鈥淗i,鈥� Barbara Garrett said, phone to her ear. 鈥淚鈥檓 with a partner, and we鈥檙e up in the mountains and have no way down.鈥�

鈥淥K,鈥� the 911 operator said.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 know.听We thought we were on a trail, but we鈥檙e way up high and鈥擨 don鈥檛 know. We鈥檝e been climbing and climbing and climbing, and I can鈥檛 even find a trail to go down.鈥�

鈥淥K. Do you know what trail you鈥檙e on?鈥�

鈥淲ell…鈥� Then she began to explain.

Garrett was 74. At 2 P.M. on April 3, 2020, she and her hiking partner, 63-year-old David Burgin, had left a parking lot at the city limits of Ogden, Utah, and hiked several miles on the Indian Trail into the Wasatch Mountains. During the return hike in the evening, Garrett started getting nervous. She thought they鈥檇 been heading the right way, but they were still going up, and were now on an unfamiliar slope where the trail was banded by cliffs. It didn鈥檛 make sense.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we鈥檙e on the trail anymore,鈥� she told Burgin. He said, 鈥淲ell, it might not be the trail, but it鈥檚 a trail, and it鈥檚 headed toward town.鈥� The slope kept ramping up; to keep their footing, they had to tug on roots and rocks, with Burgin telling Garrett, 鈥淐ome on. You can do it.鈥� Finally, they came to a narrow ledge that ran above a cliff tall enough to injure her if she fell off. For the first time in the four years she鈥檇 been hiking with Burgin, Garrett was scared.

They鈥檇 met while hiking, back in 2017. He鈥檇 taken her picture at sunset, on top of the Ogden Canyon Overlook Trail, and they鈥檇 chatted all the way down like a couple of high schoolers. After saying goodbye, Garrett started walking toward her Dodge Caravan but then turned around, walked back over, and gave Burgin a hug under the stars. It was such a great day.

This was the worst day. They鈥檇 crossed the ledge, scrambled up more steep terrain, and were now stuck on a flat perch. The sun dropped behind the ridgeline. The temperature was in the forties, and it would soon be dark. They were at 6,000 feet.

鈥淥K, all right,鈥� the dispatcher said. 鈥淪o I鈥檓 trying to see where the map is pinging you. It鈥檚 not a very good reading.鈥�

鈥淥h, I鈥檓 kind of hiding behind a rock. You mean you can find my cell phone?鈥�

鈥淵eah. It鈥檚 telling me that you鈥檙e possibly by Ogden Canyon, but it鈥檚 very far. Give me one second, OK?鈥�

Garrett heard typing. Then the dispatcher connected her to a sheriff鈥檚 deputy who didn鈥檛 seem to understand her fear or fatigue, because he said, 鈥淲hile you got a little bit of daylight, just start working your way down, and I鈥檒l come up and then try to find you.鈥�

鈥淲ell…鈥� Garrett sighed.

鈥淟et me get your phone number.鈥�

鈥淥h, my gosh.鈥� Garrett knew they were in danger. What she didn鈥檛 know was that an uncommon kind of rescuer would soon be hitting the mountains to search for them.

The post Why Drones Are the Future of Outdoor Search and Rescue appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Leroy Bull was a boy who felt things other children did not. He sensed that there was something right on the edge of his reality, in rural Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the 1940s and 鈥�50s. Sometimes it sent him messages, although at the time he did not know them as such. What he knew was that in school his eye was drawn out the window and into the woods, where his world hushed.

He quickly learned not to tell the other kids that sometimes, in these moments, he thought he glimpsed the future. Once, when he was older, he called his high school sweetheart and urged her to stay home from school. She hung up, ignored his advice, and broke her ankle that afternoon in gym. As a child, kids called Bull crazy. Was he? He didn鈥檛 know. He was surer of himself when he was alone.

There was an old strip mine up the road from his home, and he liked to walk there. The floor of the mine was unnaturally flat and its walls steeply sloped, but he would pick his way down a few times a week, enter that vast space, and feel small. There, he was most aware of the hush. It was like the bottom of a deep breath. It was as if he had grown wings and flown out of this world. Going down was always like returning.

People are most aware of the other side when they鈥檙e young, before they grow up and come to distrust what they can鈥檛 measure, he says now. Yet some adults retain the feeling, and they may pass along what they鈥檝e learned to those who are open. Bull鈥檚 grandfather lived on a farm on the edge of Watertown, New York. He felt something, too.

Bull spent his summers on that farm in upstate New York punching cows, as he puts it, six days out of seven. One spring, on Easter Sunday, when Bull was 12 and he and his brother and the cousins were all up in the front yard, his grandfather disappeared into the woods. When he emerged, he was clutching half a dozen branches he鈥檇 cut from the willows. They were shaped like wishbones.

He handed the branches around and showed the kids how to hold them鈥攑alms skyward, points facing forward like the needle on a compass. Then he lined the children up before what he said was an underground vein of water that fed a black pitcher pump, and the old-timer told them to walk.

Well, the kids walked, and when they walked over the ground said to have water beneath it, a few of their rods, as it happened, dipped.

Bull鈥檚 was the first. His brother鈥檚 didn鈥檛 budge.

Afterward, their grandfather pulled Bull aside and said, 鈥淚f you can learn to use that in your lifetime, do it, because it will probably help you.鈥�

Bull would not realize for some time that what he had done that Easter Sunday was to channel the other side鈥攖he spirit world, as he calls it鈥攚hich always felt strongest when he was close to Mother Nature, when the din of his world hushed and the messages from the other side rose in him like goose bumps. He would not learn until his twenties that he could call upon the hush to find things鈥攚ater, minerals, utility lines鈥攐n a map; he would be in his forties before he learned to summon from the silence images of missing people or lost pets or misplaced wedding rings; and not until he was a half-century old would he realize, with shock, that on rare days he could project visions onto the landscape to guide him in his search, like the time a golden grid of shimmering lines snapped above the grass and led him to a well site. Bull鈥檚 calling, he would learn, was in finding things the old way, with his intuition as a guide and a forked stick as a pointer, like dowsers have for centuries. All his powers would come in time. It was on that Easter Sunday, when Bull was just a boy, that he took the first step: he learned to find water.

The post Into the Mystical and Inexplicable World of Dowsing appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

When I say the skiing was icy, I don鈥檛 mean your standard East Coast edge-skittering hardpack. I mean ice. Ice ice. Frozen water. Inches of it. Peppered in little bumps, like the bumps that stood on my forearms when later I told people听what happened听last spring听on the summit of the tallest mountain in Vermont. I watched two friends ski down first. They looked like toy ships on uncertain seas鈥攈eaving starboard, falling portside, too much in the bow, sinking in the stern鈥攂ut they didn鈥檛 capsize. When I jump-turned down into the slope, though, my skis blew right out from under me on one of those damn bumps. I started sliding fast and I couldn鈥檛 get my skis to bite, so I summoned all my animal instincts to keep them below me, where they scuffed the bumpy ice and regulated my descent to the little tree downhill听and the big cliff beyond.

But I hit the tree and stopped.听

That day听I had on powder skis听by East Coast standards, that were 98 millimeters underfoot. For two decades now, the American skier has been听irrationally gripped with powder fever. Shane McConkey (may he rest in peace) was the harbinger. He reversed the historic trend of manufacturing skis with more sidecut and camber when he for the first true powder skis, the , on a bar napkin听in 1996. In 2001, he tried out听the first prototype in New Zealand on听wet, heavy snow. The rest of the pros on the trip听were flailing, but he was flying, and his performance听blew the industry away.

McConkey鈥檚 skis were shaped in precisely the opposite dimensions of every other ski at the time:听they had fat waists, a reversed sidecut, and zero camber. Skis with this geometry, McConkey proved, rip in powder, and that鈥檚 why you see iterations of these obese boards today beneath听the feet of so many skiers, even when the snow is firm. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e trying to manifest their season,鈥� says听Mike Rogge, an editor at Mountain Gazette听magazine and a听former听editor at Powder.

Powder skis, he says,听are a specialized tool, just like skinny skis. But people are drawn to powder skis even on days when they鈥檇 be better equipped on their thinner-waisted sisters,听in part because ski magazines and their Instagram feeds feature pros in powder on powder skis. Everyone, it seems, is an optimist. And the market reflects听this. Last season, sales of skis with widths between 101 and 110 millimeters underfoot grew 10 percent, faster than any other category, according to data provided by the NPD Group.

Now, I鈥檓 not saying go hawk your fatties. What I am saying, though, is go tromp on over to that mirror there, look deeply within, and ask yourself, 鈥淗onestly, am I best served on most days by powder skis?鈥澨�

Ponder it.听

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 one or the other,鈥� says Rogge. 鈥淵ou can never really have too many skis,听and that,听to me, is part of being a skier.听You want to build the quiver that makes your season the most fun.鈥澨�

For weeks after my slide, the only lesson I could muster was that a full slope of ice made for bad skiing, not that my skis were too wide for the conditions. But I have since moved back out west, to southwestern Colorado, where the distances between places are great and those听distances听can be harrowing. Traveling on skis through such听lonely spaces has shifted my perspective. I understand now that when the slope is steep and firm, skiing can be dangerous听if you鈥檙e unprepared. My friends were prepared听on the day I slid; they were on skinny skis with sharp edges, skis with leverage and听bite, skis, it seems to me now, that are less a toy for pleasure and more a tool for safe passage. I鈥檝e since looked into the mirror, and I know my answer: I am not best served听every day听on powder skis.

So last听fall I bought a pair of skinny skis.

A ski is either a buoy or a blade. It floats听or it cuts. None do both well. Powder skis, which must float, achieve buoyancy mainly by sheer surface area, but on corn or boilerplate or wind-whipped, sunbaked, supportable mank, a wide ski is a slow ski edge to edge. Your width underfoot also reduces leverage听laterally, so a wide ski more easily blows out of turns. All that tends to make for a sluggish and imprecise ski, one听that spreads like a butter knife, not one that cuts like a cleaver.

Of course, you don鈥檛 want听skis to cut in powder. Those skis don鈥檛 float. They sink, and sinking in deep snow听sucks. But you don鈥檛 sink on firm snow; in those听conditions, you want a ski that cuts and tracks when you tilt it, not one that squabbles. The two defining traits of a ski that rails are听more curvature along its听edges and less distance between them. More sidecut鈥攚hich gives a ski that hourglass shape鈥攁llows a pair to penetrate deeper in its听tracks and shortens the turn radius, heightening those sweet, sweet G鈥檚. By听contrast, a听thinner-waisted ski听amplifies traction in a turn because it offers听more听leverage.

Skinny skis听also snap听edge to edge. It鈥檚听a different sensation than the feel-good, floaty vibes, brah, of bounding through powder like a dolphin rolling on dopamine. It鈥檚 more savage. You flick your ankles and instantly there you are, leaping into a new turn, loading onto a new set of edges, leaning in and hanging on and bracing with your quads and glutes and core against a force that wants to eject you, wants听to break you. It鈥檚 not a dolphin you鈥檙e riding,听it鈥檚 a bull.

But there are better authorities than me on carving. I only raced in high school. Take it from听ski racer Bode Miller, who has won six Olympic gold medals. Carving is听鈥渙ne of the elements of skiing that is really, really fun. It鈥檚 primarily what I do,鈥� he said, laughing, when I reached him by phone in Montana. And when it comes to carving, your ski choice makes 鈥渁 huge, huge difference,鈥� he said.听With a fat ski, 鈥測ou can make a slide GS turn, a slide slalom turn, and it鈥檚, you know, playful, fun.鈥� But when you angle a thin-waisted pair of skis sharply into a turn and dip deeply enough to fight the six or seven or eight G鈥檚 pulling on you, 鈥渋t鈥檚 really like a whole new sport.鈥�

No skis excel more at carving than skinny skis, and it is Miller鈥檚 goal to 鈥渟oftly nudge鈥� people to try them. After all,听he鈥檚 designing them (and other models)听for the manufacturer . There鈥檚 just so much more to skiing that you鈥檙e missing if you don鈥檛 give skis thinner than 100 millimeters underfoot a chance, he said.听But he acknowledges that it鈥檚 probably impossible to change the paradigm with so much market momentum behind fat-waisted skis, which is a shame. Many skiers haven鈥檛 ever truly carved. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 something that鈥檚 never, unfortunately, been shared,鈥� he said.

My skinny skis are a pair of discounted 听mounted with ancient 听bindings. They are 176 centimeters long and, conspicuously, 82听millimeters underfoot. They鈥檙e the skinniest skis I鈥檝e owned as an adult, rivaling even what I rode when I was a kid and my dad plopped me on the best deals he found at ski swaps. They鈥檙e unsubstantial, and the first few times I skied them, before snow听in southwestern Colorado had substantially听accumulated, I was afraid, deep down, that skiers would think I was, too. They don鈥檛 scream fun. They whimper pragmatism, something听few skiers really care about, it seems.

In late January, I finally tested my skinny skis in the conditions for which they鈥檙e designed: firm snow. That day, on听groomers at Winter Park, much of the corduroy had been scraped clean by the afternoon. Bare patches shined with a white-blue听almost-ice. I kicked in, rode to the top of Mary Jane, and the skinny skis kicked back.

They vaulted from edge to edge to edge, and I could feel that gyroscopic tug as I cut unbroken lines from turn to turn to turn, accelerating on the low-angle groomer as islands of trees zipped by faster and faster and faster. They hammered twin tracks into the hard snow as the slope steepened and opened below me.听I felt like a locomotive storming down the valley, fast because I was confident, confident because I was secure. The skinny skis cut where my powder skis would slide. The cutting quaked in my thighs, which were flexed, and I felt powerful.

Then I lost an edge.听

As I slid听sideways, still on my feet, I didn鈥檛 think about that spring slide last year on the summit of the tallest mountain in Vermont, because you don鈥檛 think in moments when you must act. I thought about it later, though. If, at Winter Park, I鈥檇 been on skis just 15 millimeters wider underfoot, with less edge-to-edge leverage, I could鈥檝e continued sliding and, upon heaving my knees uphill in an effort to regain control, blown my edges听out entirely, landing on my hip, catching a rogue edge, spinning upside down, losing skis, poles, and perhaps sailing听into the trees. But I was on skinny skis that day, and when I pressed my knees into the slope, my edges caught, slamming me back into my track. I rocketed through my turn, grinning.

The post An Ode to Skinny Skis appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.