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Fast and Lit

With UPS drivers sipping from CamelBaks and just about everyone using carabiners as keychains, the gadgetry of the outdoor world continues to surface in unexpected places. Witness the Photon Micro-Light II—an ultra-lightweight LED flashlight, about the size of four stacked quarters, prized by trekkers. Now the device has found a following in, of all places, the rave scene. That’s because when clipped to a whirling raver’s extra-large trousers, the Photon leaves neon-colored tracers of light in the darkness (see above). The manufacturer, Oregon-based Laughing Rabbit Inc. is getting into the groove, and in March will unveil a tiny light expressly for dance-floor exhibitionists, for about $30. The beam will change color when moved and a crystal prism lens will scatter the light in all directions. “I am making it so that it is awesome,” states company president David Allen. Whoa…Intense. —James Glave

SERIOUS adventure ain’t cheap, and since governments and wealthy industrialists tend not to fund expeditions the way they used to, today’s climbers and trekkers usually rely on equipment companies to fix them up with ice axes, down jumpsuits, and a nice mule or two. But for many free-spirited types, writing a grant proposal is more daunting than topping out on K2.

Enter Yourexpedition, a Minneapolis-based marketing, PR, and logistics firm launched last fall as a broker between athletes who want to do something epic but don’t have the money, and deep-pocketed firms that want a piece of the glory but have few heroes handy in the Rolodex. “We’re going to come in there with a big splash,” says Yourexpedition president Charlie Hartwell, a 37-year-old former marketing manager for Pillsbury.

As Hartwell explains, his firm (which caters exclusively to female athletes) matches up the jocks with the suits, taking a fee from the latter. In the case of the company’s first big deal, a $1.5 million Antarctic traverse by Scandia, Minnesota­based Ann Bancroft (a Yourexpedition partner) and Norway’s Liv Arnesen, the athletes got cash and PR, and sponsors Pfizer, Volvo, and Motorola, reached the 18- to 50-year-old female demographic in the ensuing media frenzy (the company cites more than 1,200 “placements,” PR-speak for media mentions).Bancroft and Arnesen’s send-off party alone—a lavish evening in Cape Town, South Africa—ran over $50,000.

Hartwell is currently shopping for future sponsors, but with a recent infusion of $2.7 million in private financing, he still has enough cash left to make at least one more big splash. Or belly flop. “A lot of stuff is overhyped,” complains Utah-based Himalayan climber Kitty Calhoun. “What is important is to not lose the heart and soul of climbing.” Fair enough. The line for application forms is on the left.

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UPDATE
Kyrgyzstan Kidnapper May Be Alive in Prison

“I WANTED TO GO HOME.” That appears to be the ultimate, if cryptic, reason why Rafshan Sharipov, a 20-year-old Islamic rebel from Tajikistan, allegedly admits he took part in the kidnapping of four young American climbers last August in Kyrgyzstan—a six-day drama detailed in şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř’s November issue (“Fear of Falling”). In the story, Sharipov was last seen tumbling off a cliff into the darkness. The man who sent him there, 22-year-old Colorado climber Tommy Caldwell, made the fateful decision to yank his captor so that he and his companions—Jason Smith, 22, Beth Rodden, 20, and John Dickey, 25—could make a break for freedom. All four climbers saw Sharipov (who identified himself to the group as “Su”) go over the edge and believed that he could not have survived the fall.

However, much to the surprise of his former prisoners, he apparently did. Sharipov, who seems to be a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan—a militant group seeking to carve out an independent Islamic state in Central Asia—was subsequently captured by the Kyrgyz military. In a videotaped jailhouse interview, obtained and translated by şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř, Sharipov appears dejected but surprisingly healthy, considering the fall he apparently took. In the taped interview, Sharipov claims he encountered the Americans while traveling home through Kyrgyzstan after four months of weapons training. Although he does not speak on camera about the kidnapping or the days during which the climbers were marched around the Kara Su Valley—nor does the footage allude to Sharipov falling off a cliff—a Kyrgyz official on the video says that, according to Sharipov, the Americans fled after he fell asleep. Dickey, who has seen the tape, believes Sharipov was their captor, and all four climbers stand by their account of their escape.

The U.S. State Department has declined to comment on the kidnapping, but Caldwell says the FBI has taken an interest in Sharipov. “They want to interview him, with a view to looking into prosecuting him,” says Caldwell. All four climbers have expressed relief that Sharipov is alive—relief that has removed the guilt that they mave have taken a life to save their own. —Greg Child

HOT ENOUGH for ya? It is in the far north, where ocean currents are shifting, the polar ice shelf is thinning, and the Inuit are for the first time seeing wildlife—i.e. robins, dragonflies, and salmon—previously only found in far warmer climes. Early signs of the apocalypse? Based on last November’s failed United Nations meeting on climate change at The Hague (and the collapse of subsequent emergency talks in Ottawa in December), we should all be investing in boats. The U.S. delegation, headed by Frank Loy, refused to back off on a proposal that would allow emissions credits for pre-existing carbon “sinks,” such as forests. Such sinks would significantly offset the nation’s 7 percent greenhouse gas reduction goal set under the Kyoto Protocol. Scientists are still split on what’s behind the thaw (the planet’s natural cycles, or smokestacks) but some are biting their nails: “Regardless of the cause, the change is so extraordinary it needs attention,” says Lawson Brigham, an Arctic scientist. Consideringthe indicators below, one has to wonder: Will the next North Pole fashion craze be Hawaaiian shirts?

1 A Robin in Winter One of the more obscure words in the Inuit language of Igloolik is misullijuq—loosely, “rain in midwinter,” an extremely rare event. Until recently, that is. According to research conducted between June 1999 and May 2000 by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (a Canadian think tank), residents of Sachs Harbour on Canada’s Banks Island are noticing spring ice breakup coming earlier, and, for the first time, thunderstorms. Townspeople also encountered dragonflies and robins, and have had to venture farther out to sea to hunt for seals. The most alarming change: House foundations are beginning to shift as the permafrost melts beneath them.

2 Baja, Canada? In 1942, after a grueling voyage that included two winters locked in the ice, the schooner St. Roch (above) successfully navigated the perilous 1,000-mile Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. Last July, 60 years after the first trip began, the St. Roch II—a 66-foot aluminum-hulled catamaran—made the same trip in only 103 days. The key difference: “No pack ice ever even touched the hull,” explains St. Roch IIcaptain Ken Burton. The crew went swimming (without wetsuits) in 40.1-degree-Fahrenheit water between 70 and 72 degrees north latitude, about 1,200 miles from the Pole. “It was surreal,” he says. “It looked like Baja.”

3 The Floe-Protein Diet Polar bears are not light eaters; North America’s largest land carnivores will nosh 43 blubbery seals each year. But shortening Arctic winters are cutting into the feast. The earlier arrival of spring breakup (June, compared to July in decades past) now means fewer floes, which the bears use as fishing platforms from which to secure plump, juicy pups. A recent Canadian Wildlife Service study found that the earlier ice breakup is resulting in skinnier bears (the average body weight has dropped 10 percent) that have 10 percent fewer offspring than they did two decades ago.

4 Into Thin Ice By reflecting up to 80 percent of incoming solar radiation back into space, sea ice acts as a kind of planetary thermostat. Trouble is, the thickness of the frosty mantle covering the Arctic Ocean has diminished by about 40 percent in the last four decades. “Not only has there been a reduction in polar sea-ice thickness but in surface area too,” says climatologist Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

HAD THERE been an orthopedic surgeon on hand for the Colorado premiere of the climbing film Scary Faces, she would have been handing out stacks of business cards. The crowd that December night at the Boulder Theater included a man in a wheelchair with two broken ankles, a pair on crutches, and a handful of others with pronounced limps. All were apostles of “highballing,” rock climbers who used to boulder, or climb horizontally within ten feet of the ground, but who now scale bone-breaking heights of up to 30 feet, with foam pads and spotters strategically arrayed below to cushion and direct their falls.

“If pads had never been invented,” says Paul Lembeck, a 40-year-old horticulturist who tore his ankle ligaments after falling 15 feet off a boulder last November, “people probably wouldn’t be out highballing very much.” The sport seems to be thriving under a twisted, crash-test-dummy logic: Give drivers air bags, they just go faster; give boulderers pads, they just go higher. More than a dozen companies now make over 40 foam models, and climbers from Squamish to the Shawangunks fear bouldering will forever change from a sport of strength to one of nerves—and good insurance.

Naturally, highballers love the thrill. “When you top out on a highball,” says Michael Moelter, 22, “you’re so psyched you didn’t wreck. It’s rad.” But the sport is dangerous. Take Steve Banks’s word for it. As head of the Venice, California­ based gear firm Pad Industries, one of the manufacturers that helped stoke the trend, he discourages highballing. “The higher you climb, the better chance you have of missing your pad,” he says. “That’s just good math.”

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It’s What’s Inside That Counts
After a century of service, say so long to the inner tube

“THIS IS GOING to be the big-time standard in every mountain-bike wheel out there,” gushes Steve Driscoll, marketing manager at the French component manufacturer Mavic. He’s not talking up a tweak on the rim or a novel twist in the spokes, but something more fundamental: a new generation of wheels that do away entirely with that 113-year-old fixture of cycling, the inner tube.

Driscoll has good reason to be pumped. Like similar designs available from competing wheel manufacturers Rolf and Bontrager, Mavic’stubeless Crossmax UST ($799) and more affordable Crossroc UST ($350) are less vulnerable to pinch flats, or “snakebites,” the holes that occur when a rider slams his wheel into a rock or log, squishes the tire, compresses the tube into the edge of the rim, and tears the rubber. Converts will also be able to ride on as little as half the air pressure, doubling the amount of rubber on the trail and, by extension, the traction. This spring, tires from Continental, Geax, and Specialized, with unique treads arranged for low-pressure setups, will be widely available for the first time. “Tubeless will have as much impact on the industry as front suspension did,” promises Specialized product development manager Al Clark.

Maybe. Bontrager founder Keith Bontrager believes that for now, at a steep $799 a pair, his firm’s Race Lite Tubeless wheels will appeal primarily to pro racers. “The product reviewers are saying, ‘I smashed the hell out of the rim, but I never got a flat,'” he says. “That doesn’t work for the general public.” Aside from bringing the prices down to earth, engineers have a few other kinks to work out. With their thick sidewalls, the new tires are heavier than their tube-bearing predecessors. Grit can sneak into the seal between tire and rim, allowing air to seep out. And at low pressure, front tires can fold and crumple during hard braking. But then, better the tire than you. —Ben Hewitt

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RAW DATA
Lake Sailing, Sans Lake

Maximum number of three-wheeled “dirtboats” expected in America’s Landsailing Cup, the largest terra-firma regatta in America, at California’s Ivanpah Dry Lake this March:
90

Surface area of course, in square miles of hard-packed clay:
3

Years Ivanpah regatta held
26

Speed of fastest seafaring yacht, in mph:
53

Speed of fastest landsailing yacht, in mph:
116.7

Size of sail flown on that yacht, in square feet:
71

Female sailors expected this year:
4

Radio-controlled model dirtboats expected:
10

Weight of speed-record-holding Iron Duck, in pounds:
1,800

Dirtboat crashes resulting in broken bones at Ivanpah:
0

Nonfatal motorcycle crashes involving man hired to barbeque a pig for the 1999 event:
1

Number of cement mixers used to prep après-sail banana daiquiris:
1

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$17B
>REVENUE
The estimated Gross Domestic Product of Cuba for 1998—and the amount Americans spent on outdoor sports equipment and clothing in 1999, according to an industry report by the Outdoor Recreation Coalition of America.

WHILE FEW would argue that the humble sheep offers any sort of benchmark for animal IQ, it’s hard to trump the brilliance of ovine design when it comes to temperature control: Wool keeps you warm when it’s cool out, cool when it’s warm out, and doesn’t even begin to feel wet until it has absorbed 40 percent of its weight in water. So it’s nice to see innovative clothing manufacturers going back to the farm. Using modern milling techniques that eliminate scratchiness and enhance durability, companies like SmartWool, Devold, Icebreaker, Woolrich, and Ibex are rekindling a love affair between outdoor enthusiasts and wool that ignited sometime around, well, 7000 b.c. and blazed brightly until the debut of down in the early fifties.

The Ibex Randonee Pullover ($235; 800-773-9647; www.ibexwear.com) features a soft weave of merino wool on the inside with a synthetic flexible fabric made by Schoeller called “Skifans” on the outer surface. The result: a light, breathable, wind-resistant shell that solves a problem Ibex president John Fernsell understands all too well. “When I run or ski, I overheat and sweat like a 400-pound fat guy,” he sighs. “But wool’s climate control is distinctive. Basically, you can wear it at 45 degrees or 20 degrees without changing a thing.” Of course, sheep knew that all along.

IN A LIFETIME spent exploring the world’s most remote ranges, the legendary British mountaineer Eric Shipton wrote six classic exploration books, discovered the first route up Everest, and co-invented the now de rigueur fast-and-light approach to alpinism.

About the only person not impressed was Shipton’s youngest son.

“To everybody else, he was this great hero,” says John Shipton, a 50-year-old horticulturist from Y Felin, Wales. “To me, he was just this silly old bugger. He wasn’t around much and that was all right with me.”

Shipton the younger spent much of his youth rebelling against his father’s “reactionary values.” Thrown out of two schools, John eventually graduated and bummed around the world with the stated ambition of “becoming a beggar.” Only now, something is calling him to the mountains. In March, he expects to be circling and, weather permitting, climbing Chile’s 5,741-foot Mount Burney —a peak not touched since his father summited in 1973.

Burney’s height may be modest, but Shipton’s trip will involve two weeks of arduous tramping through thick temperate rainforest, peat bogs, and icefields. “This trip is totally what my father was all about,” says Shipton.

So how did John finally come to follow, quite literally, in his dad’s footsteps? For one thing, he read Everest and Beyond, Peter Steele’s biography of the elder Shipton. “I realized there was another side to the family story than the one my mother always told me,” says John. The trip also springs out of his own increasingly ambitious botanical outings—plant-hunting trips that have taken him to the highlands of Morocco, Turkey, and Chile.

As of late December, the affable but scattered Shipton was still mulling over a number of crucial details of his trip. “It’s rather like the way Eric would have done it,” says Steele. “I think he’s starting to realize his father wasn’t so bad after all.”

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From Luna to Lumber

THERE’S A THIN LINE between sacred environmental totem and patio furniture. In the case of Luna, the northern California redwood from which Julia “Butterfly” Hill revitalized the anti-logging movement, that line is about half an inch thick and just under three feet deep—the work of a vandal’s chainsaw. In a senseless act of violence undertaken sometime last Thanksgiving weekend, the still-unknown assailant sunk a 36-inch blade more than halfway through the base of the 1,000-year-old tree. Spying an unbeatable PR opportunity, Pacific Lumber and the California Department of Forestry—the 27-year-old Hill’s former nemeses—joined foresters, arborists, and engineers from around the nation in an effort to bolt Luna back together. Though the braced tree is less vulnerable to toppling now, only time will tell if the inner cambium, Luna’s nutrient-transport system, can recover. “Luna’s value is much more than just the wood,” says Stuart Moskowitz, a member of the board at Sanctuary Forest, the group overseeing Luna’s welfare. “Even if she falls, she’s a symbol of peace and the need to protect our resources, and that’s priceless.” On the other hand, were Luna not Luna, she’d be just another old-growth redwood—one that, as it turns out, would yield about 150,000 board feet of specialty lumber, potentially worth more than a million bucks. Should the unthinkable happen and Luna end up on the shelves of the nation’s home-improvement stores, here’s where she might go from there. —Misty Blakesley