The Barkley Marathons is 100 miles long, but it’s not an ultramarathon. Runners competing in it slog through the mud, look for hidden checkpoints, and cross through a dark tunnel, but they’re not running in an obstacle race like Tough Mudder. The course is barely marked, and forces competitors to negotiate mountains and thick underbrush in rapidly changing conditions, but the Barkley is not an adventure race.

So what, exactly, is the Barkley Marathons, the legendary event that every year draws 40 people to Tennessee’s Frozen Head State Park to attempt to finish a 60,000-vertical-foot course in under 60 hours? Ask anyone who has tried it, and you’ll get one answer: It’s the most brutal race on earth. Only 14 hardy souls have completed the full distance since the race started in 1986, including two runners at this year’s edition in April. And every time someone does, the course is tweaked.

Off the course, the Barkley is no less of a challenge. Runners have to decode a byzantine entry procedure just to get in the door, and the entry fee for newcomers is a license plate from their home state. We talked to two of the race’s original organizers and one determined competitor to get the story behind “the race that eats its young.”

Genesis

Barkley’s co-creators drew inspiration from the rugged landscape of Frozen Head State Park in the Tennessee Mountains—and the story of a notorious killer.

Gary “Laz” Cantrell, Barkley Marathons Co-Founder: After James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., he was held in the park in Brushy Mountain State Prison, which is where they kept the worst of the worst because it’s surrounded by the Tennessee Mountains. They call those mountains the ‘third wall’: If you get over the first two walls of prison, you’re not going to escape the third. When Ray escaped, he was out for 54 hours and they found him only eight miles from the prison.

This got Karl and I all intrigued. So we went up there in 1985 for a backpacking trip to scout out the area. When we showed the rangers our route, they told us we wouldn’t be able to make it. The next day, after making it all the way around, we told the rangers that we had friends who would like to run that course.

We started putting out word within the ultrarunning community that we were going to have a race. The first year, 1985, we had 13 people who came to try it. No one finished. The next year, no one finished.  Four years passed before someone finally finished in 1989—and that was just a 55-miler. It was then that we decided to make the race 100 miles. It took another six years before someone finished that distance.

I named the race after Barry Barkley, a friend of mine from way back. Barry was injured in Vietnam, so he can’t run, but he’s always been enthusiastic about the sport. He came once back in the 80s, but he’s a farmer, and spring is planting season. He keeps saying one day he’ll retire and come see it.

The Course 

Most ultra-runs are designed to push participants to their limits. The Barkley is designed to make them fail.

Laz: The best description of the course I’ve heard? Someone told me that every ultra has its signature hill, the nasty one that’s totally unreasonable and makes or breaks the race—the Barkley is like all those hills just put end on end.

Karl Henn, Barkley Marathons Co-Founder: Most trails are built with switchbacks or follow a ridge edge, but here in East Tennessee, you bring them straight up mountains. It may be a 1,500-foot climb, but it’s straight up the mountain through the woods, or through rocky terrain or briars. The weather can go from hot, which destroys runners, to raining sideways, flooding, or sleet or snow up on the tops. And you can’t use GPS; you have to find your way.

Laz: The course consists of five 20-mile loops around the perimeter of Frozen Head State Park. Sixty hours is where we set the time limit, making it a nice, even two-and-a-half-day race. I always try to introduce something a little bit new to the course each year.

Henn: Whenever I have an idea, it’s to make the race easier, and Laz doesn’t take that. Every time he changes it, I’m telling him, this is ridiculous, you’re adding a whole other mountain here. The runners don’t complain. It’s hard for me to understand it, but they like it.

Laz: It’s possible to go fast enough to finish, but it’s not really possible to build up much of a cushion, so you’re always under pressure.

Getting In 

At just $1.60, the entry fee for the Barkley is cheaper than most ultras—unless you count the license plate, the personal essay, and time it takes to figure out what to do with them.

Laz: We don’t publish the entry procedure. People who have business out there on the Barkley find out how to enter. That’s the whole race: Nothing is done to make it mentally easier. The race dates are not posted. There’s no website.

Beverly Abbs, Two-Time Barkley Competitor: There’s an email listserv for the Barkley, and when a new person gets accepted and starts asking questions on the listserv, the veterans will just lie. They’ll put up amazing stories about what needs to be done and what happens. For a virgin, half of getting to the start line is working through the lies.

Laz: We do a set of weighted drawings. The first lottery is the sacrificial lamb. We basically pick the people who have absolutely no business being there. I do it mainly because it provides great amusement to myself and the other runners. Then we draw the elite runners.

The first year that someone attempts the Barkley, he or she has to bring a license plate from their home state or country—that’s the entry fee. The subsequent years, it’s various things. This year it was a flannel shirt, one year it was a pair of socks—I really hate going to the store. And the entry fee for veteran finishers is a pack of Camel filters. That way I have a quality cigarette to smoke during the race.

The Runners

To run a race as trying as the Barkley it helps to be tough—and a little bit of a genius.

Laz: It takes a different kind of mentality to do something that no matter how well you’ve prepared, you’ll probably fail at. There’s no room for error. There aren’t any stretches where you can zone out and run.

Crazy people don’t do well. There have been a lot of things that probably seem crazy to outsiders. We had a Swiss runner once who broke his ankle four miles into the loop and hopped the last 16 miles on one foot.

Less than five percent of our applications are from females. The thing is, no woman has ever made it to halfway through the fourth loop yet. We publicly state that this race is too hard for women and no woman can do it.

Abbs: It seems that the people who are attracted to the Barkley—and specifically those who do well—are quite smart. Up until this year, the only people who ever finished it were engineers, chemists, and people who had advanced college degrees. It takes so much to maintain control over whatever situation you can control, and to make sure everything is going to go the way it needs to go.

Laz: There are a lot of skill sets needed for the Barkley. You have to be comfortable in the woods. You might have to be able to find a single rock in the mountains, where the fog’s so thick you can’t see your feet. And of course you have to be able to go on without sleep. You also have to be in the best condition of your life.

Because of the kind of people who run ultras, more often than not, we’ll have a physician in the mix. Other than that, the race just has a roll of duct tape and a jar of Vaseline. Figure you can treat anything with duct tape or Vaseline.

Race Day

The world’s toughest race starts not with a pistol, but with a cigarette. For most runners, it ends with a long walk back to camp, and the sound of “Taps” being played on a bugle.

Abbs: Any time between midnight and noon on Saturday, Laz will blow a conch shell, which signals one hour to the start of the race. The last couple years, he’s blown it shortly after 8 A.M. The year before that he blew it at 1:04 A.M. So nobody can sleep because there’s always the worry that he’ll blow it in the middle of the night.

Laz: The Barkley starts with the lighting of a cigarette. Then, it’s usually a very uninspiring start: [The runners] all walk past the yellow gate, and stroll around the corner into the woods. And then they run. They don’t like to give me the satisfaction of seeing them run.

Abbs: The names that have been given to the climbs are crazy. Testicle Spectacle is the first really steep climb. It’s usually pretty overgrown, with saw briars and plants that you have to bushwhack through, and it can easily turn into a muddy river. Then you go down Meth Lab Hill. Rat Jaw is one of the worst. Those who make it to loop three learn the joy of Checkmate Hill, which is 1,300 feet of climbing in a quarter mile.

Laz: There are paperback books at each checkpoint. They’re not hidden, per se, but you have to be able to find them in the forest. Then you get the same page number out of the book as the number on your bib, which means we can only use every other number. So all of the Barkley numbers are odd, which seems fitting.

I used to have to go and scout the used bookstores to get books with appropriate titles. Now people see books that look like they belong out there and they send ‘em to me. My favorite this year was What to Do When You Feel Lost, Alone, and Helpless.

Henn: was a federal prison until just a few years ago. Gary somehow got the warden to show him this tunnel that goes underneath the old exercise yard. It’s a quarter of a mile long and there’s water flowing through it. There are no lights. Laz makes the runners go through it. If you didn’t believe in auras, you’d probably start believing in them if you went through that tunnel.

Laz: The course breaks your heart. People reach a point. They climb a hill, and know they’re done. Toast. Most of the time, people aren’t forced to leave or timed out. They quit on their own.

Everyone has to self-extract. People refer to it as the hardest race in the world to quit because it might take seven hours to get back to camp once you’ve decided that you’re defeated. Especially the first night, people come in from all directions out of the woods. Some give up and make their way out to a highway and hitchhike back to the park.

We play “Taps” on the bugle for each loser as they come in. It’s the final indignity: In the middle of the night people can come up to see who’s bit the dirt. People really hate to have “Taps” played for them, but they all seem to want you to enthusiastically play it for the others.

The Finishers 

Just over a dozen people, all men, have gone the distance at the Barkley Marathons. This year, ultramarathoners Nick Hollon and Travis Wildeboer added to that number.

Laz: The prize is that you get to stop running. The finishers have a chair brought to meet them right at the finish line. They stay there for a long time. They talk and tell their stories, and the rest of us sit around and listen, and think Oh my God! Why can’t that be me? Oh yeah, I quit, I remember. I was going up Little Hell and it dawned on me that all I really wanted in the world was to get out of the woods alive, and never go back.

If no one finishes it could end any time. It doesn’t finish until the last person comes in or at sixty hours. When someone does finish, it’s just an incredible thing to witness. You feel like you’re elevated just being around it.

I don’t know if the Barkley is supposed to teach people about failure. What the Barkley does is force people to go deep inside themselves. It’s hard to explain. You reach the limit and find out that there’s a little more.

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Why do an Olympic track star and a Stanley Cup-winning defender for the Boston Bruins don neon and go meet a bunch of bartenders, moms, and yoga instructors at the crack of dawn? To hug them. Also, to stay in shape. For the past 19 months, a growing cadre of fitness buffs, including former 800-meter runner Nicole Teter-Downin and Bruin Andrew Ference, have been gathering at outdoor spots around Boston. On Mondays, they do push-ups and sit-ups in public parks; on Wednesdays, they sprint up the Harvard Stadium stairs; on Fridays, they run the city’s hills. Hundreds of people turn out, rain, snow, or shine, some of them in spray-painted clothes. The crew’s leader, a hulking six-foot-six former college rower named Brogan Graham, who prefers spandex, commands everyone to hug. Good vibes ensue. Then everyone in the crowd pumps their fists, screams “Fuck yeah!” and gets after it.

This is the , an unsanctioned, grassroots fitness community organized through social media that is quickly catching the attention of prominent gear companies. Graham, 30, and Bojan Mandaric, 31, former members of Northeastern University’s crew team, tweet the workout locations a few nights before each session. Think of it as a fitness flash mob—CrossFit meets Critical Mass.

“It’s like a cult,” says marathoner Ian Nurse, a 35-year-old chiropractor who runs with the November Project every week, “in a positive way.” Graham, who makes his living as a marketing manager for a bike-share program, says, “It’s just hundreds of friends playing at 6:30 a.m.” He sees the project as both a serious fitness group and a rejection of anonymous, device-driven urban life. The core of what people want, he says, is not fitness but interaction: “We’re building community and accidentally getting fit.”

It may sound a little corny, but the huggers are onto something. Brogan and Mandaric recently launched an offshoot of the project in Madison, Wisconsin, and similar groups have emerged across the country, among them , a nonprofit that organizes free weekly 5K races in Chicago and Houston; , a long-­distance running community that trains twice a week; and Denver’s , which hosts a free full-body, boot-camp-style workout three times a week at Red Rocks stadium. The November Project, though, seems to have the most traction. Recently, New Balance, Nike, and Reebok reached out to discuss partnerships with the group.

“With the state of the economy and our reliance on technology, millennials’ desire for community is heightened these days,” says Claire Wood, senior product manager at New Balance. “We’re desperate for it. The November Project provides fitness and helps erase loneliness simultaneously.” Besides, she notes, “these are potential lifelong New Balance customers.”

So far the partnerships have been few. In March, New Balance filmed a promo with the November Project and gave away shoes to participants in Madison and Boston who attended a certain number of workouts. But Graham and Mandaric want to take the group national, hoping to travel to five cities in the next year to train volunteers. They would also like to quit their day jobs—which would require money. “Grassroots only goes so far,” says Bern Prince, head coach at Reebok CrossFit in the Back Bay area of Boston, which partnered with the shoe brand to get on its feet. “You need a big company to make it appealing to everyone. That’s not selling out—that’s reaching more people.”

Graham and Mandaric don’t see it that way. “You can’t say grassroots and have it look and feel like a corporation,” says Graham. “The minute Nike or Reebok put their name on it, there’s going to be a little bit of a problem.” He also says the group will “never, ever” charge for its workouts. There’s an obvious tension between statements like this and partnerships like the one the November Project forged with New Balance—major gear companies, after all, don’t buddy up to startups out of charity. But the group is still finding its way. For now the plan is to keep adding tribe members through unconventional means. This winter, crazed followers took to the streets of Boston, using large stencils and power-wash machines to imprint the November Project logo onto sidewalks and buildings and plastering cars with fake parking tickets that read “#FREE #GRASSROOTS #RACINGFIT Fuck Yeah, November Project.”

“We would rather just have a bunch of ridiculous events and grow this thing until it’s insane than take money from anyone,” says Graham. “It sounds cocky, but we don’t need any help.”

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, January 6-12
WHERE: Breckenridge, Colorado
January marks the 50th anniversary of Colorado’s wackiest festival, during which Breckenridge is transformed into an 11th-century Viking hamlet, complete with horned helmets, plenty of flasks, and the Ullympics, which features a frying-pan throw and wooden-ski race.

, February 1-3
WHERE: Lava Hot Springs, Idaho
This gala includes a costumed Polar Bear Float down the icy Portneuf River and the Running of the Bulls, in which locals don underwear and Uggs for a jog to the town’s 112-degree hot springs.

, February 1-10
WHERE: Saranac Lake, New York
The longest-running winter festival on the East Coast, the carnival celebrates its 116th birthday with music, parades, fireworks, broomball, and the Lighting of the Ice Palace, built with frozen blocks harvested from nearby Lake Flower. This year’s theme: Under the Sea. 

, March 2-3
WHERE: Bellaire, Michigan
Held on northwest Michigan’s Schuss Mountain, the Slush Cup kicks off with a costumed ski race across a 40-foot melting pond and includes a seal-sled race that sends garbage-bag-clad contestants bombing down a hill.

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In a 2011 study of 128 college runners, researchers found that “surrounding greenness” was an indicator of better athletic performance. Other studies have shown that exercising in nature results in less fatigue, reduced anxiety, less hostility, more positive thoughts, and an overall feeling of invigoration.

Natural settings alleviate directed-attention fatigue (DAF), which occurs when the brain’s prefrontal cortex must constantly manage competing stimuli. DAF can cause impatience and irritability. Gazing at clouds and trees restores both mood and cognitive function.

Running on natural surfaces, specifically grass, is 15 to 35 percent easier on your joints—especially your knees—than running on pavement and also lessens the impact on the plantar fascia, the sensitive tissue that supports your arch. The shock absorption also makes your muscles work harder, so you get a better workout.

When you’re relaxing in nature, your adrenal cortex produces less of the hormone cortisol, which activates the body’s stress response. Prolonged periods of stress can also shrink the hippocampus, which is where we form and store memories. By contrast, less stress enhances neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form new connections.

Recent research analysis found that for every hour per week a child spends outdoors, the chance of developing near-sightedness falls by two percent. Some studies have also found that spending time outdoors may slow the progression of myopia in adults.

Studies have shown that being in close proximity to water can significantly lift people’s moods.

Soil bacteria and other microorganisms that we passively inhale can alter hormone levels to improve mood, decrease anxiety, and improve cognitive function. One study found that mice that ingested soil bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae were able to navigate a maze twice as fast as other mice.

Sunlight exposure boosts production of white blood cells, which helps the body combat disease. Sunlight also increases the number of red blood cells, thereby increasing your blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity and improving muscular endurance.

When sunlight hits your eyes, your optic nerve directs your brain’s pineal gland to decrease production of melatonin, the hormone that regulates circadian rhythms—our wake-sleep cycles—and boost serotonin, a neurotransmitter associated with mood and appetite.

The sun’s ultraviolet energy converts cholesterol in your skin into vitamin D, which increases calcium absorption during digestion, producing stronger, denser bones. Regular exposure to sunlight has been shown to decrease blood cholesterol levels by more than 30 percent.

Scientists believe that biologically diverse environments like farms and forests harbor more friendly microbes, which colonize our bodies and protect against inflammatory disorders. A recent study found that teenagers living in the country has fewer incidences of allergies than those in urban centers.

DNA methylation—biochemical changes that are critical for gene expression—may differ in people raised in cities over rural areas, according to recent hypotheses. While the potential impacts aren’t clear, some studies suggest that the methylation linked to urban life could contribute to depression.

Phytoncides, compounds emitted by plants and trees, reduce blood pressure, decrease stress hormone levels, and boost production of so-called natural killer immune cells, which fight tumors and viruses.

Several studies indicate that spending time in nature lowers blood pressure, and one found that it lowers blood sugar levels in diabetes patients.

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Climbing trips are the easiest: all you have to do is drive out to the desert with ropes and food. Ski-hut trips are relatively simple, too. All the gear, shuttling, and logistics that go along with raft trips make them more challenging to organize. But they’re also the most fun.

Plan at least six months in advance to be sure you can obtain permits and property bookings. If the activity is technical, make sure everyone has comparable skills.

Keep it small at first and let it grow organically. Email an invite to a core group and tell them to reserve spots with a check. Then open it to a wider group with each subsequent trip.

Reserve the same week every year.

One person needs to manage the money— is a good tool. Plan for $15 per person per day for food.

Have fun—bring instruments or costumes. And whiskey.

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1988
Shark Week premieres with 10 programs, including Sharks: Predators or Prey? and Sharks of a Different Color. Ratings nearly double.
Viewers: Fewer than one million

1994
The series’ first host, Jaws author Peter Benchley, speaks from locations where the film was shot.
Viewers: 1.1 million

1999
Shark Week goes live, with a two-hour shark-diving special filmed in the Pacific’s Bikini Atoll.
Viewers: 1.3 million

2000
To promote its first 3-D program, Discovery distributes six million pairs of glasses to viewers in the U.S. and Canada.
Viewers: 12.6 million

2004
Discovery’s marketers create commercials comparing sharks to evil clowns and the Grim Reaper. Following criticism by execs, Discovery pulls the ads.
Viewers: 20.6 million

2005
An intern is forced to dress as Chompie, Discovery’s shark mascot, for the entire week.
Viewers: 23.9 million

2006
Discovery decorates the exterior of its Silver Spring, Maryland, headquarters with a giant shark head and fins.
Viewers: 27.4 million

2011
A Discovery production team uses 300 bottles of chocolate syrup mixed with red food dye to produce fake blood for shark-attack re-creations.
Viewers: 27.1 million

2012
The 25th year of Shark Week kicked off August 12. Look for an ode to the continuing influence of (yes) Jaws.

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What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs swimming across the English Channel? Philippe Croizon. That’s what the 44-year-old quadruple amputee did in 2010. By the end of this month, the Frenchman will have added the Strait of Gibralter, the Red Sea, the Bering Strait, and the Papua New Guinea-Australia Gap to his list of watery accomplishments.

“What Philippe is doing is much larger than even the longest of all open-water swims in the world,” said Marcos Diaz, an elite open-water swimmer who completed this same feat two years ago. “He brings a message that’s bigger than life with every meter he moves forward in the water. It’s not only going to be a big accomplishment for a disabled person, but to all of us who have arms and legs.”

Croizon, who used to be an electrician, lost his arms and legs in 1994 after being shocked by 20,000 volts while changing a TV antenna on his roof. “I decided to make my handicap the beginning of a new life,” he says. He bought a pair of carbon-titanium prosthesis for his legs and, because he can’t generate the torque needed to lift his head out of the water, a snorkel. Croizon spent the next two years swimming 35 hours per week to prepare for the Channel crossing, which he completed in 13 hours in August 2010.

This May, he and his expedition partner, fellow Frenchman Arnaud Chassery, swam the 11-mile Papua New Guinea-Australia Gap, and have ticked off one crossing a month since. Among the challenges faced: 37-degree water, shipping lanes choked with 900 vessels off Morroco, and unexpected storms in Jordan. None of which Croizon is all that worried about.

“I’m through the hard part,” says Croizon, who nearly drowned three times the first time he attempted to swim. ”Whatever happens can’t be worse than what I’ve already gone through.”

Croizon will complete the last leg of his journey across the Bering Strait next week.

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CADENCE: The quicker your cadence, the faster and (generally) more efficient you can run. The ideal is 180 foot strikes per minute; most people have a longer, slower stride than that. Use it to track and focus on a shorter, faster gait for improved efficiency and better performance.

NIKE FUEL SCORE: Essentially, this is the full measure of your athletic activity—the more you move, the higher you score. To arrive at the figure, Nike measured oxygen uptake for various exercises, then used an elaborate algorithm to standardize the scores for everyone, letting you compete against the likes of LeBron James and Hope Solo—and have a chance at actually beating them. (Exclusive to Nike+ devices.)

HIGH-INTENSITY DISTANCE: This is a good indicator of your aerobic power output, and tracking it can assure you’re improving your speed over time. Intensity is also the key to burning fat, so knowing how hard you’re pushing yourself is the best weight-loss measure during a workout.

PEAR SQUARE ONE SCORE: After your run, the Pear device will give you an overall percentage indicating how well you stuck to your workout plan and kept in your heart-rate zones. The biggest training mistake people make is going too hard; the Square One helps eliminate that by making a competition out of sticking to your plan. (Exclusive to the Pear Square One.)

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Sometimes, having a little fun in mother nature can turn deadly. But if you’re quick to react appropriately (or luck is on your side) you can beat the odds. These four did. Here are their stories.

• Alone on the Water
• Caught in an Avalanche
• Falling Through Ice
• Mauled by a Cougar (And Saved by a Bear)

: Alone on the Water

Help is coming. In two more days.

The most terrifying thing about sharks is how silent their approach is. It was 1 a.m., and for 40 hours I’d been stranded on my kiteboard in the Red Sea, waiting for the wind to pick up.

Last year I completed the first-ever kiteboard crossing of the Baltic Sea, and this time I was trying to cross the Red Sea, a 124-mile trip from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. Everything looked perfect. The sun was shining, my weather team predicted consistent northwest winds at 25 to 28 knots the entire way, and I had packed light.

But after eight hours of steady cruising, just 18 miles from the Saudi coast, the wind shut off like someone unplugged it. I triggered my SOS device and hoped to be rescued.

It was night in whitetip shark territory when the first two appeared, circling me at a distance. I was a sitting duck.

I spread the kite out to appear bigger and climbed on top of it, praying they’d leave me alone. I watched them take bites out of the nylon. I knew I was the next course and switched into survival mode. I tied the nine-inch tactical knife to my right hand so I wouldn’t drop it and prepared for battle.

For the next seven hours I was on full alert, using my board as a shield and stabbing the sharks under the dorsal fin each time they circled by. Their skin is incredibly thick, and you can feel their massive power gliding by, like a truck coasting in neutral. When they started attacking me from underneath I got aggressive, with jabs to the head and face. I’d heard the nose was sensitive, so I went for that when I could. The water was churning furiously all around me.

Once I scared the first two away, my confidence was high, which was good, because more came. Eleven in all. Some were light gray, some were black, others had stripes, and all were ugly. I fought them off until sunrise.

Later that day, the Saudi coast guard finally showed up, 50 hours after I sent out my SOS.
—AS TOLD TO SCOTT YORKO

FIVE ALIVE: WINNING A SHARK FIGHT
Expert advice from George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research

1. Get big. Show the shark you’re as big and aggressive as it is. You don’t want to play dead; you want to yell and fight back.

2. Arm yourself. Sharkskin is extremely coarse and can easily cut yours, which you want to avoid. (Blood triggers sharks’ predatory instincts.) Use whatever you’ve got—flipper, camera, knife—to repeatedly jab the shark in the head, ideally in the nose, gills, or eyeballs.

3. Use karate. Open-palm shots to the shark’s nose are most effective, because they transfer momentum better than closed-fist punches. They also deflect upward, whereas punching has a natural downward trajectory that’s likely to follow through into the shark’s mouth.

4. Get a good angle. If you’re scuba diving, back up against a reef or a wall to reduce the angle of attack. Attacks from below are the hardest to defend.

5. Don’t panic. Sharks know easy prey when they see it, so don’t thrash or swim irregularly. Get out of the situation as gracefully as possible.

: Caught in an Avalanche

Living through a slide is just the beginning

The first question my good friend Conrad Anker asked me when I told him about the avalanche was “When did you decide to live?” I knew the moment.

It was April 11 last spring, and I was in the Tetons scouting locations for a film shoot with and , two of the world’s best big-mountain snowboarders. Maybe 10 seconds after I’d dropped into my line, the entire mountain seemed to release. The avalanche grew until it was like an ocean, with waves of snow ripping down the slope and snapping off trees at the base.

I kicked my skis off and was swept over a cliff. When I landed, I was plunged deep under the still-sliding avalanche. The pressure crushed me. I felt as though I’d left my body; I seemed to be watching myself from afar. It was suddenly calm, and I had the rational and impersonal thought that this—here, now—is how I die. Then I realized that if I’m conscious and having this internal discussion, I must be alive. I decided to fight. The world came rushing back with the roar of the avalanche, and I tensed every muscle in my body against the pressure.

Two thousand feet later, I  came to a stop, buried up to my chest on the valley floor. In the moments after, my priorities—family, friends, ambitions—were stacked with clarity. Four days later, I was supposed to fly to Nepal to join an expedition to ski the world’s fourth-highest peak. I decided not to go. I was beaten down and ashamed.

I dropped out of my normal life and went to Mexico to surf for four weeks. Looking back, I was struggling with post-traumatic stress. I was on edge for months. If I didn’t have two other expeditions in the works, I might have stayed in Mexico for 10 years. A month later, I climbed and skied Denali, and three months after that I finally completed the first ascent of India’s Shark’s Fin, one of the hardest climbs of my career. I’m not saying I wiped the slate clean after what happened—that experience goes everywhere I go. But working in the mountains isn’t just my job; it’s what I live for.
—AS TOLD TO KYLE DICKMAN

THE MENTAL SIDE OF ADVENTURE TRAUMA
Expert advice from Laurence Gonzales, author of Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why

1. Recognize that there’s a problem and that it’s totally normal. The causes of post-traumatic stress range from extreme—combat survival—to common, like losing a loved one. Telltale symptoms include difficulty concentrating, sleeplessness, and jumpiness.

2. Take time. It used to be that combat veterans were forced to discuss the incident immediately after a trauma occurred. That caused suicides. The new rule is to talk to people you trust and not to force it.

3. Distract yourself. Post-traumatic stress is like being stuck in survival mode. Override that instinct through rhythmic, goal-oriented activities like writing, surfing, or knitting. (Who wouldn’t want a crocheted hat made by Jimmy Chin?)

4. Create rituals. Structure your emotional response, and allow yourself to feel bad about an incident one day a year—not the whole year. On January 23, 1945, my dad was shot down and survived a 27,000-foot fall in his airplane. When I was a kid, my family held a special dinner every January 23.

5. Rewire your brain. Repeated positive exposure overrides negative feelings. Cut your finger chopping onions? Chop more onions. Just be slow, deliberate, and very aware while you’re doing it.

: Falling Through Ice

Sometimes it pays to watch the instructional video

The guys in the bait shop said the ice was solid, a good seven to eight inches—plenty to support a snowmobile—all the way out past an underwater hump called Levi’s Shoal. But when we got there, two guys were already fishing the shoal. My son Aaron and I went to another hump about a quarter-mile in the direction of the open water.

The ice felt thick. The air was crisp, and the coating of new snow sparkled. We went a few hundred yards. The snowmobile slowed. We heard a loud crack, then the sled tilted backward and disappeared beneath us.

Next thing I knew, we were in the water. The hole was about 15 feet in diameter, and I could see Aaron out of the corner of my eye. Instinct told me to help him, but there was nothing I could do from the water. I had confidence in him. He had lost 100 pounds and was now a strong, competent adult. We had both been in poor shape and three years ago decided to start working out. If we hadn’t, each and every week, no excuses, I don’t think we’d be here now. And we knew what to do: we had watched instructional YouTube videos.

When the moment came, Aaron remembered that you’re supposed to “swim” out, meaning flop up onto the surface, instead of putting all your body weight on the edge of the ice and trying to hoist yourself up out of the water. He escaped right away, but I did it wrong—just like the videos warned. The ice cracked again, and I fell back, bobbing in the water. As a piece of ice bumped my shoulder, it occurred to me, This is the real thing; this is how people die.

Then I heard Aaron yelling “Swim! Swim!” And then it was magical, it was very easy.

When I saw that we were both out, we yelled, “Yes!” and moved to firmer ice.
—AS TOLD TO SAM MOULTON

FIVE ALIVE: AVOID BECOMING A HUMAN POPSICLE
Expert advice from polar adventurer Eric Larsen

1. Check the ice as you go. When I’m out, I have an ax with me. If I’m uncertain of the conditions, I’ll stop periodically and give the ice a few good whacks, listening for a deep thump—a good sign it’s solid.

2. Know what to look for. Ice is usually thicker closer to shore, but each lake has its own currents and potential thin spots: springs, river inlets or outlets, outflows from power plants emitting warm water, even beaver lodges.

3. React right away. If you hear the ice cracking, immediately throw your weight backward while spreading out your arms and legs to distribute your body weight. That could prevent you from becoming fully submerged.

4. Gain traction any way you can. Some ice fishermen tie two awls around their neck, just for that reason. Skiers: use your poles as picks; just grab ’em right above the basket. But first you have to take your skis off, because it’s almost impossible to get out with them on.

5. Soak up the water. Once you’ve crawled a safe distance away from the hole, look for fresh, dry snow to rub on your clothes. Light snow is remarkably absorbent, and you want to use it to keep as warm as possible by sucking away moisture.

: Mauled by a Cougar (And Saved by a Bear)

A story so outrageous we had to call the authorities

Five days a week, I mine gold on the North Fork of the Feather River, in Northern California, and I’d seen the bear and her yearling there a few times before. So in March, I was surprised when I went down to the riverbank and saw her standing on a gravel bar 45 feet away with the yearling and a new three-week-old cub.¹

I turned back up the trail, and three steps later a 120-pound cougar pounced on my back. I never saw it coming, didn’t even suspect it was in the area—I was focused on the bears. Come to think of it, I probably got in the way of that mountain lion’s dinner.²

It came up from behind and pounced on my backpack³, knocking me to my knees. As soon as it was on me, it didn’t let up for a good few seconds. It shook me violently, just like a house cat toying with a mouse.

I swung my rock hammer, which I always carry with me, at its head and heard it howl. When I tried to hit it again, I couldn’t believe what happened. My 400-pound mama-bear friend charged⁴ and grabbed the cat by its throat, pulling her off me. I crawled into a thicket and watched in awe for nearly a minute. The bear had its teeth around the cougar’s throat, and they were rolling across the ground, hissing and growling.⁵ Then the cougar twisted free and bolted into the forest.

The mama bear watched the cat retreat and ambled back down to its cubs, which had witnessed the whole affair from the riverbank. As for me, my arm had been scratched bad, so I wrapped it in a rag and hiked back to the car. When I got home, my wife screamed at the sight of me. She tried to make me go to the ER, but I refused. Many people don’t believe this happened to me, but I just ignore them.
—AS TOLD TO MADISON KAHN

FIVE ALIVE: PUTTING THE SCREWS TO A DUBIOUS TALE
An expert opinion from cougar biologist Robert Quigley

1. Mama bears rarely have more than one cub in a span of two years. That’s just bear behavior 101.
2. I can’t recall an incident where a cougar ate a bear cub. I suppose it could happen if the cougar came upon a cub without its mama, but that wasn’t the case here.
3. Cougars aim to kill by going for the head or neck. And the California Department of Fish and Game forensic specialist found no saliva, hair, or bite marks on the pack—all inconsistent with an attack.
4. This is hard to imagine. The only time a female bear might attack is if it felt threatened, and a cougar mauling a miner doesn’t represent a threat to it or its cubs.
5. If a bear and a cat fought, it’d be the cougar doing the biting. Bears use their forepaws to swat things.

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No device is better at turning a workout into a game than the new . Eight pressure sensors in the shoes (included) collect information on your movements—how fast, how high, and how hard you play—and wirelessly transmit the data to your iPhone. From there, post your stats and feedback on the Nike+ Leaderboard to compare your NikeFuel score with friends and pro athletes alike. The app offers what Nike calls drill packs to help improve speed, explosiveness, and strength—directing you in everything from hill climbs to sumo squats to crunches. Bonus: since each pack lasts only 10 to 15 minutes, it’s easy to fit in a workout, or two or three. Bummer: it’s currently compatible only with the iPhone.

BEST FOR: The Competitive Set

Pear Square One Running Monitor

A combination foot sensor, hear-rate monitor, and digital coach that offers stats and advice while you run

That voice in your head telling you to go faster? It’s the new , a combination foot sensor, heart-rate monitor, and digital coach that offers stats and advice through your earbuds. Start with a 20-minute assessment run and the online Pear Portal training tool will customize one of its 300 free programs (everything from a 5K to a marathon) to suit your fitness goals. As you train, the coaching voice tells you which of five heart-rate zones you need to hit and whether to pick up or slow down the pace. Even better, the voice occasionally provides form checks, explaining foot-strike and stride technique to help make you a faster runner. Sometimes there are so many audio cues that it’s hard to enjoy the run (you can adjust the frequency), but if you’re looking for a full-time digital coach, this is your device.

BEST FOR: Dedicated Runners

Adidas MiCoach SpeedCell Running Monitor

An accelerometer-based running monitor with the most comprehensive data collection and analysis tools

Adidas was one of the first to the fitness-monitoring market, and the is still the best all-around device. An accelerometer that you embed in the sole of your Adidas shoe (or clip to the laces of your regular kicks) tracks speed, sprints, intensity, number of steps, and stride length, among other factors. After a workout, the SpeedCell connects wirelessly via USB adapter or iPhone dock connector and uploads your data to your computer and to the company’s online MiCoach app, then spits out a comprehensive digital chart of your performance. There are nine training packages (women’s and men’s fitness, running, football, soccer, rugby, etc.), and the app can tailor each of them to your goals based on your initial stats. The quantity of data can be overwhelming at first, but once you understand what you’re looking at, achieving your fitness objectives is as simple as following instructions.

BEST FOR: Multisport Athletes

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