July 2008 Women's Adventure Magazine

PHIL SCHERMEISTER/National Geographic Image Collection

Features

28

Adventure by Rail Hopping a train is just the answer to rising fuel prices and air travel headaches. And you’ll actually arrive at your destination relaxed.

What a concept.

By Kelli B. Kavanaugh

36

42

Lost

The Trailblazers

Feel like your sense of direction is lacking? You’re not alone.

It turns out when it comes to orienteering, we may just be the weaker sex.

By Cristina Opdahl

These adrenaline mavens have broken records, stereotypes, boundaries, and glass ceilings. Some are onto their next adventures while others have not yet hit their high marks, but they’ve all helped make the outdoors a better place for women, from fledgling professional athletes to weekend warriors.

By Mary Catherine O’Connor

The Coast Starlight makes its daily run between Seattle and Los Angeles.

Cover photo Justin Bailie / Aurora Photos

1 Women’s j Adventure

departments 20

Klaas van Lil

62

08. The Dirt

People, Places, and Things from Our Outdoor World Beth Rodden’s latest feat, triathlon training camps, fuel-efficient car maintenance, the ins and outs of whitewater kayaking, and more

He Used Me . . . for a Pro Deal (A Cautionary Tale)

Wet Goods Sunshine? Check.

Water? Yep. Supplies? Right here.

80. Editorial

Horse Lessons Pam Houston reminds us of the age-old mind meld between horses and girls.

50. Whole Health

Savor every luscious bite. Fruit just doesn’t get any better than this.

68. Fresh from the Field

26. Letters from the Divide

24. It’s Personal

62. Full The Sweet, Juicy Treats of Summer

Balancing Act Got aches and pains? Your daily routine could be causing muscle imbalances that are leaving your whole body out of whack.

50

Enter at Your Own Risk Our world is only getting more crowded, and unfortunately residents of the animal kingdom are paying for it.

26

56. Yes, You Can Kick Butt and Defend Yourself Why not know that you’re in charge both on

the trail and in the face of adversity?

6. Message from the Editor 8. Behind the Story 78. Musings 2 Women’s j Adventure

endurance is

Setting a goal and achieving it. For The North FaceŽ athlete Lizzy Hawker, it’s running 3 days, 2 hours and 35 minutes on 4 hours of sleep during a world record-breaking jaunt from Everest Base Camp to Kathmandu. The Rucky Chucky is designed for just this kind of varied and technical terrain.

See what it takes to be an endurance athlete at lizzy.thenorthface.com

Lizzy Hawker in the Rucky Chucky. Photo: Tim Kemple

Top: Lizzy Hawker. Nepal. Photo: Mark Hartell

Bleed: 11.125 Trim: 10.875

EDITOR’S LETTER

READERS’ STORIES Kayak or Bust in Nicaragua

Lost in Space

I have a terrible sense of direction. Put me in a city built on a grid or give me a subway map and I can lead the way, but plop me down on a trail any more complicated than a there-and-back and I have no concept of where I am. I would not even consider venturing out on a new trail on my own. For me that spells coverage on the five o’clock news: Local lady lost in woods outside her backdoor. I’ve always just considered it my cross to bear, a personal shortcoming I have to live with. For that reason I have to say I was delighted with Cristina Opdahl’s findings for the feature story “Lost” (page 36). It turns out—and you might not want to share this with the guys in your life—that women have a harder time with directions and orientation than men do. Okay, so maybe it’s not great news for womankind, but it helped me understand myself a little better and the challenges I face in that area. And, really, it makes sense considering that men honed instincts to go off and hunt, while women were left in charge of caring for the family.

Of course, we’re long past living the life of The Clan of the Cave Bear, but it’s this sort of information that gives us perspective on who we are as outdoorswomen. I know that not everyone gets as turned around as I do, but aren’t you glad that you now can blame your ancestors the next time you’re on a hike and things aren’t looking as familiar as they should be?

Christian Nardi, Editor in Chief

After years of travel in Central America, I finally stumbled upon the Pacific northwest coast of Nicaragua, specifically the fishing community of Padre Ramos and the vibrant city of Leon. This good fortune has already changed the course of my life forever, and you just can’t say that every day of your life.

In Nicaragua I fell in love with the warmth of the people, the beauty of the protected nature reserves, and the splendor of the shoreline as it calmly embraces the belching and sputtering chain of volcanoes.

The Estero Padre Ramos Nature Reserve is the largest contiguous mangrove estuary remaining in Central America, and it is full of life. The locals call it “la cuna,” or “the cradle,” because of its importance in providing habitat for baby fish, shrimp, sharks, sea turtles, birds, and crocodiles. More than 175 bird species—including white ibis, roseate spoonbills, tricolored heron, magnificent frigatebirds, and orange-chinned parakeets—as well as three species of endangered sea turtles (hawksbill, leatherback, and olive ridley) rely on the estuary and the Pacific Ocean for their survival. I think my survival has also become deeply intertwined with this body of water, as I come to rely on its fish for my food and its tranquility for my mind.

By sea kayak the Estero has become my sanctuary and my social conduit into the community. The fishermen in their dugout canoes and pangas cannot help but approach a single white female in a closed-deck Necky kayak.

—Jennifer Shulzitski If sports, travel, or the outdoors have changed your life or inspired you to do something incredible, we want to hear about it. Go to our website to post your story. If we print it in an upcoming issue, we’ll send you a Women’s Adventure T-shirt.

CATCH US ONLINE!

www.womensadventuremagazine.com

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The Women’s Adventure Blogosphere New reviews are now being posted every week on our gear blog, featuring the freshest stuff out there.

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Check out “From the Back of the Pack,” Assistant Editor Bryn Fox’s blog chronicling her marathon training. It may be just the inspiration you need to set your own big goal. ~..=:";:­

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Wonder what traveling along the Pacific Crest Trail would be like? Kristin Gates started the journey in May and is blogging about it on our website.

Go to www.womensadventuremagazine.com for blogs, reviews, advice, and more.

4 Women’s ❊ Adventure Trim: 10.875 Bleed: 11.125

brooksrunning.com brook ksrunning..com

BEHIND THE STORY For a resident of the Motor City, Kelli B. Kavanaugh does not consider herself much of a car person, as you will read in “Adventure by Rail” (page 28); she prefers to travel by train when at all possible. In 1995 she rode the rails for a month all around North America, with stops in Utah, Washington, and British Columbia for snowboarding and hiking side trips.

That’s when she caught the bug, and she has been “training” ever since.

“There’s something about train travel that speaks to me,” she says. “It really brings home the point of the old saying Life’s the journey, not the destination.” She recently opened a bike shop, Wheelhouse Detroit, and is a regular contributor to several local publications.

Founder/Publisher Michelle Theall Editor in Chief Christian Nardi Creative Director Randi Pallan, RP Graphic Design Studio Editorial Copy Editor: Elizabeth von Radics Proofreader: Susan Gall Gear Editor: Karina Evertsen Assistant Editor: Bryn Fox Cycling Gear Editor: Susan Hayse Gear Intern: Corrynn Cochran Photo Editor: Quentin Nardi Editorial queries or submissions should be sent to edit@womensadventuremagazine.com.

Products for review consideration should be sent to karina@womensadventuremagazine.com.

Nonreturnable samples may be sent to 1722 14th Street, Suite 180, Boulder, CO 80302-7423 Photo queries should be sent to photos@womensadventuremagazine.com.

Making first ascents, riding massive waves, and screaming down nearvertical trails at breakneck speeds—all that is well and good, but what’s really impressive about these athletes is their pain tolerance, says San Francisco–based writer Mary Catherine O’Connor. In “The Trailblazers” (page 42), she talks about the high points in the lives of trailblazing women athletes. But it’s not always fun at the top. Surfer Layne Beachley has suffered a herniated disc in her neck not once but twice.

Downhill mountain biker Marla Streb took third in a race with her broken ankle taped to her pedal. “Fighting sexism I could deal with,” says Mary Catherine, “but riding with a broken ankle? No way.”

Advertising Associate Publisher: Karina Evertsen West Coast/Rockies/Midwest Sales karina@womensadventuremagazine.com/303 263 2722 Northwest Sales: Michelle Theall michelle@womensadventuremagazine.com/720 635 1380 California Sales: Theresa Ellbogen theresa@womensadventuremagazine.com/303 641 5525 Eastern Sales: Susan Sheerin suesheerin63@yahoo.com/303 931 6057 Automotive/Food/Beverage Sales: Melissa Hickey melissa@womensadventuremagazine.com/303 588 4686 Advertising Managers Joanna Laubscher (Northwest): joanna@womensadventuremagazine.com Alex Ballas (Travel/Tourism): alex@womensadventuremagazine.com Corrynn Cochran (Classified): corrynn@womensadventuremagazine.com For general advertising inquiries, please see the posted media kit on our website or e-mail us at publisher@womensadventuremagazine.com.

Office Manager: Lynne Boyle lynne@womensadventuremagazine.com

Having grown up among the business suits and armchair Bears quarterbacks of Chicago, Boulder-based writer Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan found she was a sucker for rugged, mountainman types as soon as she set foot in Colorado. Unfortunately, as she discovers in “He Used Me . . . for a Pro Deal” (It’s Personal, page 24), outdoorsy guys have their downsides. “I’m not giving up on climbers and kayakers just yet,” she says, “but maybe it’s best to go for the ones who already have all their gear.” Elisabeth’s most recent stories can be found in Backpacker and Mountain Gazette. And starting next issue in this magazine, look for her regular column on dating and the outdoors.

Design Manager: Krisan Christensen Circulation Circulation Director: Rick Rhinehart If you’d like to carry Women’s Adventure in your store or would like to explore a partnership to help us grow our subscriber base, please e-mail us at rick@womensadventuremagazine.com.

Subscribers and Customer Service If you wish to subscribe to the magazine, have a change of address, or have missed an issue, please contact Kable Fulfillment at 800 746 3910 or e-mail us at ddln@kable.com.

Web Web Developer: Susan Hayse Women’s Adventure, July/August 2008. Women’s Adventure is published six times per year by Big Earth Publishing, 1722 14th Street, Suite 180, Boulder, CO 803027423. Application to mail at periodical rates is pending at Boulder, CO, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: send address changes to Women’s Adventure, P.O. Box 408, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0408.

The opinions and the advice expressed herein are exclusively those of the authors and are not representative of the publishing company or its members.

Copyright © 2008 by Big Earth Publishing. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is expressly prohibited.

Women’s Adventure makes a portion of its mailing list available from time to time to third parties. If you want to request exclusion from our promotional list, please contact us at ddln@kable.com.

6 Women’s ❊ Adventure

Outdoor activities are inherently risky, and participation can cause injury or loss of life. Please consult your doctor prior to beginning any workout program or sports activity, and seek out a qualified instructor. Big Earth Publishing will not be held responsible for your decision to thrive in the wild. Have fun!

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Dirt

People, Places, and Things from Our Outdoor World ≥ ROAR ≥ sports trend ≥ Health NEws ≥ OUt There ≥ The green zone ≥ Sports Clinic

8 Women’s j Adventure

From Atop One Steep Slab ROAR

I

t took this accomplished climber more than four months to link all the difficult segments of her newest challenge together, but on a cold Yosemite day in February, Beth Rodden bagged her newest first ascent: Meltdown. The climb is being called the hardest naturally protected rock climb ever achieved by a woman and likely the hardest trad pitch in the United States (traditional climbing using careful placement of cams, nuts, and hexes to set your own safety system). This 70-foot overhanging crack has yet to be rated, but it is in the 5.14c range. Back on ground level, Beth took the time to give us the scoop on how she was able to accomplish such a feat.

Corey Rich / Corey Rich Photography

“

I went to the route each day thinking if I could just make a little progress somewhere, whether it was the crux or not, I might be able to do it.

I think I really realized that I needed to rise to a level that I hadn’t been at before, mentally and physically. I really worked on my power by bouldering with friends, and I climbed through fatigue when I needed to and rested really well.

It took me about three months to climb from the bottom through the crux. About two months into it, I figured out a new sequence for the crux, which allowed me to make a lot of progress. I completed the climb about a month and a half after that. The climb itself was definitely very difficult for me. The individual moves were really hard, and having to put them all together was really challenging. On top of that, being a traditional climb and having to place gear added yet another layer.

I think the hardest part of the climb was the culmination of everything counting down. I felt pressure on this project that I normally don’t feel. Usually, I can climb when I want—when I feel healthy and strong and have a lot of time, but the waterfall [nearby, that kept spraying Beth and the rock with water, making the route slippery and raising the water level below her], the weather—it all added up. I think at times I would be all consumed by it. I really had to learn when to obsess about the route and when not to.

I think I go through [the feeling of success and failure] daily with my climbing. The successes are always icing on the cake and really make all the training worth it. But a lot of times, I think failing teaches me more.

It teaches me how to push through, how to improve, and how to take a step back and really analyze why I failed and how I can improve for the next time. I think this climb taught me that I can push myself to new levels and surprise myself. I didn’t think before this one that I could ever climb that hard and work that much on a single pitch climb.

Climbing Meltdown is an amazing feeling for me. It was a very involved and long-term project for me and taught me a lot. I just feel very lucky to have been able to redpoint it. I usually go through a little lull after such a big accomplishment; however, as I get older I just know that it is coming and I learn to go with the flow. But I am really excited this season to climb and boulder with my friends here in Yosemite, so I have no lack of enthusiasm right now.

”

—As told to Bryn Fox

Women’s j Adventure

9

The Dirt SPORTS TREND

Tri’ing with the Girls

All-women Triathlon Camps Her Tri Clinic Manassas, Virginia One-day triathlon clinics held every January on the campus of George Mason University, near Washington, D.C. Geared toward beginners, Her Tri Clinics offer an overview of the sport, tools, and motivation. $190. http://shetris.triitnow.com viXen Los Angeles, California viXen training offers eight- to 12-week clinics geared toward specific triathlons in the Los Angeles area. $350–$400. www.vixentraining.com TriChic Triathlon Camps Clearwater, Florida, and Calistoga, California TriChic offers four-day camps that include coaching in all aspects of triathlon training. For groups unable to travel, TriChic can host camps in their hometown. $399–$599. www.TriChic.com

Breaking into a sport can be daunting, especially when the pinnacle of that sport is the world-famous Ironman, held each year in Kona, Hawaii. This storied triathlon challenges its athletes to a 2.4-mile swim followed by a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2-mile run.

Most triathlons’ distances are not as long as the Ironman’s, but all require swimming, biking, and running—in other words, lots of training. These days you don’t have to put in the long hours alone. More and more women’s triathlon training programs are popping up.

“I joined Iron Chicks,” says Erica Bono of Austin, Texas. “It’s a local all-women camp that prepared me for the 2001 Danskin triathlon. I joined to improve my swim stroke, make me better on the bike, and push me on my running. The coaches also taught me little tricks for the transitions, like wearing my goggles under my cap.”

Another camp, TriChic, held in California’s wine country and on the beaches of Florida, combines training with a little bit of pleasure too. Its founder, Brenda Gilchrist, says, “Most triathlon camps are co-ed and/or designed for elite athletes. Our camps give female triathletes an opportunity to train in a supportive yet competitive environment while building lifelong friendships during a fun girls’ weekend getaway.”

Erica says the Iron Chicks camp jumpstarted something for her and that she has since competed in about 10 triathlons. “It spurred a passion in me.

The camp’s coaches challenged me and gave me a lot of useful information. I think the next step now is becoming a camp instructor myself.”

—Mariko LeBaron

10 Women’s j Adventure

Tri Divas Kona, Hawaii; Las Vegas, Nevada; and various locations in California and Ohio Tri Divas’ offerings include ongoing workshops throughout southern California; destination camps in Hawaii, California, and Nevada; and nine-week workshops. $95–$425. www.tridivas.com Iron Chicks Austin, Texas A 10-week training program includes four group workouts weekly, two open-water trainings, one practice triathlon, a weekly online training schedule, informational seminars, and more. $300. www.runtex.com

HEALTH NEWS

The Doctor Is In: Shoulder Instability How it occurs. Typically, the shoulder will dislocate out the front from an injury when the arm is stretched out away from the side of the body and the hand is rotated backward, such as during a fall. Some experience the shoulder coming out of joint in the front, back, and bottom of the shoulder joint; this is called multidirectional instability.

Who it affects. Women sustain dislocations less frequently than men do. The younger you are when you first dislocate your shoulder, the more likely you are to dislocate the shoulder again in the future. This is called recurrent shoulder instability.

What to do. If a shoulder is dislocated, it should be put back in the socket by a medical professional. X-rays are important in case a fracture occurred with the

CHOOSE YOUR

ADVENTURE

injury. If you try to relocate the shoulder without knowing if there is a fracture, the fracture fragment can be dislodged and require surgery. Relocation is done with a simple local injection of anesthetic or intravenous pain medication followed by gentle traction.

If you’re stuck in a remote area and you dislocate your shoulder, trying to relocate it could make matters worse.

You can try it if you have experience, but without analgesics, it can be tough to get the shoulder back in place.

Once the shoulder is back in the socket, conservative treatment consists of keeping your shoulder immobile in a sling, followed by physical therapy.

Surgery is recommended if you are still experiencing instability after four to six months of conservative treatment.

—Dr. Joanne Halbrecht

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Women’s ❊ Adventure 11

The Dirt OUT THERE

Camping on the Edge T

he next time you grab for your hiking boots, think twice—and grab your water shoes instead. The best way to experience the outdoors this summer is via something much more fun than your own two feet: your kayak or canoe. All these places guarantee good, wet fun and accessible camping. Hiking shoes optional.

KAYAK Prince William Sound, Alaska With more than 3,500 miles of pristine coastline, this remote region of Alaska is accessible only by water. Take a water taxi from Valdez or Whittier to any spot of beach where you choose to begin your journey. Cracking icebergs will be your soundtrack as you keep your eyes peeled for whales.

Experienced captains can paddle to Columbia Glacier, an ice river, and see the second-largest tidewater glacier in North America. Here you can experience kayaking through deep, cold water with extreme tides and conditions. Both official and unofficial campsites are sprinkled throughout the area, so the possibilities for overnighting are endless. Ask your water taxi outfitter for maps and details. www.dnr.state.ak.us CANOE Edisto River, South Carolina One of the longest free-flowing blackwater rivers in the world, the Edisto is known for its dark tea color and 250 miles of calm waters, running from the middle of the state all the way to the Atlantic Ocean at Edisto Beach. Ideal for canoeists, the popular Edisto River Canoe and Kayak Trail is a 56-mile stretch of the river, from mile 50 to mile 105, designated to preserving its natural beauty; it has no rapids, whitewater, or dams. This section takes about 15 hours to travel. Break it down into multiple days, stopping to camp along the Edisto’s sandy shores. With a little luck, you might even see an alligator! Access points for the river are scattered throughout South Carolina; to specifically paddle the trail, put in at Whetstone Crossroads (US 21) and get out at Long Creek Landing (S-15-91). With two cars to shuttle, you can start and end your trip virtually anywhere.

River flow averages 2 to 4 miles per hour—a perfect cruising speed. www.sctrails.net KAYAK or CANOE Upper Missouri River, Montana Three different segments of this class I river allow you to structure a trip from two to six days. The entire Upper Missouri River flows through the northern portion of Montana, beginning near Great Falls, and connects with the Missouri River to the east. The first segment of the Upper Missouri—the “Upper River”—is 42 miles long, beginning in Fort Benton. A perfect two-day trip, this section runs faster than the rest, and though it’s lined with private land there are still a number of designated campsites, legal for canoers to stop for the night. The

12 Women’s j Adventure

Intrepid Travel… meet your new local friend

Five Things You Can’t Camp on the Water Without Make sure any nonwaterproof valuables, along with some warm clothes, are packed properly in drybags so no 1 Drybags. matter how wet you get, your important stuff will stay dry. food packaging. Things like glass jars and bottles can weigh down your boat (and give you a lot to pack out), so 2 Smart bring meals in packaging that’s light and can be compacted

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once the food has been eaten. maps. You can stick a waterproof map of the coastline and campsites in the bungees on top of your boat 3 Waterproof for easy access, and you won’t have to worry about them

africa • asia • australasia • europe • latin america • middle east

getting ruined. or water shoes. Getting in and out of your boat on rocky beaches can do a number on your feet. Water-friendly 4 Booties shoes will protect your feet and dry out quickly. bags. For added waterproofing for large items like sleeping bags, trash bags can give you a little extra protection 5 Trash in a pinch. They also work as a makeshift rain poncho or rain fly for a leaky tent.

next section, the “White Cliffs of the Missouri,” is the most popular stretch, with straight-flowing river, 300-foot cliffs, and numerous Indian habitation sites along the banks. The last segment, the “Badlands of the Upper Missouri,” is the longest at 61 miles. It takes you to the James Kipp Recreation Area at the boundary of the Upper Missouri, is by far the least-traveled portion of the river, and remains the most rugged. With tons of hiking trails and wildlife viewing, this section is best done as a six-day trip. www.uppermissouri.com CANOE Black Canyon, Nevada/Arizona Delineating the Nevada/Arizona border is the Colorado River, and just below Hoover Dam is the Black Canyon, a stretch of river appropriately named for the area’s black volcanic rock.

Though there are no rapids on this section of the Colorado, the water can move swiftly at times, depending on the releases from the dam. Park at one of the many access sites and paddle upstream from there, or shuttle cars for a point-to-point downriver run. There are numerous geothermal attractions along the way, such as hot springs and a sauna cave a short walk from the banks. Launching at Willow Beach, 12 miles downriver from Hoover Dam, will allow you to spend a few days paddling against the current for a nice workout, so once

The true account of love, travel, adventure, loss, and inspiration against a moun backdrop. Here is the story of Alex Lowe, Jennifer Lowe and Conrad Anker. And how hope and love survive.

«In pire the soul long after the last page i tum d."

- Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cup otTea "Forget Me Not wiU stay with you forever.'

-Tom Brokaw

"compelling"- Yvon Chouinard, founder, Patagonia "beautiful"

- Alison Osius, Rock&/ce

Women’s j Adventure 13

THE DIRT KAYAK San Juan Islands, Washington Protected from Pacific swells and storms by Vancouver Island, these boundary waters offer ideal paddling conditions in the safety of the calm, flat Puget Sound, an intricate arm of the Pacific that reaches up to 50 miles inland, stretching from the Admiralty Inlet to Olympia, Washington. Explore any one or all three of the San Juan Islands, as they all have camping accessible via water. At only 29.5 square miles, Lopez is the smallest of the islands and the most rural. Spend your evenings mingling with the resident artists, musicians, and farmers.

The largest of the islands, Orcas, contains Moran State Park, with more than 30 miles of hiking trails and five lakes for swimming and fishing. The namesake San Juan Island is home to a pod of more than 90 orca whales, which you are likely to see during the summer months. On San Juan you can also go scuba diving, visit art galleries, or take in the community theater. The best nooks and crannies of these coastlines are all accessible via kayak. www.guidetosanjuans.com —Bryn Fox

READERS’ POLL RESULTS

How’s your sense of direction?



You answered:

Excellent—I’m always the navigator

I can figure out where I am if I have to

62%

35%

Go to www.womensadventuremagazine.com to participate in our next readers’ poll.

14 Women’s ❊ Adventure

FREE STUFF

Don’t Leave Home Without It Marmot’s Ion Windshirt is one of those items that once you have it, you wonder what you ever did without it. Compact enough to fit in your hand and lightweight enough that you won’t even know you’re carrying it, it’s the perfect piece of outerwear to throw on for hikes, climbs, or those early morning runs. Enter to win the Ion, which retails for $55, at www.womens adventuremagazine. com/marmot10.html before July 30. Winner will be announced by August 15.

ELSA / GETTY IMAGES SPORT

you’ve reached the end of the road (or the dam) you can turn around and float effortlessly all the way back to where you started. Or you can put in at the dam and float 63 miles to the take-out at Lake Mojave. www.desertriveroutfitters.com

SOUND BYTE

ELSA / GETTY IMAGES SPORT

Olympic-bound marathoner Deena Kastor swears by this playlist to keep her fast and focused: ≥ “Beautiful Day,” Matt Darey ≥ “Beautiful Day,” U2 ≥ “Time of Your Life,” Paul Oakenfold ≥ “That Look” (Single Edit), De’Lacy ≥ “Sky Fits Heaven,” Madonna ≥ “My World,” Paul van Dyk ≥ “Victorious,” DJ Tiësto

Women’s ❊ Adventure 15

THE DIRT OUT THERE

Spotlight

Nancy Hogshead-Makar Nancy Hogshead-Makar would tell you that her incredible accomplishments were a product of opportunity. As one of the country’s leading advocates for Title IX and increasing athletic opportunities for girls’ and women, you’d believe her.

Now: Nancy is currently on sabbatical as a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law and is working with both the University of Colorado and the University of North Carolina. She has been challenged with reviewing the universities’ policies and practices regarding sexual violence and harassment and is making recommendations on how to make the schools safe and equitable places for all students.

“All her athletic skills were transferable,” says Donna Lopiano, PhD, arguably the nation’s foremost authority on Title IX, “being a student of the game and having an extraordinary work ethic and a tireless pursuit of her goals, which now happens to coincide with the goals of her clients.”

—Sarah Murray

16 Women’s ❊ Adventure

STEPHEN LOVEKIN / GETTY IMAGES ENTERTAINMENT

THEN: When Nancy was 11, her family moved to Gainesville, Florida—swimming country.

Three years after her first swim lesson, she was ranked number one in the world. Not a bad case for opportunity preceding interest.

In high school Nancy won three national championships. She qualified for the 1980 Olympic team, only to have her dreams dashed by the American boycott of the Moscow games.

She became the first swimmer to receive a full scholarship to Duke University, where she was a two-time All-American and broke eight school records, which still stand today. Her performance at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles brought her instant fame: one silver and three gold medals.

Discipline and drive for perfection aren’t easily switched off. After retiring from the pool, Nancy graduated from Georgetown Law. As a practicing attorney, she fought Title IX cases, representing female athletes who were being cheated of their dreams. She has testified in front of Congress multiple times, co-authored two books, and appeared on CNN and CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

THE GREEN ZONE

TUNE IT UP

Concerned that rising gas prices will keep you off the road?

These tips will keep your car fuel efficient and adventure bound. / Check your tires to ensure that they are properly inflated.

Increasing air pressure to correct levels can improve your gas mileage by 3 to 4 percent, and your tires will perform better as well. / Change a dirty air filter and watch gas mileage improve by up to 10 percent. A clogged filter allows dirt and grime to infiltrate, slowing down and possibly permanently damaging your engine. / Make sure you are using the correct grade of oil for your car.

And when getting your next oil change, ask for a brand that says “energy conserving,” which contains ingredients that reduce friction. / Get your car regularly tuned up and checked for any irregularities.

Although you might see only a 3 to 4 percent increase in gas mileage efficiency for some repairs, you could see up to 40 percent for repairing a failing oxygen sensor. / Pack lightly! The heavier your car, the harder it has to work, burning more gas. / Finally, if you happen to be in the market for a new car, check out one of the top two hybrids with the highest fuel-efficiency: the Toyota Prius (48/45 city/highway) and the Honda Civic Hybrid (40/45 city/highway).

—Jodi Kopke

HELPFUL HINT #6

2008

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Women’s j Adventure 19

The Dirt

W

First-timers Take a lesson.

Regardless of your comfort level with whitewater, to learn to whitewater kayak the first thing you’ll need to do is take a lesson. A knowledgeable professional can teach you the basics you’ll need to stay safe and help build your platform of essential skills—all while in the safety of calm, flatwater. “I would recommend at least a few days on the water before making your decision to commit,” says Ruth. “Stick with the lessons until you get into the rapids, probably a few days in, so you really know what you are getting into before trying to get out on your own.”

Get comfortable in the water.

Regardless of your previous involvement in water sports, getting some familiarity with being in the river and understanding how your body reacts to swimming, floating, and holding your breath can be helpful in building up your confidence in the boat. “Optimally, you should be comfortable swimming a few lengths of a pool,” advises Ruth.

“If you weren’t born a water baby, practice holding your breath without physically plugging your nose.” This will help prevent you from panicking if and when you go under the water while kayaking.

Master the basics in flatwater.

Before you get into rough waters, you’ll want to be confident in your skills on flatwater portions of the river. Here you’ll learn how your body and your boat react to the dynamics of the water. “I am a strong believer that if you can’t do it in the flatwater, you won’t be able to do it in the whitewater,” says Ruth. By training in flatwater, you are creating habits that will then come naturally while in whitewater. So don’t feel rushed to get into the class IIIs. Plan some downtime in the flat stretches every time you get on the river.

Ruth Gordon j Adventure 20 Women’s jAdventure

Learn to roll.

To right yourself in the water when you accidentally flip upside down (which is inevitable as you get into rougher water), you need to learn a move called the Eskimo roll. Ruth tells us when upside down in the water: • Set up your position by curling your body over the cockpit while placing the paddle parallel along one side of the boat. (You’ll really need to reach with the paddle because when you flip upside down you want it to be on the surface.)

”

Billy Harris

ith a stretch of moving water, a boat to play in, and an arsenal of tricks up your sleeve, you can have about as much fun in the river as, well, anywhere on earth. With the help of 2007 freestyle kayaking world champion Ruth Gordon, you can be eddying in by next weekend.

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Whitewater School

Otter Bar Lodge Kayak School, Forks of Salmon, California Mid-April through September, seven-day all-inclusive program. $2,190. www.otterbar.com Liquid Adventures, Potomac River, Washington, D.C. Year-round weekend classes for all levels. Check website for prices. www.liquidadventures.org Class VI River Runners, West Virginia Spring through fall, one- to four-day classes, ranging from $170 to $620, not including accommodations. www.class-vi.com

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Green River Adventures, Asheville, North Carolina May through October, two-day intro class, all levels. $300–$500. www.greenriveradventures.com

• Curl your body out to the side as you sweep the paddle out to perpendicular. Using the sweep of the paddle to gain some leverage, rock your hips away from the outstretched paddle—a move known as a hip flick.

• Your finish position should be lying back on your stern, with your head and eyes turned to the paddle blade still in the water. You will undoubtedly want to have a pro show you how to do this and critique you the first few times.

Take it out of the river.

“Practicing in a pool is a great way to perfect your technique before venturing out into the whitewater,” says Ruth. “A lot of pools have rolling clinics or open kayaking time.” Once you learn some basics from an instructor, the controlled conditions of a swimming pool will allow you to practice your technique until you build up confidence and muscle memory. When you flip in whitewater, you may be too nervous to think of all the necessary steps to right yourself, but if you’ve spent some hours in the pool, you can expect your muscle memory to kick in and guide you through the motions.

Learn to read the river.

From one foot to the next, the water may be moving in an entirely different way. To stay in your boat and take on whatever feature the river might bring, says Ruth, “It is important to learn to be able to read the whitewater so that you can choose your line and stay on it.” This is a good thing to practice in a rapid that you are familiar with. Choose a route that is different from the one you usually take and see how it turns out. See if you are able to make the line you have chosen; if not, were you able to get yourself on course for a different line? Much of running whitewater is about reading the river and knowing where to go. This will become increasingly important as you progress into more-difficult sections of river.

Taking It Up a Notch Play your way downriver.

Small features can yield big fun, and “all the while you are learning how your boat reacts to different situations and in many cases getting in some unintentional roll practice too!” Learn to feel out the personality of your boat and challenge yourself against the features you paddle through. Try a stern squirt: while crossing an eddy line, wind up your body, drop your upstream edge, and use a reverse sweep stroke (a flat arching stroke used to change the direction of the boat) to pivot around the stern.

Master an understanding of river flow.

“Lessons, a book or video, and talking with an experienced river person will help you develop a better sense of the river,” says Ruth. “Understanding what all the features are, where they are found, and how they will affect the movement of you and your boat will all improve the caliber of your kayaking.” To learn more, Ruth recommends The Ultimate Guide to Whitewater Kayaking by Ken Whiting and Kevin Varette (Heliconia Press, 2004).

Take a rescue class.

As your kayaking progresses, you will inherently take more risks. The better equipped you are to safely navigate a section of river and react to any possible danger, the more freedom you’ll have. In a swift-water rescue course, you will learn all about safety, including rope work, river swimming tactics, and signals used to communicate when conditions may prevent usual conversation. Ruth reminds us that “safety is imperative for all skill levels!” Check out www.swiftwater-rescue.com for more information about classes and certifications.

22 Women’s j Adventure

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He Used Me . . . for a Pro Deal (A Cautionary Tale)

By Elisabeth Kwak-Hefferan

H

e was a Boulder boy, that’s for sure. One of those guys who own 12 different kinds of technical shoes and don’t eat meat. They climb Estes Park ice in the winter and guide California rivers come summer—but mountaineering is their true passion, or so they tell you. They’re always tan. Their abs ripple, and their blond hair stays curly even when wet.

I was a naive midwestern girl, just in from Illinois for a job in the outdoor industry. I’d never skied, never mastered the Eskimo roll, never rappelled down a sheer rock face. I didn’t yet know about these mountain guys and how they want only one thing.

Is it any wonder what happened next?

We met on a trail outside of town and got together a few times after that, very friendly stuff. I couldn’t tell if I liked him or not—though, to a girl used to Chicago’s blazers and business suits, he made puffy vests look damn good.

We didn’t see each other all that often, but that was okay. Work was keeping me busy. A few weeks into the

24 Women’s j Adventure

gig, I went along on a gear-testing trip in the mountains with the top brass, stuffing 55 pounds into a pack that wasn’t even on the market yet so we could try out 850-fill down sleeping bags and ultralight tents.

I saw him again the Thursday after we got back; he was hosting a party to present a slideshow of his summit climb up Rainier. In between bites of homemade hummus, I told him about my trip. He seemed awfully interested; looking back, the lust on his face was obvious.

Still, I wouldn’t have minded him undressing me with his eyes if only he hadn’t imagined me in lingerie of 40-denier ripstop nylon. Before I left he pulled me aside, wondering what I was doing on Saturday night.

The next morning I got an e-mail from him, asking again.

Oh, he was charming, even more so when he suggested our evening activity: let’s drive up Flagstaff Canyon and sit in the back of my truck and look at the city lights.

So drive up we did, slipping into a bottle of pinot noir and tracking shooting stars like you never see in Chicago.

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He sat close to me and asked thoughtful questions about my favorite music and my first kiss.

I guess that’s about the time my knees got a little weak.

The next morning another e-mail was waiting for me: Thanks for a really nice evening last night. Haven’t done something like that in a long time. So, I’m wondering if you have an official pro deal? If you do have such a deal, I’ll go pretty far with favors to get a tent.

Oh, really?

I’ll entertain almost anything, and I aim to please.

He threw out a few ideas, safe yet somehow suggestive: He would make calzones for me. He would detail my car. He would take me climbing up the Flatirons.

Even over e-mail his voice was buttery, his lips inches from my ear. I could almost feel his hand on my thigh.

Flattered by the attention, I discovered I could indeed get him a killer deal on the high-end mountaineering tent he so desired. I told him so and threw him a line of my own: Help me change the burned-out turn signal on my car. Prove those cooking skills. Take me somewhere I can wear a hot dress. Teach me how to self-arrest.

Here in the mountains, it’s a whole new game; carbon fiber and Gore-Tex trump even the most enticing feminine charms.

Just a few hours later: Take you to dinner somewhere you can wear a hot dress . . . Who’s doing who the favor?

Cheeks flushed, I nevertheless put an end to our tit-for-tent banter. He didn’t owe me any return favors, I told him. But if any of that stuff sounded like fun anyway, well, that was a different story.

How can I turn down an evening with you in a hot dress?

And one more thing: Oh, and you can have the honor of being the first person to share space with me in this new stellar winter shelter.

I must say, he was good, this mountain guy. I spent the next days in a walking swoon, helpless against his expert seduction. I gave it up. That’s right, I ordered his tent at 40 percent off. That very day I got a message from him. Turns out he’d had another iron in the fire the whole time, someone else with a pro deal. That iron had played the coquette for so long this mountain man had given up. But in the end, the other one gave in and got him the tent. By a stretch of incredible luck, I got in touch with the gear rep just before she placed the nonrefundable $300 order.

I saw him just one more time after that. He was nice, but the caress was gone from his voice. He’d gotten what he wanted, after all. He had the tent. Still, I believed him when we made plans for the upcoming weekend. I’ll call you, he said.

I waited. Days passed. The weekend passed. The dress never left the closet.

I was annoyed, then angry. Then the weeks stretched on, and I was just embarrassed. This hadn’t been about my kind heart or my sparkling conversation at all. Not even about how I looked in tight jeans. He wanted me for my pro deal. Anywhere else, a girl just has to worry about getting used the old-fashioned way. But here in the mountains, it’s a whole new game; carbon fiber and Gore-Tex trump even the most enticing feminine charms. From now on it’ll take more than an ice ax and a compliment to turn my head. And I’ve got a new rule: never give him a pro deal before the third date. I~·I.:I

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Women’s j Adventure 25

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Horse Lessons Pam Houston reminds us of the age-old mind meld between horses and girls.

R

emember when you liked horses better than boys? Remember when the best day imaginable was when you got to ride your bike straight from your junior high school English class to the barn, where the willowy blond instructor named Chase or Chance or Charlie let you work your favorite thoroughbred for two hours in the ring if you mucked out 10 stalls and carried 20 buckets of water?

Remember the Saturday afternoons in early fall, when you got to take that same thoroughbred out onto the cross-country course, that feeling of pure exhilaration when a living being who has been bred for one thing and one thing only puts his head down at the edge of a huge grassy meadow, drops it into turbo drive, and begins to run?

Remember how youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d start out with your heart in your throat and the reins tight between your fingers, but then you realized he was smoother than a Cadillac

26 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

convertible and twice as fast, and you began moving with him instead of just hanging on for dear life? Next thing you knew, you were talking to him with your legs, asking for the gallop and asking for controlâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not your control, of course, but his; you were asking him to control his own gallop. You were reminding him that speed and control are not opposites, that they can be contained in the same request, asked for with one movement of the leg.

Remember the way you knew how, without ever learning, like it was your birthright to be hooked up to the age-old mind meld between horses and girls, to move your leg in a way that made that request but at the same time made a promise. It said, You can trust me. It said, I am asking you to gallop with me, but I am also telling you at every second that I am right here, helping you have the courage to gallop. It said, You are holding me up, it is true, but I am up here holding you together.

>>>>>> >>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Remember that this is what makes horseback riding different from tennis or skiing—that there are two wills constantly engaged. Remember the way that horse tested you, tested you every minute, and he read your fears straight through your body like no human being ever could. How he would know the second you lost attention and then pretend to be much less intelligent than he was, walking into a hole on purpose or getting caught up in barbed wire, and you didn’t know why, exactly. Maybe he liked watching your hands gently separate the barbs from his fetlocks; maybe he recognized this as an act of undying love.

Remember how the two of you talked to each other and how most days you reached an understanding, and he became more human and you became more equine, which didn’t take all that much becoming because if you didn’t have an equine spirit, you wouldn’t have spent so much of your time hanging around horses, and if he didn’t have a human sensibility, he wouldn’t be your chosen horse.

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Remember how you got scared sometimes, but not exactly of him, or even of your work together, but of how you continued to fail him in all the same ways, in all the same places. And though he’d been tricked (not by you but by something bigger, some universal law of nature questionable but stronger than you both) into believing that you were the one holding the reins, it was also true that one well-placed kick—even a kick of joy—could break your arm in 19 places. And the one thing he really understood about you (and it is the reason he sometimes bucked you off and the reason he’d ford a belly-deep river for you) is that what you wanted most of all, what all the years of riding showed you, is the possibility of going that fast together without fear.

And if you don’t remember any of this, if you were not a girl who got to spend countless hours in the fine company of horses, it is never too late to discover the multiple wonders that reside there. There is the soft nicker of greeting when you open the barn door in the morning. There is the plain fact that if you stand very still in the center of the paddock, even the most timid horses will get curious enough to come to the bridle in your hand. There is the satisfaction of combing the knots out of his mane with a stiff brush. There is the kindness in his eye when he accepts the significant weight of the saddle, the gentleness with which you offer and he takes the bit. There are the silver clouds of his breath on a fast ride down a snowy road on a subzero morning. There is the surprise of speed in 16 hands of horseflesh and of grace in the slowing of that same horse, in the giving in.

A relationship with a series of good horses taught me everything I needed to know about cooperation, mutual trust, and what my therapist likes to call “healthy dependency.” Now if I could only figure out how to take all that knowledge and use it with the boys . . .

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28 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure Jon Lowenstein/Aurora Photos

Adventure

By Rail Hopping a train is just the answer to rising fuel prices and air travel headaches. And youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll actually arrive at your destination relaxed. What a concept.

Jon Lowenstein/Aurora Photos

By Kelli Kavanaugh

Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure 29

Last winter,

Ryan Humphrey

in search of adventure, a friend and I opted for a trip to Montana via rail. We hopped on an Amtrak train in Detroit one morning and transferred to the cross-country Empire Builder line in Chicago.

The trip itself was spectacular. The route runs between Illinois and Minnesota and then hugs the northern border of the United States all the way from North Dakota to Washington.

The stretch that passes through Glacier National Park alone is worth the price of passage: the tracks cantilever over valleys and run perilously near to sheer peaks jutting up overhead.

The evening of our second day on the train, we arrived at the historic depot in Whitefish, Montana. Determined to keep our entire trip car-free, we dragged our luggage three short blocks to the centrally located Downtowner Inn. We found plenty of bars and restaurants within walking distance, and Whitefish has a convenient free shuttle bus between downtown and the nearest ski resort, Big Mountain, about 10 miles and a few stops away.

After several days of snowboarding, we hopped back on the rails early one morning to tackle Glacier, just one train stop away.

We rented cross-country skis right outside the park entrance and spent the entire day in the quiet snow of one of the most majestic

national parks in the country. We took the train back to Whitefish in late afternoon, in time for a night on the town.

After a couple more days on the mountain, it was almost a relief to get on the train, heading east toward home. We slept most of the way—but at least we were able to go back to work nice and rested after a vacation that was really a weeklong workout.

How to Train It Logistically speaking, the railroad falls between auto and air travel in terms of autonomy and convenience. Obviously, operating one’s own vehicle allows for complete command over schedules and routes, but it also requires total responsibility and unwavering attention. When flying, you leave the driving to more-capable hands, but you hand over any and all control to the airline.

Although the schedule is predetermined, on a train your time is your own: enjoy a slow-paced sit-down meal at a table, hang out in the viewing car with a book, or chat with fellow passengers in the lounge car. Plus, boarding a train is much less stressful than boarding an airplane, and the relatively slow pace of rail travel is relaxing.

30 Women’s j Adventure

Intrigued? Here’s how to start planning that epic railroad journey. It’s as simple as pulling out some maps that show train routes and finding cities with stops that reach the itch you are looking to scratch.

What’s your pleasure: Surfing? Hop off in San Diego. Kayaking?

Seattle. Hiking? Albuquerque. Or Cumberland. Or Minneapolis. You get the picture.

Where to go

United States Denver: Have your cake and eat it too A train trip to Denver can combine a visit to a great American city—replete with concerts, art, and culture—with amazing access to whatever outdoor pleasure your heart desires, whether it’s rock climbing, hiking, mountain biking, or, depending on the season, lots of snow.

The California Zephyr line, which begins and ends in San Francisco and Chicago, makes a stop in Denver (www.amtrak.com).

It’s a superb train ride with expansive views of the heartland, the Rockies, and numerous canyons—and the first thing you see when you step out of the station is Wynkoop Brewing Company, apropos for a town that takes its microbrew very seriously (www. wynkoop.com).

Boulder is an easy 45-minute bus ride from the train station.

The town is a walking, shopping, and dining mecca (www.bouldercol oradousa.com). Or you can take it up a notch with hiking or climbing in Chautauqua Park and the surrounding area. Stay the night: you can rent a historic cottage or grab a room in the Columbine Lodge right on the park’s grounds (www.chautauqua.com).

A bit farther afoot is Winter Park, about an hour west of Denver. Skiing, snowboarding, biking, hiking, and fishing—it’s a great destination in any season (www.skiwinterpark.com).

The California Zephyr makes a stop here; or, if you are heading over after a stay in Denver, you can hop on the Ski Train, which has both winter and summer seasons. It will take you directly from Denver to Winter Park in about an hour (www.skitrain.com).

Three More: Salt Lake City: Also a stop on the California Zephyr line, Salt Lake offers many of the same outdoor activities as Denver. Hike or bike City Creek Canyon (www.trails.com), boulder Pete’s Rock (www.killerclimbs.com), or ski Alta (www.alta.com).

Yosemite National Park: The San Joaquin line travels through California’s agricultural heart and stops in Merced, just outside the park, but Amtrak offers a bus connector that drops you off in the park near the Yosemite Lodge. With traffic congestion becoming a major issue in many of the more popular national parks, this is a sensible way to arrive at Yosemite guilt-free (www.nps.gov/yose).

Charleston: Hop off the Palmetto line, which runs along the eastern seaboard from Miami to New York City, in balmy Charleston, North Carolina. Your itinerary might include paddling to Capers Island and camping on the beach, hiking the Oakridge Trail, or taking an overnight canoe trip on the Edisto River (www.charlestoncvb.com).

Must Read: The Wayward Bus (Penguin Classics; 1947)

by John Steinbeck Any Steinbeck book is a wonderful traveling companion, but this one documents a bus trip gone awry and the intertwined fates of travelers with little in common save one “wayward” trip.

TIM STEVENS

Train Logistics ≥

Security on trains has been amped up in recent years but is nowhere near as invasive as air travel has become. A valid ID is necessary to board a train, checked luggage is screened, and onboard baggage may be randomly searched.

≥

When researching a town, try to find accommodations that are near the train station so that your walk is quick—you will be hauling all your gear.

≥

Depending on what kind of train you are in and where you are, some precautions should be taken while you are sleeping. Keep your money and passport on your person, first and foremost. I’ve bungee-ed the door on an unreserved berth on an eastern European train.

Another option if you are traveling in a group or pair is to rotate sleeping shifts. Again, it all depends on your comfort level. Most of the time, sleeping in your seat is a worry-free proposition, but extra money for a couchette should be considered for peace of mind and added comfort if you have any concern whatsoever. Sometimes it’s just worth springing for the luxury of stretching out.

≥

The number one thing to keep in mind while traveling by train is to absolve yourself of your western expectations of speed and machinelike precision. Train travel takes time, but that is what vacations are supposed to be: unstructured, unhurried days.

A Canadian National train passes by Mount Fitzwilliam as it travels through Lucerne, British Columbia.

CANADA

Vancouver Island: Adventurous beauty Many Americans overlook their neighbor to the north when planning a journey, but that’s a mistake. The varied nation has plains and mountains and forests and, most of all, vast expanses that are surprisingly reachable by train.

VIA Rail, Canada’s premier line, is aptly called the Canadian. It stretches from Toronto to Vancouver and might be the only way to truly take in the breadth of the country. The trip is even marketed as a gateway for backcountry adventure—it actually allows passengers to request special stops, in the middle of nowhere, to reach a particular unnamed part of the country (www.viarail.ca).

When you arrive in Vancouver, you have a couple of options: you can head to perennial favorite Whistler (www.whistlerblackcomb. com) on the Mountaineer train to ride, bike, or climb, but your best bet may be to hop a ferry to Vancouver Island (www.visit-vancouverisland. com). Once on the island, you can traverse its length on the Malahat line, from Victoria at its southern tip to Courtenay in the north. Mount Washington (www.mountwashington.ca), to the west of Courtenay, is not as big as Whistler but it gets more snow. Plus the panoramic views from the top are spectacular. In warmer months hiking and mountain biking are popular in the area.

You can also catch a ferry from Seattle, which is reached by Amtrak’s Empire Builder and Coast Starlight lines.

Vancouver Island is just north of the dozen Gulf Islands, a premier kayaking destination that has more than 1,000 caves, earning it the moniker the “Island of the Caves” (www.gulfislandsguide.com).

Just south of Courtenay, don’t miss Horne Lake Caves Provincial Park

for some spelunking or climbing (www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/ explore/parkpgs/horne.html).

Two More: Mont Tremblant: This one requires a bus transfer from Montreal, but it’s well worth the hassle. Mont Tremblant is consistently ranked the East’s top ski resort by Ski magazine; its 94 trails are wooded and lengthy. Add in some snowshoeing to spice up your holiday.

And don’t forget to eat some poutine, classic Canadian comfort food that will warm you through and through. The resort may be worth a summer visit as well; the Laurentians make for some spectacular horseback riding, hiking, and biking (www.tremblant.ca).

Churchill, Manitoba: The polar bear capital of the world is reachable by the Hudson Bay line, which terminates in Winnipeg, a stop on VIA’s Canadian line. This sub-Arctic town is also known for whale watching, hiking, hunting, fishing, dogsledding, and snowmobiling (www.townofchurchill.ca).

Must Read: Surfacing (Anchor, 1972)

by Margaret Atwood This book addresses environmentalism in Canada through the prism of a larger scale of activism burgeoning in the 1960s—along with a distinctly not-a-Yank perspective. In only her second novel—she has since won the National Book Award—Atwood paints a picture of nature and madness that is haunting and memorable.

Women’s j Adventure 31

Gary Yeowell / The Image Bank / Getty Images

,

Nighttime in Bruges

32 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

Europe

Gary Yeowell / The Image Bank / Getty Images

Traveling by train in Europe is obviously much more common than it is on this side of the pond. Even [gasp!] Americans accept train travel as normal when they visit the Continent. To this end the number of adventure destinations accessible by rail in Europe is really limited only by your imagination and a map. Eurail offers a variety of passes, ranging from travel within one country, to five bordering countries, to the entire continent (www.eurail.com).

Consider a cycling tour of the Low Countries, the Netherlands, and Belgium (www.visitbelgium.com/bike.htm). So many people ride there that the cycling infrastructure—rentals, maps, bike lanes, and even places to lock up—makes it easy to take a grand tour. Begin in Amsterdam, where multilevel parking structures for bikes exist, and rent a bike—or hook up with a tour.

Start the trip off with a day or two spent pedaling around the city, taking in the sites and marveling at the amazing ability of the Dutch to integrate cycling with everyday urban life—we’re talking high heels, dresses, kids, coffee, and phone calls. Take a side trip to Haarlem, a quaint, tulip-growing borough complete with galleries, medieval architecture, and a lively town market. It’s just 30 miles round trip—a great day trip.

When you’re ready to embark on a more substantial journey, consider heading to Bruges, a weeklong trek that combines cycling and barges en route to this World Heritage city (www.brugge.be/internet/ en/index.htm). You can swing through Utrecht, visit the town of Gouda, see windmills in Kinderdijk, pass the Biesbosch nature reserve, and ride the flat Flemish countryside near Antwerp. Don’t miss a refreshing stop at a Trappist monk brewery in West Flanders.

Arriving in Bruges is like stepping back in time—or into a postcard. With tree-lined canals, arched brick bridges, and cobblestone streets, the charming town is perfect for meandering strolls to wind down your sore legs. Spend a luxurious night at the Hotel Ter Duinen, with a canal view and breakfast made fresh with ingredients from local farmers (www.terduinenhotel.be).

Bruges’s main railway station connects regularly to all of Belgium’s other major cities, which are regional hubs. Heading back to Amsterdam by train is a piece of cake: it’s a mere fourhour trip.

Two More: Kirchberg, Austria: The famous town of Kitzbühel is a top ski destination for Germans on holiday, but stay on the train for one more stop and disembark in Kirchberg. The town is just as alpine adorable as its more famous neighbor but is a bit more affordable. There are apartments for rent throughout town; vacancy is discernible from a lighted sign in the town square.

Kirchberg is fairly easy to reach by train from Munich via Innsbrook, Salzberg, and London. Hiking is popular year-round in the area, as well (www.skiaustria.com).

Croatia: Croatia can be reached by train via connections in Vienna and Prague. The country has become a mecca for adventure seekers, with kayaking topping the list. With clean water and soaring cliffs punctuated with largely unpopulated islands, paddling the Adriatic is a singular experience, but the country’s river kayaking is spectacular, as well. From Karlovac four rivers—the Kupa, Mreznica, Korana, and Dobra—converge, making it a great popping-off point (www.croatiatraveller.com).

Must Read: The Great Railway Bazaar (Penguin, 1975)

by Paul Theroux Theroux has a reputation for excellence in travel writing as well as his fiction, which also takes readers to faraway destinations. It’s hard to single out just one of his books, but this one gets the nod because it takes place, in part, on European trains. The book captures the minutiae of train travel to a T: sights and characters are described in great detail, oftentimes with the benefit of Theroux’s superbly sharpened wit.

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How To Pack

Train travel requires smart packing but, thankfully, is much less forgiving than air travel. Large bags, like snowboards and golf clubs, can be checked at many Amtrak stations, although some smaller ones forgo checking altogether. Schedules with station guides are your friend. Read everything you can about your stop(s) so you will be prepared.

≥ If you are a light sleeper, earplugs are a good idea.

Stops are called through the night, and breakfast is announced really early. Also, families with kids tend to stir at first light. Plugs also help with naps.

Alternatively, if you are a music buff, put your iPod volume on low and nod out to some relaxing tunes. Definitely bring a variety of reading material. ≥ This is a good opportunity to tackle a long book you can really sink your teeth into. A mix of magazines is great for short diversions. If your final destination is a hotel and not a base camp, pack along the laptop for movies. Electrical outlets can be at a premium on older trains, but Nancy Drew them out and plan on charging up when they are not at peak demand (i.e., 8 p.m.).

A deck of cards can be a lifesaver, too. Worst-case scenario: solitaire can pass many, many hours.

Trust me on that one. ≥

Bring snacks like trail mix and fruit, and a large water bottle is a must. For meals a dining car might be a bit expensive but is a great break if a long day of riding is starting to bore you. Cheese sandwiches are excellent survival food for long trips. Buy a hard cheese and make a sandwich for breakfast and lunch, saving up to treat yourself to dinner.

Japan

It’s only fitting that snowboarding is king in Japan, the country that hosted the first Winter Olympics—Nagano in 1998—that included the sport in competition. And in the island country where trains rule supreme, the opportunity to combine a mountain trip with comfortable travel is unparalleled.

Japan’s world-class ski resort infrastructure makes it possible to hop a train in Tokyo at 7 a.m., arrive at a resort before 9 a.m., ride all day, and return to the city in time for dinner. There are plenty of options, as dozens of ski spots are reachable by train from Tokyo in less than two hours. One resort, GALA Yuzawa, even has a bullet train station built into the same structure that houses its gondola.

A good web resource is Snow Japan (www.snowjapan.com).

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Dining—Russian style

If you’re looking for something other than mountains, head for the Izu Peninsula, a popular recreation destination for Tokyo residents due to its hot springs and surfing. It’s only 60 miles southwest of the city. Americans can buy a discounted train pass while still on home soil at Japan Rail Pass (www.japanrail.com).

Must Read: A Haiku Journey: Bash’s Narrow Road to a Far Province (Kodansha International, 1974)

by Matsuo Bashu This journal by poet Matsuo Bash recounts his 1,200-mile journey by foot taken in 1689. The subject of a stirring photo essay in a recent issue of National Geographic, the book continues to inspire travelers and searchers more than 300 years after its publication.

Russia

Perhaps the classic train trip is the Trans-Siberian Express. It is a perfect opportunity for intrepid travelers to combine adventure with rail travel in a nation, much like Canada, that is truly expansive.

Consider departing from Moscow for the cross-country skiing trip of a lifetime in the Ural Mountains (www.uraltourism.com/crosscountry-ski.php). On the eastern side of the range is Yekaterinburg, known for its dramatic history and numerous eighteenth-century monuments and monasteries. Ski all day and enjoy the ballet or an opera in the evening. The train trip is an overnighter.

Using St. Petersburg as the start of your journey, you could also head to the Karelian forests, another overnight train trip. The area is called “Europe’s lungs” because of its thick taiga and tundra forests, and much of the area is set aside as nature reserves and national parks (http://nordictravel.ru/page/winter_holidays.html).

Must Read: Anna Karenina (Modern Library, 1875−77)

by Leo Tolstoy This classic literary work is the perfect train companion. It contrasts a tender love story with one that is less than noble, has finely drawn characters, and delves into the history and the practices of Russian religion, class structure, education, industry, and agriculture. If that sounds like a lot to pack into one book, it is, but Tolstoy is a master who was more than up to the challenge.

And its climax takes place—you guessed it—at a train station.

Hiroyuki Matsumoto

Things you might want to have: ¸ Something comfortable to sleep in, like sweats ¸ A small pillow and a light blanket—wonderful luxuries if you can fit them ¸ A change of socks and underwear ¸ Rubber-soled slippers or flip-flops for night-time bathroom trips ¸ Toiletries—because sometimes just washing your face and brushing your teeth can make you feel like a new woman

avatra images / Alamy

≥ Pack one large bag with everything you’ll need when you arrive at your destination as well as a smaller duffel or backpack with train necessities.

Mount Fuji, Japan

Hiroyuki Matsumoto

36 Women’s ❊ Adventure EMILY CARR / THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY / GETTY IMAGES

EMILY CARR / THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY / GETTY IMAGES

LOST Feel like your sense of direction is lacking?

You’re not alone. It turns out when it comes to orienteering, we may just be the weaker sex.

By Cristina Opdahl Women’s ❊ Adventure 37

n June 9, 2007, Carol Swingle, a 60-year-old amateur photographer from Miami, walked with her camera into the Fakahatchee Strand, a 75,000-acre swampy wilderness, wearing flip-flops and warm-weather clothing. A few hours and many camera clicks later, after almost stepping on one of the resident alligators, she couldn’t find her way out.

Smartly, they say, she plopped down in one corner of the swamp instead of walking farther into the realm of the unknown and ended up spending two nights huddled under palm fronds to conserve body heat and hide from the local wildlife. She drank droplets of water from the leaves of plants and set her shirt out in the rain, later drinking the water wrung from it, before being rescued.

You could say that the online audience who read the news article about Carol’s ordeal were not impressed: “Duh . . . flipflops and sunshirt? Four letters: D-U-M-B,” wrote one.

“Idiots come in all shapes and sizes,” shot another.

There were those who defended Swingle: “What if that was your mom?” To which the reply came: “If this was my mom, she would have had herself a new alligator skin belt, boots, and matching handbag.”

“My family wouldn’t have any sympathy for me if I did something like that,” added yet another. “I know to dress appropriately for the woods.”

The general public is indeed impatient with those who get lost in the wild. Navigational mistakes look rather stupid when you regard them from your couch. Those who get lost make the grave mistake of overestimating their ability to get along outside of their own living rooms, and everybody loves it when someone gets too cocky and pays for it. It’s the stuff of America’s Funniest Home Videos.

For me, however, the humor hits too close to home, for I too—and too many times to admit—have been the bumbling idiot lost in the woods. None of my misadventures has yet made the papers, but they’ve been embarrassing in their own right. Once I got lost just 500 yards from my climbing partners, who came running when they heard my bloodcurdling scream of frustration. Another time I planned to follow a river for a two-day hike and ended up just following the curve of a mountain all the way to its backside, far from the river I meant to track.

What truly bites is that much of this might be related to the fact that I’m a girl. Differences in how men and women tend to find their way in unfamiliar territory have been studied at length by cognitive researchers since the early 1980s, including Dan Montello, a geographer at the University of California at Santa Barbara. In 1999 Montello put 43 women and 36 men through a long list of navigational tasks. Based on his findings and others like them, Montello believes there are innate differences between how men and women tend to navigate.

“Men navigate more with the survey style—a two-dimensional style,” says Montello, “which means if a man were asked to head in the direction of a distant landmark, he’s better at just heading in that direction. The contrasting style, which appears to be more common among women, is a route style, which involves a sequence of places. You know, ‘Go here, turn left, continue for 10 blocks . . . ’ Think of it as a chain or a string that is more one dimensional, with simple terms like right, left, or straight.”

Each style has its pluses and minuses. Those of us who use the route style function quite well normally. “You really see the differences when something goes wrong, when a map is drawn poorly or there’s a detour,” says Montello. When left without a sequence or directions, those of us who rely more on the route style are suddenly disoriented.

Montello includes the caveat that this generalization doesn’t speak for all men or women: “The differences are average differences,” he says. “They don’t hold for everybody.

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There are women who navigate really well, and men who navigate really poorly.” But the science of not getting lost doesn’t land quite in the favor of an average woman like me.

“In most studies of navigation, men learn routes faster and make fewer errors than do women,” says Deborah Saucier, a neuroscientist who studies navigational and other differences between men’s and women’s brains at the Canadian Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience and echoes Montello’s findings of gender difference. Why this is so is possibly because men tend to score better in certain “spatial problems” like the brain teasers I remember chewing a pencil over in elementary school, in which you have to rotate some weird two-dimensional shape in your brain to get it to fit properly with another weird shape.

“Mental rotation shows the largest consistent sex difference (favoring men),” says Saucier. This becomes relevant only if you understand orienteering and navigation as some sort of similar mental problem—one in which you take two-dimensional information from a map or a trail guide, blow it up into a 3D diorama in your imagination, and correctly orient it to the sun (something that I’ve never been able to do). “Perhaps to get home again,” says Saucier, “you have to rotate the route in your head.”

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hadn’t heard of these studies years ago when I grew tired of being the follower with Christopher, my boyfriend and mountain bike riding partner. Whenever he and I encountered a fork in an unfamiliar trail, he’d sniff the air, take a look about, and decide which way to go. So one June morning I chose a trail out of a guidebook for mountain bike rides in New Mexico and declared myself trip leader for the day. We headed for Goose Lake, a ride near Black Mountain in the Carson National Forest north of Taos that promised a beautiful singletrack descent after a long steep climb up old mining roads to

an alpine lake. That spring was a particularly chilly one, but I figured it was late enough in the season to attempt an alpine ride. An hour into the steep uphill climb on a mining road, we hit snow. We kept going, and the snow gradually grew deeper and deeper. We considered turning around, but we’d already come so far. I recited passages from the guidebook to push us on: “pristine, winding singletrack that follows a rippling creek.”

We forged on. Of course, what we didn’t figure was that once we reached Goose Lake, shimmering spectacularly next to a rough rock wall, the snow would cover the singletrack as well.

Indeed, the Goose Lake meadow was covered in a beautiful and unfathomable blanket of white snow. There was no singletrack trail to be seen. We could have turned around and taken the

JEANNINE FALLERT / VEER

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JEANNINE FALLERT / VEER

roads back, but we really had come too far to turn back from singletrack now. Recalling that the singletrack followed the creek, I started for a creek that ran north out of the lake, and he willingly followed. It was narrow; the bank was steep and not for riding, so we slogged through the creek with our bikes, reckoning that we’d certainly run into the trail eventually. Our feet and legs were cold up to our bare knees. We walked and we walked, at first gingerly stepping from rock to rock but before long just stomping right through the water. At one point he let me know that this was the worst bike ride he had ever been on.

And it was, for we were slogging down the wrong creek, not the one with the beautiful singletrack trail. A trail emerged next to the creek—hallelujah!—then veered away from it and, a half mile later, suddenly petered out into nothing, absolutely, devastatingly nothing. As the bright afternoon light faded into the soft light of evening, we were running around mountain slopes, dragging our bikes behind us and trying to figure out where in the hell we were. I was feeling how thin my lightweight windbreaker was and how little water I had left in my CamelBak, and we were lost, totally lost. If we didn’t stumble upon something fast, we were going to spend the night on that mountain.

Other creatures fare much better at finding their way.

The bobolink, a smallish songbird, flies confidently from its birthplace in Canada to warmer Argentina in the first fall of its life, a journey it takes at night. Arctic terns annually navigate 18,600 miles between their arctic breeding ground and the Antarctic. A population of Atlantic green turtles swims back and forth 1,400 miles from their feeding grounds on the Brazilian coast to their breeding site on a tiny island in the middle of the open ocean between Brazil and Africa.

The difference between navigational abilities in male and female sea turtles or migrating birds—both males and females will fly point in a formation—has not been an area taken up by research biologists (yet), although deer mice, voles, and rats have been scrutinized, and the females, like us, are much more likely to find themselves stumbling around in the woods, yelling for their climbing partners to give them some clue as to their whereabouts.

Perhaps this is related to the fact that we, like the female rats, were originally foragers who stayed close to our young.

“People generally think that this difference reflects our evolutionary prehistory in which we were hunter-gatherers,” explains Saucier. “As men typically hunted over quite a distance, men with good ability to maintain reference to a point that could no longer be observed (e.g., home or north) had an advantage, as they could take shortcuts on the way back rather than retrace the route exactly. As women gathered, those who paid attention to salient features in the environment (e.g., the source of a high-protein food, such as a plant) had an advantage. These advantages were selected over time and are now translated as these differences in behavior.”

In comparison with the green sea turtles and the bobolinks, male or female we humans pale in navigational ability.

In general, we get lost a lot. Some of us—many, even—perish as a result. No organization keeps track of exactly how many of us lose our way in the woods each year, although the numbers are greater than one might think. The Mountain Rescue Association (MRA), which oversees 90 teams throughout the United States, conducts up to 6,000 rescues every year.

The ratio of men to women who need rescuing has not been documented to my findings. Those involved in search and rescue will say that most often it’s men who are the focus of a search-and-rescue effort, but that is simply because a larger number of men than women tend to venture into wilderness areas. “I haven’t seen any gender difference in rescues for men and women,” says Fran Sharp, president of MRA. “That is, it’s proportionate to how many men and women are out there.”

Christopher and I eventually stumbled into another creek and followed it downstream, where it joined yet another trickling stream. The bank flattened out a bit, and we could mount our bikes and ride cross-country. The flattish bank turned into a trail—maybe the one we’d been searching for? It didn’t matter. We finally rode singletrack with the wind in our hair.

(At one point Christopher, 200 yards ahead of me, encountered an angry mamma mountain lion, but that’s another story.)

The trail met the old mining road, and the road, miraculously it seemed, led us to the parking lot. We arrived at my car in pitch darkness, blinking, overjoyed, and relieved, ears buzzing with adrenaline.

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friend, a former professional kayaker who loves exploring and stomping about in the woods, recently told me, “I love to get lost. I’ve gotten lost so many times.” She let her words trail off wistfully. We were sitting safely at a bar on the very street my house sits on, albeit several miles from it. “It gets easier, you know, figuring out how to find your way out.” She leaned in with a wry smile, “And you know, you need to get lost before you can be found.”

No doubt, there is no adventure magazine out there, including this one, that is not in love with the idea of being lost. It’s a fabulous idea, not knowing where you are. For someone like me, the sunny side of being lost means you are blissfully unavailable to make your preschoolers yet another peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, and for others it no doubt means an escape from some other similar drudgery in their lives.

The dreamy idea of being lost hasn’t been, ahem, lost on Rebecca Solnit, who wrote an entire book celebrating the idea: A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Viking Adult, 2005). “Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction,” she writes. I gotta say, the real thing is no picnic.

There is utter despair and real, gripping fear in getting lost, Women’s ❊ Adventure 39

along with all that freedom from civilization. There’s also the utter shame of being the doofus lost in the woods. It drives home the reality that we are—even those of us who love being outside—not at home in the natural world, and we are always a bit out of sync with it, to which Solnit might reply, to quote again from her book, “To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty.”

Scientists used to believe that animals practiced their navigational wizardry by using the same clues we humans use for finding our way: the stars, the position of the sun in the sky, and landmarks. But recent studies have demonstrated that many creatures have what is essentially an internal compass.

Magnetite, an iron oxide crystal that acts like a tiny compass needle, has been found in the cells of birds, bats, dolphins, honeybees, and other mammals. A few years ago, it was discovered that magnetite exists in us humans too. “Many tissues in the [human] brain are slightly magnetic,” says Joe Kirschvink, a professor of geobiology at the California Institute of Technology, who made the discovery (and whose son’s name, Jiseki, is the Japanese word for magnetite). Does that mean we humans have the tools for better navigation, perhaps atrophied in us from an overreliance on MapQuest? In birds and fish, there is a large nerve that is “the main conduit of magnetic information to the brain,” explains Kirschvink. “All groups of vertebrates have this nerve, including primates. Humans are primates. Go figure.”

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o maybe there was hope for someone like me. This is what I was thinking when I went to see Joy Marr, a former raft guide and a veteran of one of the first Raid Gauloises, a nowdefunct grueling 10-day adventure. Joy is now race designer and co-founder of Odyssey Adventure Racing, which holds adventure races and operates a training academy for racers that includes a course on navigation. Joy lives and breathes “nav.”

As race organizer, she plots out a racecourse for biking, hiking, and paddling by going into the woods herself and making up a route. She must imagine where others might get lost when they follow her footsteps during a race, and she considers it her job to explore every trail out there to see where it goes.

“I’ve always had an interest in maps,” says Joy. “When I was a kid on vacation, I was the one in the backseat, going, ‘47 more miles!’ ‘122 more miles!’ and ‘That mountain on the right is Mount blah blah blah.’ So my brain is interested in it.”

When her family wasn’t traveling, she and her four brothers and sisters were always exploring the beaches and the foothills of Santa Barbara, California, where she grew up. “We’d come in [from school], say, ‘Hey, how ya doin’,’ and go out the back door. All we ever did was hike, go into the woods, go exploring, scramble up here, over there, down into old washes. I definitely have been places when I was younger where we didn’t know where we were at all, but we were able to figure it out.”

For Joy, having a good sense of direction is something everyone can improve if they would spend more time with topographical maps and noticing landmarks around them, that is, thinking about just where they are located on this planet. Topo maps, inscrutable to many, just take practice. “Make yourself familiar with something simple, like in your backyard. Just get a topo map of your town—anyplace that has some topography— go there with your map, and go, OK, that’s what it looks like on my map; that’s what it looks like in the world. Start making those associations and you will be able to grow that part of it very quickly.”

To trigger a similar kick-start in my nav brain growth is why Joy and I are hiking somewhere in the Appalachian Mountains past rhododendron thickets and the kind of dense, young,

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scrubby forest that is common here. Earlier that day I pulled out a never-before-used compass from my gear closet. She’s brought topo maps and made me a map pouch out of a large plastic zipper bag and a nylon cord (a homemade version of the one she has hanging from her neck, along with her compass)— an adventure racing tool designed to keep the map front and

center that might be useful for hikers like me, who tuck ours away in our backpacks next to the Lexan spice kit.

We take a trail through a reforested field, with young trees that had been planted in neat rows, before the trail dives into the woods. We soon find that it’s a trail, parts of which have been marked with pink plastic strips, some of the trees inscrutably numbered, with many forks. Joy is looking for a loop to take a group of campers on a short mountain bike ride for a rafting company for which she occasionally consults. “Oh, this will be good biking! This is great stuff to learn on,” she says as we head down the path, a wide singletrack with just enough rocks to make it interesting for novice bikers. I soon realize that the map I’ve folded into my pouch is simply a formality; although it shows a clear loop trail without any topographic lines, the trail we are hiking goes up and down the small contours of this forest and includes a lot of forks and spur trails that the map doesn’t show. Joy, 52, who has a hiking pace reminiscent of the Raid Gauloises, isn’t bothered. She points out that most topos were created in the 1920s and updated in the ’70s and ’80s, many only by flyover, and have certain limitations. Trails grow over; new ones are created. “Lakes dry up; you can’t count on finding those,” she says. We have to use our landmarks and our wits instead. We have taken several forks in the trail, each with Joy saying, “Oh! I wonder where this goes!”

We hike downhill for a half hour and then stop and look around. We are just above a narrow road. Joy laughs, “Man, we are . . .” She pauses. “Well? You know where we’re at? This is the back road to Burnwood [campground]. This comes down to Junkyard [climbing area], so this is great. I’m glad we took this.

This would be a classic instance of going, ‘How did we get here?

How do we get back?’”

We pull out our compasses and check direction—we’ve been hiking southwestish. Joy shows me how to “shoot a bearing” and do a dead reckoning, that is, figure out what direction I want to go, get the red-lined arrow of my compass to point to it, and head that way, checking that I don’t veer off. I’d whined to Joy about compasses earlier. What good is knowing a direction if you don’t know what to do with the information? What good is “east,” I asked, if you have no idea where you started or in which direction to head?

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“Well, if you look at a map and know the lay of the land, generally speaking,” said Joy, “if you know that you’re on this trail and going that way, that you’re heading into the sun all afternoon and all you can remember of the map after looking at it is it’s a turn off to the right, then it does you some good. But I don’t know. I think if you don’t pay attention, then it doesn’t matter because you have nothing to apply it to. What good is it going to do me if I’m standing there going, ‘That’s east,’ if I can’t remember where anything is? So it does come down to some amount of personal awareness, which, if you’re traveling for a reason, you should have.”

We were hiking downhill, so we head back up the trail.

After a spell the trail halts on the edge of somebody’s backyard.

We’ve butted up against Ames Heights, a small rural town on one side of the forest we’re exploring. Joy laughs a tickled laugh and says, “This is interesting.” There are dogs barking in the distance. We stand there scratching our heads for a minute or two. “I didn’t see another trail,” she says.

It’s clear we are lost, although not dangerously so. The large patch of forest we were wandering around in is bordered

by U.S. 19—from which we could hear the distant hum of traffic, an unmistakable landmark of sorts—as well as Ames Heights and two other rural roads.

Research has proven that Joy’s hunch that sense of direction can be improved is right. In a University of Alberta study, adults and children as young as six were taught some selected navigational techniques and showed great improvement. The subjects weren’t taught map-reading skills, figuring, perhaps, that a map is somewhat pointless if you’re really lost, but rather ways to keep your bearings by the seat of your pants. “The one that was most useful was called the ‘look-back strategy,’” says Edward Cornell, a behavioral scientist and one of the authors of the University of Alberta study. “This one is documented in

anthropological studies of hunter-gatherer peoples. When you come to an intersection or a significant site from your path, you pass by it and then turn around and look back to gain the perspective as if you were returning. It works remarkably well.”

From the backyard we turned on our heels and retraced our steps, and in a bit we ended up under a deer blind we had passed 20 minutes earlier. “Hey!” I say.

“Yeah, we’re back. This is where we’ve been. There’s the deer blind. Let’s just hope we don’t miss our turn again,” Joy says, laughing. There are three trails that converge here. One of them is much less traveled. I start to go down what seems to me the obvious route and she corrects me. “This is where we came,” Joy points as she lines herself up on the less traveled trail and motions to the blind. “We didn’t see the blind from that angle, we saw it from this angle. Let’s go back and see if we can find something we missed.”

From the deer blind we backtrack over our original trail, return to the reforested field, and find yet another trail, this one dipping through more-mature hardwood forest. When we pass a log that has been cut with a chainsaw, Joy points it out: “We call these mancuts—you come across these and you know you are at least somewhere where somebody goes.” We cross over a manmade bridge that spans a small creek and end up on a grassy knoll adorned with wooden park service signs and a lookout point. We check our maps. The loop is printed on a patch of white, clear and bright as day, nothing like the maze of confusing spur trails we had encountered. We never did find it. Joy is laughing, thinking of the article I’m writing on navigation. “This will be great—I got lost. I’ll be like, ‘Hey, it was this big on the map!’”

In a related navigation study at University of Alberta, researchers asked men and women to rate themselves on their navigational skills before giving them certain way-finding problems to tackle, and the women rated themselves as having a much poorer sense of direction than the men did, although their actual scores on the test were not all that shabby. “They tended to take more time; they tended to be more deliberate,” says Cornell, “which might be more related to sociocultural issues than ability.”

I started to realize during my hike with Joy that the most important part to not getting hopelessly lost, aside from trying to pay attention to where you are on the earth, is to hold off frustration and simply not freak out. There is one more thing that science can tell us about navigation, says UCLA researcher Dan Montello: Being lost or not is largely determined by perception.

For someone using the survey style of navigation, “As long as they are going the general direction they believe they should be going, they feel all right,” says Montello. For a route-style navigator, “If she’s not on the right street, she feels lost.”

I deduct from this that winging it—even faking it, feigning confidence—seems to have some value in way finding. Act like the competent guide, don’t sweat some extra miles you may need to take to get back, and you’re nearly there. “Maybe there’s a quicker way to get there,” says Joy, “but don’t let that bother you too much.”

What women have a lot of, after all, is patience and perseverance. In July 2007 an experienced hiker named Mary O’Brien missed a trail turnoff and got lost on a day hike in Olympic National Park. Over the next five days, she rationed the few energy bars she had brought and one dehydrated dinner and slept under a piece of reflective foil. “My goal was to fly out on Wednesday,” she says, “and on every day after that, my goal was to get out on that day.” Mary, who had a map, headed toward where she believed was a large recreational lake, bushwhacking in the thick underbrush of a river basin to get there.

She was eventually able to climb up to a high ridge to get a good view of her whereabouts. Early the next morning, she finally spotted some lights that were near the lake. She walked toward them and made it home.

Women’s ❊ Adventure 41

Cara-Beth Burnside 42 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

Wendy Fisher

john dickey

Lynn Hill

Scott Markewitz

Rich Adams Jason Merritt/WireImage

Marla Streb

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The TRAILBLAZERS These adrenaline mavens have broken records, stereotypes, boundaries, and glass ceilings.

Some are onto their next adventures while others have not yet hit their high marks, but they’ve all helped make the outdoors a better place for women, from fledgling professional athletes to weekend warriors.

By Mary Catherine O’Connor

Women’s j Adventure 43

44 Women’s j Adventure

By 2000 there still wasn’t exactly a welcome mat rolled out for women who wanted to skateboard competitively, so CB and other notable female skaters, including Mimi Knoop and Jen O’Brien, pushed open the doors. As with snowboarding, CB dominated in halfpipe events and took gold in both the summer and winter X Games events. And she worked hard to get women equal footing in the sport, starting the Action Sports Alliance with Mimi Knoop to seek better prize money at contests and more-equitable media exposure. “We didn’t ask for a lot,” says CB. “We just wanted something that was acceptable.” And the $2,000 in prize money for the top female X Games skater was simply not acceptable, especially because the X Games is arguably the biggest event in the sport.

There’d be no way for a woman to make a living as a professional skateboarder at those rates.

The group leveraged its power at the 2005 summer X Games with a threat to boycott the event, a move that resulted in more prize money for the women’s field and the broadcast of their event on television. In 2007 ESPN, which puts on the X Games, increased the top women’s skateboarding prizes to $20,000 (the top men got $50,000).

CB and the Alliance are still working with ESPN, pushing for more parity in prize money and media exposure.

These women have proven that the outside is not a man’s world and that there’s room for everyone.

“CB has used her established name in skateboarding to try to make a difference for the next generation. She shows real compassion for making a positive change for the girls. Skateboarding is in her blood; it’s just what she loves to do, and in turn she has made great strides so the rest of us can enjoy careers from skateboarding, too,” says Mimi, who hails from Virginia. “She definitely paved the way for us by continuing to skate at a time when there were very few professional opportunities for female skaters. She carried the torch through those times so that we have a contest circuit in place today.”

Indeed, CB says the skating scene has changed remarkably in recent years. “There are a lot more girls in professional contests, and I like contests where there are more girls because it pushes me. I still want to skate good with the guys, but when girls skate together they push themselves more. Look at guys: they are pushing each other all the time.”

In surfing, the sport from which skateboarding evolved in the 1960s, a number of women mavericks have had to nudge their way into the lineup, including Australian Layne Beachley, the winningest professional woman surfer in history, with a total of six Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) world championships (she also holds the most consecutive titles for a man or woman).

Layne has brought the National Australia Bank (NAB) into the women’s ASP circuit as a sponsor of the NAB Beachley Classic, which offers the highest total purse of any event on the women’s tour: US $100,000. All the other women’s events offer a US $85,000 purse (the men compete for a US $320,000 purse at each of their events).

Having juggled multiple jobs and struggled financially early in her career, Layne established the Aim for the Stars Foundation (www.aimforthestars.com.au) to provide financial support to young women who are striving to reach goals, athletic or otherwise. The foundation provides grants for 12 girls each year. Oh, and did we mention that Beachley has ridden the largest wave by a woman on re-

Quinn Rooney / Getty Images

It’s hard to think of any comment more grating than “You’re pretty good . . . for a girl.”

In 1972 the United States passed Title IX, the law that made it illegal to exclude females from participation in sports—or any educational pursuit—that receives federal financial assistance.

It was landmark legislation that led to significant changes by allowing athletes to develop skills from a young age and participate in organized sports. But there is no Title IX for a young woman who wants to, say, climb El Capitan in Yosemite or ski near-vertical slopes in Alaska.

Certainly, women have always participated in outdoor pursuits— many of the earliest Samoan surfers were female, and women were ascending the Matterhorn and Mount Blanc before 1900 (and in cumbersome dresses). But the landscape has changed quite a bit, and women are into everything from motocross to BASE jumping.

Sure, stereotypes persist, but the level of respect and acceptance that women receive today just for wanting to get outside and play the same games the boys are playing is well beyond what we’ve ever enjoyed before.

And we owe that to the trailblazers—the women who tested limits, pushed buttons, and nudged naysayers out of their way to achieve their goals. We highlight a few of them here, but there are hundreds of others, some older and some younger, who have done the same.

These women are trailblazers because of more than just their athletic prowess. Mountain biker Jacquie Phelan, skateboarder Cara-Beth Burnside, and surfer Layne Beachley are trailblazers because they refused to be treated like second-class competitors and have fought to close the pay disparity between men and women in their respective sports.

Some women inspire us by not just what they’ve accomplished physically but also what they’ve achieved as pioneers, as ambassadors, or as torchbearers. Mountain biker Marla Streb started competing at the relatively ancient age of 28 and is now beginning her third career, and freeskier Wendy Fisher blazed a new trail by having the guts to take a break from competing to start a family and become a coach for the next generation of freeskiers.

Others are trailblazers because their passion extends well beyond the confines of their athletic endeavors. Take extreme skier and climate-change educator Alison Gannett, or Tina Basich and Shannon Dunn, pioneers in women’s snowboarding who also helped found the 12-year-old awareness and fundraising charity Boarding for Breast Cancer.

These women have proven to be badasses in their sports and role models for the next generation, and the trails they’ve blazed have affected the outdoor industry in ways we’ll see for years to come.

In 1965 a Gidget-like young woman from San Diego named Patti McGee was pictured on the cover of Life magazine on a skateboard. She’s shown riding along, la-dee-da, in a handstand.

The headline: “The craze and menace of SKATEBOARDS.” Patti was the national skateboard champion of 1964, back when girls were just as likely to be on a skateboard as boys were. That all changed in the 1970s, as the sport moved from goofy exhibition to serious, testosterone-fueled competition. It stayed that way for a long, long time.

But in the background, there were still girls riding skateboards.

One was Cara-Beth “CB” Burnside, born in Orange County in 1968.

As a girl she was a regular at her local skate park, where she earned some sponsorships and won some competitions. But by the late 1980s, the girls’ division was eliminated and she didn’t have many options. She turned her attention to more-mainstream sports during college—a soccer scholarship at the University of California at Davis—but she never stopped loving her board.

After college CB started snowboarding and she excelled. By 1995 she was ranked second in the world and later earned a spot on the inaugural Olympic snowboarding team, placing fourth in the women’s halfpipe in Nagano. She kept at it for a few more years, but her attention was turning back to skateboarding.

Quinn Rooney / Getty Images

Layne Beachley, 2008 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure 45

cord? She rode a 40-foot face at Outer Log Cabins on Hawaii’s North Shore. Her success has spurred a growing field of young rippers to embrace surfing, and some of them are eking out a nice living at it.

But well before CB and Layne started rattling cages about equal—or at least fair—pay, there was Jacquie Phelan. Quite literally one of the pioneers in the sport of mountain biking—she was among the first to ride a fat-tire steed down the bumpy, rooted trails of the sport’s birthplace, Marin County, California—Jacquie had little trouble winning many of the early mountain bike contests in the 1980s, even beating the men. When she was given the wrong prize envelope at a race in 1993—she’d placed sixth overall in the race and was given the prize money meant for a sixth-place male finisher ($400) rather than the first place female finisher (a whopping $37)—she raised a stink. “I knew that if I cashed it, my name would be mud,” she says.

So instead she went public about the inequity and wrote letters to all the sponsors of the event. She pushed for equal prize money for both genders in the National Off-Road Bicycle Association (NORBA), and her influence remains today. The U.S. National Series mountainbiking events, a part of NORBA, are the only ones that give equal prize money to the top three men and the top three women.

“But riders’ salaries are what really matter,” says Jacquie, who at 52 is out of the competitive scene but still rides constantly.

Marla Streb, another mountain bike maven, agrees. In 1993 at age 28, Marla shelved her career as a cytogeneticist and started racing. She has multiple U.S. National Downhill titles and took the NORBA National Downhill title nine times. She even claimed the

The level of respect and acceptance that women receive today for playing the same games the boys are is well beyond what we’ve ever enjoyed before.

World Single Speed Championships twice. An outspoken advocate for the sport and women’s place in it, Marla is one of the founding members of Luna Chix, a professional racing team sponsored by energy food company Clif Bar (which sells the Luna Bar). Looking forward to the day their young, athletic daughter would choose a career, Clif Bar founder and cyclist Gary Erickson and his wife conceived of the team in 2001 as a means to nurture opportunities for women in outdoor sports. The goal of the team is to provide the same level of support, resources, and pay that men’s pro team members receive.

When Luna Chix, now in its eighth year, emerged, skeptics said an all-woman pro team on par with men’s would never last. “Many of those critics have since gone out of business and dropped out of sight, and some have even asked about working with or for us, since our team has arguably the highest profile (with probably the most highly paid women) in the country for eight years now,” says Marla.

At 43, Marla still trains and races, and she says it’s great to be competing against deeper women’s fields these days. She also devotes time to teaching clinics—something she says is more rewarding than winning contests—and supports emerging pros. She made a splash in the sports world with a cover story in Outside magazine in 2000 that included a nude black-and-white photo in which she’s poised on her mountain bike. Aside from being provocative, the photos and the accompanying story brought attention to both the sport and its female participants. “I always felt like I wanted to bring femininity to downhill [mountain bike] racing,” says Marla. “For that nude photo, I grew long hair. I was trying to be sexy. I wanted to show that you can be feminine and still get on your bike and be

46 Women’s j Adventure

aggressive.” That message has sunk in. It’s no longer uncommon to see a young girl riding a downhill bike, wearing a full-face helmet.

One woman who got the message is 26-year-old Kathy Pruitt, current U.S. Nationals downhill champ. “I’ve looked up to Marla as a role model for how to promote yourself in this sport of mountain biking and, even more importantly, [how to do so] as a respectable woman,” says Kathy.

The fact is most competitive action sports have high barriers to entry for women, in terms of both the attitude held by male participants and the disparity women perceive from the industry built around the sport. But so long as the women’s competitive field continues to grow, and with it the coverage of the sport in mainstream media, the gap should continue to close.

Despite its cultural connections to skateboarding, snowboarding has traditionally been much more welcoming to women.

From early on in snowboarding’s skyrocketing popularity in the late 1990s, “there were women in powerful positions within [snowboarding] companies,” says Kathleen Gasperini, co-founder of the Label Lab, a youth branding consultancy, and a former editor at Powder and Transworld Snowboarding magazines. These women had influence on everything from women’s gear design to creating contests for female riders, she says. “This made snowboarding more of a genderless sport compared with skiing. There were almost always women’s events. Prize money is pretty equal [between men and women] in snowboarding, too.”

Kathleen says the ski industry moved at a glacial pace in accepting women into the fold. “It took a good 20 years for the ski industry to realize that women’s skiing was a viable industry; they got onboard due to what they saw in snowboarding,” she says.

Of course it wasn’t just female cash flow that piqued the ski industry’s interest in women skiers. It was also the shockingly fluid and gutsy lines that women like Wendy Fisher were laying down in increasingly popular extreme skiing contests.

In 1994, after seven years on the U.S. Ski Team, Wendy felt her passion for ski racing fade and decided to quit. Two years later she paid a visit to Kim Reichhelm in Crested Butte, Colorado. Kim was also an alum of the ski team and held the title of women’s winner of the first World Extreme Skiing Championships in Valdez, Alaska, in 1991. Influenced by Kim, Wendy decided that rather than drop out of skiing altogether she’d take a stab at freeskiing (aka extreme skiing, though that term has faded).

Wendy placed third in her first freeskiing contest but quickly used her ski-racing background to identify and change what she calls the “mental mistakes” that dogged her in the first race. By 1998 she was dominating the women’s field.

Then, as the century turned, the ski industry took a shine to freeskiing in a big way, and Wendy found herself doing competitions with more mainstream publicity. Events such as the X Games and the Gravity Games started featuring skier-cross and freeriding competitions. It was no longer a fringe sport. All the while Wendy was traveling with crews of (mostly male) freeskiers to film ski movies. She did eight different films for Matchstick Productions as well as a couple of Warren Miller flicks, and she starred in a couple of ski films exclusively about women skiers and snowboarders.

Wendy says that she and other women in freeskiing films and contests, such as Alison Gannett and Kristen Ulmer, weren’t getting any special treatment. “When we were on heli trips, we all got dropped off at the same places, on the same peaks, as the men. We had to find a line to ski just like everyone else.

“I feel like I was opening doors, getting women to ski harder terrain,” Wendy says of her freeskiing career. “I think I’ve inspired women to push it, no matter what skiing level they’re at.”

Across the country images of women skiing off huge cliffs and arcing turns down near-vertical slopes led to growing female participation in freeskiing contests and showed a younger generation of female skiers that they could get out there and give it a try, too.

Wendy pulled away from the traveling and the contests in 2006, when she and her husband, Woody Lindenmeyr, decided to start a family. Today they’re raising two sons and are teaching tomorrow’s

Jacquie Phelan, 1992 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure 47

Jose Azel / Aurora Photos

Lynn Hill, 1990

48 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

Jose Azel / Aurora Photos

Scott Markewitz

crew of freeriding phenoms at the Crested Butte Academy.

“For all of us girls, Wendy has been a hero to look up to and emulate as an athlete,” says Lynsey Dyer, a 26-year-old freeskier.

Lynsey got into freeskiing at the urging of another pioneering freeskier, her cousin, A.J. Cargill, who competed in many of the same contests as Wendy.

“We all work really hard to get where we are, but it’s never been so good for women [in freeskiing],” says Lynsey, “and absolutely it’s because of the work of Wendy and women like Alison Gannett and A.J. Cargill. I don’t think any of them got as much recognition as they deserved in pioneering the sport.”

Wendy and the women she competed with also helped the ski industry realize that hardcore women skiers—or, more precisely, wannabe hardcore women skiers—represented a new revenue stream. As a result, ski resorts started offering women-only clinics and retreats for both skiers and snowboarders.

In mountain biking women-only instruction has roots that are 20 years deep and extend to the birthplace of the sport: Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area. Here, Jacquie Phelan started the Women’s Mountain Bike and Tea Society (WOMBATS) in 1987 because, quite simply, she wanted to see more women on mountain bikes. Jacquie is still teaching women how to ride singletrack with aplomb, and WOMBATS has spawned many similar groups across the country.

Today female-focused training, often taught by the trailblazers themselves, abounds. Looking for an all-girl surf safari? No problem. Do you think your climbing has plateaued? We can now enjoy specialized training in the form of a girl posse getaway for just about any outdoor adventure. (There are also myriad retreats for the mind/body connection; see “Going Deep” in the March/ April issue.)

These trailblazers and others like them have provided us better access, better instruction, and, for those who wish to pursue a professional sports track, more equality and increasingly equitable pay. To help improve their performance, these women also pushed for, and oftentimes helped design, women’s-specific gear.

Certain models of bikes, shoes, skis, snowboards, and surfboards are now sized and designed specifically for our body geometry and smaller frames.

Aside from working to close the gap in pay and to broaden opportunities for women in their respective sports, a number of athletes have leveraged their celebrity—and continue to—to bring attention to their sports. Would rock climbing be nearly as popular among women in the United States were it not for legend-in-her-own-time Lynn Hill? Doubtful. Though European women had already established themselves in the climbing world, Lynn planted a seed for women’s sport climbing on this side of the pond in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. She claimed many European titles, including five wins at the elite Rock Master Invitational in Arco, Italy, and she helped foster a growing women’s field in U.S. sport-climbing comps.

In the nineties Lynn turned her attention away from sport and indoor climbing and toward big, multipitch efforts on real rock, and here is where she really ascended into the history books. In 1993 Lynn became the first person—male or female—to free-climb the Nose route on Yosemite’s El Capitan. She did the 33-pitch climb in four days, and the next year she repeated the climb in one day.

Lynn now works as a climbing ambassador for outdoor-gear company Patagonia, giving talks and presenting slide shows around the world. She also helps raise money for environmental organizations

Wendy Fisher, 1998

and brings attention to cultural issues, such as the potential environmental and social impacts of the Three Gorges Dam in China.

Like Lynn, world-class skier Alison Gannett also works to make a positive impact on not just her sport but the world around her. Alison has started six different nonprofit organizations designed to help stop climate change. She is also a huge advocate of clean technology, and she works constantly to educate others on how they can reduce their carbon footprints.

In fact, all these women have laid sustainable trails; they’ve proven to everyone that the outside is not a man’s world and that there’s room for everyone. So is their work here done? And will it go unnoticed? “Today you have a whole generation of young women not even knowing the hardship that we had to endure,” says Kathleen Gasperini.

But Jacquie Phelan, a voracious writer who regularly uses the f-word (that’s feminism, of course), thinks there’s still plenty of blazing left to be done and says that professional biking is still a “bastion for the patriarchy.” What’s her approach? She converts one pupil at a time and does so with a great sense of humor and empowerment, according to Heather Herless, a massage therapist from San Francisco. Heather says she was ready to “put her mountain bike in the closet” because she was having a hard time with the sport. Her boyfriend signed her up for Jacquie’s class as a present.

“I gained so much confidence and fell in love with my bike again,” says Heather. “Jacquie broke it down, she took the time to learn my riding style and customize her instruction.” Jacquie pointed out that a bad set of brakes was making riding even harder for Heather. “Jacquie said that when men are not riding well, they blame it on the equipment, but when a woman doesn’t ride well, it’s assumed that the problem is her skill level,” recalls Heather. A quick fix-it job on her brakes proved to Heather that the problem hadn’t been her skill level at all. The problem had been that she didn’t think she could ride. Once she realized she could, it was a whole new day.

Women’s j Adventure 49

Justin Bailie / Aurora Photos

whole health

50 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

Balancing Act Got aches and pains?

Your daily routine could be causing muscle imbalances that are leaving your whole body out of whack.

By Kara Douglass Thom

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Justin Bailie / Aurora Photos

ately my right hip has been aching. In addition to the pain, I was trying to prevent a tight iliotibial band from rearing its ugly head and keeping sciatica at bay. I tried backing off training because, surely, I was just working too hard. As it turns out, there were muscles I wasn’t working enough. My tight hips weren’t the real culprit. It was my lazy gluteus medius.

Opposing muscles (one contracts while the other stretches) have a symbiotic relationship that makes it possible to lift our latte, hold on to our handlebars, and sit down at our desk. Problems can arise when certain muscles become overworked, leading to an imbalance.

A muscle imbalance can mean various things: an imbalance in the same muscles on different sides of the body (say, if the right bicep is stronger than the left) or when a mobilizer muscle, such as the abductor muscles on the outside of the leg, doesn’t have enough support from its stabilizer muscle, in this case the adductors on the inside of the leg. Go ahead and stand on one foot to test the balance between your abductors and adductors. Still standing? If not, you likely need to strengthen the muscles in the inner thighs.

Women’s j Adventure 51

whole health

Problems can arise when certain muscles become overworked, leading to an imbalance.

Options for the Off-kilter n Take a yoga class. Search www.yoga.com for

instructors and studios. One of the reasons why yoga was created some 5,000 years ago was to offset the effects of sitting in meditation for hours. Yoga can benefit desk dwellers as well as it does monks sitting in lotus. n Try Pilates. Introduced in the early twentieth century as a form of physical therapy to balance the body, Pilates is one of the most popular ways to exercise today. Learn more and find a studio at www.pilates.com. n Biomechanist Katy Santiago (www.restorative exercise.com) recently released a series of videos to address common ailments. They include: Restorative Exercise for Foot Pain, Restorative Exercise for Spinal Alignment, and Restorative Exercise for Bone Health. Find them online at www.gaiam.com.

52 Women’s j Adventure

to use another motor skill.” For example, she says, the arm is designed to move both in front of and behind you. “If you spend six hours a day typing at a keyboard and no time with your arms behind you, the set of musculature that pulls your arms in front of you will become tighter and under more tension.”

When we use muscles in only one direction, the contracting muscle becomes shorter and the opposing muscle tends to become stretched out and weaker. The muscles we contract more are stronger, yes, but not necessarily strong.

“Biomechanically speaking, muscles have an optimal position,” says Lynn Millar, PT, PhD, a professor of physical therapy at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan. “If muscles are too short or too long, they’re not effective.” This may not be a huge problem while you’re sitting at your desk, but once you take up your favorite sport, when you need to engage those underused and weaker muscles, position and technique will suffer.

“If one part of the kinetic chain isn’t working, other parts will compensate,” says Millar. Surrounding muscles may try to move in to help. Once we get away from a muscle’s intended use, chronic pain rears its ugly head or we develop an injury.

Be a Contrarian Santiago recommends that exercise be focused on strengthening or stretching muscles opposite the way you tend to use them in your daily life, improving those neglected motor skills. “Avoid any movement you just spent eight hours doing,” she says, “and take breaks throughout the day to counter whatever position or movement you’re repeating.”

Strengthening the stability muscles that attach a limb to the trunk (hips and shoulders) will better support these joints. “Stability muscles don’t have a big range of motion,” explains Millar, “but they allow the joint to move freely through its range of motion with control.” Better control, she says, will keep the rest of the body in an optimal position as we move. I~'I.:I

Cary Jobe / Aurora Photos

Balance Begins in Your Brain There’s another kind of balance, though, one that’s more prevalent and insidious. According to Katy Santiago, a biomechanics specialist in Ventura, California, the imbalance that most negatively affects our body is when we don’t balance the use of our muscles. “Muscle imbalance is an imbalance in habit,” she says. “We become so strong in certain patterns that it becomes ingrained in the brain, and the body doesn’t know how

Cary Jobe / Aurora Photos

whole health Muscle Fix Do you recognize an ailment or injury in the chart below? These are three major muscle group imbalances and ways you can seek equilibrium. If you balance out your movement, you can balance out your body.

Pain/Problem Injury •Lower-back pain •Sciatica: “pain in the butt,” often shooting down the leg

Muscle Pair Imbalance

Cause

Fix

Hip flexor and hamstring and/or gluteus muscles

If you spend any time sitting at a desk, you’re shortening your hip flexors. Many other common activities do the same, from stair climbing to cycling—anything that calls for a bend at the knee. Meanwhile you’re lengthening your hamstrings (which might also become tight with bent knees), and the gluteus muscles get neglected and less able to support your hip joint.

Make yourself look as little like a chair as possible. Stretch out the hip flexors and strengthen the stability muscles for the lower extremities, particularly the gluteus medius and the piriformis. Do hip extensions in a standing position on a cable machine. Reach one leg behind you with a straight leg. Or, if you’re in need of a sit break, just stand up and tap your toe behind you 20 times on each leg. Helpful activities include ice skating, in-line skating, and cross-country skiing—movements that push the leg behind the body.

Deltoids and latissimus

Often the shoulder does work that the upper back is supposed to do, resulting in kyphosis, or rounding of the shoulders. When our arms hang in front of us, it’s like weights hanging from our spine, which curls it forward when we don’t engage the upper back.

Pull the shoulder blades down. Do exercises or stretches that press the arms back behind you.

Use a cable machine to pull weight behind you with a straight arm. Walk with poles, pushing off behind you. If you’re a swimmer, end your workout with a backstroke.

Abdominals and spinal muscles

Sitting with poor posture, whether sticking your bum out or tucking it too far under, can cause inappropriate curvature of the spine, placing too much pressure on the discs between the vertebrae. Weak back muscles (the culprit again can be too much sitting) can’t support the spine in an upright position.

When strengthening abdominals or lower-back muscles, aim to keep a neutral pelvis with the legs straight so you don’t engage the alreadyoverworked hip flexors. Yoga and Pilates work to balance both muscle groups equally. The Pilates roll-up (lying prone and then slowly rolling up to a sitting position starting with the head) and yoga’s boat pose (balancing on the sitz bones while keeping straight legs raised off the floor and the upper body lowered toward the floor) are ideal exercises that engage both sets of musculature.

A good way to stimulate the stability muscles on either side of the spine is to get on hands and knees and lift a leg and opposite arm.

•Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) weakness in the knee and the surrounding joint

•Thoracic output syndrome: numbing or tingling in the hands •Cervical spine issues: neck pain •Chronic headaches •Shoulder bursitis •Rotator cuff tears •Lumbar disc issues •Pelvic floor pain and/or incontinence •Hip pain •Groin pain

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56 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

Tanya Constantine

Kick Butt and Defend Yourself Why not know that you’re in charge both on the trail and in the face of adversity?

By Bryn Fox

I

t’s a big world, and you do your best to explore every inch. You run the trails around your house like you own them. You know what every curve of the road looks like from the saddle of your bike. You eat bunny slope skiers for lunch. As you head out on your next adventure, why not know that you can kick butt both on the trail and in the face of adversity? Unplanned encounter? No problem. Read on and you will know just how to yell, “Hu-AH!” and leave others running for the hills. And, unlike you, they won’t be doing it to add another 10 miles in their training logs.

Prevention “Self-defense is made up of environment awareness, attitude, and basic techniques,” says Teri Coffee, fifth-degree black belt and women’s self-defense instructor at Jang’s Karate in Santa Barbara, California. One of the best methods of preventing an unwanted attack is being aware of your environment and always being in control of your personal space. And, no, this doesn’t mean we have to be paranoid, thinking that every stranger or tree is looking at us funny.

“Actually, most women are assaulted by people familiar to them,” says Joanne Factor, director of the Self-defense Education Center, Strategic Living, in Seattle. “They give the benefit of the doubt to someone they recognize.” So, for this reason it’s important to pick up on the subtle clues when someone may have something not so kosher up his sleeve.

Women’s Women’s j j Adventure Adventure 57

yes, you can potentially dangerous situations, we can combine our body’s natural alarm system with reading the behavior of strangers and learn when a situation requires action.

You already know how to tell the second you start to get dehydrated. Equally important is learning how to tell when your body says something is fishy. When you get that gut feeling that something isn’t right or you get goose bumps even though it’s 85 degrees outside, pay attention. It just might be your body’s natural defense telling you something.

Did you know that you can actually smell aggression? The body secretes a hormone when you’re feeling intense anger.

So your nose may end up being the first thing that tells you that that stranger doesn’t just want to compliment you on your new hiking boots.

Finally, you’ll know when someone doesn’t have the best intentions by the invasion of your personal space. If someone seems fixated or is watching your every move, it may be time to meet up with a buddy. If you suspect a stalker in your midst, make sure you stay in well-populated areas. If someone is trying to get you alone, he may watch you intently until the opportunity arises. Don’t give him that opportunity. If someone is invading your space, change direction or wait for him to pass. If he doesn’t let the gap grow, it may mean he is testing your boundaries to see just how close he can get. It may be time to heighten your defenses.

Be in Tune with Your Surroundings As outdoorswomen we are trained to focus on the task at hand. After all, we wouldn’t want to try to ski a double black diamond while mentally making our grocery list. But when we least expect it is when we’re the most vulnerable. So for safety’s sake, we can put those multitasking skills to use and keep an eye or ear on what’s going on around us. When you leave a party and head for your car, be aware of who is around you.

If someone is interested in you and watches you leave, he knows you are probably going to a quiet parking lot or an empty street. As you get in your car, be alert. Buckling a two-year-old into a carseat or loading gear into an already stuffed trunk can narrow your focus and take your mind off what is going on outside your car, which can make you more susceptible to being surprised or caught off guard if someone were to approach you.

You probably know the road and the trails around your house like a true local, so you’re happy to give directions to someone who isn’t as familiar with them. But it’s important to remember not to get too close to a car when answering someone’s questions—and don’t lead strangers to remote places. If you have to, give them your favorite map. It’s better to give that up than your safety. And though your friends may drop by unannounced all the time, if a stranger shows up at your door, asking for help, don’t let him in. You can still help him out by calling 9-1-1 and letting him know that help is on the way. Don’t assume that all strangers are selling Girl Scout cookies. Not everyone who knocks on your door is earning his or her merit badges.

Be in Tune with Yourself Because we are frequently among strangers, we obviously cannot be afraid or suspicious of everyone we see. You can still stop to chitchat with fellow hikers so long as you know the signs of someone or something that isn’t quite right. Trusting our instincts and learning to read the signs of someone infringing on our boundaries can be the best tools in defending our personal space. Like animals, humans do have a true instinct of safety that can often be our best method of prevention.

“When the senses note something amiss, those portions of the brain send signals back to the body,” says Joanne. To successfully avoid 58 Women’s ❊ Adventure

Butt-kicking MOVES FROM THE EXPERTS Palm. Strike with the heel of the palm straight into the nose or up under the jaw. Pull the palm back with the fingers bent (but not curled around the palm) in a bowand-arrow position and release in a strong strike motion.

Knee. Strike with the knee into the groin or the thigh while holding the attacker. Use the part of the knee just behind the top of the kneecap, in front of the thigh.

Elbow. When grabbed from behind, use an elbow strike to get a release. By striking backward in a driving motion with the elbow bent and using the area just behind the point on the backside of the arm, bring the arm forward bent, and backward, striking hard with the weight shifting back into the strike.

Fingers. If you are being choked from the front, extend two fingers straight into the neck of the attacker just below the Adam’s apple and push forward. “This is not a strike but an extended push into the hollow area under the Adam’s apple,” says Teri.

Thumb. “A thumb in the eye will impair the assailant’s ability to see you and to follow as you escape,” says Joanne.

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Defense Methods If you do find yourself in a situation that requires you to open up that can of whoopass you keep in your back pocket, don’t be afraid to react. “The vast majority of women who are assaulted recognize that something isn’t right yet ignore their intuition,” says Joanne. “Some don’t want to be unladylike or rude or embarrassed or wrong. They want to give people the benefit of the doubt.” Although nobody likes to make a scene, chances are your senses won’t lead you astray. And if they do? Better to make a little scene than find yourself a victim.

Voice Your first line of defense can be as simple as knowing how to use your lungs to your advantage. “Bringing attention to what is taking place by yelling and using identifying words is important to receiving help and making the person bothering you fearful of being caught and identified,” says Teri. Using obvious phrases like “WHO ARE YOU?” “HELP ME!” and “HE HAS A GUN!” tells someone that you are serious about fighting back and specific phrases like these are likely to attract the attention of others within earshot. Even if the person in question does not in fact have a gun, undeniable signs of distress like this will attract attention of someone who could help. “Also you want to identify you don’t know the person attacking you,” says Teri, “since people often do not want to help in domestic situations.”

Body Language Aside from the sound of a steady voice, body language and a confident air can be as big a defense as any. “Your voice, confidence, and attitude are powerful deterrents,” says Teri. “The predator wants an easy target, so anything you can do to display the opposite of that can have them fleeing the situation.” If you suspect that someone approaching you has ill intentions, show him that you are not a target. Looking others in the eye shows that you are confident, and it reminds them that they are not anonymous and that you can identify them. Also, if someone seems to be following you, you can first just try to cross the street or take a different fork in the trail and walk in the opposite direction. If he is definitely following you, you’ll know and can turn to face him, get into your fightin’ stance, and yell “STOP!” 60 Women’s j Adventure

“With this position we are indicating ‘STOP’ in every language,” says Teri. At this point they cannot deny that you don’t want to be messed with and you will be ready to kick butt if you have to.

Force If despite your confident nature someone is still stupid enough to try to mess with you, you will have to employ a physical defense.

“You do not need to know martial arts to defend yourself,” says Joanne. “A good self-defense class will teach very simple yet highly effective physical skills that can be adapted to any level of fitness.

If you know nothing else,” she adds, “remember good, decisive targets.”

The consensus of the experts is that knowing a wide array of different martial arts techniques isn’t necessary. With a solid arsenal of a few key strategies, you will be able to react physically without wasting a second. Joanne explains that targets such as the eyes, nose, throat, groin, and knees are your best bets because they are easily visible, they are soft and usually unprotected, they do not require much strength to affect, and you don’t need great aim to cause significant effects.

Personal Defense Items There is also the option of carrying personal defense items like mace. Mace or pepper spray can be bought in cans small enough to fit on your keychain or in the back of your sports bra and can be used—sprayed in someone’s eyes—to throw him off (and in pain!) long enough for you to run away. You can also try a shrill horn, which serves as your own personal alarm system. Simply push a button or pull a pin, and a high-pitched ring or beep will emit, attracting the attention of everyone around.

And we can’t forget to use our good old-fashioned resourcefulness. Be aware of what items you have at hand that can be used as a shield or weapon. Things like pens, keys, or books can all be used against an attacker when needed. Just about anything in your pack can be thrown at someone. Sure, the can opener on your keychain probably won’t make them break a leg or go blind, but it can throw someone off just enough for him to hesitate, if for only a second, and in that time you, outdoorswoman, will already be a half mile down the trail.

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62 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

The Sweet, J uicy Treats of Su mmer Savor every luscious bite. Fruit just doesn’t get any better than this.

By Radha Marcum

I

’d bet you can remember the last time you devoured a plump, perfectly tree-ripened peach—or maybe it was a plum. I can. It was last August, and I was lounging on the grass at the farmers’ market with my husband and our two young kids. The Colorado peach harvest was in full stride. We had selected a few warm, fuzz-covered fruits— golden orange, as if the sunlight had condensed inside their skins. They didn’t last long. It was pure, juice-dribbling bliss.

The peach is one of the most illustrious members of the “stone fruits,” also known as drupes, which include apricots, plums, nectarines, and cherries. In season from May through September, most originated in Asia. Legend has it that Marco Polo was responsible for introducing the apricot to Europe from China via the Silk Road. Cultures all along that

There are few summer pleasures more immediately satisfying than the taste of ripe, freshly picked stone fruits. route—from Turkey to Spain—readily adopted the apricot into their cuisine. And cherries are mentioned in Western texts dating as far back as the third century B.C.

It’s not hard to imagine why these fruits have been scrupulously cultivated throughout the centuries. There are few summer pleasures more immediately satisfying than the taste of ripe, freshly picked stone fruits. But palate pleasing aside, these fragrant beauties also pack abundant nutrients, from vitamins to cancer-fighting antioxidants.

“Yellow and red are two very good colors in food,” says Dana Jacobi, author of The Essential Best Foods Cookbook (Rodale, 2008). “Those colors tend to indicate particular phytochemicals and vitamins, such as carotenoids, quercetin, and anthocyanins.” In fact, recent research supports the idea that eating tart cherries (often found dried or in juices)

alleviates joint pain due to their high levels of anthocyanins (red-pigment phytonutrients), which have an anti-inflammatory effect in the body. Apricots are rich in beta-carotene, the same pigment found in carrots that has been linked to eye health and cancer prevention. And peaches contain ample amounts of nerve- and muscle-supporting potassium.

(Check out “Stone Fruit Vitals” for other nutritional highlights.) In general, the darker-hued the fruit, the greater amount of these nutrient superstars it contains, says Dana.

There are hundreds of varieties of stone fruits, but you won’t see many of them at big-chain supermarkets. Most of the fruits you’ll find there come from large conventional orchards that grow a single, popular

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Guide to Buying and Storing Summer Fruits Apricots What to look for: Firm, deep-orange, fragrant fruits that feel just a tad soft when pressed.

Ripening: If possible, buy tree-ripened fruits from local growers.

Apricots will not ripen much further once picked.

Storage: Store at a cool room temperature. Enjoy within one or two days.

Cherries What to look for: Color-saturated fruits with smooth, unwrinkled skin and stems intact.

Ripening: Pick larger fruits for more flavor; cherries gain a significant amount of flavor and volume in the week before picking, ideally.

Storage: Refrigerate ripe sweet varieties in a plastic bag for two to three days. Sour (tart) cherries will keep longer, up to two weeks refrigerated.

Nectarines What to look for: Unblemished, fragrant fruits that are just slightly soft.

Ripening: Like apricots, nectarines will not ripen much further once picked, so use your nose when buying.

Storage: Refrigerate ripe fruit for one to two days.

variety—often one that travels well and looks appealing but that has sacrificed flavor to make it to market. Most stone fruits won’t ripen much after picking, so the farther they have traveled, the less likely they are to have the divine flavor of local sun-ripened fruit. What’s more, conventional varieties have often been bred for sweetness. Not a bad thing, you may think, but Dana begs to differ: “The sweeter fruits lack acid. Without the acid, they just don’t taste the same.”

Before you succumb to the supermarket sale, check out farmers’ markets, says Dana. “On the lowest level, at least it’s local. In addition, it’s more likely that it’ll be an heirloom variety.”

Keep an eye out for flavorful heirlooms such as Blenheim apricots or mirabelle plums. And be aware that conventionally grown nectarines, peaches, and cherries typically have high pesticide residues, so buy organic whenever possible.

If any of your favorite stone fruits make it back to your kitchen—without being eaten purely for their own deliciousness—there are a million and one ways to use them to enhance summer cooking. “Stone fruits are very versatile,” says Elizabeth Karmel, executive chef of Hill Country restaurant in New York City and author of Taming The Flame: Secrets for Hot-and-Quick Grilling and Low-and-slow BBQ (Wiley, 2005). “Add extra sweetness (a glaze, such as jelly thinned with champagne) and they become dessert; chop and combine with savory ingredients (such as fireroasted poblano peppers) to turn stone fruits into savory salsa. They can go either way.” For starters, try Elizabeth’s grilled stone fruits (see “How to Grill Stone Fruits” on page 66).

“The fresh, ripe fruits have such an incredible flavor,” says executive chef Roger Freedman of Jackson Hole’s Rendezvous Bistro, Q Roadhouse, and Il Villaggio Osteria. “They really can be used in almost any recipe.” 1~'f.:1

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Stone Fruit Vitals Apricots (1 cup, sliced) = 79 calories.

Good source of vitamin A (3,178 IU) and beta-carotene (1,805 mcg).

Peaches What to look for: Fragrant, blemish-free fruits with good color and weight.

Ripening: Like apricots and nectarines, peaches are best when tree ripened; they won’t ripen much after picking.

Storage: Keep ripe peaches in the refrigerator for no more than two days.

Cherries (1 cup, sweet variety) = 87 calories.

Good source of choline (8.4 mg).

Plums What to look for: Plums with powdery, silver dustings are freshest. As with other stone fruits, look for those that are fragrant and firm but not hard.

Ripening: Unripe fruits won’t gain more flavor or sweetness but will soften at room temperature.

Storage: Refrigerate ripe fruits for up to three days.

Peaches (1 medium fruit) = 58 calories.

Good source of potassium (285 mg) and vitamin A (489 IU).

Source: The Produce Bible: Essential Ingredient Information and More Than 200 Recipes for Fruits, Vegetables, Herbs & Nuts by Leanne Kitchen (Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 2007).

Source: USDA National Nutrient Database at www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search.

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Nectarines (1 medium fruit) = 62 calories.

Good source of potassium (285 mg).

Plums (1 cup, sliced) = 76 calories.

Good source of vitamin A (569 IU).

)

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How to Grill Stone Fruits “Grilling intensifies the natural sweetness and flavor and is a great way to use slightly underripe fruit,” says chef Elizabeth Karmel.

1. Use ripe but not mushy fruit to withstand cooking without falling apart.

2. Cut fruit in half and remove the pit. Brush with nut or olive oil; this keeps the juices inside the fruit and prevents it from dehydrating during cooking.

3. Preheat a very clean grill to moderate heat (350 degrees).

Grill cut-side down just long enough to get grill marks (1 to 2 minutes); turn over and let cook skin-side down, until the skin begins to peel away from the flesh.

Optional: When finished grilling, rub the fruit with dessert rub (combine 1/8 teaspoon salt, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1 teaspoon cinnamon) to enhance the natural flavors of the fruit.

Source: Elizabeth Karmel, author of Taming The Flame (Wiley, 2005).

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Amy Neunsinger / StockFood Creative / Getty images

Peach and Apple Salsa 2 large ripe but firm local peaches 1 small Honey Crisp apple, peeled, cored, and chopped 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro 3 1/2 tablespoons honey 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon Bring medium saucepan of water to boil over high heat. Add peaches and cook 30 seconds. Using a slotted spoon, transfer peaches to a bowl of cold water. Drain peaches. Peel and chop coarsely. Place peaches in large bowl. Mix in all remaining ingredients. Cover and chill. (Can be made 4 hours ahead.)

Source: Ted Cizma, chef, Grand Traverse Resort & Spa

Stone Fruit Marinated in Balsamic Vinegar Yield: 4 servings Balsamic vinegar has a nice balance between sweetness and acid. This makes it a perfect complement to ripe stone fruits, which have a sweet tartness. When you reduce balsamic vinegar to a thicker consistency, its sharpness is tamed and it becomes a nice, slightly bitter, sweet syrup that enhances the flavor of stone fruit.

Grilling method: Direct/medium heat 4 firm white peaches (or nectarines or other stone fruit) juice of 1 lemon 1 cup balsamic vinegar 1 cup water 1/2 cup sugar zest of 1 navel orange Pinch sea salt 1. Cut the fruit in half and remove the pits. Brush with lemon juice and set aside.

2. Mix the vinegar, water, sugar, and orange zest in a small saucepan. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the sugar is melted. Add a pinch of salt and remove from heat. Let the mixture cool to room temperature.

3. Build a charcoal fire or preheat a gas grill.

4. Pour the vinegar-sugar liquid over the stone fruit and let it sit for 10 minutes, turning occasionally to submerge all cut sides in the marinade. Remove the fruit from the liquid. Reserve the marinade in a small saucepan. Simmer over medium-low heat until the liquid is reduced by about half, about 20 minutes; set aside.

5. Place the fruit, cut-side down, on the grill over direct medium heat, cover, and cook for 2 or 3 minutes or until marked. Turn it over and grill for 5 to 7 more minutes or until warmed through and the skin begins to peel away from the flesh.

6. Remove the fruit from the grill and place it back into the marinade. Marinate it for at least 5 minutes. Serve warm or cold with a drizzle of the reduced marinade.

Source: Taming The Flame by Elizabeth Karmel (Wiley, 2005) Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure 67

fresh from the field

Wet Goods Sunshine? Check.

Water? Yep. Supplies? Right here.

By Karina Evertsen and Corrynn Cochran

68 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

PADDLING

Sea Kayaking Kavu Sol Shade Hat You’ll be made in the shade with this fantastic hat. A 4-inch brim of 100% cotton canvas provides plenty of coverage for your face and neck, and a chinstrap with adjustable draw cord won’t let it blow away. $26. www.kavu.com

Smith Optics Talent Sunglasses These shades are designed to handle anything, whether you are hard at play or out on the town. The scratchresistant lenses are shatterproof and curve around the face for optimum coverage. We love them because they are stylish but still supertough. $109; Polarized $139. www.smithoptics.com

Rip Curl Bye Bye Bahamas You can’t get any more classic than these shorts. They are the perfect item to throw on while playing in the water or on dry land. $44. www.ripcurl.com

NRS Dri-Stow Dry Bag Pack your kayak with these transparent bags and you’ll be able to locate that fleece with ease as well as protect your gear from getting wet. A fold-down vinyl closure tightly secures your cargo and makes for a perfect carrying handle.

Choose from six different sizes. $13–$24. www.nrsweb.com

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Helly Hansen Swimsuit Leave it to Helly Hansen to know how to kick out great water wear. Here is the perfect suit for riding the waves hard. The halter top is ultracomfortable and will stay in place. The cute boy-short cut on the bottom adds some playfulness to the look. $50. www.hellyhansen.com

_......

•• Beyond Coastal Sun Block A little goes a long way with this stuff. If you are looking for sunscreen that doesn’t leave a slick behind you in the water, this is a good choice. It goes on smoothly and soaks in quickly without the gooey leftovers. It’s waterproof and has an SPF 30 rating. 4 ounces $18. www.beyondcoastal.com

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fresh from the field

70 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

PADDLING

River Kayaking KokAtat Women’s Tropos Super Breeze This splash jacket is designed to keep you dry and protect you from the sun when paddling in warm weather. Water is kept out with the adjustable wrist and neck closures. To top it all off, it has a great fit for the female form. $105. www.kokatat.com

Shred Ready Vixen Helmet A helmet made just for women means you can still boat like a boy—you just don’t have to look like one. The Vixen features a strong fiberglass shell that will protect your head from any unexpected run-ins with rocks or branches. Much like a bike helmet, it has interchangeable foam-fitting pads and highly adjustable straps, allowing you to customize the fit. It is accented with a fun dragonfly graphic and comes in six sweet colors. $125. www.shredready.com

Astral Bella PFD The Bella has everything we look for in a personal floatation device.

Adjust the two-panel system up or down to fit your torso and the innerpanel sports bra to accommodate your cup size. Side zip entry makes it easy to get on and off, and we love the cargo pockets for extra storage. $157. www.astralbuoyancy.com

NRS Women’s HydroSkin Shirt The HydroSkin shirt is a neoprene insulator that’s perfect for keeping you warm while paddling in cold water. It has a comfy fleece lining, which retains little water and dries quickly. And the underarm stretch panel maximizes mobility while paddling. $70. www.nrsweb.com

Chaco Hipthong The Hipthong combines a casual flip-flop with Chaco’s signature straps that adjust and secure to your foot, making this free-heel sandal a perfect fit. The new EcoTread outsole is made from 25% recycled rubber and is ultrasticky when it comes to treading on slippery rocks. This sandal delivers funky style and peak performance. $70. www.chacousa.com

Women’s j Adventure 71

fresh from the field

FLY FISHING

Char Bloom Fishing Vest This one-of-a-kind fishing vest is designed by Colorado fly-fisher Char Bloom. It features pockets that store within reach everything you will need. The lightweight nylon fabric sheds water, and the buckle closer makes getting it on and off easy. The best part, other than its precision functionality, is the assortment of fun colors you won’t find in any other women’s fishing vest. $95. www.charbloom.com

I ,

Simms Women’s Gore-Tex Stockingfoot Fly-fishing Wader Finally a wader made just for women.

Rest assured, you will stay dry in these waterproof Gore-Tex overalls.

The neoprene booties are attached to keep your feet warm inside your wading shoes. A spacious zippered pocket on the chest leaves room for extra fishing necessities. $330. www.simms-flyfishingoutfitters.com

72 Women’s j Adventure

Patagonia Canyonwalker This shoe, designed to be worn with waders, is perfect when you are up to your waist in river water. The polyester felt soles make for sure footing and prevent slippage on rocks and uneven river bottoms. The highfiltration mesh upper keeps out sand and sediment, and the fast-drying synthetic leather is lightweight and comfortable. $120. www.patagonia.com

ExOfficio Reef Runner Lite The Reef Runner is made to cover you for all kinds of summer adventures.

Its mesh side panels provide ample ventilation for warm days, and the quick-drying, wrinkle-resistant nylon fabric blocks UV rays with UPF 30+. $65. www.exofficio.com

Keen Zerraport Get ready to scramble on rough terrain in these sandals.

The Zerraport have an ultracomfortable foot bed that is both contoured and lightweight.

It also boasts beefy rubber toe guards, which prevent stubbing on trickier terrain. And the straps adjust to give a supportive fit. $80. www.keenfootwear.com

Ryders Eyewear Sonnet Polarized These Polarized lenses are lightweight and flexible.

They’ll keep their stylish shape no matter what you throw at them. $70. www.ryderseyewear.com

®

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74 Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s j Adventure

Surfing

Patagonia Women’s R2 Jacket A fleece jacket is just the thing to cozy up in after a long day on the water.

Not only is the stretch polyester knit warm and breathable, it’s also lightweight and slim fitting. Better yet it’s designed with partly recycled material as well as being 100% recyclable. To find out more, check out the Common Threads program on Patagonia’s website. $160. www.patagonia.com

Lole Maui Surf Top Pure bliss describes this surf top. A blend of spandex and nylon creates a thin, soft, superslick layer between you and your surfboard. The barely there seams and the UPF 50+ sun protection make it a must-have. $48. www.lolewomen.com

Lole Swimsuit Sumatra Surplice Top/Riviera Bottom Debuting this season, Lole swimsuits combine style and function perfectly.

The crisscross top is flattering and supportive (no worries about losing it in strong surf), and the bottom provides effective coverage. In addition to your sunscreen, these pieces give you added UPF 50+ protection. Top $34; bottom $32. www.lolewomen.com

Women’s Freestyle Tide 3.0G Watch Monitor tidal information for 75 beaches worldwide. The time, height, and direction of the waves can be yours at the touch of a button, with the option of switching between present and future.

This watch is smaller than the average tide watch and displays all you need to know on a clear, simple screen without the bulk. It features dual time zones, preset heat timer for surf competitions, and two alarms. It’s water resistant to 100 meters and easy to read in the dark. Go forth and surf. $90. www.freestyleusa.com

Sanuk Sidewalk Surfers Tap in to your inner surfer with these ultracomfy loafer-style kicks. Made for lazy days when you just want to slip something on and go. The funky artistic detail adds a nice touch. $48. www.sanuk.com

Body Glove Sanddollar Boardshort The fit of these boardshorts makes them one of our favorites.

They sit low on the waist, with a comfortable drawstring and a 9-inch inseam. The brushed polyester fabric is ultrasoft and quick drying, and the contrast stitching sets them apart. $35. www.bodyglove.com

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fresh from the field

LANDLUBBERS Horny Toad Mali Dress Dressed up or down, this is the perfect pick for summer days while cruising the farmers’ market or warm nights at an outdoor café. With typical soft Horny Toad fabrication, the 100% cotton is perfect for a warm sunny day. The contrast embroidery adds a touch of detail and sass. $88. www.hornytoad.com

San Diego Hat Company Ribbon Crusher Hat A sunny day isn’t complete without this stylish hat. The wide brim does the trick, you’ll be safe from the rays and looking good. It’s 100% polyester and comes in nine fun colors. $42. www.sandiegohat.com.

Athleta Reversible Summer Satchel Toss your beach-going necessities in this stylie satchel, which features adjustable tie straps and a magnetic closure. And it’s reversible between a solid Coco Bean brown and a superfun print. $49. www.athleta.com

Colorescience Sunforgettable SPF 30 Brush The Sunforgettable powder sun block is long lasting, extremely water resistant, odor free, and easy to apply. A simple swipe of the brush and you are covered. It is safe enough to use on your kids too. The zinc and titanium oxides and the sea minerals protect from UVA and UVB rays. It works instantly and won’t rub off on your clothes or burn your eyes. $50. www.colorescience.com

Maui Jim Hibiscus Sunglasses These top-of-the-line shades are the epitome of luxury for your eyes. Maui Jim coined the term SuperThin to describe the glass used in their lenses. What does it mean? Crystal clarity and effective protection.

The scratch-resistant polarized technology blocks UV rays and glare from every angle. Choose from three different lens shades. $209. www.mauijim.com

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Dermalogica After Sun Repair To soothe overexposed skin, we recommend this treatment balm, which repairs damage caused by UV rays.

A combination of botanicals and homeopathic herbs reduces painful irritation and redness brought on by sunburn. At the same time, it restores moisture and protects cell proteins from more damage. $30. www. dermalogica.com

WATERPROOF YOUR WORLD GSI Outdoors Waterproof Gear Dry Box Got something you want to keep dry? It will stay safe and secure in our favorite utility box. Perfect for keeping your gadgets safe and moisture-free, the GSI Gear Box is watertight and crush proof. $28. www.peak62.com

Chisco Waterproof Camera Floater Lets face it: a waterproof camera won’t do you any good at the bottom of the lake. This bright foam-filled neoprene floater will save the day. A detachable short lanyard clip stays on your camera and connects to the floater when in use. $10. www.chisco.com

Olympus Stylus 1030 SW Whatever water sports you find yourself drenched in this summer, capture the action on the Stylus 1030 SW. This waterproof, crush-proof, shock-proof, freeze-proof digital camera can keep up with your active lifestyle.

Take underwater video down to 33 feet. A wide-angle lens and 10.1 megapixels provide premium images. Don’t leave home without it. $400. www.olympusamerica.com

Atlantic IceBar2 iPod Nano Waterproof Speaker System This pocket-sized speaker system is waterproof and shatterproof, keeping your Nano safe and completely dry.

Your iPod is cradled in the tightly sealed insulated shock-absorbing case.

Waterproof speakers and click-wheel membrane let you jam out in the wettest of conditions. We love the flip-out stand and the removable nylon wrist strap.

It is compatible with earphones and accommodates all three Nano generations. $80. www.atlantic-inc.com

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“Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.”

—Roger Caras

78 Women’s ❊ Adventure

SURF AND YOGA TOURS FOR WOMEN SUMMER SESSIONS ’09 SESSIONS

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editorial

Enter at Your Own Risk

By Michelle Theall

L

ife should have a neon sign: Enter at your own risk.

If nothing else, human beings could sign a waiver upon the age of reason that says they understand and agree to the challenges and the dangers inherent to living on planet Earth. I’m talking less about our adventurous pursuits than our decisions to live close to mountain and wilderness areas. Every year someone buys a cute A-frame with acreage and a rippling stream. From the deck of that house, they watch the deer and the antelope play. A home on the range. An American dream. But what should you do when the new neighbors show up to welcome you? They won’t bring an apple pie. I’m talking about the bobcats, black bears, grizzlies, and mountain lions, coming to join your barbecue. Stalking you on your morning hike.

Rummaging through your garbage. What do grizzlies and mountain lions eat? The answer is anything they want, including you. And that’s as it should be. If you want to commune with nature in safety, you can go to the zoo. But

80 Women’s j Adventure

you won’t find me there. I choose to go into the backcountry, live in the mountains, and relax beneath the aspens.

And I have a request: If I am ever mauled by a grizzly or stalked by a mountain lion, I don’t want you to hunt down

We must agree to be responsible stewards of the wild areas left on our planet. the animal or say that she’s become too accustomed to humans or that he is unusually aggressive. I want you to let her be a grizzly. Let him be a lion.

I’m brought to tears when I hear about someone getting attacked by a mountain lion. Why? Because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will track and kill the lion. It just doesn’t make sense to me. When someone breaks into my house or trespasses on my land, I have rights. What rights does a lion have when I am in his backyard? If you threaten my child, I’ll come at you with my claws out and teeth bared. Should we allow a grizzly with her cubs any less?

Let’s face it: you’re not likely to find a mountain lion cruising through downtown Denver, so when you decide to live where wildlife abounds, you’ve done just that—made a choice. And the animals shouldn’t have to pay for it.

We must agree to be responsible stewards of the wild areas left on our planet. That means realizing that we are guests. The animals reserve the right to revoke our travel visas anytime they choose. And it’s amazing to me that they do so infrequently. So, when you hear about a grizzly or mountain lion being seen near your home, put your garbage, bird feeders, pets, and kids inside. Make noise.

Scare them away. And if by all means you are still worried about your safety or that of your children and pets, please do the animals a favor and kindly relocate to a place where you feel more comfortable. No one is forcing you to stay.

But, if you sign the waiver and agree to experience life with all its risks and thrills—if you take responsibility for the ride—you’ll find wonder and awe on the journey. I~'/~