Blue Ridge Outdoors March 2017

MARCH 2017

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Fly Females 6 Women Revolutionizing the Sport

SURVIVAL GUIDE

10 WORST CASE SCENARIOS

RUNNING MAN CHARLIE ENGLE ON PRISON, RECORDS, AND REDEMPTION

SPRING 2017

FLY FISHING GUIDE

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March 2017 CONTENTS

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

19 FLY FEMALES

Meet six women who are rocking the boat and revolutionizing the sport.

25 WORST-CASE SCENARIO

Santa Run record • Thru-hikers help Gatlinburg fire victims • 77-year-old runs 149 miles

Lost? Broken bone? Bear attack?

With the help of four of the region’s top outdoor experts, our 2017 Survival Guide will prepare you for any adventure disaster.

10 THE DIRT

47 RUNNING MAN

8 QUICK HITS

Revisiting the B-52 crash site of Maryland’s nuclear moment

15 FLASHPOINT

Drones can be disruptive and dangerous, but scientists and search and rescue teams are also using them to protect forests and save lives.

58 THE GOODS

Pro angler Damon Bungard shares his favorite fly fishing gear.

COVER PHOTO BY

LIGHTEUNP

S O S E R IE TAC T P R E A IR CO N C FORM A N H IG H P ER SF ER N A LOA D T R

North Carolina’s Charlie Engle has overcome drug addiction and prison to become a record-breaking ultra runner. He reveals the secrets to his comeback in a new memoir and a candid interview with BRO.

53 WHAT DOESN'T KILL US

Can extreme cold conditioning make you stronger? Scott Carney thinks so—and he has the frigid firsthand experiences and scientific research to back it up.

www.deuter.com

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DRONES: COOL OR NOT COOL? GORDON WADSWORTH Drones allow us to explore wild places in new ways, but seeing them more makes me nervous for those same wild places. Why leave the parking lot if you can just get the drone to the top?

EVANS PRATER Drones can make some cool outdoor videos, but I don't want to be focusing on them when I'm out in the woods.

RANDY JOHNSON I was buzzed by a drone atop Humpback Rocks. I'm sure it got some "great photos of a hiker," but it was a little like being on Mount LeConte and hearing a Harley.

TIM KOERBER They're being flown all over, typically by unskilled pilots. I see so much illegal drone footage from wilderness areas. Sure, most of it is beautiful, but does that make it okay?

DAN BRAYACK I was part of a photo shoot where they used drones. It was pretty cool and made our ropes course look awesome.

As a photographer and publisher, I'm considering getting one myself.

CHRIS GRAGTMANS Drones allow us to see mind-blowing perspectives, but a responsible pilot should never fly a drone over anyone who has not given permission.

STEVEN MCBRIDE Generally I think they distract from most outdoor recreation. I operate a drone for my business, and when flying it, I keep the airtime as minimally distracting as possible.

STEVEN YOCOM The photographer in me thinks they are awesome for capturing unique perspectives, but after being buzzed by a drone while watching a sunset at Max Patch, I was ready to shoot it out of the sky.

CHRIS GALLAWAY Most folks go outdoors to escape civilization and won't appreciate the buzzing intrusion of a flying machine.

If other people are nearby, ask before you fly.

be bold

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QUICK HITS

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BEYOND THE BLUE RIDGE

SHORTS

NEVER TOO COLD TO PEDAL Next time you try to back out of a bike ride by making an excuse about the weather, take a lesson from a group of 500 cycling advocates in Russia, who back in January held a five-mile group ride along the Moscow River in temperatures that hovered around -17 degrees Fahrenheit. For the second straight year the brave Muscovite bikers bundled up and pedaled from a residential neighborhood to the Kremlin to demonstrate that cycling can be a valid form of alternative transportation in a city plagued by chronic traffic congestion—even in sub-zero temps.

BLUE RIDGE BRIEFS

by JEDD FERRIS COUPLE CUTS A.T. HIKE SHORT TO COOK FOR FIRE VICTIMS After Ontaria Kirby and her husband lost their Baltimore home in a fire, the couple decided to hike the Appalachian Trail to escape their troubles. But during their journey on the trail late last year the pair—both professional chefs—heard about the fires burning the Smoky Mountains and decided they wanted to help those being affected. The couple hitched a ride in a truck to Gatlinburg, where they spent a few weeks cooking at a donation center.

“We both said, let’s go help out with this fire,” Kirby told news station WATE. “I mean we are both chefs; everybody has to eat.”

SANTA RUN RECORD SET IN VIRGINIA BEACH At the Surf-N-Santa 5 Miler in Virginia Beach, runners broke the Guinness World Record for the Largest Santa Claus Run, besting a mark set by 4,961 costumed Santas at a race in Ireland in 2013. According to a piece on Runner’s World’s website, the runners were required to wear five pieces of Santa attire—white beard, red pants, red jacket, hat, and black belt—in order to count towards the record.

Not everyone on the course met the requirements, as the race had a total field of 5,700 participants.

77-YEAR-OLD TENNESSEE MAN WINS ULTRA BY RUNNING 149 MILES 77-year-old Doyle Carpenter of Treadway, Tenn., won the Endless 8

Mile, a 48-hour run that takes place near Birmingham, Alabama. The race has runners complete as many one-mile laps as possible on a smooth path. By running 149 miles Carpenter bested the next closest competitor by 12 miles and beat multiple runners more than 40 years younger than him. Carpenter has been running since he was a teenager, a necessity when his legs were his only mode of transportation to get to his job as a golf caddy. Carpenter has run 130 ultramarathons, and in 1988, he set a record by running 221 miles during another 48-hour race.

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illustration by WADE MICKLEY

RECORD NUMBER OF VISITORS AT GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK Great Smoky Mountains National Park had more traffic than ever in 2016. Over 11.3 million people visited the park last year. The 5.6-percent attendance increase, up from 10.7 people coming to the park in 2015, comes despite the fall wildfires that spread through much of the Smokies and ultimately caused the park to close for nearly two weeks.

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NEW HAMPSHIRE WOMAN SETS HIKING RECORD At the end of December, Sue Johnston of Littleton, N.H., set a huge hiking record, becoming the first person to hike all 48 of the Granite State’s 4,000-foot mountains in every month in a single year. The rugged challenge of conquering the 48 White Mountain peaks in all 12 months, known as “The Grid,” usually takes hikers many years, and only 70 people have done it. But Johnston, 51, hit the trails hard last year, and with support from her husband, bagged all fourdozen 4,000-footers in every month of 2016. The Whites have notoriously volatile weather. In July she topped all 48 in just 10 days, while it took 21 in December. She hiked a total of 3,181 miles and climbed a total of 1 million vertical feet.

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MARYLAND’S NUCLEAR MOMENT A HALF-CENTURY AGO, A COLD WAR TRAGEDY UNFOLDED IN THE WESTERN MARYLAND WILDERNESS

by TOM FLYNN

I

t was approximately 1:40 am on January 13, 1964, as the small town of Grantsville Maryland hunkered down through a winter blizzard, that a B-52 armed with two thermonuclear bombs slammed into nearby Big Savage Mountain.

The plane was one of at least a dozen U.S. bombers in the air at all times that flew directly toward Russian air targets before breaking off their routes as part of a Cold War initiative dubbed Operation Chrome Dome. The rationale for Chrome Dome was a simple, grim calculus.

In the event of a first-strike nuclear attack by Russia, U.S. bombers would already be in a position to deliver a retaliatory strike as part of an unfolding Armageddon.

The plane that hit Big Savage in the mountainous panhandle of western Maryland was returning from Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts to its home at Georgia’s Turner Air Force Base where it could resume its flying missions.

The flight was given code name Buzz One Four, and its combined nuclear payload was 1,000 times more destructive than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during WW II. Due to a known structural flaw, the vertical rear stabilizer snapped off the 156-foot-long bomber in the heavy turbulence accompanying the winter storm and sent it into an uncontrollable spin into the still largely unpopulated mountain region.

Bill Richmond, 79, of nearby Lonaconing, Md., remembers hearing

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STANDING ON THE FAULTY VERTICAL TAIL STABILIZER THAT CAUSED THE WRECK. photo courtesty GRANTSVILLE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

what was likely the ditching airplane approaching the mountain. “I was with our baby, about 1:30 or 1:45 in the morning. We had a newborn who was born that December and I was up with him. I heard the plane. It was unusual; it was a real cold night and snowing heavily, not good flying weather,” said Richmond. "And then by the next day, we knew about the crash.”

Of the five-member crew, four ejected into a raging winter storm and were probably out of the bomber by the time Richmond recalls hearing it. Of the four, only two survived the sub-zero wind chill and three-foot drifting snows that awaited them when they parachuted into the jutting hills of the countryside.

Major Thomas W. McCormick piloted the plane and was the first to emerge safely after navigating his way some two miles through deep snow to a still-standing farmhouse on State Route 40, just east of Grantsville.

Co-pilot Captain Parker “Mack” Peedin, the only other survivor, was rescued several miles to the south of McCormick. Peedin took elements of his parachute and erected a makeshift tent. The tent had as its base an

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inverted life raft that provided lifesaving air insulation between him and the snow.

The remainder of the crew perished. Major Robert J. Townley, the radar bombardier, died upon impact at the crash site. His death, while tragic, proved mercifully quicker than those of Major Robert Payne and Sergeant Melvin Wooten, as they landed in the snow-blinded folds of the Appalachians that pass vertically through the state’s

A BRIDGE OVER THE CASSELMAN RIVER IN GRANTSVILLE NEAR THE CRASH SITE. photo courtesy GRANTSVILLE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

panhandle.

Gerry Beachy of the Grantsville Community Museum, and a former mayor of the town, was 16 at the time of the crash and recalls the ensuing days vividly.

Dozens of citizens that included Beachy were assembled to help locate the downed fliers or their bodies. “We

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formed a line on the hillside along with the military. The snow was still blanketing the trees,” said Beachy, 64. “We walked along, and if we saw something under the snow—a large rock or something—we’d check it out and make sure it wasn’t a flier.”

“No one found anything that day.

Wooten was over in Salisbury, and that’s who we were really looking for,” said Beachy. “McCormick came out first; Peedin came out the second day. At the crash site they found Townley,” said Beachy.

Wooten was the first to evacuate the plane, based on his northernmost landing point. He set down in Salisbury, Pennsylvania, several miles north of Grantsville up Route 216, a small town along the banks of the Casselman River. Although he escaped the crashing bomber, Wooten was severely injured in the process, shattering his left thigh and gashing his head, chest, and hands. He was found on the embankment of the river, partially frozen by its waters.

In December I walked along the Casselman in Salisbury. Fifty years removed from the incident, it remains a decidedly small place, but as I strode along its muddy banks to the spot where Wooten perished, houses that predated 1964 are achingly near at hand.

Viewing Wooten’s small memorial, you’re also looking a halfmile east to the main of Salisbury.

It’s not difficult to picture the injured sergeant seeing lights from the same, but tragically unable to know that the partially frozen river was between him and the town.

Separate search efforts were underway that ultimately led to Payne. His parachute was spotted late on Monday and a small group of (by Beachy’s estimate) seven civilians assembled and dispatched into the thick forest in its direction.

Payne had parachuted into the depths of New Germany State Park. “As he landed, part of his 12

chute got stuck in a tree, and he cut himself free,” said Beachy. Payne was tragically unprepared for the elements, having dressed in his summer aviator’s suit prior to the hastily scheduled flight.

“He walked about a half-mile to a grove of trees—perhaps looking for dry wood for a fire.”

Payne managed to cross the stream several times while remaining dry. Ultimately his body succumbed to the extreme temperatures. He was found by searchers in a crouched position next to Poplar Lick Run, frozen in place. Temperature estimates range from 10 above to 10 below zero at the time of the crash.

“If he’d gone 100 yards in another direction, he would have found a road, and he would have found a house. He might have survived,” said Beachy.

As I walked through the New Germany State Park to where Payne was recovered, the forest is thick with river birch, black gum, red maple, and rhododendron. Even without standing snow, harrowing winds and nightfall, I’m able to—on a basic level—see the difficulty of traversing this area even in ideal conditions.

Several of the search party that

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recovered Payne’s body fell into Poplar Lick in the effort. “They made a makeshift stretcher out of two saplings and a blanket and put him on it. They tried to keep him on the blanket,” said Beachy. “There were no roads or anything there­—they just had to walk down through the woods, and they knew to walk toward Savage River Road.”

Payne’s body kept falling off the stretcher, so they would stop frequently to place him back on and to warm themselves. “They almost died—if you consider the temperatures and conditions walking through the woods.”

The military attempted to work their way back to the rescue group with road-clearing equipment, but due to the depth of the snow couldn’t get far from an impromptu base at Savage River Road.

The citizens worked through it all, despite uncertainties about a nuclear payload that, if detonated, would have removed the entire region from the map in a cataclysmic nightmare. One night during the week following the crash, the Lutheran Church Women of St. John's served 1,500 dinners of roasted chicken, baked ham, mashed potatoes, gravy and corn to

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SGT. MELVIN WOOTEN; WOOTEN'S MEMORIAL; CO-PILOT MACK PEEDIN, WHO SURVIVED THE CRASH. photo courtesy GRANTSVILLE MUSEUM ARCHIVES

rescue workers and the military. They repeated the effort the next night.

The Air Force assured the civilians that there was no threat of detonation from the bombs. In the throes of a Cold War, however, military assurances could sometimes hew more closely to a manageable narrative than the untoward realities of a given situation.

The 28th Ordnance Team was scrambled from Maryland’s Fort Meade to secure the bombs, and made its way west as the elements permitted. Ultimately, it was area residents who removed the two bombs directly from the crash site.

Ray Giconi, who ran the local quarry, assembled a group of citizens and hoisted the nuclear payload onto two dump trucks that he owned.

Showing the sensibilities innate to the residents of a region where nature still holds dominant sway, he stopped by a nearby state boy’s camp and lined the trucks with mattresses for good measure.

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BIRD’S EYE VIEW: HOW DRONES ARE HELPING IN THE BLUE RIDGE

CRITICISM ABOUNDS WHEN IT COMES TO DRONES IN THE OUTDOORS, BUT CAN THIS PIECE OF INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY SERVE SOME GOOD IN THE ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL SECTORS?

by JESS DADDIO

D

arryl Kerley, Fire Chief of the Oak Ridge Fire Department in eastern Tennessee, has been in the fire service for 38 years. During those nearly four decades of service, he’s seen quite a few changes, from the protective equipment worn to the fire hoses used.

“Almost everything has changed as new technology and new science comes forward and brings us information for improvements,” Kerley says.

And yet perhaps the most surprising development of all for the Oak Ridge crew came about five years ago when drones entered the sphere of fire service. Though Kerley had experimented with drones personally through various family members and friends who had a cam-copter of their own, he never thought he’d see the day when a drone would be considered essential fire service gear.

Now, he has.

“The uses for drones in the fire

service are almost limitless,” Kerley says. “In a few years, I think you’ll see a drone on every fire truck.”

The Oak Ridge Fire Department already has a drone of their own, with plans to buy a few more, and as of this month, the department officially became certified to pilot drones in the name of not just public safety, but firefighter safety, too.

“Our entire program is based around improving service to our citizens while reducing risk to our firefighters, and drone technology is an impressive way to do that,” Kerley says. “It’s safer and faster and much more efficient to send an $800 dollar drone to see what’s going on and collect what information we need.”

In the case of Oak Ridge, a city with a heavy manufacturing industry, the issues of safety and cost efficiency are of the utmost importance when answering calls for hazardous materials. On average, a hazmat suit used by the Oak Ridge

Fire Department can cost anywhere between $900 and $3,000. To answer one of these calls requires two firefighters to dress out in hazmat suits ($4,000), air packs ($12,000), and radios ($8,000).

“That’s about $25,000 worth of equipment plus the risk of the lives of our firefighters to see what’s happening,” Kerley says. “Now, we can deploy a drone down there in two minutes and if it gets contaminated, it’s only $800 and that’s less than the price of one [hazmat] suit.”

“If a drone only costs that, it’s kinda expendable, right?” says Dr. Thomas Alberts, a Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor at Old Dominion University. “All of a sudden, you’re not having to risk a person to save somebody or locate a fire, and that’s a real benefit.”

Alberts is part of the 4-VA Virginia Drones Project, a collaborative academic course offered through Old Dominion University,

HOW WOULD YOU FEEL ABOUT A DRONE DELIVERING MEDICAL SUPPLIES OR SCOUTING A FIRE IN YOUR HOMETOWN? photo by CHRIS GRAGTMANS

James Madison University, and George Mason University. The project, which started in the spring of 2016, provides students with the hands-on, real-world experience needed to build and pilot drones for environmental and social issues.

“There’s a lot of potential for drones to do almost anything that people can do, and while that might be bad news for some people, onward, it can really be a good thing,” Alberts says.

Students have already built and launched drones for a variety of applications—one team at James Madison is using drones to study the behavior of bees in an effort to develop a solution to their sharp decline; another team at JMU is using drone technology to determine

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the effect of climate change on a historically and culturally significant wall in Cartagena, Colombia; the students at ODU where Alberts works, have created drones to map tidal flooding, aid in sea rescues, and assist the local Corova Beach Fire Department.

Despite these advances, you’d be hard-pressed to find such positive anecdotes about drone technology in the national media, yet stories abound of drones invading privacy and crashing into national park treasures. Just last July, a Louisville, Ky., man was arrested for shooting his neighbor’s drone out of the sky (he claimed the drone was spying on his 16-year-old daughter, who was sunbathing, and the judge dismissed the case). In Yellowstone, there’s still a drone at the bottom of Grand Prismatic hot spring from when a tourist crashed the quadcopter in August of 2014. It’s no wonder drones have such a bad rap.

“They’re not a toy but they’re being sold as toys,” Kerley says. “You can go

anyplace now and buy a drone.”

Because of that accessibility, it’s likely that we’re going to see more, not fewer, drones in the future, especially as they pertain to the service sector. In July 2015, the first government-approved drone delivery took place in Wise County, Va. The drone dropped off 24 packages of

A DRONE CAMERA CAPTURES A ZIPLINER FLYING HIGH AT WILDWATER PIGEON. photo by CHRIS GRAGTMANS

medical supplies to a Remote Area Medical pop-up clinic in the rural southwest Virginia county.

Its success paved the way for the Emerging Drone Industry Cluster

program, a workforce development initiative announced last fall and funded largely by the Appalachian Regional Commission. The program will benefit Wise County, an area heavily affected by the coal industry’s decline, in the form of jobs and local investment opportunities. In its first year, the program will train 64 new workers, including former coal industry employees, to operate drones for projects such as geospatial surveys and mapping.

“It requires a little bit of training,” says Alberts, “but you don’t have to be a general aviation pilot to be able to understand and fly a drone,” which might be good news for some, like firemen and former coal miners learning a new trade, but bad news for others fearful of the new age of peeping Toms.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Tell us what you think about drone usage in the outdoors! Are they good, bad, or somewhere in between? Tweet us at @GoOutAndPlay and use the hashtag #DroneChat to share your two cents!

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fly

females

MEET SIX WOMEN REVOLUTIONIZING THE SPORT

by TRAVIS HALL

To the casual observer, the world of fly fishing may look like a totally maledominated endeavor. Dig a little deeper, however, and you will inevitably discover the long-held and enduring legacy that female anglers have imprinted on the sport.

It was Joan Wulff who changed the sport forever.

In 1943, at the age of sixteen, she walked away with top honors in the national dry fly accuracy championship. From there she would go on to rack up twentyone additional casting titles before ultimately winning the National Fisherman’s Distance Fly Championship with a cast of 136 feet against a field of all male competitors.

By the early 1950s, a time when

women’s rights were severely limited, Joan Wulff was widely regarded as the best fly caster in the world.

Wulff used her deep knowledge and innate understanding of fly fishing and techniques to become one of the single most recognizable figures in the professional fly fishing game.

At age 89, Wulff is still heavily involved in the art she mastered many years ago, mainly through teaching and inspiring both male and female anglers alike.

In the wake of her success, increasing numbers of women have found avenues into the historically male-dominated sport.

Today, fly fishing is experiencing a golden age of female participants.

Here are a few of the many female anglers making waves right here in the Blue Ridge and around the country.

KATIE CAHN

UPSTATE SOUTH CAROLINA

Katie Cahn grew up fishing the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near the border of North and South Carolina on land settled by her family in the 1800s.

“We would drown worms in the creeks and use whole cans of niblet corn just to catch war-painted shiners on spin rods,” Cahn said of these formative years. “This is when bobbers were called bobbers—not strike indicators.”

Katie didn’t discover what would become a lifelong love of fly fishing until her college years at Western North Carolina University.

“For three years, I lived 50 yards from the Tuckasegee River. I spent many study breaks at the river fly fishing. During those years I got to

KATIE CAHN FISHES A BLUE RIDGE TROUT STREAM. photo by KATIE CAHN

know the Tuckasegee, Nantahala, and a few other streams pretty well.”

It took time, but with focus, perseverance and a little bit of mentoring, Katie soon became a highly proficient angler.

“I had a good friend teach me the basics, and like many, I struggled in the beginning. It took weeks of getting caught-up in trees and untangling line. Not much has changed except that I catch fish now.”

She’s still combing the rivers and streams of the Blue Ridge. “I live five miles from a delayed harvest section and try to end my days with a ‘happy hour’ session. On the weekends, you can find me in Western North Carolina. I prefer fishing for wild trout in areas around the Blue Ridge

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Parkway, but if I’m looking for big ole’ stocker trout, you may see me on the Tuckasegee River in Cullowhee, the Watauga River, the Davidson or the East and North Forks of the French Broad.”

She advises other would-be female anglers to stick with the sport, even if barriers to entry like expensive gear and the long learning curve get in the way.

“Fly fishing takes patience, and the more you do it, the better you get. It’s an expensive sport, so borrow or rent gear in the beginning until you know it’s what you want to do for years to come. If you can, try to get into a women’s flyfishing group around your area.

If you are in Western North Carolina, look up Headwaters Outfitters, advises Katie. The owner, Jessica, is dedicated to helping female angler newbies feel more comfortable with the sport, and she offers a women’s retreat every spring. "I’ll be there this year and would love to help any and all women interested in fly fishing.”

TI. SOLIN TUS, CONSUMUS PERVIRIT photo by TK

CASSIE SPURLING FLY FISHING GUIDE BLUE RIDGE, GEORGIA

Cassie Spurling began fly fishing at age five in the mountains of North Georgia, which she still calls home today. Under the tutelage of her father, she learned the ins and outs of what would one day become a fulltime obsession.

“My father is one of the most impactful inspirations I've had in my flyfishing journey,” Spurling says.

“I remember being frustrated when I was first learning as I watched him effortlessly present a fly to unsuspecting trout. I wanted to cast as well as him.”

Over the years, as Cassie continued to pursue her passion for all things trout, she eventually took her skills to the next level, and a premier North Georgia guiding outfit took notice.

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“As I got older, I had the opportunity to guide in North Georgia, which broadened my knowledge and perspective of fly fishing even more,” she said. “I love sharing my passion with others and cherish the ability to teach the sport that has become such a huge part of my life. There is nothing like getting a client on their first fish and seeing the excitement and joy in their eyes.”

JEN RIPPLE

EDITOR IN CHIEF DUN MAGAZINE

Jen Ripple learned to to fly fish on the banks of the Huron River not far from the campus of the University of Michigan, her employer at the time.

“I was bored and looking for some entertainment when I saw that a fly

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tying class was being taught at a local fly shop.”

Before long, Jen was obsessed.

“That spring, as soon as the ice melted on the Huron, I spent countless hours on the river fishing for smallmouth bass. I didn’t realize until two years later that I was ‘supposed’ to be fishing for trout with my fly rod.”

A few years later, when Ripple left Ann Arbor for Chicago, she immediately got involved with a fly tying class at a local rod builder and fly shop in the city.

“There was a new Midwestern fly fishing magazine at that time and the editor was teaching my tying class,” Ripple says. “He knew I could write, and asked if I would be interested in writing a women’s column for his magazine, A Tight Loop.”

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JEN RIPPLE OF DUN MAGAZINE; CASSIE SPURLING OF BLUE RIDGE FLY FISHING; KIKI GALVIN OF MS. GUIDED FLY FISHING; ABBI BAGWELL OF HEADWATERS OUTFITTERS.

She continued to write the column for about three months but eventually grew restless.

“At that point I really felt like I wanted to write for a women’s magazine, but I was shocked to learn that there wasn’t one. So I decided to approach my editor about starting my own.”

From that conversation, Dun Magazine—a publication that showcases female anglers from around the globe—was born.

Now Jen does work for Dun from her home base in Dover, Tennessee where her backyard is adjacent to 178,000 acres of public land known as

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the Land Between the Lakes.

“My favorite fishing spots around here are located in Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley, where I fish predominantly for largemouth bass and crappie. The area is a hot spot for traditional bass tournaments, so it’s fun to see the look on people’s faces when I start catching giant largemouth on the fly from the comfort of my drift boat.”

ABBI BAGWELL

FLY FISHING GUIDE HEADWATERS OUTFITTERS BREVARD NORTH CAROLINA

You may know Abbi Bagwell from her popular series, #somestreamerchick, where she demonstrates the finer points of fishing with a category of flies known as streamers.

Like Cahn, Abbi grew up fishing, but she didn't begin swinging a fly until later in life.

“It wasn’t until I graduated from Brevard College that I would find my

passion and love for fly fishing,” she said. She landed a job with Flymen Fishing Company, a company that manufactures fly tying materials.

Over the course of her tenure with Flymen, Abbi broadened her fly fishing knowledge and experience considerably.

“Quickly after joining the company, local fly shops and guides took me under their wings and taught me as much as they could about the sport,” she said. “I received casting classes, ‘work days’ on the water, tying instruction and a crash course in the art of knots. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this would be something I would enjoy for the rest of my life.”

While she loves fly fishing and devotes much of her life to it, Abbi is well aware of the challenges female anglers face, particularly when breaking into the sport for the first time. She says her father was her biggest inspiration for overcoming these hurdles.

“In a male-dominated industry,

it can be quite intimidating for a woman to go out on her own and fly fish, to walk into a fly shop and buy flies, and to go to fly fishing events and discuss experiences. If it weren’t for him, I would not have had the confidence to do these things, and I wouldn’t be the fly fisherwoman that I am today.”

Today, Abbi is guiding for Headwaters Outfitters in Rosman, North Carolina.

KIKI GALVIN

OWNER MS. GUIDED FLY FISHING FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA

A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, Kathleen ‘Kiki’ Galvin has been fishing for over 50 years.

“I grew up near the Finger Lakes region of New York State and first wet a line on Keuka Lake at the tender age of 5,” Kiki said. “In those days I had nothing more than a Zebco rod with a bobber and a live worm, but after that first fish I was

hooked.”

Her fondness for fly fishing emerged in 1996 when she enrolled in a one-day course in Leesburg, Virginia.

Since then she’s gone on to become a reputable Virginia fly fishing guide, with her own outfitting service called Ms. Guided Fly Fishing. She also volunteers for Project Healing Waters and Casting for Recovery and serves as the Vice President of her local Trout Unlimited Chapter.

“Wanting to share my passion with others, I had the opportunity to attend guide school in 2002 and eventually returned home to begin my guiding business,” Galvin said. “My goal has always been to show others what they achieve with a fly rod in hand. I consider myself a teacher and strive to be the best angler, guide and volunteer I can be.”

According to Kiki, right now is one of the best times to be a female in the fly fishing industry.

“Being a female in the industry at

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this particular time has been exciting and very rewarding. There are so many of us out there, supporting each other, sharing new ideas and just generally passing on our love for the sport.”

When introducing new clients to the sport of fly fishing, Kiki likes to employ a technique known as Tenkara. Tenkara, which originated in Japan, employs a much simpler and more approachable method involving only a rod, line and a single fly. The minimal nature of Tenkara makes it a perfect alternative for the type of small, rhododendron-choked streams that Galvin fishes with regularity.

“Tenkara is a great way for women as well as children to be introduced to the sport,” she said. “It eliminates much of the line management skills you have to have in many situations, and you can cast and achieve a dragfree drift very quickly. The simplicity allows a complete beginner to get out the on the water much quicker than a conventional fly fishing system.”

SIMMONS WELTER FLY FISHING GUIDE

BROOKINGS ANGLERS CASHIERS, NORTH CAROLINA Simmons Welter—a resident of Spartanburg, South Carolina—has been enamored with the sport of fly fishing for over twelve years.

“The late Spider Littleton, the longtime owner of the now defunct DK Littleton Outfitters in Greenville, taught me how to fly fish, and he was my first and probably biggest inspiration,” Simmons says. “He always said women were better fishermen and was extremely encouraging.”

When she’s not guiding for Brookings, Simmons spends much of her spare time mining the rivers and streams of Western North Carolina and Upstate South Carolina for wily brook, brown, and rainbow trout.

One of her favorite rivers to fish today is the same one she learned to fly fish more than a decade ago—the 22

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SIMONS WELTER OF BROOKINGS ANGLER (photo by BILL CHILES); HILLARY HUTCHESON OF TROUT TV (photo by STEVEN GNAM); APRIL VOKEY OF FLY GAL VENTURE (photo by TRACEY MOORE)

Chattooga River as it flows through South Carolina. Aside from the Chattooga, Simmons does most of her fishing in Western North Carolina.

“Most of the streams I fish are in the mountains of North Carolina, south of Asheville,” Simmons says.

“It’s just a fact there are loads more trout streams there than in the Upstate. Stocked streams like the Tuckasegee, the East Fork of the French Broad, and the Little River are great, but, for me, nothing beats a good hike into a small wild stream where you’re not likely to see another soul, a trophy trout is twelve inches

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long and you have to bushwhack your way around at least one waterfall.”

She says that, while breaking into the fly fishing world as a female was challenging at times, it has been an overwhelmingly positive experience.

“Over the years, I have definitely had mixed reactions to my chosen sport, but by and large the greatest response has been a positive one.

Many times I’ve heard the comment from male anglers, ‘I wish my wife would get into fly fishing.’ Or, ‘You fly fish? That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.’

She admits that there have been the occasional tough guys who will always be members of the He-Man Woman Haters Club, but they have been very rare. "I love it when I’m introduced to a client, and the expression on his face says, 'THIS is my guide?' But, long before the end

of the day, his expression changes to, 'THIS is my guide!'"

Simmons is a 12-year member of the Mountain Bridge Chapter of Trout Unlimited and sits on the Board of Directors for Casting Carolinas, an organization that combines fly fishing instruction and low-cost retreats with medical education and support for women surviving cancer.

BEYOND THE BLUE RIDGE

HILARY HUTCHESON OWNER OF LARY’S FLY AND

SUPPLY AND HOST/COFOUNDER FOUNDER OF TROUT TV Hilary Hutcheson likes to tell people that she’s a product of the National Park Service.

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Growing up in government housing near the west entrance of Montana’s Glacier National Park, where her father worked as a ranger for the NPS, Hilary was afforded opportunities to interact with the natural world that most kids only dream of.

“When we started to go to rivers fly fishing at an early age, we would float Lower McDonald Creek or the Middle Fork of the Flathead River and hitch-hike back,” said Hutcheson, who began fly fishing in the seventh grade. “I think we felt like we were rebellious, kinda like going to the skatepark or something.”

By age fourteen, Hilary had landed a guiding gig with Glacier Angler in her home town of West Glacier, Montana, becoming the youngest fly fishing guide in the entire state.

After high school she left Glacier to attend the college in Missoula where she continued guiding while earning a degree in broadcast journalism on the side. The degree

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lead to a television news anchor position in Missoula and then to one in Portland, Oregon, before the world famous rivers of the Treasure State beckoned her home again.

Once back in Montana, she worked alongside her husband to create an outdoor marketing firm, Outside Media, and a network television show called Trout TV, which she now hosts.

APRIL VOKEY

OWNER FLY GAL VENTURES; HOST OF ANCHORED WITH APRIL VOKEY PODCAST, BRITISH COLUMBIA Born and raised in the shadow of the Northern Rockies in Chilliwack, British Columbia, April Vokey has been fishing in one capacity or another for most of her life.

“I think it was the sheer excitement of being outdoors that drew me to fishing in general,” April says. “I've always loved water— creeks, rivers, lakes, the ocean, rain—

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all of it, but I loved the trees and mossy forest bottom just as much.”

It was an excitement that would eventually lead her to discover fly fishing, particularly the variety that involves spey casting to giant Steelhead in the waters of British Columbia, at the early age of 18.

“I was a menace out there,” Vokey said of her earliest fly fishing expeditions. "But I spent my nights watching instructional VHS tapes about how to cast, and eventually my flailing started to look alright.”

By the age of 23, she would own her own guiding service specializing in Steelhead trips on B.C.’s famed Skeena River, and in 2011 April joined the Patagonia ambassador team, where she now assists in the design and direction of an upcoming women’s line of fishing apparel.

“It has always been a shame to me that fly fishing is perceived as a man’s sport. There is truly nothing overly masculine about it,” she said in a 2012 Q & A with Fly Life Magazine.

“Fly fishing requires finesse,

timing, passion, excitement, intrigue and dedication—descriptives that are not sole features of either gender.

I urge women who have not given this sport a try to skip their next yoga class or hike. Tranquility or excitement, whatever it is that you’re looking for, why not follow Mother Nature to the river to find it?”

Today April hosts a popular fly fishing podcast called Anchored with April Vokey where she interviews some of the most influential people in the fly fishing game. In a recent episode of her podcast, April sat down with fly fishing legend and pioneer Joan Wulff to bring the female fly fishing revolution full circle.

Wulff launched the female fishing revolution over 70 years ago, and now it’s innovative industry leaders like April Vokey who are inspiring a new generation of women to wade out into new waters.

WATCH Fly females tackle new rivers together at BlueRidgeOutdoors.com

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KARSTEN DELAP Owner and Head of Alpine Programs | Fox Mountain Guides Wilderness EMT | AMGA Certified Rock and Alpine Guide Instructor | High Angle, Technical, and Wilderness Rescue, National Park Service | Volunteer, Brevard Rescue Team and Henderson County Rescue Squad When Delap’s not guiding clients on climbs, he’s rescuing climbers from some of the very places he guides. Delap’s resume is chock full of high-altitude summits of some of the most revered mountains in the world, but his most important work is often done right here in the Blue Ridge near his western North Carolina home.

MAIRI PADGETT Administrative Director, Landmark Learning | Instructor, National Outdoor Leadership School Wilderness Medicine

12 Real-Life Situations: What to Do Right When Things Go Wrong

by JESS DADDIO

B

eing an outdoor enthusiast inevitably lends itself to plenty of moments when sh*t hits the fan. We’ve consulted a panel of four of the region’s wilderness medicine experts with 12 real-life scenarios so you can prepare for the worst and hope for the best on your next adventure.

SCENARIO 1 EXCESSIVE BLEEDING THE SCENE: It’s a quiet afternoon near Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, or so it seems. David Fifer and a teammate pull their response vehicle into the parking lot of a local business, owned by other team members, just to check in. Minutes later, a vehicle grinds to a halt outside. From behind the driver’s seat, out stumbles a man completely covered in blood.

“It looked like something out of The Walking Dead,” Fifer remembers. “He was stumbling toward us and had an avulsion from

the knee down to the ankle. It was just a massive slab of skin hanging off.”

The gentleman confessed to having gone on a “spiritual journey” in the gorge, a saga that entailed fasting for multiple days and bushwhacking with a machete.

Somehow, the man had managed to, in effect, filet the lower half of his leg, which was still bleeding uncontrollably. To his credit, the man had attempted to fashion a tourniquet by shredding his pants into long strips of fabric, but the material was too delicate and the strips were hardly wide enough to make a difference.

Recognizing this, the man painfully found his way back to his vehicle and started driving. Coming upon Fifer’s idle response vehicle was just a stroke of good luck.

“He was about to lose consciousness,” Fifer says of the patient. “The big mistake he made was that the material he was using was just too thin. He had probably already lost so much blood in the

WHEN IT COMES TO AVOIDING INJURIES IN THE BACKCOUNTRY, PREVENTION IS KEY. photo by KARSTEN DELAP

OUR SURVIVAL EXPERTS...

are wilderness medicine ninjas well versed in the ways of Mother Nature’s capriciousness. They are climbers, paddlers, surfers, outdoor enthusiasts of every type who know firsthand what can go wrong when you’re recreating outside.

DAVID FIFER Owner, Red River Adventure Medical, LLC | Coordinator, Red River Gorge Special Treatment, Access, and Rescue Team | Lecturer, Emergency Medical Care, Eastern Kentucky University Originally from Roanoke, Va., Fifer has served in the emergency medical services field for 15 years.

His love of climbing landed him in eastern Kentucky, where he now serves wilderness rescue needs in the Red River Gorge and Natural Bridge State Park.

In 1996, Mairi and her husband Justin founded Landmark Learning out of their apartment. Now, 21 years later, the Padgetts oversee the nation’s leading institution for education and training in the outdoor community, the first outdoor school in the country to receive a national education accreditation.

SETH COLLINGS HAWKINS Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Wake Forest University | Medical Director, Burke County EMS & Burke County Communications | Medical Director, North Carolina State Parks Chief | Appalachian Mountain Rescue Team For over 20 years, Hawkins has made out-of-hospital, in-field medical care his specialty. He’s founded numerous organizations, including the Appalachian Center for Wilderness Medicine and the Carolina Wilderness EMS Externship, and is the lead author for the upcoming climbing medicine and wilderness first aid handbook Vertical Aid (available April 2017).

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first place that he wasn’t really able to focus.”

With two other team members, the crew was able to stem the bleeding through direct pressure and without the use of a commercial tourniquet.

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Bushwhack with a machete, solo, while fasting • Underestimate blood loss—“You can lose a lot of blood over time from even a small wound, and it can be really hard to estimate blood loss since blood can get soaked into soil or leaves or clothing,” says Fifer. “The wound site itself can be deceptive.

It’s hard to go wrong about being aggressive with bleeding in the first place. When it comes to controlling bleeding, go big or go home out of the gate. You can’t replace blood if you lose it in the field—the only way to replace blood is through a transfusion.”

WHAT TO DO: • Fashion a tourniquet, early.

“Although direct pressure to the wound will control the bleeding in most cases,” says Fifer, “it makes sense to go straight to a tourniquet for any wounds to arms or legs that are bleeding significantly.” Tourniquets can be removed later if deemed 26

too aggressive, but blood can’t be replaced, especially when you’re in the backcountry.

• To create a makeshift tourniquet, use materials that are “fairly robust,” such as tubular webbing or nylon rain shells. The fabric should be at least two to three inches wide. “You don’t want something that is going to stretch or tear easily,” Fifer adds, but the material should still be thin enough to twist tightly.

• Situate the tourniquet above the wound but not near a joint or too close to the injury site. “Think high and tight.” Find something to act as the windlass, or twisting mechanism, such as a carabiner, tie a square knot over the mechanism, and twist until the hemorrhaging stops and the pulse farthest from the injury is gone. Secure the windlass device so it doesn’t untwist. A tourniquet can stay on safely for at least two hours.

• Keep patient warm.

• Inspect tourniquet often for loosening.

SCENARIO 2 HYPOTHERMIA THE SCENE: Fifer and a friend are hiking in the Shenandoah National Park to Marys Rock. The backpacking trip itself isn’t necessarily trying, physically at least, but it’s early March and the nights are still cold. The two

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arrive at camp, set up their tent, and settle in for the night, at which point, Fifer starts to shiver.

“I was not wearing appropriate layers at all,” he says. “My companion was reporting that I was really lethargic, not clear in my thoughts, slurring my speech,” all of which, he says, are signs suggesting mild hypothermia, if not moderate.

His friend acted quickly, insulating Fifer with extra layers inside his sleeping bag and fixing up a hot bowl of ramen to get his metabolism working again.

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Suck it up—“Some people get in this mindset where they say, ‘It’s cold, so I should be cold,’ but if you layer effectively, that should keep you from experiencing that cold.”

• Strip down and cozy up in an attempt to transfer body heat. Though there is some research that suggests this approach can be effective, it should be used as a last resort, as it increases the risk of another individual succumbing to hypothermia. “If you’re running low on options, you’re low on calorie-dense food, having trouble starting a fire, don’t have a way to heat liquids, and can bundle up with your companion in a way that won’t make you hypothermic, why not?” says Fifer.

“But I’d probably need to not have

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE WINTERTIME FOR HYPOTHERMIA TO OCCUR. IF IT'S 50 DEGREES AND DAMP OUTSIDE, BE PREPARED. photo by KARSTEN DELAP

options A thru D before trying some body heat transference.”

WHAT TO DO: • Shed any wet layers from the patient and add dry ones.

• Prevent moisture from reaching the patient.

• Add a heat source, like heat packs or a warm water bottle inside the sleeping bag, to increase patient’s heat production.

• If patient is able to chew and swallow safely, make high-calorie food to spur metabolism. Warm liquids can make a patient feel comforted, “which is not for nothing. Psychological first aid is real,” says Fifer.

• Create a hypo wrap by insulating the patient and wrapping them in a cocoon using an outer moisture barrier, like a rain fly.

• If patient is severely hypothermic (think cold to the touch, pale, altered mental status, stopped shivering), handle the patient as gently as possible because aggressive motion can cause them to go into cardiac arrest.

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SCENARIO 3 SNAKEBITE THE SCENE: Fifer is scrambling up a hill to set up a rappel, using his hands to stay balanced. Too late to do any good, he notices a copperhead right beside his hand. Surprisingly it doesn’t strike.

“Copperheads in particular are actually pretty docile. For the most part, they’re not looking to tangle,” he says, “unless you really make that snake feel threatened.”

That’s not to say that climbers and hikers in the gorge aren’t getting bit by snakes. In fact, a friend of Fifer’s recently spent a couple of weeks in the hospital after being bitten by a copperhead. But even then, he says, about 30 percent of all snakebites from the Crotalus genus (copperheads and rattlesnakes) are “dry bites,” where no envenomation occurs. For the remaining 70 percent of bites that do contain venom, the mortality rates are relatively low, about a dozen

or less per year, and typically occur in people who either have certain underlying health conditions or are very old or very young. That’s not to say that snakebites in the backcountry should be taken lightly.

“Puncture wounds, by definition, are pretty deep and they really do lend themselves to infection,” says Fifer. “Moreover, Crotalus envenomations can cause serious tissue damage if not treated.”

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Use a tourniquet. Snakebites won’t produce that much blood, and you don’t want to concentrate the venom in one area.

• Panic. Snakebites can be treated successfully, even if you are in the backcountry.

WHAT TO DO: • Wash the wound if you can with drinkable water. Puncture wounds are ideal breeding grounds for infection.

• Splint and dress the bite as if it were a strain or break, using the “rule of

SCENARIO 4 ALTITUDE SICKNESS THE SCENE: Delap and a fellow guide are in the middle of a trip in the Sierras. Their clients are settling in at camp, preparing for the next day’s summit of Mount Whitney, when two climbers come down the mountain with bad news—a woman is unconscious on the saddle of Mount Whitney around 14,000 feet. Delap, who has worked in the emergency medical field for over a decade, sets out with a fellow guide.

“She was basically dead,” Delap

remembers. “It was dark, she had not made it to the top, and was literally laying up there to die.”

When Delap and his partner reach the woman, she is unresponsive.

They begin the slow and trying task of taking her down the mountain.

When they get 1,500 feet below the saddle, she comes to, enough so that she can even walk on her own, albeit not very gracefully. Another 1,000 feet down and she improves even more to the point that Delap and the other guide don’t have to fully support her. But around 10,500 feet, the woman becomes combative.

Instead of expressing gratitude to her rescuers, she refuses any further assistance. All of these developments, says Delap, are telltale signs of altitude sickness.

“I’ve seen this before in people where you bring them down and they’re like, ‘Oh I’m fine, I’ll go back up,’ and you have to say ,‘No you’re not fine,’” says Delap. “They’re fine now because they have oxygen in their head, but with altitude sickness,

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thumb,” for dressings. “You want to be able to slip your thumb underneath the dressing, not too tight,” Fifer says.

• Monitor the dressing frequently, as bite site will likely swell. Remove shoes, socks, jewelry, anything near the bite site that could constrict the blood flow in the event of excessive swelling.

• Evacuate the victim and get to the hospital immediately for antivenin.

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people don’t understand that.”

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Summit solo.

• Ignore proper acclimatization. Above 8,000 feet, the Altitude Research Center recommends sleeping altitude should not increase more than 2,000 feet per day, and that climbers should take one rest day with no elevation change for every 4,000 feet of gain.

• Ignore the signs of altitude sickness, in yourself, in your group, or in passing climbers—“If you see someone sleeping on the side of the trail at higher altitudes, or stumbling and falling around, ask them how they’re doing,” says Delap. “If they’re not giving you clear answers, encourage them to come down but be forewarned: they could be combative.”

Signs of acute mountain sickness include headache, fatigue, dizziness, nausea, trouble sleeping, and poor decision-making. “It’s like being in a state of drunkenness without any of the good feeling and all of the bad decisions.”

WHAT TO DO: • Descend immediately. It can take as little as 1,000 feet of elevation loss to improve conditions in a patient with altitude sickness.

• In severe cases of altitude sickness, known as high altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), breathing supplemental oxygen is recommended.

SCENARIO 5 WATERFALL ACCIDENT THE SCENE: It’s late in November 2016 and a 23-year-old man from Florida is with his friends visiting Moore Cove Falls in the Pisgah National Forest just outside of Brevard, N.C. Feeling bold, the man begins scrambling up the side of the 50-foot waterfall to the top. Suddenly he falls, at first just 10 feet. He lands on a ledge, but moments later, his lifeless body slides over the lip to the waterfall’s base.

“By the time we got the call out, got to the trailhead, and hiked in, 28

we’re basically looking at an hour since the accident time,” Delap, who was one of the rescuers, says. “If he had been on the doorstep of the hospital, the likelihood [of survival] still would have been pretty slim.”

The man did not survive the attempted resuscitations. His death marked the eighth waterfall-related death in 2016 for Transylvania County, an area well known and beloved for its many waterfalls. Delap says the problem with tourists around waterfalls is that they misjudge their risk management.

“If he’d had a helmet on, he could possibly be alive, but people probably aren’t going to hike around a waterfall with a helmet on,” he says. “But the rocks are almost more slick than ice, because ice will melt and can freeze to your boot.”

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Ignore the warning signs near waterfalls.

• In the event someone does ignore the warning signs, slips, and falls, do not make yourself a patient, too. “That’s happened a couple times this year. If you can’t hear them, can’t see them, can’t easily get to them, just call for help or go get help,” Delap says. “It sounds horrible to leave them, but if you rush in there and get hurt, too, that makes it twice as hard on the rescuers.”

WHAT TO DO: • If you’ve determined it’s safe to get the victim, remove them from the water so they are not drowning or getting cold. Assess airway, breathing, and circulation, performing CPR when necessary.

• If there is not a head injury, assume there is a spinal injury. Situate them in a position of comfort, “whatever that means for them,” says Delap. “We’re moving past the spinal immobilization devices. If they’re comfortable, their spine is probably not going to move, especially if it’s hurt.”

• Remove wet layers, replace with dry clothes and other insulating materials, and treat patient for hypothermia, even in warm weather.

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SCENARIO 6 LOWER LEG INJURY THE SCENE: On a hot summer day at Looking Glass Rock near Brevard, N.C., a young man is out with his girlfriend climbing on the South Side. The man, who had taken a college course on rock climbing, isn’t the most experienced climber, but he knows some basic safety precautions.

After scrambling to the top and setting up his anchor, he ties a BHK, or big honking knot, and prepares to rappel. Unbeknownst to him, he ties a slipknot instead, not a BHK, and he doesn’t back it up. When he leans back in his harness to begin the rappel, the slipknot fails, sending him over 60 feet to the ground.

“He landed on both feet resulting in a bilateral open tib-fib fracture,” says Delap, who was one of 23 rescue and EMS personnel on site. “Both bones in his lower legs were sticking out, and because of the way Looking Glass is, when he fell, his hands were scraping the rock on the way down.

His hands were useless. They were down to the bone.”

That, on top of the already debilitating lower leg injuries, meant the man was entirely at the mercy of the climbers at the crag. Fortunately for him, two of those climbers happened to be Wilderness First Responders (WFRs). They made the call for help, gave the young man some water and kept him calm, took note of his allergies and medical history, and one of the WFRs even hiked to the trailhead to meet Delap.

The whole rescue, from the time of the call to the time the young man was headed to a hospital, took just under four hours.

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Go climbing without proper training or a partner who is more knowledgeable.

WHAT TO DO: • Stop bleeding through use of elevation, direct pressure, or tourniquet if hemorrhaging is severe.

•Get patient in a position of comfort, being sure to protect the spine but not make it rigid.

• Clean the wound with drinkable water. If patient is going into shock, this may not be the highest priority.

• Fashion a splint, either with a SAM splint or something equally rigid like trekking poles or reasonably sized tree limbs. Even an empty pack could work in an emergency. If something rigid is not available, use plenty of layers and create bulk for stability.

Fill layers and material around injury and wrap.

SCENARIO 7 LIGHTNING THE SCENE: An outdoor instructor is leading a course with his students at Table Rock in western North Carolina. Thunder rumbles in the distance. The instructor wisely splits up his group to reduce the potential for multiple victims in the event of a lightning strike. His students are well into their course by now, and take up the crouched lightning position in the parking lot.

Suddenly, there’s a loud BOOM. The instructor is blasted to the ground. His students scramble to get him to safety and check his pulse.

There is none. Fortunately for the instructor, he had taught CPR earlier that week. The students started performing CPR immediately and resuscitated him on the spot.

“The reason it was so effective was that the heart that was stopped by the great defibrillator in the sky was a healthy heart,” says Padgett. “With CPR, his heart was able to start itself again,” and the instructor recovered just fine.

Padgett herself has been stuck high on ridgelines when storms roll in. She says that especially in North Carolina, a state that had the second highest number of lightningrelated casualties between the years 1959-2007, afternoon storms should seriously factor into how and when a person decides to recreate.

“We encourage the groups we teach to make sure they summit early

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that are created for recreators with trail signs and beautiful walkways, if they’re not prepared, they can get lost in places we don’t consider easy to get lost in,” says Padgett.

in the day because lightning storms are most common between 1 and 5 p.m."

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Ignore thunder. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests, “When thunder roars, go indoors!”

• Camp on mossy balds or low-lying, treeless fields.

• Assume your tent will protect you.

• Take shelter beneath lone, tall objects, such as trees.

WHAT TO DO: • Take shelter in forests with many similar medium-sized trees. “Imagine an apple orchard,” says Padgett. These also make safer campsites.

• Begin seeking shelter and start descending at the first signs of a storm.

Camp in areas where you are not the lowest or tallest point around.

• If you’re paddling on the river and stuck in a storm, keep going. “Generally speaking, the fact that you’re on the water and moving downstream to your extrication point, probably the safer thing to do is keep on going,” says Padgett, though different river companies may have different

policies.

• If you are near your car, take shelter inside, but be sure to move it to a safer location first. “If you can’t avoid lightning, a vehicle is better than no shelter,” Padgett says. “The car could still get struck, so descend and get to a safer place with your vehicle rather than rely on it to protect you.”

• Spread group out within earshot of each other and assume the lightning position, crouched down, hunched over, as small as you can make yourself.

• If someone is struck by lightning, attempt to move them away from the site. “Lightning does like to strike in the same place twice,” says Padgett.

“Check the scene for safety and drag or move the victim to a safer spot.”

• Once the storm passes, continue descending if up high or seek better shelter. Storms in the Southeast in particular tend to cycle back around.

SCENARIO 8 LOST THE SCENE: Padgett is in her early 20s. She’s working for a veterinarian, a man she has come to respect and admire. Her boss takes a vacation

A LITTLE BIT OF MEDICAL TRAINING CAN GO A LONG WAY WHEN YOU'RE IN THE BACKCOUNTRY. photo courtesy LANDMARK LEARNING

to Standing Indian Mountain with his family. While they settle into the campground, Padgett’s boss goes for a hike. The trail is a loop, so he doesn’t think to bring a map or much in the way of supplies. But soon, he starts to worry—is he going the right direction? How much further does he have? Daylight starts to fade and his family, worried, calls 911.

“The whole rescue squad came out,” says Padgett, who was relayed the story on the following day. “It took a long time to find him, but he was right there. He was still on the trail!”

Short of suffering a moderate case of embarrassment, Padgett’s boss was just fine and reunited with his family shortly after. Getting lost, says Padgett, is a real problem for outdoor enthusiasts, even if you are in an area considered well traveled and developed.

“That scenario really illustrated to me that folks who go into areas

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Forgo planning or map familiarity.

• Continue wandering. Just stay put.

• Leave designated trails. “Our mountains have so many nooks and hollers and are quite steep and full of nearly impenetrable thickets,” says Padgett. Theories like following water downhill or hiking in concentric circles can not only lead to increased fatigue and disorientation but can also move you farther away from help.

• Rely on your cell phone. “Although I’ve witnessed the accessibility of cell towers skyrocket in our region in the last 20 years, you still cannot get a signal in a lot of areas. Part of your pre-trip planning is knowing where cell service can be accessed along your route.”

WHAT TO DO: • Plan ahead and prepare. “Know where you are going, know your physical limitations…and be fully prepared with shelter, food, and water.”

• Tell friends or family where you’re going and when you are expected back.

• Have a map and compass and know how to use them.

• Bring food and water, or a means of filtering water, always.

• Have a buddy, especially if you are an inexperienced hiker.

SCENARIO 9 BEAR SCARE THE SCENE: Brian Sarfino of Tucker County, W.Va., is embracing the simple life outside of South Lake Tahoe in California. His home for the summer of 2003 is nothing more than a backpacking tent and a 10’ x 10’ mesh canopy that acts as his kitchen. He’s been camping out at one particular site in the forest for, he admits, longer than the two-week time limit, but there’s no one else around and, being from the rural

M A R C H 2 017 / B L U E R I D G E O U T D O O R S . C O M

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mountains of West Virginia, Sarfino feels right at home in the woods.

Comfortable. Complacent, even.

“I had definitely pushed my luck and gotten lazy with my food care and storage,” Sarfino says. “I just stored my food in the [kitchen] tent.”

One morning, Sarfino wakes to the sound of heavy breathing. A muzzle nudges his one-man tent. Then, he hears what he’s been dreading—the shredding of claw-on-mesh, and the subsequent ransack of his kitchen.

“That’s when I knew there were multiple bears,” Sarfino says. “I could feel the vibration in the ground when the momma bear would come down from her hind legs. Everyone was getting really excited, or aggressive, I couldn’t tell which.”

Now, Sarfino’s sleeping tent isn’t the recommended 100 yards away from his cooking area. No, Sarfino is lying on his mat a mere five feet from the bears’ plundering. As one bear after another charges past with their loot in tow, Sarfino can practically feel the fur brushing past.

“I thought they were going to run right through my tent or try to get into my tent,” he says. “I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Escape for Sarfino is not an option.

The bears are all around his campsite, and his truck is too far to comfortably reach. Seeing no other option, he rolls onto his stomach, assumes the “play dead” position with his hands over the back of his neck, and waits for three painstaking hours. Fortunately, the bears moved on, satisfied with their night’s feast.

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Leave your trash and/or food near your tent.

• Leave a messy kitchen.

• Turn and run in the event of a bear encounter. “They will chase you, and they are faster than we are,” says Padgett.

WHAT TO DO: • Hang food at least 100 yards from where you’re sleeping. “Also, identify where you’re going to do this hang before it gets dark,” adds Padgett.

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“Setting up a bear bag in the dark is very hard to do and causes people to do a very poor job.”

• Cook at least 100 yards away from your tent.

• Hang your food at least 12 feet off the ground, five feet away from the tree trunk, and five feet below the branch holding it.

• When traveling solo or in small groups, make noise or bring bells in bear country to prevent the element of surprise.

• Travel with bear pepper spray on you or quickly accessible.

• Should you encounter a bear, face them, slowly back away, quietly. If the bear continues to approach you, make yourself physically look as big as possible and make a lot of noise. Get close to others if you’re in a group and clap and yell while backing away. “You can even hold backpacks over your head. We want them to want to avoid us.”

• In the event of a bear attack, follow the National Park Service guidelines.

For brown or grizzly bears, play dead by lying flat on your stomach with your hands clasped behind your neck and spreading your legs to prevent the bear from easily turning you over. For black bears, do not play dead. Fight back if a car or some similar form of shelter is not available. Use whatever weapon is available and direct kicks and punches toward the bear’s face.

SCENARIO 10 BURNS THE SCENE: Hawkins is leading a sea-kayaking trip in the Florida Everglades for the Yale Outing Club: clear coastal waters, sandy beaches, breathtaking sunrises and sunsets. The trip is stacked up to be a memorable one, until one of the participants gets sunburn.

“Sometimes we dismiss sunburns as not very important, but this participant got such bad sunburn that his ears and nose were blistered and he was in so much pain,” Hawkins says.

Serious burns, whether from the sun or otherwise, can be seriously painful. More recently, Hawkins’

B L U E R I D G E O U T D O O R S / M A R C H 2 017

colleagues answered a call for a woman who spilled boiling water in her lap as she was removing a pot from her camp stove.

“The two things we see most often are burns from stoves exploding or boiling water dropped in people’s laps or kicked over from kids running around the campsite,” says Hawkins. “Usually people don’t have medical kits that have sufficient pain medicines to treat that level of pain.”

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Try to get a tan in the backcountry.

• Underestimate anything hot. “A lot of times people get contact burns from trying to flip grills off campfires because they think they can just do it quickly.”

• Sit down while you are cooking. “Be mobile and be on your feet in case of a spill,” says Hawkins.

• Apply snow or ice directly to the burn site. “You can cause more damage to the skin tissue if it’s too dramatic of a cooling measure.”

DON'T WAIT UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE TO LEARN CPR. photo by SETH HAWKINS

WHAT TO DO: • Establish a “no-run” zone while cooking.

• Keep stoves clean and in proper working condition.

• Place bowls or thermoses on ground (as opposed to holding them) when pouring hot water.

• Submerge burn in cool water or use cool, wet cloth to soothe burn.

• Apply burn cream or, if not available, antibiotic ointment.

• Wrap in dry dressing for extensive burns.

SCENARIO 11 FISH HOOKED THE SCENE: Hawkins and his family are on vacation in the Outer Banks. Hawkins is out in the surf

BlueRidgeOutdoors

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BlueRidgeOutdoors

trying to squeeze in a few more waves before the day is done. Out of sight and farther up the beach is a man illegally surf fishing with a long line, but when Hawkins feels a sharp pain in his right big toe, he first suspects a crab, not a fish hook.

“I pulled my leg up and it took me awhile to figure it out, but it was a sea fishing fish hook that had gone through my toe. The line had hog tied me around my ankles, so I lost the use of my legs in the surf.”

Hawkins frantically waves his arms, helplessly flailing without the use of his legs. A passerby sees Hawkins in distress and gets him to shore. Hawkins successfully depresses the barb to the point where he can edge the hook out of his toe, an uncomfortable but fairly straightforward procedure most anyone can replicate.

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Panic.

• Yank fish hook out of the track it has already created.

WHAT TO DO: • Remove line and anything else attached to fish hook.

• Disengage barb and slide out backwards, or rotate barb forward to complete its path so it exits the skin. Cut off the barb and then rotate backwards through its track.

• Clean puncture wound with the cleanest available water and mild soap if available.

• With fish hooks that have the possibility of transmitting tetanus or animal bacteria, seek medical treatment immediately.

SCENARIO 12 DROWNING THE SCENE: The Catawba River is flooding. Law enforcement and rescue personnel in Morganton, N.C., are working around the clock to ensure the city’s safety. Despite their warnings, a group of young teenagers decides to hit the water in recreational kayaks. One of the boys hits a low-head dam where the river

Landmark Learning The Learning Specialists for the Outdoor Community.

passes through town. His kayak flips and washes downstream, but his body recirculates in the feature.

“By all definitions of the word, this kid drowned,” says Hawkins.

“He was pulled out of the water, without a pulse and not breathing, by his friends who did not know CPR.” But what they lacked in medical training, the boy’s friends made up for by placing a call to the Burke County dispatch center, which employs Emergency Medical Dispatchers specifically certified by the state to practice medicine over the phone.

“They can train lay public to do CPR over the phone and in real time, that’s what they did,” says Hawkins.

“They taught this guy’s friends how to do CPR and he recovered.”

WHAT NOT TO DO: • Delay CPR. WHAT TO DO: • Clear out airway obstructions.

“Almost invariably people who have drowned have a lot of foam

Since 1996

that comes out of their lungs,” says Hawkins. “That’s creepy for people to see, so they spend a lot of time trying to clear this foam, but that can be breathed back into the patient with no complications during emergency ventilations.” Obstructions here can be things like river matter or vomit.

• Check for pulse.

• Begin rescue breathing immediately.

“Now with CPR they are teaching people to look at compressions as really important, but especially in very young kids and drowning patients, it’s the breathing that’s really important. It’s a lung problem, not a heart problem.”

• Once the patient establishes breathing on their own, turn them on their side, lying on one shoulder, and place them in the recovery position. “They almost always vomit. If they’re lying on their back and that happens, they can swallow that vomit and get into serious trouble.”

• Keep patient warm.

WEMT, EMT Intensive, WFR, SWR, & WLG Certifications Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician, Emergency Medical Technician Intensive, Wilderness First Responder, SwiftWater Rescue, and Wilderness LifeGuard courses initiate from Landmark Learning’s campus in Western North Carolina, just outside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

www.LandmarkLearning.edu M A R C H 2 017 / B L U E R I D G E O U T D O O R S . C O M

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WA R M I N G TEM PER ATUR ES, L E N GT H E N I NG DAYLI GHT, A ND R E T U R N I N G SHA DES OF GR EEN O N T H E LA ND SI GNA L THAT S P R I N G I S I N TH E A IR H ERE IN TH E B LU E R IDG E.

W

ith these seasonal changes, many excitedly turn their sights to our region’s creeks, rivers, and lakes as they research new areas to fish

and the pros who can guide them. To assist with those angling adventures in 2017, our popular “Tight Lines” guide is back to provide you with the ultimate resource of guides, outfitters, and destinations spanning our mountains. Whether you tie your own dry flies or don’t know the difference between a brown trout and a brook trout, Tight Lines will introduce and connect you to the people and places that will make your spring and summer fishing adventures a success.

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H U N T E R BA N K S F LY F I SH I N G

A T RU E A N G L E R C OM M U N I T Y— E X P E R I E N C E T H E U LT I M AT E B LU E R I D G E F LY F I SH I N G D E ST I NAT IO N

T

he rivers around Asheville, North

beginners move beyond the misconception

Carolina hold some of the finest fly fishing

that learning to fly fish is too difficult. Once

opportunities in the country. The diversity of

a rod is in hand, our friendly and skilled fly

fish species is matched by the variety of anglers,

fishing instructors have clients casting like

creating a dynamic community that makes

professionals in no time. We also provide top-

Western North Carolina an unforgettable

notch instruction on fly selection, knot tying and

destination. You can wet a line for native brook

water reading. We teach on the water with the

trout in high mountain streams, search for

beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains as a backdrop.

trophy brown trout in world-class tailwater

We also understand that fly fishing doesn’t

rivers like the Watauga and South Holston

have to replace your other hobbies. It enhances

and chase the ever-elusive musky on the

the experience with those activities. Are you a

French Broad River. This variety fuels a fishing

stand up paddle boarder? Try one of our guided

community as unique and diverse as the waters

paddle board fly fishing trips this summer!

they fish. The energy of this group coupled with the diversity of fishing opportunities is driving

LET US BE THE GUIDE

the region’s emergence as a premiere fly fishing

Thousands of miles of river are within a quick

destination.

morning drive of our shops. With a familiarity of area water that only locals could have, our guides

A LEARNING EXPERIENCE

will select the perfect stretch of river to ensure

Hunter Banks Fly Fishing has been serving

all of your trip expectations are met. If you’re

the Southeast fly fishing community since

looking for an immersive fly fishing experience,

1985. During this time, we’ve helped countless

we offer the full-day fly fishing school. These trips include all necessary equipment, lunch and instruction on fly casting, gear and tackle selection, essential knot tying, fly selection, reading water, and sustainable fishing practices.

If you’re pressed for time, choose our half-day fly fishing school. You will still walk away with a solid understanding of the most important aspects of fly fishing.

HUNTERBANKS.COM

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WAY N E SB O R O, V I R G I N IA

T

he city of Waynesboro offers

South River Fly Shop on Main Street

some of Virginia’s finest trout

offers classes, guided trips, and an

fishing, with the South River flowing

extensive line of fly fishing products.

right through downtown. The river

Join Waynesboro this April 22 and 23

has been gaining attention as a prime

for their annual South River Fly Fishing

fishing destination, where trophy-sized

Expo, which provides funding for

rainbow and brown trout thrive in the

continued conservation habitat efforts on

South River Delayed Harvest Area. The

the fishery.

Where Good Nature COMES NATURALLY

www.visitwaynesboro.net | 540.942.6512 VISITWAYNESBORO.NET

M A RT I N S V I L L E , V I R G I N IA : W H E R E O N E R I V E R SU I T S MANY ST YLES

N

o fly fishing experience would

as you near the North Carolina border.

be complete in Virginia without

With 10 access points to choose from,

Smith River. The Smith River’s character

you’ve always got a place to enjoy your

changes dramatically as it travels 44.5

favorite fishing style. You can explore

miles downstream. Catch native brown

incredible scenery, magnificent rock

trout and stocked rainbow trout in the

outcrops and Native American fish weirs

cool water near Philpott Lake or chase

dating back centuries.

after the small mouths and redbreast SPE CI AL ADVE RT I SI N G SE CT I ON

VISITMARTINSVILLE.COM

M E C K L E N BU RG , V I RG I N IA : B IG , SM A L L , I T ’ S YOU R C HOIC E

M

ecklenburg County has been called

WHATEVER FLOATS YOUR BOAT

Southern Virginia’s Lake County and

If an off the road experience is more your

for a good reason. Overall, the county is home

thing, then experience the Southern Virginia

to three lakes, including the state’s largest, and

Wild Blueway. Over 100 miles of navigable

many rivers.

river leads to 1,200 miles of beautiful lake

Take Kerr Lake, or as the locals and

shoreline. Enjoy no crowds and waterfront

anglers call it, Bugg’s Island Lake. The largest

camping at night. Pass a day or take up the

freshwater lake in Virginia, Bugg’s Island

weekend exploring world-class fishing,

is home to plenty of largemouth bass, gar,

spectacular scenery, and miles of classic

walleye, and freshwater drum. It also holds a

paddling adventure.

naturally reproducing population of striped bass and plenty of sizable crappie. Bugg’s Island

CELEBRATE

Lake also boasts the world record blue catfish

In conjunction with the 11th annual

weighing in at 143 lbs caught in 2011. Looking

Clarksville Wine Festival, the Mecklenburg

for something smaller? Then head to the

County Tourism Office will be hosting a

peaceful Lake Gordon. Anglers will have more

Seaplane Splash-In. This free event features

than enough largemouth bass to contend with.

rare seaplanes from around the country

It also has good channel catfish, redear sunfish,

landing directly on Bugg’s Island/Kerr Lake.

and crappie populations.

VISITMECKVA.COM

More Miles of Shoreline than Highway.

There is so much to explore in Mecklenburg County, including Virginia’s largest lake with over 850 miles of scenic shoreline.

There’s a peaceful cove and a secret fishing spot waiting just for you.

More of what matters. More Mecklenburg. visitmeckva.com | #moremeck

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T OW N SE N D, T E N N E S SE E

STAY A W E E K E N D O R A L I F E T I M E L E A R N I N G

W

ith over 1,000 miles of trout fishing

and permits required to run a guide service. In

streams, the Great Smoky Mountains

Spring of 2003, R&R Fly Fishing was born.

National Park made the perfect home for Ian and Charity Rutter’s fly fishing guide service,

NO FAVORITES

R&R Fly Fishing. Charity offers perspective on

I think everything inside the National Park

what drew her from Oklahoma to become not

boundary is just beautiful, and all the streams

only a guide and co-owner of R&R Fly Fishing

have healthy trout populations. There is such

but also one of the sport’s best female anglers

diversity here that the fishing can be very

and guides.

different throughout the park. Higher elevations lead an angler to swift waterfalls and plunge

GETTING HOOKED

pools where every little pothole holds a trout.

When Ian’s first guide book, Great Smoky

The Park is also open year round to fishing,

Mountains National Park Angler’s Companion,

and the fish are wild. In addition to the park,

was released, our phone started ringing with

Townsend is within an hour drive of the Holston

requests for us to take people fishing. Since Ian

and Clinch Rivers where we do tailwater float

had written the book and I helped him with

trips.

the editing, maps and photography, people were calling saying “I want to fish the Smoky

EXPLORE WITH US

Mountains with you since you wrote the book.”

Fly fishing is not just our business; it is our

After a few months of hesitation, we decided it

lifestyle and our passion. We feel that if we take

was time to get the business license, insurance

the time to expose others to these wild places, they too will come to love them and want to protect and preserve them as much as we do.

We are full time fly fishing guides. We take anglers on half-day and full-day wade trips in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and full day float trips on the Holston and Clinch Rivers. We don’t operate a walk-in fly shop but check out our online store that sells flies, leaders, tippet, and all of our books and videos.

SMOKYMOUNTAINS.ORG RANDRFLYFISHING.COM

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Go De e p, il d Go Hig h, Go W else. everything trains and... s, ne la V, p W , with rant County Beautiful G ve it all! ha s e o d really

G R A N T C OU N T Y, W E ST V I R G I N IA : WHERE TRANQUILIT Y AND A DV E N T U R E AWA I T

H

ead to the Potomac Highlands

trout fishing in the region that anglers

this spring, where you can find

appreciate and return to annually. Hop

thrilling outdoor adventure or relaxing

on an all-day train ride with the Potomac

countryside tranquility in Grant County,

Eagle out of Romney to Petersburg, or

West Virginia. While it is host to several

for a true panoramic view—a private

nationally recognized attractions such as

scenic airplane ride.

Scen ic Pla ne ride s and othe r a dve ntu re s

Fly Fishing!

Tu bin g, Ca noei ng, K a ya ki ng a n d more

Dolly Sods Wilderness Area and Smoke Hole Caverns, it also has exceptional

VISITGRANTCOUNTY.COM

Located in Cashiers, NC and NEW location in Highlands, NC

BROOKINGS ANGLERS Guides for �irst-time to experienced anglers -and everyone in between.

Destinations include high elevation wild trout streams, scenic tailwaters, private water for trophy trout, and intense summer-time smallmouth bass trips.

LODGING | FLY FISHING GUIDE TRIPS | FULL SERVICE FLY SHOP

828-743-3768 | info@brookingsonline.com | BrookingsOnline.com Brooking’s is licensed to guide in Nantahala and Pigsah National Forests as well as Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

W

estern North Carolina comes

since its founding in the mid-1980s.

alive in the spring, and nowhere

With our location in Cashiers, NC and

can you see its vitality more than in the

our new store in Highlands, NC, we’ve

region’s rivers. As temperatures warm,

enjoyed sharing our knowledge with

the trout are almost as ready for the

countless anglers visiting our little slice

waking insects as your line will be for

of heaven.

them.

Brookings Anglers has been a fixture in the region’s fly fishing community

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BROOKINGSONLINE.COM

C U RT I S W R IG H T OU T F I T T E R S & S OU RWO O D I N N CURTIS WRIGHT OUTFITTERS

SOURWOOD INN

Locally owned Curtis Wright Outfitters

Sourwood Inn rests at an elevation of 3,200

has been serving anglers in the Southern

feet in one the most popular areas of Western

Appalachians for over a decade. Curtis

North Carolina—located two miles off the

Wright has some of the region’s best guides,

Blue Ridge Parkway and 10 miles from

available for full- and half-day trips fishing

downtown Asheville.

for trout and smallmouth bass. The two shops

Guest rooms feature a wood-burning

offer anglers essential fly fishing gear and

fireplace, private balcony, and a tub with

outdoor apparel from Simms, Sage, Scott,

a view. Grab a good book from the well-

Ross, Columbia, and Patagonia.

stocked library and sit a spell in a rocker on

Curtis Wright Outfitters also offers

our back porch for a relaxing afternoon. Or

falconry and sporting clays lessons for a

stretch your legs on the property’s two miles

unique mountain experience. Join a licensed

of walking trails. Visitors start the day with

falconer and learn about the ancient sport of

a yummy breakfast, served daily, and Chef

falconry, or practice the ins and outs of gun

Kacia Stuart prepares delicious contemporary

safety and clay shooting.

and seasonal, regional dinners Thursday

Customers will also find a friendly shop

through Sunday. Partnering with Curtis

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While it was exciting to catch fish, that was not the real highlight for either of us. New adventures can sometimes wear you down and stress you out, but fishing tenkara together had the opposite effect on us, bonding us ever more strongly as something we truly enjoyed doing together.

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If Charlie Engle were a cat, his nine lives would have run dry by the age of 30. A recovering addict with a zeal for long-distance running, the 54-year-old ultrarunner has an uncanny ability to suffer, and survive, in the direst of circumstances—including federal prison.

by JESS DADDIO

t’s late Thursday morning when I arrive at William B. Umstead State Park in Raleigh, N.C. Save for the not-so-distant hum of afternoon traffic blazing down I-40, the parking lot is quiet. Snow lingers in the shadowy crevice of trees, holding on despite the balmy January day.

Charlie Engle parks his Ford Ranger and steps out, shaking his head.

“It figures you’d be the one to be on time, and I’m the one who’s late.”

He smiles broadly through a row of neat white teeth, foregoing a handshake for an embrace. Tall and trim with a headful of closely cropped hair, Engle doesn’t look like a 54-year-old with a history of addiction and an 18-month prison term. His chatter is lively, charming, exuding an almost youthful naiveté.

As we walk, he greets every hiker that passes, stooping to dote on the four-legged ones especially.

But behind his cheerful aura, there’s a hint of something darker, a hardened wisdom that comes not from age but from experience. In his debut memoir, Running Man, Engle details that insight, beginning with his early years as an only child and tracing his bumpy, often convoluted ride from addiction to sobriety and, ultimately, ultrarunning.

The memoir is every bit as transparent as Engle, providing a stark and unwavering look at both his accomplishments and shortcomings.

After battling an all-consuming addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol for over a decade, Engle turned to running as a form of penance and an avenue for recovery. In the first three years of his running career, Engle ran over 30 marathons.

“Nothing else made me feel so clean, so focused, and so happily spent,” he writes in Running Man. “The high that I experienced after a long, hard run—that effervescence of endorphins that had eluded me for so long—was purer and sweeter than photo by JESS DADDIO

any pleasure I had ever felt on drugs.

Drugs and alcohol had been my way out. Running would be my way through.”

When marathons lost their edge, Engle sought harder, more daunting challenges. First it was 50-milers, then 100-milers, and eventually multi-day adventure races staged in every corner of the world. From the hills of eastern North Carolina to the rainforest of Brazil, from the volcanoriddled mountains of Ecuador to the barren Gobi Desert of China, Engle followed that running high to its very limits.

After numerous adventure race wins and podiums at notoriously arduous events like the Badwater Ultramarathon, Engle switched gears to take hold of an adventure run of his own design—crossing all 4,500 miles of the Sahara Desert. In 2006, Engle and two fellow runners became the first to successfully make the trans-desert run, an adventure chronicled in the 2007 Matt Damon produced documentary Running the

Sahara.

A year later in 2008, Engle embarked on a record attempt across the United States. The run, documented in the film Running America, ended in bitter disappointment after Engle was sidelined on day 20 from a debilitating ankle injury. He completed the trans-America crossing by bike while his fellow teammate Marshall Ulrich continued to run, but relations between the two turned sour. Ulrich finished the run, but failed to set a new record.

That failed attempt would turn out to be the least of Engle’s problems in the years to come. Just one day after the premier of Running America debuted in Greensboro, N.C., six armed federal agents arrested Engle. Charged with allegedly overstating his income on a home loan application, Engle was suddenly thrust into a very different spotlight.

“I was purged from my own life,” he tells me back at Umstead. “My non-profit foundations dropped me,

my sponsors dropped me. It hurt my feelings, and it really taught me some painful lessons.”

Engle fought the charges and the paltry evidence stacked against him, but his efforts were in vain. On Valentine’s Day, 2011, Engle arrived at a minimum-security federal prison in Beckley, W.Va., to begin his 21-month sentence. The 18 months that ensued were some of the darkest, most challenging times of his life, harder even than running two marathons a day across the Sahara Desert.

Yet as he sits across from me at a picnic table near his home in Durham, N.C., there’s not a hint of resentment or anger in his voice.

Engle’s mastery of finding the silver lining comes through no shortage of reflection, sheer will, and stubborn determination.

“I’m not a person that believes in that old saying, ‘things happen for a reason.’ I don’t buy into that. I think the reason is only revealed once we figure out what we’re going to do with it.”

LET’S BACK UP TO YOUR YOUNGER YEARS. WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY OF RUNNING?

Being out running in a lightning storm, running around in my cotton underwear and nothing else and there’s lightning all around and my mom is cheering for me on the porch.

That kind of freedom, first of all, taught me to love running back when running was all about being a kid. I wasn’t running for any reason other than that’s the natural state of being a kid.

YOU CONTINUED TO RUN THROUGHOUT YOUR HIGH SCHOOL YEARS AND SOME INTO COLLEGE, BUT IT WAS DURING YOUR TIME AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL THAT YOUR ADDICTION STARTED TO MANIFEST ITSELF. HOW DID DRUGS AND ALCOHOL TAKE HOLD OF YOUR LIFE?

I was that kid who played every sport, made good grades, had good SAT scores, volunteered…I was sorta annoyingly overachieving in high school. When I got [to UNC Chapel

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Hill], lo and behold, I found out that I was actually pretty average. What I found out pretty quickly that I was good at was drinking and partying. I really did get lost and I stayed lost for 10 years of my life.

DID YOU THINK YOU WERE LOST AT THE TIME?

I really strived to look good on the outside—be the best salesman at my job, buy a house, buy a car, get married, do all of these things that made me look normal, because my feeling, incorrectly, was that if I looked really normal then I couldn’t possibly be a drug addict and ultimately that’s just not true. My joke used to be that my boss wouldn’t fire the best salesman and that turned out not to be true either.

IN YOUR MEMOIR, YOU DESCRIBE A NUMBER OF MULTIDAY DRUG BINGES. WAS THERE ANY ONE MOMENT THAT MADE YOU CHANGE THE DOWNWARD TRAJECTORY YOUR LIFE HAD BEEN ON?

When I was 29 years old, my first son was born, Brett, and I remember really distinctly holding this tiny little baby. I still wasn’t clean and sober, but I vowed that this would be the end of it, like having this person that I was now responsible for other than myself would change everything.

In a sense, like he was going to be my savior. Unfortunately nobody else can be your savior other than yourself. My wife and baby came to visit me in Wichita, and I had the best week, literally, of my life. I take them to the airport, I drop them off, and inextricably drive straight to the hood where I spend the next six days drinking and doing drugs. This whole episode ends with the police going through my car and there’s three bullet holes in my car that were put there by somebody trying to do me great harm. I remember it so distinctly, saying to myself, “This seems like a pretty good time to quit.” It sounds simple, and I’m not trying to be flippant, but I realized in that moment that Brett wasn’t going to save me. I changed my life that

day. That night I went to a recovery meeting and the next morning I got up and I put my running shoes on.

IN YOUR FIRST THREE YEARS OF RUNNING REGULARLY, YOU COMPETED IN 30 MARATHONS AND SOME STARTED TO QUESTION IF YOU HAD JUST SWAPPED ONE ADDICTION FOR ANOTHER. HOW DID YOU RESPOND TO THAT?

If you know someone who is an addict or an alcoholic, the obsession is overwhelming. What people tend not to understand is that every minute of every day of my life as an addict was spent thinking about the next time I was going to drink or do a drug.

There was a part of me that worried very much that when I got clean and sober that my life would just be incredibly boring and tedious, like all of my “fun” was over, and that’s the way the addict brain works. What I found was the exact opposite.

WHAT WAS IT IN PARTICULAR ABOUT RUNNING THAT RESONATED WITH YOU?

Addiction is all about hiding. It’s about being invisible. Running is the exact opposite. With running, you cannot hide. There is no hiding in a 100-mile race. When you’re in 70 miles and the wheels have come off and you think you are going to die, there’s no hiding. I am the core of who I am in those moments. If I do what I know how to do and push past that and find a way to keep going, it makes me the essence of who I am and that’s the gift in not just running but in all kinds of adventure.

EARLY ON, WHAT ROLE DID RUNNING PLAY IN YOUR RECOVERY?

I had a lot of guilt about my years of addiction because I put people through a lot. When I finally did get

sober and I started to use running as a mechanism for my recovery, I felt almost like it was my way of paying my dues, of a penance of sorts, where I punished myself. Really it was the wrong way to go about it, but it was a learning process. It was all about learning how to find a balance between punishing myself for the guilt and shame from my years of addiction and my goal to be better and move forward.

WHAT SURPRISED YOU THE MOST ABOUT THIS NEWFOUND COMMITMENT TO SOMETHING OTHER THAN DRUGS AND ALCOHOL?

The addict in me is actually what makes me good at things. That drive that I have, if it’s focused in the right direction, actually makes me successful.

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AS THE REALITY OF SOBRIETY SETTLED IN, WHAT WAS ONE OF THE MORE NOTICEABLE CHANGES IN YOUR DAY-TODAY LIFE?

For the first time in my life, I actually got to be present for my own life.

Before, as an addict, if I had an emotion—anger, happiness, whatever it was—it was always accompanied by a substance. Now that that crutch was gone, whatever came along, whatever emotion, whatever catastrophe or celebration even, I had to be present for it. I got to be present for it.

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST LESSON YOU LEARNED FROM YOUR YEARS OF RUNNING LONG-DISTANCE RACES?

Adaptation is the number one most important tool that I have in my opinion. I don’t care if you’re planning a run or a hike, or starting a business or a family, everything is going to go wrong at some point.

Who I am is defined by how I react when everything goes completely to hell. Life is easy when everything’s going my way.

IN THE EARLY 2001, RAY ZAHAB, THE CANADIAN RUNNER, BROUGHT UP THE IDEA OF RUNNING ACROSS THE SAHARA DESERT. HOW DID YOU RESPOND, AND HOW DID THAT QUESTION LEAD TO YOU AND RAY TAKING ON THAT VERY CHALLENGE?

I literally looked at him and said, “That is the dumbest idea I have ever heard,” but it wouldn’t go away.

I went home and it was just stuck there. What I found out was it had indeed never been done, go figure. It intrigued me. I took possession of the possibilities and I let everyone else tell me that it was impossible.

CLEARLY, YOU, RAY, AND KEVIN LIN PROVED THAT THE IMPOSSIBLE WAS POSSIBLE IN LATE 2006, BUT WHAT CHALLENGES DID THE TRANS-SAHARA RUN ENCOUNTER ALONG THE WAY?

We had to run 50 miles, almost two marathons, every single day with 130-degree ground temperatures for the first month. It would get cold at night, super hot during the day. We 50

had more problems than I ever could have imagined. That slow-moving train across the Sahara Desert nearly came to a total halt on a number of occasions­—we were lost, we ran out of water and food, we weren’t allowed to cross borders, there were tons of physical problems, personalities crashed.

DESPITE ALL OF THAT, YOUR TEAM FINISHED. WHAT WAS RUNNING THROUGH YOUR HEAD AT THE END?

I was incredibly sad about it being finished. You’re on this mission for so long and you have this window of time where you’re entirely committed to this one thing, putting one foot in front of the other. Yes, the goal is to finish, but the finishing can be incredibly depressing. I knew there was no recapturing that. I could turn around and run back across the Sahara, but that wouldn’t be the

B L U E R I D G E O U T D O O R S / M A R C H 2 017

same. You only get to do something for the first time once. The beauty of that run was so powerful for me that I knew instinctively that I’d never get to do that again.

LET’S FAST-FORWARD TO MAY 2010.

YOU’VE JUST BEEN TO THE PREMIER OF YOUR SECOND DOCUMENTARY, RUNNING AMERICA, WHEN YOU’RE ARRESTED FOR ALLEGEDLY TAKING A “LIAR LOAN.” HOW DID YOU REACT TO THIS SUDDEN TURN OF THE TABLE?

It sounds so unreal. I fought it very hard. It was a very expensive undertaking to try to fight it, and I lost. I know it sounds strange, but I was the most qualified person and most well prepared person to go to prison that’s maybe ever gone. I’d been sober for 19 years, I had run all over the world and done some incredibly difficult things, physically, and through all of that, I learned this one basic lesson—it simply doesn’t

CHARLIE ENGLE, SECOND FROM RIGHT, PICTURED WITH HIS WIFE AND TEAM AT THE START OF THE BADWATER ULTRAMARATHON, A 135-MILE FOOT RACE THAT TAKES RUNNERS FROM DEATH VALLEY TO WHITNEY PORTALS ON MOUNT WHITNEY. photos courtesy CHARLIE ENGLE

matter what happens to you in life.

All that matters is what you do with it. Good and bad things happen to everybody and they come in different packages. Going to prison meant I had an opportunity, not an opportunity I asked for, or one that I wanted, but it was an opportunity.

HOW DID YOU SPEND YOUR TIME IN PRISON?

I would run, read books, write. I did yoga on the softball field by myself, which I can tell you in prison is a risky thing to do. Thank God I didn’t have spandex.

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WHAT WAS THE ONE THING THAT SURPRISED YOU ABOUT YOUR TIME IN PRISON?

When I got to Beckley federal prison, there was me and maybe two or three other guys that regularly ran. By the time I left, I had more than 50 guys running in this running group, about 20 guys out doing yoga three days a week on the softball field. We looked ridiculous, but that was some of the best laughter I’ve ever had in my life, and that was a real gift.

DURING YOUR TRIAL AND PRISON SENTENCE, YOU AND YOUR FATHER WORKED TOGETHER TO SUBMIT A NUMBER OF APPEALS, ALL OF WHICH WERE DISMISSED ON ACCOUNT OF TECHNICALITIES. WHAT WAS IT THAT EVENTUALLY MADE YOU QUIT FIGHTING?

If you’re indicted by the federal government in the United States,

WANT MORE? Check out Charlie Engle's memoir Running Man on his website at CharlieEngle.com

1 5 TH ANNUALG SPRIN

you’re going down. There’s really no way to beat it. I actually thought the truth mattered, that the facts would speak for themselves and things would change. My friend, who was an attorney, said, “You have to choose— are you going to get on with your life, or are you going to stay mired in this?” It really brought things to light for me. I recognized that unfair and unjust things happen every single day in the world. I’m not saying I’m okay with it. I’m okay with it because there’s no alternative. To dwell on it or somehow deny it is pointless.

WHAT WAS THAT FIRST RUN OUT OF PRISON LIKE FOR YOU?

The day I was released from Beckley, I had to report to a halfway house, but I had enough time to sneak in a brief 30-minute run. I needed to have real running shoes on my feet, I needed to be in woods that weren’t part of a prison complex. I needed those things. I will never forget that feeling of relief. It was almost as if I

had been holding my breath for a year and a half and I was finally able to let that out. I felt buoyant.

WHAT ROLE DOES RUNNING SERVE IN YOUR LIFE NOW?

Running has been a mechanism of exploration for me. I’m not a tourist.

I certainly hope I’m not ever going to experience a new place on this earth from the back of a tour bus. That’s not for me. At 54 years old, what it really does is give me urgency. I hope I have 30 more years of this, at least, exploring, but it reminds me that I gotta stay diligent, I need to continue to get out there and see things and running is my way of doing that.

WOULD YOU SAY THAT RUNNING SAVED YOUR LIFE?

Running saved my life, and then running actually gave me a life, and it’s something I can never repay, and the beautiful part about is I don’t have to. All I have to do is keep running.

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FIRE ICE Extreme cold conditioning can make you stronger, according to Scott Carney’s bestselling book What Doesn’t Kill Us

by ANNA KATHERINE CLEMMONS

W

hen journalist Scott Carney set out for the Polish countryside in 2014, on assignment for Playboy magazine, he thought he was going to write an expose. He arrived to cover the extreme environmental conditioning habits and coaching of Wim Hof, a.k.a. The Iceman, whose unorthodox methods had enabled him to accomplish super-human feats, such as submerging his entire body under ice for close to two hours and climbing Mount Everest wearing only hiking boots and spandex shorts.

For a week, along with other tutees, Carney sat on ice blocks, stood in the snow barefoot, alternated between breath-holding and hyperventilation and moved through a series of tests to extend control over his previously untapped (and for the most part, untested) physical

capabilities. “I did think that he was very potentially a charlatan who was preying on people’s desire for super powers,” Carney says of Hof. “There was no indication that his feats were anything other than genetic anomaly.

I was pretty sure him telling people they could do it was going to get them killed. Me going out there was going to be a warning, but it turned out that he was able to do the things he said. And I could repeat them.”

Carney not only replicated them; the methodologies became a part of his daily life. And he was so intrigued by the results that he decided to expand his article into a book. Entitled What Doesn’t Kill Us, Carney’s new 223-page work details how extreme environmental conditioning, at both a macro and micro level, can help you in a variety ways, from controlling immune

system processes to simply losing weight. And whatever your limits, you’ll probably discover an inner strength that you never knew existed.

The training—and the results-doesn’t come without pain, as we

photo courtesy SCOTT CARNEY

be that there is a specific sort of pain that might serve a hidden evolutionary function?”

Carney addresses that question

“There’s an entire hidden physiology in our bodies that operates on evolutionary programming most of us make no attempt to unlock.” - Scott Carney learn through Carney’s writing and the stories of other participants. But pain, Carney argues, is a sensation that we were created to withstand, and one that more people have attempted to explore through experiences like Tough Mudders, adventure races and Antarctic marathons.

“How did pain become a luxury good?” Carney writes. “Could it

throughout the book. As he points out, “it only takes a matter of weeks for the human body to acclimatize to a dazzling array of conditions.” And yet, “the vast majority of humanity today—the entire population that spends the bulk of its time indoors and/or whose only experience when it gets too cold or too hot is wearing state-of-the-art outdoor gear—never exercises this critical system of their

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body.”

Evolutionarily, Carney writes, many, including 58-year-old Hof, would argue that we were made to withstand extremes in temperature, particularly the cold. But in today’s society of comforts, we rarely do so.

“Our bodies are not discreet things,” he writes. “Rather, they are reflections of the environment that they inhabit.”

I, myself, was skeptical as I began reading. But as I continued through the book, I couldn’t argue with the truth in the testimonials, studies and anecdotal evidence offered by Carney., I’ve subsequently tried some of the practices on my own. Granted, I’m not running shirtless in 33-degree weather just yet, but I’ve practiced some of the recommended breathing exercises while also pushing my body into an environment of temperature discomfort (my house thermostat is set to 61 as I type this—and I’m not wearing a winter coat).

Carney himself, who lives in Denver, accomplished everything he set out to do while training with Hof, beginning with breathing exercises (with a goal of holding one’s breath for five minutes) all the way to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro wearing only a pair of shorts and boots for the majority of the ascent (note: Carney pointed out that he only made it to Gilman’s Point, just shy of the true peak, Uhuru, though he, Hof and one other participant did so in an incredible 28 hours and six minutes). The idea is that Hof ’s training builds upon itself—the breathing exercises, for example, train the body to compensate for lack of available oxygen, which therefore better prepares you to ascend steep elevations in a minimal amount of time.

Still, there are dangers, as Carney points out. There are cases of those who’ve tried Hof ’s methods or similar extreme techniques, independently and without proper training, and died. Hof can swim under sheets of ice in only swimming shorts for close to 50 meters; this incredible feat, however, was not done without years

of training.

Following Carney’s week-long stay at Hof ’s training site in Poland (for a $2,000 fee), he traveled the globe, speaking with scientists as well as trainers and other professional athletes. Carney devotes one chapter to the techniques of Hof-devotee and pro surfer Laird Hamilton—and finds that again and again, these methods produce results.

Scientific studies, too, often support this claim. As a 2014 study published in Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism found, “Regular exposure to mild cold may be a healthy and sustainable way to help people lose weight.” (Of note: ‘mild cold’ is a bit different from the snowcaps and ice sheets where Hof undergoes his training).

A 2016 article entitled ‘The Surprising Health Benefits of Extreme Hot and Cold Temperatures’ notes, “Strategies that help optimize energy production in your body include exposure to extreme hot and cold temperatures, exercise…When exposed to cold, your body increases production of norepinephrine in the brain, which is involved in focus and attention. It also improves mood and alleviates pain.”

Carney discovered several people who’d reached a similar conclusion.

Hans Spaans, who has spent the

photo courtesy SCOTT CARNEY

past 14 years battling Parkinson’s disease, decided in 2011 to spend several months training with Hof. Carney visited with Spaans at his home outside of Amsterdam in 2015.

“Think of it this way,” Carney writes.

“Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative process in which the brain slowly loses connections with the limbs it is supposed to command, and Spaans uses the Wim Hof method to strengthen environmental signals to override his failing neurology. It isn’t a cure. It’s a management routine.

In 2015, he is enjoying 11.5 hours of ‘good time’ every day with a lower drug regimen as compared with 2011, when his daily average of ‘good time’ dipped to less than seven hours. And that progress is more hope than any doctor has given him so far.”

Carney also shares the story of Kasper Van der Muelen, a practitioner of Hof ’s methods. After falling and breaking the ulna in his arm, which doctors predicted would require several surgeries and weeks of recovery, Van der Meulen healed in a miraculous three days (practicing Hof ’s breathing methods and meditative practices), which the doctor described as “a medical anomaly.”

Carney acknowledges that

perhaps all of the people he spoke to in writing the book were just that— medical anomalies whose bodies were built to withstand extremes, regardless of whatever methodologies they follow. “I mention in the book that that’s one of the potential problems-–that I’m meeting people who are doing the method; I meet the success stories and that’s certainly a limitation for the way I conducted sampling,” Carney says. “You’ll definitely find people who try the method and are like, ‘yea it’s not for me.’ You’ll find people who have more severe reactions to the cold – people for whom, because our systems are so degraded, it’s harder to learn the methods. But that won’t be the majority of people … I don’t want people to go out and get hurt, but I want them to realize that pain alone isn’t necessarily bad. That pain is a warning, and you should be aware of your warning, but still use your head and figure out what’s rational and real.”

When you do, as Carney illustrates throughout the book with himself (including regular visits to the CU Sports Medicine and Performance Center for testing) and others as case studies, you can push your body to new limits, increase your metabolism and achieve mental and physical breakthroughs that you previously considered impossible.

Perhaps most importantly, Carney highlights for the reader, in an easy-to-read-and-understand explainer within the chapter entitled The Wedge, how he/she can also incorporate a small-scale version of these exercises into daily life. So now, should you choose, you can try it. Who knows what you might find. Even if you don’t, the book is fascinating and will likely change the way you look at your environment— and your body’s capabilities.

WANT MORE? Scott Carney will speak and sign books at the Smoky Mountain Adventure Center in Asheville on March 11 at 3 p.m. (with a polar plunge to follow).

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THE WAR ON WOLVES Accompanying House and Senate bills would strip wolves of federal protection

by RACHEL WOOLWORTH

I

n January, companion bills were introduced to the House and Senate that would remove the protections of the Endangered Species Act from gray wolves in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Nicknamed “the War on Wolves Act,” the proposed legislation would strip wolf populations of federal protection— subjecting the species to unregulated trapping and trophy hunting.

If passed, delisting of the controversial red wolves of North Carolina, Mexican gray wolves of New Mexico and Arizona, and various other endangered species are likely to follow.

Over two million gray wolves once roamed the continent. Yet by the turn of the century such wolves had retreated to remote parts of Alaska, Canada, and to a smaller extent the Great Lakes region.

In 1995, a small population of gray wolves were brought from Canada to Yellowstone National Park. Wolf populations have grown to 1,700, naturally dispersing to Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.

Conservationists view the

reintegration of the gray wolf as a success. In addition to steady population growth, wolves have often transformed the ecosystems and physical geography of the lands they roam.

As an apex predator, wolves suppress the abundance and behavior of their prey, in turn opening up nutrients and reshaping ecosystems.

For example, in Yellowstone National Park, the overabundance of deer and elk led to overgrazing, causing the devastation of willow, aspen, and cottonwood trees. Yet the reintegration of the gray wolf forced the grazers to keep moving.

Vegetation began to regenerate, leading to the reemergence of birds and bears, beavers and otters, fish and reptiles. The regenerating forests also stabilized eroding river banks.

Red wolves have also helped maintain ecological balance in North Carolina. The species feeds on deer, raccoons, rabbits, and other rodents, initiating trophic cascades that result in abundant habitat for beavers, fish, songbirds, and more.

Opponents of wolf reintegration are a vocal group from small ranchers to hunters to the industrial agriculture and energy industries.

Indeed, the loss of cattle or

sheep due to wolf depredation can be devastating for small ranchers.

Though most states compensate ranchers for confirmed losses due to wolves, such kills are tricky to verify.

Yet the most powerful anti-wolf contingent is comprised of industrial agriculture and the oil and gas industries. While their lobbying efforts often invoke the threatened livelihood of small ranchers, the industries’ primary hope is to operate on lands currently protected for the wolf among other species.

In North Carolina, anti-wolf factions pressured the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to end the red wolf reintegration program and remove wolves from private land. The Fish and Wildlife Service has drastically scaled back red wolf recovery plans to appease private landowners and hunters.

At its core, the political battle over wolf populations across the United States has come to symbolize the country’s differing views on conservation and the Endangered Species Act. Conservationists see the Endangered Species Act as a way to legally protect species from the threats of industry and development.

A recent Tulchin Research survey

suggests that support of the Act crosses party lines; 90 percent of registered voters support the legislation.

Yet others view the Endangered Species Act as an easy way to lock up natural resources. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) argues that the Endangered Species Act “has never been used for the rehabilitation of species. It’s been used for control of the land.”

President Trump has said he will oppose all environmental policies that get in the way of energy and infrastructure projects, and he has appointed Ryan Zinke (R-Montana) for Interior Secretary. Zinke has voted to remove wolves, grizzlies, and lynx from the endangered species list, and notoriously featured a dead gray wolf on his 2011 Christmas card.

Was Zinke’s Christmas card a testament to his belief in environmental deregulation or an eerily prophetic caricature of the future of wolves in the continental United States?

Wolf populations have waxed and waned with the currents of American expansionism and politics. The War on Wolves Act could be their final curtain call. photo by RONNIE MACDONALD

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THE GOODS

0 3 . 17

FLY GUY

DAMON BUNGARD'S FAVE FISHING GEAR

by GRAHAM AVERILL

D

amon Bungard is why they invented the term “outdoorsman.” Bungard, who lives in Tennessee and works as the brand manager for Jackson Kayaks, is one of the few people in the world who’s been a professional kayaker, professional angler and professional hunter at different points in his life.

These days, the well-rounded athlete spends most of his free time finding ways to combine all of his passions into seamless, self-supported adventures. Sometimes that means embarking on multiday backpacks in search of white tail deer. Or paddling class V whitewater deep into a Wilderness area to fish holes that have rarely seen a fly line.

This April, he’ll star in a show on the Sportsman Channel called “The Orion Chronicles,” that details how Bungard is able to blend adventure with traditional outdoor sports.

“I remember teaching whitewater clinics in these pools and watching the trout rise. And nobody was fishing,” Bungard says. “I thought it was ridiculous. I would be on various, multi-day kayaking trips and get into a totally clear eddy and see all these fish. So I started packing a seven-piece rod in my stern.

Sometimes I’d just strap it to the outside.”

We talked with Bungard about the gear he relies on when he’s seeking elusive brook trout deep in the Southern Appalachians.

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EXO MOUNTAIN GEAR K2 2000 ($499) Using gear that’s made in the US is important to me, and it’s hard to find a good pack that’s made here. But EXO makes a great one in Boise, Idaho.

The 2000 is an innovative pack system loaded with technical features. I use this for week-long fishing and hunting trips.

It’s light and moves well.

SIMMS VAPORTREAD ($179) I like hiking in boots I can fish in. I don’t like carrying different footwear. I wear this boot with a good, wool sock (see below) and a neoprene sock too. It’s a hybrid hiking/wading boot. I want one boot on the trail and river. That’s the key to successful backcountry fishing. Keep your gear versatile and simple.

SIMMS ACKLINS JACKET ($209) It’s the Southern Appalachians, so there’s a good chance it’s gonna rain when you’re in the backcountry. I like this GORETEX jacket from Simms. It’s super packable, but it’s also really comfortable. I can spend all day in this jacket, hiking and fishing, and never get soaked or sweaty.

FARM TO FEET SLATE MOUNTAIN ($24) Having good socks is important. These wool socks are really comfortable and they dry superfast. I’ll fish in these all day, moving in and out of the water, then dry them fast by the fire and put them right back on.

BUNGARD’S ADVICE FOR FISHING THE BACKCOUNTRY: Keep your gear versatile and simple. And seek out native brook trout, even if you don’t plan on catching them.

Brook trout only live in beautiful places. To get where the Brook are, you’re going to get solitude and you’ll be in the cleanest water in the planet.

ORVIS SUPERFINE ($425) If I’m going after trout, I like a 7’ four-weight Superfine. Orvis has been making quality rods for decades. This one is an ultralight, nimble rod built for tight Appalachian streams. The four-weight is good for getting into bigger, deeper holes, but it’s still flexible and small.

B L U E R I D G E O U T D O O R S / M A R C H 2 017

I RIDE FOR DAVID: BEN KING AND FAMILY LAUNCH TECHNICAL SOCK COMPANY Charlottesville’s Ben King is one of the country’s top cyclists, and his family has ridden right alongside his ascent. His parents train in the Blue Ridge Mountains with their kids; his two sisters are long-distance runners; and Ben’s brother Jake is also an elite cyclist.

The Kings are cycling’s royal family, and they recently launched a technical apparel company focused on making comfortable cycling socks that don’t bag and sag once you pedal a few miles down the road. The socks have proven to be quite popular among elite

runners and longdistance hikers, too.

The I Ride for David sock is the King family’s endeavor to support for a junior cyclist in Virginia suffering from cancer. 100% of profits from the socks help with his cancer treatment.

The socks sold out in their first week.

Check out the entire line of King technical socks, all of which are made in the U.S.A. and worn by top athletes, including Ben and his brother Jake: KingTechnicalApparel.com.

MORE GEAR THUNDERBOLT MARK II COMMUTER JEANS ($200) Thunderbolt’s Commuter Jeans are the perfect solution for the ride to work. Windresistant and water-repellant, the four-way stretch soft shell provides protection from the elements, while the inner fleece-like lining keeps legs warm on even the coldest commutes.

ABUS HYBAN URBAN HELMET ($69) The Hyban helmet fuses high-end performance with a robust design to withstand the day-to-day abuse of the urban cyclist. The adjustable headring provides a comfortable, snug fit with a quick twist of a dial, and 18 huge air vents to keep the rider cool and comfortable.

COLUMBIA PFG BAHAMA II ($48) It’s light weight, wicks like mesh, and dries almost immediately, so it’s perfect for hiking in the summer. The front pockets are handy for storing knives and clippers and there’s a Velcro tab on the chest for securing your rod when you’re changing the fly.

BLACK DIAMOND IOTA HEADLAMP ($39) Easy to wear and adjust on the go, The Black Diamond Iota is the smallest, lightest, brightest, rechargeable headlamp on the market. The Iota is ideal for early morning training sessions or evening runs with a 3-hour burn time and rainproof exterior.

FITNESS WITH A BETTER VIEW.

Introducing the New TERRADORA MID WATERPROOF

ELEVATE YOUR FITNESS ON ANY TRAIL YOU CHOOSE

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Introducing the all-new 2017 Subaru Impreza. ®

The all-new 2017 Subaru Impreza. Available in sedan and 5-door body styles, equipped with standard Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive, and up to 38 mpg.* It retains its value better than any other vehicle in its class, according to ALG.† More than a car, it’s a Subaru. Love. It’s what makes a Subaru, a Subaru.

Impreza. Well-equipped at $18,395.** Subaru and Impreza are registered trademarks. *EPA-estimated hwy fuel economy for 2017 Subaru Impreza CVT non-Sport sedan models. 2017 Subaru Impreza CVT Sport 5-door shown is rated at 35 mpg hwy. Actual mileage may vary. †ALG is the industry benchmark for residual values and depreciation data, www.alg.com. **MSRP excludes destination and delivery charges, tax, title, and registration fees. Retailer sets actual price. Certain equipment may be required in specific states, which can modify your MSRP. See your retailer for details. 2017 Subaru Impreza 2.0i Sport 5-door shown has an MSRP of $22,495.