houses the brand’s SuperQuartz movement, all on a rubber strap available in five bold colors—which also can be switched out for an equally light recycled NATO strap. $3,000; breitling.com

GO FOR THE BOLD Combining high-tech function with vibrant styling, the latest sports watches offer something for every conceivable adventure. Words LAURIE BROOKINGS 88

THE RED BULLETIN

G U I D E 2. VICTORINOX FIELDFORCE SPORT GMT

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When life gets back to normal and you can go hiking or skiing in distant time zones, Victorinox’s latest sports watch will be a great choice if you’d like a glance at the time back home. The brand’s popular FieldForce collection now includes this eye-catching 42 mm piece with a GMT function, while the hour and minute hands take their design cue from the shape of Swiss Army knives. The case’s gunmetal tone is nicely offset against an orange rubber strap. $425; swissarmy.com

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3. SHINOLA RADIO FLYER

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In 2019, Shinola debuted its Detrola collection, named for a brand of radios and cameras manufactured in the Motor City in the 1930s and ’40s. The latest addition to this fun group of quartz watches is the Radio Flyer Detrola, the result of a partnership with the American brand known for its iconic red wagons.

On a strap in Radio Flyer red, the 43 mm case in glossy black resin houses a white dial with date aperture. $395; shinola.com

4. ZENITH DEFY EL PRIMERO 21 ULTRAVIOLET

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The latest Defy 21 is bold in both look and technology: Able to time events to 1/100th of a second, this chronograph’s high frequency also inspired the violet hue of both the bridges and oscillating rotor and the fabric insert on the black rubber strap. The 44 mm microblasted titanium case houses a dial featuring a 30-minute counter at 3 o’clock, 60-second counter at 6 o’clock and a power-reserve indicator at 12 o’clock. $13,100; zenith-watches.com

5. HUBLOT BIG BANG MILLENNIAL PINK For a forward-looking timepiece, consider the latest collaboration between Hublot and Fiat scion Lapo Elkann’s Garage Italia. This watch has been designed as a gender-neutral selfwinding chronograph in a 42 mm aluminum case that’s scratch-resistant and tinted via a proprietary anodization process. Featuring a 72-hour power reserve, this Big Bang comes with two straps: one in rubber with a titanium buckle, and the second in Velcro and a poly-cotton blend. $20,900; hublot.com

6. CARL F. BUCHERER PATRAVI TRAVELTEC COLOR EDITION FOUR SEASONS A triple time-zone complication is among the reasons the TravelTec has become a soughtafter watch by global adventurists, and for 2020, Carl F. Bucherer has added four bright hues to the collection, each representing a different season. Winter is interpreted in icy blue to create the rubber strap, screw-down crown and dial, which features black subdials for the chronograph functions, in a 46.6 mm stainlesssteel case. A world timezone chart is engraved on the caseback. $10,900; carl-f-bucherer.com

7. TUDOR BLACK BAY FIFTY-EIGHT

Originally conceptualized as a dive watch, Tudor’s Black Bay family may be the most popular collection worn by people who never go diving, and its newest timepiece, the Black Bay Fifty-Eight, is likely no exception. Crafted with a navy dial in a 39 mm stainless-steel case on a navy “soft-touch” bracelet, this Tudor offers divefriendly features like a unidirectional bezel and water resistance to 200 m, but it’s also ideal as an everyday, unisex watch. $3,375; tudorwatch.com 89

PRESENTLY HEALTHY

However your friends and family like to work out—inside or out, high-tech or no-tech—these gifts are sure to make their lives fit and fun.

Words JOE LINDSEY

BOWFLEX SELECTTECH 840 ADJUSTABLE KETTLEBELL

Pound for pound, few free-weight tools are more versatile than kettlebells. But storing a set in a home gym eats space. The SelectTech 840 gives you the functionality of six kettlebells (8, 12, 20, 25, 35 and 40 lb) in one package. Adjust your desired heft with a twist of the intuitive dial.

The durable matte finish won’t mar hard floors and the slip-free handle provides several grip options for workouts. $179; bowflex.com

If you want kettlebells but lack space, the SelectTech 840 is a brilliant solution.

G U I D E

AT- H O M E

F I T N E S S

NORTH POLE ENGINEERING RUNN

WAHOO KICKR BIKE

THE SUFFERFEST

PRANA MAHA TOWEL

TRIGGERPOINT MOBILITY PACK

TONAL HOME GYM

This ingenious pod turns treadmills into smart machines to record workouts on a smartwatch, or get the full experience of virtual running apps like Zwift. Apply the belt stickers and affix the main unit to the side of any treadmill and it will measure speed, incline, cadence, distance and pace. Antennas on both the BLE and ANT+ wavelengths transmit data to a smartwatch, computer, tablet or phone running virtual workout apps. $100; npe-inc.com

Indoor exercise works up a real sweat, whether you’re cranking out intervals or flowing from asana to asana. Keep it clean and dry with this generously sized (75 x 26 in) towel made of a super-absorbent polyester microfiber blend. The soft, sueded fabric feels great against skin and absorbs more water than thick cotton—and dries more quickly. It’s ideal for added grip on top of a yoga mat, to protect hardwood floors during a spin session or 100 other uses. $40; prana.com

Arguably the most full-featured indoor bike made today, the KICKR attends to every detail to replicate realistic ride feel. It mimics gradients up to 20 percent uphill and steep, 15 percent descents. It has virtual shifting to match cadence to simulated terrain that feels just like riding outside, and can handle the burliest sprint efforts. Micro-adjust fit points quickly match your on-bike position, accepting your favorite seat and pedals. $3,500; wahoofitness.com

Exercise builds but also breaks down. That’s where recovery tools come in. This pack features three faves at a deep discount from buying them separately: the original hollowcore GRID foam roller for bodywork on broad muscle groups; the MB1 massage ball for spot therapy; and the GRID strap for controlled support on deep stretches to work out tight connective tissues. There are cheaper options, but none with a rep for quality and durability. $45; triggerpoint.implus.com

Get the most out of your KICKR with this deep catalog of workouts, which go past base fitness to fine-tune specific cycling form like improving your top-end sprint, or racing simulations that help you respond to repeated attacks—all with personalized performance targets and lifelike ride footage so you’re never bored. The service also features strength workouts, yoga and mental-training programs to bolster your game. $15/month or $129/year; thesufferfest.com

If space is tight, Tonal offers a capable, compact home gym. The electromagnetic resistance simulates up to 200 lbs of weight. Articulating arms and range of smart attachments—an essential add-on—offer a range of upper- and lower-body exercises. A spotter function reduces resistance if you’re struggling to finish a set.

Streaming classes span from power lifting to yoga to cardio. $2,995, $495 smart accessory bundle, $49/month membership; tonal.com

The Maha Towel is soft, absorbent and versatile, a fitness luxury that you’ll come to depend on.

THE RED BULLETIN

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G U I D E

W E A R A B L E

JAYBIRD VISTA

These tiny earbuds are close to unkillable. The waterproof, shockproof housing is perfect for workouts inside and outdoors. They will stay put during high-motion sports, and with 6-hour play time and quick charging (5 minutes for an hour of use), you won’t have to worry about dead batteries. The Vista’s drivers offer chunky bass and clarion high notes, and the iOS or Android app offers customizable sound profiles and a locate function. $180; jaybirdsport.com

T E C H

FITBIT SENSE

Fitness watches have come a long way from simple step counters. The Sense is Fitbit’s most powerful smartwatch ever, packed with features to help you monitor and manage your health.

Whether it’s skin temp, pulse oxygenation or a dozen other metrics, the Sense keeps you in tune with your body. But it’s so much more; with call syncing, apps and voice-assistant capability, the Sense is the only smartwatch you need for workouts or everyday wear. $330; fitbit.com

JABRA ELITE 85T

Jabra’s smallest earbuds to date are packed with features, including Advanced Active Noise Cancellation, with 11 levels from HearThrough for safer use outside to full noise canceling. The semi-open fit and 12 mm speakers offer robust, crisp sound without annoying ear pressure and six microphones with windnoise protection for clear calls. With up to 5.5 hours of run time and Qi wireless charging, the Elite 85t buds are always ready for full- day use. $230; jabra.com

Jabra’s Elite 85t earbuds offer big noise-canceling tech in a tiny package.

G U I D E

SUUNTO 7

Whatever your workout, this sports watch is your perfect partner. It features more than 70 sport modes for almost any activity, with easy sync to most sport apps. Powerful GPS navigation features offline maps for confident routefinding off-grid. Google’s Wear OS gives you an intuitive interface and capability for checking calls and email, streaming music, mobile payments, even voice assistant, all packed in a stylish case with interchangeable straps. $499; suunto.com

WHOOP STRAP 3.0

One key performance metric you’re likely not monitoring: recovery. This slim strap offers precise data on workouts and tracks heart-rate variability and recovery (especially sleep) to give you clear data on whether you’re ready to go hard. And Whoop offers suggested exertion levels for workouts and intuitive visualizations to help you build strength, minimize overtraining and improve sleep habits. $30/month (strap is free with subscription); whoop.com

POLAR H10

Optical heart rate measurement may be fine for everyday use, but when you’re working out, you want the precision of an ECG strap. This sensor offers great accuracy in a lightweight, unobtrusive package with a comfortable strap in two sizes.

With Bluetooth connections, a 5Hz Gymlink frequency and an ANT+ antenna, the H10 offers reliable transmission to almost any smartwatch, connected exercise equipment or phone running a compatible workout app. $90; polar.com

STRYD

Competitive cyclists have long trained with power meters, a better metric than heart rate.

Now, runners can too with this innovative footpod, which easily attaches to any shoe. With Stryd, you can craft training plans to peak for race day, get real-time feedback on how changes in running form affect your efficiency and track your fitness as it responds to training plans.

Stryd data syncs with most major training apps and smartwatches. $219; stryd.com

OURA RING

This innovative health tracker is ideal for people who don’t want one more thing on their wrists.

With precise sizing and powerful PPG sensor technology, this sleek, jewelry-grade ring delivers sensitive measurements of key sleep metrics like resting heart rate, temperature, even respiratory rate to give you a detailed picture of your health. During the day, Oura counts calories, steps, and exercise intensity and duration, too. $299; ouraring.com

It’s a jewelry-quality ring—and a powerful health tracker.

THE RED BULLETIN

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G U I D E

O U T D O O R SY

G I F T S

SALOMON WILDCROSS

PATAGONIA MACRO PUFF QUILT

MPOWERD LUCI COLOR STRING

MESSERMEISTER ADVENTURE CHEF 3-PIECE BASECAMP SET

Slippery winter trails are no match for the Wildcross. Its burly, multidirectional tread lugs bite deep on soft trails, mud, even snow for a confident grip. Rubber toe bumpers and a moderately stiff midsole protect against rock bruises, while the low stack height and drop keep your foot close to the ground. A SensiFit lacing system cradles the midfoot for secure foothold without causing hot spots, with one-pull lace tightening. $130; salomon.com

Add some pop to any outdoor setting with this compact puck of LED string lights. The 18-foot cord is nylon braided to resist splits and kinking, and strung with 10 light nodes with six color options. The 2000mAh lithium-ion battery lasts 15 hours and recharges quickly from a USB port or the built-in solar panel; the USB can also recharge mobile devices. At home on the patio or in a tent, they provide warm, even light and perfect ambiance. $45; mpowerd.com

Everything you love about Patagonia’s Micro Puff Hoody gets supersized with this almost queensize (80 x 69 in) blanket. The light, lofty PlumaFill synthetic fiber insulation warms like down to ward off cool nights at camp and is quilted so it won’t bunch up. The Fair Trade Certified-sewn Pertex shell fabric blocks wind and is waterresistant. It packs down tight into a stuffsack for travel, and thoughtful webbing loops let you hang it to air out. $249; patagonia.com

Preparing camp food with a multitool has its limits. So cutlery brand Messermeister partnered with Adam Glick, aka the Adventure Chef, for this sweet set. The 6-in folding chef’s knife features tough high-carbon steel for longwearing sharpness and an ergonomic handle.

A folding, faux-wood cutting board offers a clean, stable workspace, and a waxed-canvas case keeps it tidy. $130; messermeister.com

The Chef 3-Piece Basecamp Set delivers culinary quality in a truly compact package.

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G U I D E

FJALLRAVEN EXPEDITION LATT HOODIE

Stay cozy in this high-loft insulated jacket made entirely from recycled materials. The polyester fill creates a puffy, down-like look and feel that’s better at retaining warmth when moderately wet.

The semi-form fit is perfect for high-motion sports, or layering under a shell. A snug hood fits under helmets, and if you warm up too much, the jacket stuffs into its own inside pocket for compact storage. $200; fjallraven.com

You've admired James Niehues’ art on the chairlift. Why not admire it—and support his craft—at home?

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SEIRUS EVO ARC DYNAMAX DISCRETE TUBE

Many ski areas are requiring face coverings this season even on lifts; this new gaiter is a good solution for safety and comfort. The tube features a flexible EVO Arc—it holds the gaiter off your face to prevent icing and goggle fogging and fits into the nose pocket of your goggles to seal against cold and outside air. And the fabric is treated with antimicrobial protection to keep germs and funk at bay. $40; seirus.com

BIOLITE HEADLAMP 750

Most LED headlamps auto-regulate brightness to conserve battery life. But this new light offers a non-dimming mode perfect for technical running or hiking terrain in darkness. A powerful burst setting provides a daylight-like 750 lumens, but even running constant mode at medium brightness, the rechargeable battery gives you 4 hours of runtime. The integrated taillight boosts visibility, and the slim profile won’t bounce on rough trails. $100; bioliteenergy.com

THE MAN BEHIND THE MAPS

If you ski or snowboard, you’ve seen James Niehues’ art. He’s the painter behind the trail maps for almost 200 ski resorts worldwide, now compiled in this 292-page coffee-table book. It chronicles Niehues’ life work and the background behind the art of trail maps—like how Niehues uses perspective and texture to show steepness or hint at powder stashes. Love one mountain?

Niehues also sells maps of individual areas, starting at $40. $90; jamesniehues.com 95

GLOBAL TEAM

THE RED BULLETIN WORLDWIDE

The Red Bulletin is published in six countries. The cover of this month’s French edition features BMX flatlander Matthais Dandois, one of the riders featured in the new film, The Old World, on Red Bull TV. For more stories beyond the ordinary, go to redbulletin.com.

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LITTLE SHAO/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Break into flight B-Boy Victor caused a flap on the streets of Tokyo when he busted an impromptu move. As can be seen in this shot by Paris-based photographer Little Shao, the Mexican breakdancer didn’t have the foresight to clear a space first. Rest assured, no pigeons were harmed during the taking of this photo.