Mountain sports are saturated with alcohol. Summit beers, lift beers, aprùs ski, post-ride happy hours, whiskey around the campfire—some days it feels like you could drink from beginning to end of your favorite outdoor activity. But as public health officials issue warnings over alcohol and younger Americans report that they drink less than previous generations, it’s worth asking whether our outdoor adventures should include so much booze.

On January 3, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for cancer warnings to be added to alcoholic beverages, citing research that shows there are around 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer-related deaths due to alcohol every year. Drinking has also been to problems with the heart, liver, pancreas, gastrointestinal system, and immune system.

The advisory came at the beginning of Dry January, when many choose to give up alcohol for the month after indulging over the holidays. Even before Murthy’s report, U.S. alcohol sales were trending downward. But the percentage of American adults who drink has held relatively steady for decades. “It’s just so built into U.S. culture,” says Adrienne Webster, an addiction counselor based in Bozeman, Montana. “Alcohol is carcinogenic. It’s a neurotoxin. Those things are just facts. But we’re fed this B.S. that we should be doing it all the time. It’s probably the only substance that when you stop using it, people are like, ‘What? Why?’”

In my early twenties, I usually went skiing with a flask of Fireball or an unholy jungle juice of tequila and preworkout powder in my pocket. On hikes and bike rides, I would drink hard seltzers and beers that appeared from friends packs without much thought, and down a couple more in the parking lot at the end of the day. Then early last year, I started taking a medication that made me feel horribly sick if I had more than one drink in an evening. Suddenly, I had to get much more selective about my drinking habits—and cut back, a lot.

Coincidentally, several of my friends and adventure buddies were also rethinking their relationship with alcohol last year, for various reasons. As I began trying to be more intentional about when and what I was drinking, it was nice to compare notes with people who were going through the same process. Do I really want to be drunk right now, or is it just easy because everyone else is? If I just want a post-exercise treat, or to keep hanging out with everyone after the activity, could going out for ice cream or french fries be just as satisfying as stopping by a brewery?

I was lucky to have supportive friends, many of whom were in the same boat, as I navigated cutting back on alcohol. Not everyone does. “I see behind the scenes how many young people are trying to abstain, but nobody wants to talk about it, because there’s still so much stigma associated with it,” Webster says. “It’s still embarrassing.”

For Nick Pearson, the founder of the Colorado-based nonprofit Sober Outdoors, carving out a space in nature free of the stigma around sobriety has been critical for his recovery from alcohol use disorder. He spent years working in sales for outdoor brands and drinking a lot in the process, which led him to see firsthand just how thoroughly alcohol and the industry are enmeshed.

“When I finally got sober and went camping again, it was pretty nerve-wracking going with friends that drink,” Pearson says. “I was like, what am I gonna do while everyone’s sitting around the fire drinking? I wanted to create a space where people could experience the outdoors and not have to worry about alcohol being a part of the picture.”

Pearson quickly found that he wasn’t the only person who wanted a substance-free outdoor community. Roughly 900 people have attended the 40-plus outings Sober Outdoors has hosted since it was founded two years ago, and the group is starting to branch out into states beyond Colorado. That community has helped fortify Pearson’s resolve when he goes out with friends who still partake, and he hopes that the broader outdoor recreation culture will take some cues from the growing sober contingent.

“My biggest wish is that everyone takes a step back, looks at how substances impact them, and asks themselves, ‘How can we change to make the outdoors more inclusive?’ Because the sober audience is so much bigger than anyone even realizes,” Pearson says. “And Sober Outdoors is the proof in the pudding that you can have a great time without drinking—all these people that are hiking and camping and having a blast, without a beer in their hands the whole time.”

Personally, I’ve found that an ice-cold root beer or coke from the snowbank next to the car after a long ski tour hits just as hard as a regular beer. The hardest part was breaking the habit. Sometimes I’ll still take my favorite cider to savor at the top of a mountain, or split a beverage with a friend in the parking lot to celebrate a particularly stellar day on the slopes. But it’s a choice now, not a reflex.

Even if you feel comfortable with your current consumption habits, Pearson and Webster both have suggestions for ways everyone can help make a culture that’s welcoming and supportive of others’ sobriety: educate yourself, don’t make assumptions, and be inclusive.

“Sometimes people aren’t sure what to do when one of their friends stops drinking,” Webster says. “But just act normal and keep inviting your sober friends to things. They might not want to deal with being around alcohol, but it should be up to them.”

Pearson emphasized that you don’t always know what someone is going through, and statistically speaking, there’s a decent chance someone you know and recreate with has an unhealthy relationship with substance use. The National Institute of Health that 28.9 million, or just over one in ten, teenagers and adults in the U.S. had alcohol use disorder in 2023. When you include all substance use disorders, that number jumps to . “Someone may not tell you they’re trying to get sober, or they’ve got a problem with it, or want to cut back,” said Pearson. “But you need to just take people at their word. If they say, ‘No, I don’t want it,’ don’t push it.”

Occasionally, it’s still awkward or just a bummer when everyone I’m out with is drinking and I can’t. And I have no doubt that it’s much harder to navigate sobriety in mountain culture, in so many ways, for people in recovery from a substance use disorder than it is for someone like me. But for the most part, my newly sober-ish friends and I have all been struck by the degree to which our experiences in the mountains haven’t really changed this year. Your real friends won’t give you a hard time for not drinking, non-alcoholic beers truly are pretty good these days, and often french fries actually are the more enticing post-exercise treat.

I’m not asking you to stop drinking, or even telling you that you shouldn’t drink. But I think anyone who participates in outdoor sports, and anyone who drinks alcohol while they do, could probably stand to reflect on when and why they’re partaking. And we would probably all be better off if we asked ourselves what we’re doing, and what more we could do, to make sober people feel more welcome and included.

The post Young Americans Are Drinking Less. How Will It Change șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Sports Culture? appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On Monday, January 20, the presidency of Joe Biden came to an end. During his four years in office, Biden, 82, focused on issues that impact outdoor recreation, such as the preservation of public lands and conservation.

The centerpiece of Biden’s conservation policy was the , a commitment to conserve and restore at least 30 percent of federal public lands and waters in the U.S. by 2030. There are still five years left to go, but during his tenure Biden did protect more lands and waters than any president before him. Biden’s track record on public lands was far from unblemished, though. He also opened public lands for the extraction of natural resources, approved a massive oil extraction project, and oversaw a boom in domestic oil production.

We examined some of Biden’s actions that impacted public lands and the environment to try and determine how he compares to previous presidents. Here’s what we found.

Establishing and Expanding National Monuments and Other Protected Designations

Biden used his power granted by the Antiquities Act to create or expand , which is actually fewer than some of his democratic predecessors. Barack Obama 34 monuments; Bill Clinton did 22. Republican presidents historically have not established as many—Donald Trump and George W. Bush created one and six, respectively. During his first term, Trump became the first president since Dwight Eisenhower to shrink a national monument, drastically reducing the size of Bears Ears. Biden restored the monument to its original size in 2021.

Designating national monuments isn’t the only method for presidents to protect public land. Biden also created six new national wildlife refuges, three national marine sanctuaries, and one national estuarine research reserve. He closed roughly 625 million acres of ocean to offshore drilling off of the Atlantic coast, part of the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coast off of California, Washington, and Oregon, parts of Alaska’s Bering Sea, and the Arctic. Biden also prevented roads from being built through the Tongass National Forest, a huge swath of undeveloped land in Alaska.

In total, Biden protected 674 million acres of lands and waters, the most of any president in U.S. history. But the drawing and redrawing of the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument from one presidential administration to the next illustrates the sometimes tenuous nature of land conserved by executive action. Namely, that it is vulnerable to being overturned by subsequent administrations.

Opened Public Land to Drilling and Approving Oil Projects

During his 2020 campaign, Biden swore not to open any new public lands for drilling. And at first, he was true to his word, issuing an executive order that paused all new oil and gas leases. But in 2021, a federal judge struck down his ban on drilling, and public outcry ratcheted up amid rising gas prices. In 2022, Biden on his campaign promise and opened Bureau of Land Management land in Colorado, Nevada, North Dakota, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana, and Utah to drilling.

Afterward, Biden’s administration approved additional oil and gas permits at a rate comparable to Trump during his first term. Biden also approved the massive, long-disputed Willow Project in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, which will involve drilling up to 199 new oil and gas wells over 30 years.

Many of the leases approved by Biden were sold by former presidents—ConocoPhillips bought the Willow project lease . Industry experts Biden with investing in alternative energy sources that will lower demand for oil and gas in the long run, and the Inflation Reduction Act raised the cost of drilling on public lands going forward. But there’s no getting around the fact that U.S. domestic crude oil production grew to , ever, during his time in office.

“Every day that you are allowing [the industry] to remain in the room, that you are indulging their fantasies about continued production, that you are allowing them to kind of peddle their false solutions and prolong their existence, you’re shooting yourself in the foot,” Collin Rees, U.S. program manager for Oil Change International, in 2024.

Partnering with Indigenous Communities

Biden made history in 2021, when he appointed Deb Haaland Secretary of the Interior. Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, is the first Indigenous person ever to lead the department that houses the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Biden administration included Indigenous communities in planning and decision making around public lands, reaching 400 co-management and co-stewardship agreements with tribal nations.

Biden broke new ground as a president when he became the first to apologize to Indigenous Americans for the federal Indian Boarding Schools, a program designed to eradicate Indigenous cultures through the forced assimilation of their children. One of the new monuments established by the former president was the Carlisle Indian Boarding school, which commemorates that period of history.

The EXPLORE Act

President Biden signed the EXPLORE Act into law in January 2025, after it passed Congress with bipartisan support. The legislation contains more than a dozen outdoor recreation-related initiatives rolled up into one piece of legislation, including protecting the use of fixed climbing bolts in wilderness areas and streamlining the permitting process for guiding companies working on public land.

The Act doesn’t appropriate new funding, but it does provide directives to the various land management agencies to take on certain projects, like improving campsite infrastructure, building more restrooms on public land, and installing broadband in the national parks. Many of the EXPLORE Act’s provisions focus on increasing access to federal public land, extending an Obama-era initiative offering free national park passes for all fourth graders, making more infrastructure for people with disabilities, and expanding programs to get veterans outside.

Enshrining these priorities into law increases the odds that they’re enacted under following administrations, but agencies like the National Park Service, Forest Service, and Bureau of Land Management have struggled for years to meet existing mandates with insufficient budgets. The National Parks Service, for example, in 2023 that they have an estimated $23.3 billion backlog in necessary upkeep of existing infrastructure.

Policies to Fight Climate Change

Biden was lauded by environmental advocates for securing the in climate adaptation and resiliency projects with the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021.

He also rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement, an international commitment to reduce emissions that Obama signed in 2016 and Trump withdrew from when he took office in 2017. Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement again on January 20, 2025, the first day of his second term.

The Biden administration formed a program called Climate Corps in 2023. The corps was highly publicized by the outgoing administration as rebooting a popular New Deal-era jobs program, the Civilian Conservation Corps. But critics argued that the program was little more than a new label placed on existing federally-supported climate and conservation service jobs. The Climate Corps, which the administration initially said would create 300,000 new jobs, didn’t secure any funding from Congress. When it finally , it amounted to little more than a website listing states’ existing climate and conservation positions that were already paid for through programs like Americorps.

Congressional Republicans vehemently opposed the Corps (Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell “pure socialist wish-fullment” and “make-work programs for young liberal activists.”) With Biden out of office, the “Climate Corps” heading has and the is inactive. But many of the actual jobs that had preexisted the Corps, and were briefly pulled under its umbrella, will remain.

There were some service-oriented jobs programs that created new opportunities for young people to work and gain skills in conservation and environmental stewardship during the Biden administration, mostly operating at the state level. The Maryland Climate Corps, for example, launched in 2023, and a dozen other states established or expanded corps of their own.

What Will Biden’s Public Lands Legacy Be? 

The full extent of Biden’s impact on the outdoors may take years to fully understand. Some of his policies are likely to be undone by the Trump administration, which has to shrink national monuments and environmental regulations. His failure to follow through on campaign promises, like the Climate Corps and a ban on new drilling leases, may feel like missed opportunities.

However, the Biden administration did set a new standard for empowering tribal nations to be partners in managing the federal lands that are their ancestral homelands. And the priorities for land management agencies passed in the EXPLORE Act, which address pressing issues for outdoor recreation, are codified into law and more likely to endure from one administration to the next.

The post Did Biden Really Protect Our Public Lands? Here’s His Report Card. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

A few months ago, I went to Los Angeles for a long weekend with my friend Becca to visit her relatives and soak in some sunshine. We both live in Bozeman, Montana and wanted to take a quick break in balmy southern California during the long, frigid northern winter.

Los Angeles tends to be at the vanguard of any health food fad, and the luxury grocery store chain Erewhon is the epicenter, the birthplace of dozens of dubious superfoods. In 2022, they started selling model Hailey Bieber’s sea moss-based , which quickly went viral. It gets its trademark pink coloring from a blend of almond milk, coconut cream, strawberries, avocados, dates, maple syrup, vanilla collagen, vanilla stevia, and the then-obscure sea moss.

Since then, sea moss has become ubiquitous among health-and-wellness types. Lately, fitness influencers are scooping heaps of sea moss gel, a colorless goo, into smoothies, coffee, and chia puddings—or just eating it straight off the spoon. Fans of the gelatinous substance claim that it boosts their immune system and improves gut and thyroid health. Some claim it increases libido. Others insist it’s an excellent substitute for face moisturizer and adds luster to their hair and nails.

What Is Sea Moss Gel?

Sea moss refers to a common type of red seaweed, also called Irish moss. The most common is a shallow-water red algae called , which grows wild along North Atlantic coasts and is farmed for commercial consumption. To make the gel, manufacturers (and enthusiasts who make it from scratch) soak or boil the plant with water until the consistency is smooth. You might have had sea moss without even knowing it, as it’s often used as a for gelatin.

While Becca and I are health-conscious, we don’t usually get caught up in the latest superfood trend. However, the rosy drink’s association with Bieber piqued our interest because, you know, celebrities. We ordered one Hailey Bieber smoothie to share.

The coveted pink smoothie. (Photo: Miyo McGinn)

I took a sip. It did not taste particularly good. And not because of the sea moss—whose taste is quite mild, sort of like a watered-down version of the salty, briny flavor I associate with saltwater plants. I couldn’t detect even a hint of oceanic flavor. Instead, it was dominated by the cloyingly sweet-without-sugar taste of stevia, vanilla, and dates. Combined with the creaminess from the avocado and coconut, you easily could have convinced me that they’d given me lotion from the Hailey Bieber skincare line advertised with the smoothie on the poster next to the cash register.

The smoothie also cost a jaw-dropping $20, which could buy a couple of hearty burritos back in Bozeman. The price tag has as much to do with Erewhon’s elite status as the not-so-modest cost of sea moss. An average serving of sea moss is one to two tablespoons of gel, and a 16-ounce jar costs $30, which comes out to one to two dollars per serving. (It can also be found in some natural food stores.)

“Definitely not worth the $20 bucks,” Becca told me after she’d had a taste. “Very sweet and not very complex.”

Is Sea Moss Even Good for You?

Seaweeds have been a staple in some cultures’ cuisines for millennia and are known to be and tasty. But, as is sometimes the case with viral health foods, few studies have been conducted on humans to support any of sea moss’s purported benefits. The sea moss gel you buy at a health food store is considered a supplement by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which means that the advertised health effects don’t have to be backed up by scientific research.

Labeling It a Superfood May Be a Stretch

“Some companies promote sea moss as a good source of nutrients that can improve gut health and immunity, such as fiber, vitamins A & C, zinc, and selenium,” says registered dietician Alyssa Pacheco. In reality, a two-tablespoon serving of sea moss equates to less than two percent of your daily recommended intake of these nutrients. “You would probably get an equal or better nutritional boost from a multivitamin,” she says.

So claims that sea moss is good for, say, your immune system are based on its vitamin C and zinc content, which Pacheco says are known to support immune health. But the amount of those minerals that you’ll find in a couple of scoops of sea moss gel is negligible. The same is true for all the other supposed benefits of the vitamins and minerals that can be found in sea moss. “In the typical recommended dose, sea moss isn’t a very good source of most nutrients,” says Pacheco.

 does suggest that many of the bioactive compounds (peptides, amino acids, and even longer names that you might recognize from shampoo bottles) found in seaweeds can contribute to skin and hair health; however, most studies consider products applied directly to the body rather than consumed. As for libido,  of rats did document increased libido and fertility, but more studies on humans are still needed to say for sure.

The Potential Risks of Consuming Sea Moss Gel

Sea moss contains . While the mineral is beneficial in small amounts, too much can lead to thyroid complications. Depending on the water quality where the sea moss was obtained, the gel may contain heavy metals like that it soaked up from its environment. According to Pacheco, there’s not much danger in trying sea moss if you have your heart set on it. Just stick to the recommended serving size, and talk to your doctor if you’re worried about iodine content.

Personally, I’ve tried exactly one more sea moss smoothie than I need to. I’ll stick to nori and kombu (the thick kelp sometimes in Japanese dishes like miso soup) for my seaweed fix and continue drinking smoothies with nut milk and fruit that don’t taste too sweet. My skin almost certainly won’t be as good as Hailey Bieber’s, but I suspect that doesn’t actually have much to do with our relative sea moss consumption.

The post I Tried the Viral Sea Moss Smoothie. It Wasn’t Worth the $20. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

It’s always a bummer when your vacation doesn’t go as planned. Still, a spoiled trip isn’t often cause for legal action. But for Christopher Bisaillon, a guest at Park City Mountain Resort in Utah over the holidays—where operations were disrupted as a result of the ski patrol union strike—the distance was just too great between the vacation he’d planned and the experience he had.

According to Bisaillon’s class action filed by the Jackson, Wyoming-based Spence Law Firm against Park City’s parent company, Vail Resorts, Inc.: “Plaintiff spent in excess of $15,000 for his family of five to have Vail Resort’s publicized ‘ski experience of a lifetime’ over the holidays. It turned out to be a colossal disaster with the family only being able to ski less than ten runs over the duration of their week-long, Christmas family vacation.”

The suit doesn’t just apply to Bisaillon. It also includes everyone who bought lift tickets between December 27, 2024, and January 7, 2025, and asks for damages of an undetermined amount that would likely exceed $5 million. The suit alleges that Vail Resorts failed to adequately notify guests of the strike’s impact, and says the company also failed to deliver on the advertised value of the lift tickets Bisaillon and others purchased.

Ski vacations come with a notoriously steep price tag, and Park City is no exception. Over the holidays, a single-day adult lift ticket cost $289, according to the court filing. Including travel, lodging, equipment rentals, dining, and lift tickets, the lawsuit estimates that a family can spend between $10,000 and $20,000 for a week-long trip.

Bisaillon, who is based in Illinois, arrived with his family at Park City Mountain Resort on December 28, 2024, one day after the ski patrol union of their locker room to form a picket line. The family planned to ski for the week, but were confounded by hours-long lift lines and little open terrain. The lawsuit alleges just 16 percent of the mountain was accessible.

An NBC News that aired on January 6 said that only 25 of the resort’s 41 lifts were operating. In the same segment, which is also quoted in the lawsuit, another skier named Peter Nystrom tells NBC, “You kind of had to laugh about it. Like, we’re here in one of the best mountains in the country, waiting three hours in line.”

The strike was the latest development in a years-long negotiation between the patroller’s union and corporate leadership, with the patrollers asking for higher wages and better working conditions. On December 14, 2024, the patrollers’ union voted to authorize a strike, and on December 16 informed the National Labor Relations Board that they felt Vail Resorts was negotiating in bad faith.

Vail Resorts said the same of the union’s conduct, with Park City’s vice president Dierdre Walsh telling the Salt Lake Tribune on December 16 that they were “deeply disappointed” union leaders “refus[ed] to negotiate in good faith or discuss mediation.”

The suit claims that Vail Resorts could reasonably have been expected to know a strike was imminent and warn guests of that possibility in advance on December 16. Instead, many guests—like Bisaillon—arrived at the resort without knowledge of the impending strike.

The patroller negotiations, and the possible walkout, were covered in local and national media outlets at the time. However, the suit says that Bisaillon and other guests weren’t alerted by Vail Resorts. It also alleges that the Park City resort’s website, where guests can buy lift tickets in advance of their visit, didn’t post an update referencing the strike’s impact on visitor experience until January 4, a week after the strike began.

Vail Resorts declined to comment to șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű about the lawsuit for this article, and Spence Law Firm did not respond to requests for comment before publication.

“It’s business, it’s complicated. […] But at the end of the day, no visitor cares about that,”  New Yorker Greg Moonves told a Utah NPR , KPCW, on December 30. He was visiting Park City with his family for a five-day ski trip. “We spent a lot of money to come here, as did everyone else, to have a good time skiing with our families. And at the end of the day, they’re not providing the product that they claim they’re providing.”

If a Utah judge determines that the suit fits the parameters for a class action lawsuit, it will continue through the state legal system. Vail Resorts will have the opportunity to settle with the plaintiffs outside of court, or the two parties can proceed to a trial.

Meanwhile, the strike ended on January 7, when the patrol union and Vail announced that they had reached a tentative agreement that “addresses both party’s interests.” One official that the benefits secured by the union, including increased base pay, might be extended to unionized patrollers at other Vail locations.

And on Thursday, January 16, Vail Resorts that they will offer everyone who skied and snowboarded at Park City during the ski patrol strike credit towards passes for the 2025/26 season, the exact amount of which would depend on how many days they had skied.

“We deeply value the trust and loyalty of our guests, and while Park City Mountain was open during the patrol strike, it was not the experience we wanted to provide,” Vail Resort’s COO Dierdra Walsh wrote in a statement. “We are committed to rebuilding the trust and loyalty of our guests by delivering an exceptional experience at Park City Mountain this season and in the future.”

The post A Skier Is Suing Vail Resorts After a Patrol Strike Disrupted Operations at Park City appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On Tuesday, January 7, President Biden announced the formation of two new national monuments in California: the Chuckwalla and SĂĄttĂ­tla Highlands. The new monuments encompass a combined 848,000 acres of land, and cover areas that are culturally and historically significant to several Indigenous groups.

According to by the Biden administration, the two national monuments will “protect clean water for communities, honor areas of cultural significance to Tribal Nations and Indigenous peoples, and enhance access to nature.”

The designation protects the land from new oil and gas drilling and other development. It also preserves outdoor recreation access and ecologically important landscapes. Both areas preserve the culturally and historically significant ancestral homelands of numerous Indigenous tribes.

“Today’s designation of Chuckwalla National Monument and SĂĄttĂ­tla National Monument is a win for the California outdoor recreation community,” Katie Hawkins, the California program director at the nonprofit Outdoor Alliance, said in a statement. “These monuments safeguard sites of sacred, cultural, and historic significance; protect critical biodiversity and habitat; and expand outdoor recreation access for current and future generations to these special places.”

The 624,000-acre Chuckwalla National Monument is situated at the convergence of the Colorado and Mojave deserts, south of Joshua Tree National Park and extending into the Coachella Valley to the west. The area, which will be overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, has been a popular destination for outdoor recreation even before receiving national monument status. It features hiking, climbing, and camping at places like the Painted Canyon and Box Canyon in Mecca Hills, Corn Springs Campground, and the Bradshaw Trail.

The new monument also extends the Mojave to Moab Conservation Corridor, a roughly 600-mile stretch of protected public land that extends from Colorado to California and is the largest protected habitat corridor in the continental U.S. According to the administration’s press release, more than 50 rare or threatened species live within the Chuckwalla monument’s borders, including the Chuckwalla lizard from which the monument draws its name. It also safeguards a stretch of the critical Colorado River watershed, which flows through the newly protected area.

“The protection of the Chuckwalla National Monument brings the Quechan people an overwhelming sense of peace and joy,” the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe, who have been calling on the Biden administration to designate the monument, said in to the Washington Post. “Tribes being reunited as stewards of this landscape is only the beginning of much-needed healing and restoration, and we are eager to fully rebuild our relationship to this place.”

The Quechans, along with other indigenous communities advocating for a monument, have also called for a co-management structure that includes federal officials and tribal leadership, similar to the one in place at Bears Ears National Monument.

The SĂĄttĂ­tla Highlands National Monument encompasses 224,000 acres stretching across parts of the Klamath, Modoc, Shasta-Trinity National Forests in northern California. It will be managed by the Forest Service.

North and east of Mount Shasta, the new monument encompasses the Medicine Lake Highlands, including the sacred ancestral homelands of the Pit River Tribe and Modoc peoples. It also features ample recreation opportunities, with trails for hiking, biking, camping, and mountaineering. At the heart of the monument is 7,921-foot Medicine Lake Volcano, a large dormant volcano, as well as Medicine Lake. The area is habitat for dozens of vulnerable plants and animals, and covers massive underwater aquifers that local communities rely on.

The announcement of the new monuments comes the day after the Biden administration along the Atlantic coast, part of the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific coast in the lower 48, and parts of the Bering Sea in Alaska. In 2024, the president designated two other national monuments in California, San Gabriel Mountains and Barryessa Snow Mountain National Monument.

Over the course of his presidency, Biden has established, expanded, or restored 15 national monuments and several , conserving a total of 670 million acres of U.S. lands and waters. The administration has consistently engaged tribal partners, prioritizing their input when selecting and managing protected areas.

The post Biden Announces Two New National Monuments in California, Conserving 848,000 Acres appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On Saturday, January 4, President Joe Biden signed the Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences (EXPLORE) Act into law. The new legislation rolls a dozen or so existing outdoor recreation-relation initiatives into one policy, which includes approval of building long-distance bike trails, the protection of rock climbing anchors in wilderness areas, and a more efficient permit process for guiding companies.

The EXPLORE Act is focused on federal public land like national parks, national forests, and areas overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. It directs the various management agencies to improve and develop new parking lots, broadband networks, accessible infrastructure, firing ranges, and restrooms at recreation sites. It also calls for improved coordination between different federal and state agencies to contain the spread of aquatic invasive species like zebra mussels.

“It will help create more fun all across the country,” Republican Congressman Bruce Westerman from Arkansas, the bill’s sponsor, Colorado Public Radio when it passed the senate.

The legislation also puts to rest a simmering problem within the rock climbing community by officially sanctioning the use of bolts as fixed anchors in wilderness areas. This became an issue earlier in 2024 when some public areas proposed bans on permanent safety anchors in national parks and national forests. “Passing this bill in a single legislative session is a testament to the growing power of the climbing advocacy movement,” Heather Thorne, executive director of the nonprofit Access Fund, . “In the years to come, I hope our federal leaders continue to work together to protect public lands, the agencies that manage those lands, and sustainable climbing access, which enjoys broad, bipartisan support from legislators and climbers across the nation.”

Also cause for celebration among some segments of the outdoors community: a simpler, more streamlined process for guiding companies to get permits.

The EXPLORE Act includes measures to help address the housing crisis in gateway communities, such as investing in more public-private partnerships. It also reauthorizes the Forest Service to use administrative buildings as housing.

Several sections of the new law are devoted to increasing access to the outdoors, for veterans, young people, disabled people, and members of underserved communities. It renews the Every Kid Outdoors Act, a program started under President Obama that grants every fourth grader in the U.S. and their family free entry to all national parks and federal public lands for a year.

In addition to installing broadband at federal recreation sites, the act directs public land managers to modernize administrative processes, calling on the national parks to develop a digital America the Beautiful pass. It also introduces a pilot program to improve the accuracy of visitation data, particularly for historically hard-to-document activities such as dispersed camping.

“Today’s passage of the EXPLORE Act will supercharge the outdoor recreation industry and is a victory for our economy, our communities, our quality of life, and our shared connection to the outdoors,” Jessica Wahl Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, said in when the senate approved the bill on December 19. “By advancing this transformative legislation, Congress has shown its commitment to ensuring every American has access to world-class outdoor experiences, from our backyard to the backcountry, while supporting the businesses, workers, and communities who make those experiences possible.”

The new legislation had bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. Outdoor policy has become a common ground for lawmakers and advocates from both parties, like the bipartisan grassroots opposition that sprung up against a plan to build golf courses and hotels in several Florida state parks this summer.

For the Biden administration, the EXPLORE Act boosts and helps solidify an already robust environmental record. The outgoing president designated seven new national monuments and expanded others during his term. In 2022, he reestablished the Federal Interagency Council on Outdoor Recreation (FICOR), a group dedicated to making the outdoors more accessible to a greater number of people. The America the Beautiful initiative boosted conservation efforts across government agencies, and his administration frequently engaged with tribal partners in decisionmaking about their ancestral lands.

The post Biden Signed the EXPLORE Act into Law, Enacting a Host of Outdoor Recreation Initiatives appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On Monday, December 9, the Biden Administration officially designated the Carlisle Indian Industrial School campus in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, a national monument. It’s the seventh new national monument that Biden has created since taking office in January, 2021.

Founded in 1879, the Carlisle School was one of the more than 400 Indian boarding schools that were a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to forcibly assimilate Indigenous peoples. The new monument will memorialize the 7,800 children from 140 tribes who passed through the Carlisle School, as well as the thousands of children and communities that were impacted by forced assimilation policies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

“It is in the public interest to preserve and protect the objects of historic interest associated with the Carlisle School and its prominent role in the story of Federal Indian boarding schools instituted under the United States policy of forced assimilation of Native children,” Biden said in a statement.

Survivors of the Carlisle School and other Indian boarding schools describe being forced to change their names, wear Western clothing, cut their traditional long hairstyles, speak English, and practice Christianity. Attempts to continue using their tribal languages or customs, or to escape, were severely punished. Many survivors describe physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. The schools were usually run by third-party organizations and religious groups, but were funded by the federal government. The Carlisle School officially closed in 1918, when the facility became a hospital for the U.S. Army.

“Designating the former campus of the Carlisle School […] as a national monument will help ensure this shameful chapter of American history is never forgotten or repeated,” the said. “Acknowledging the Federal Government’s policies aimed at destroying Tribal and Indigenous political structures, cultures, and traditions—including through the Federal Indian boarding school system—takes a step toward redress and national healing in the arc of the survival, resilience, and triumph of Indian Tribes (including Alaska Native Villages) and the Native Hawaiian Community.”

The Carlisle School joins the six other national monuments designated by Biden: Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada; Baaj Nwaajo I’tah Kukveni in Arizona; Camp Hale-Continental Divide in Colorado; Castner Range in Texas, Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley in Mississippi and Illinois; and the Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument in Illinois. The Biden Administration also restored or enlarged the boundaries of other monuments, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante monuments in Utah and the San Gabriel Mountains and Berryessa Snow Mountain monuments in California.

The Carlisle School monument will encompass the same land and buildings as the campus that was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1961. The school is situated on the United States Army’s Carlisle Barracks. Not included within the monument boundaries is a cemetery where many of the Carlisle School students who died are buried. The army is already in the process of disinterring their remains and returning them to their communities.

The declaration also details a co-management framework between the National Park Service, the Army, and tribal partners, similar to the co-management structure in other recently designed national monuments like Bears Ears.

This designation is the latest in a series of actions that the Biden administration has taken to begin to address the historic wrongs perpetrated by the U.S. government against Indigenous people, including a in October. Many of these efforts were spearheaded by Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who has sought to bring attention to the dark history of Indigenous boarding schools during her tenure. Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna, is the first Indigenous person to lead the department that oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her great-grandfather and grandparents were forced to attend boarding schools.

In 2021, Haaland launched the Federal Boarding School Initiative, which started with a federal study of the schools—the first of its kind. The findings were published in a two-part report detailing how many children had attended Indian boarding schools, how many had died, the number and location of burial sites, how much federal funding the schools had received, and suggestions for moving forward. Haaland and other officials also traveled the country on a 12-stop listening tour to hear firsthand from survivors how their time at the boarding schools had impacted them. More survivors are being interviewed as part of an oral history project.

“No single action by the federal government can adequately reconcile the trauma and ongoing harms from the federal Indian boarding school era,” Haaland said in a news release applauding the new national monument. “But, taken together, the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to acknowledge and redress the legacy of the assimilation policy have made an enduring difference for Indian Country.”

The Carlisle School itself was closed in 1918, but Federal Indian boarding schools stayed open well into the 1960s. Some , under the same names and on the same campuses, but with radically reformed practices.

The post New Carlisle Indian Boarding School National Monument Recognizes Historic Atrocities appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

When skier Noah Dines answered my phone call in late November, he was skinning up a 400-vertical foot stretch of artificial snow at Waterville Valley Resort in central New Hampshire. Anyone who skis uphill at a resort knows the activity is pretty uninspiring, akin to running on a treadmill, but Dines didn’t care—he was chasing a record. If you caught up with the 30-year-old athlete at any particular moment during daylight hours in 2024, the odds were pretty good . Setting a new record for the most human-powered vertical feet of skiing done in a single year, which Dines had achieved with the 3 million vertical feet (and counting) he’s logged since January 1, takes a lot of time.

The record had actually been Dines’ for weeks now—he surpassed Aaron Rice’s 2016 record of 2.5 million vertical feet late this summer, and hit his own goal of 3 million on October 24, in Farellones, Chile. Every cold, wet lap that November day in New Hampshire was just extra credit.

“I wanted to see what it feels like to try really hard, to be totally invested in one thing,” said Dines, adding, “I’ll probably do a little bit more today, and then walk down the mountain. They offered to upload and download me [on the chairlift], but I said no thanks.”

Technically, Dines didn’t have to hoof it the extra 600 feet from snowline to the resort’s base—avoiding surface lifts wasn’t one of the initial self-imposed strictures for his 2024 ski season goal, but it became a point of pride.

“I just love skiing,” said Dines. “To do this sort of thing you’ve got to love skiing on a day-to-day basis, and on a grand scale. And I love that day in, day out grind. I love it more now than when I started.”

Prior to the season, Dines calculated that he’d need to ski approximately 9,000 feet per day for 330 days, or around 125,000 feet per month, to hit his goal. He blew past that pace in January, skiing 378,000 feet, and continued to log monster months. He took the year off from working as a tutor in Stowe, Vermont, to ski full-time.

Skiing 3 million vertical feet in one year requires more than free time and an extreme love of the sport. I caught up with Dines to talk about logistics and gear, and to ask about his favorite place to ski.

Location, Location, Location

Dines spent the year globetrotting in search of adequate snow coverage. He skied across the United States, and also in Europe and South America. He started the project at his home mountains in Vermont in January before jetting off to France and Austria in February and March to ski in the Alps.

“I liked the ski culture there a lot, but the skiing itself wasn’t the best,” he said. Dines drank plenty of espressos in mid-mountain chalets while escaping rain and fog.

In May, Dines returned stateside to ski in Colorado and Utah, earning his turns at Winter Park Resort and Alta after they closed for the season. He eked out the last of the spring’s vert on Mount Hood’s Palmer Glacier in Oregon, before flying to Santiago, Chile and the southern hemisphere winter.

“I’ll probably drive back to Stowe tonight,” said Dines when we spoke in November. He’ll spend the rest of 2024 where he began it, lapping the New England mountains around his home. “It’ll be great to see friends again, but it was so cool getting to go to so many places for the first time this year, too.”

What Kind of Gear Does it Take to Ski 3 Million Vertical Feet?

Skis

Dines drew from a two-ski quiver, with snow conditions dictating which pair he’d use. His lightest option, the 690-gram , are designed for competitive ski mountaineering racing, and feature a narrow shape meant for skiing quickly on firm, groomed snow. When Dines needed more floatation on ungroomed snow, he used the wider , which tip the scales at 1240 grams. Dines said the two pairs of fairly narrow skis would have been perfect for all the terrain he encountered the entire year, save for a two-week stretch in Chile when he encountered deep powder.

Bindings

, “which I just love,” said Dines. The model is a burly ski mountaineering racing binding that’s frill-free, lightweight, and highly reliable.

Boots

The , a lightweight touring boot, was Dines’ footwear of choice. “I’m in my third pair of shells this year, which is pretty incredible for the amount of skiing that I do,” he said.

Skins

“I’ve probably worn through around a dozen pairs of skins this year,” said Dines, who just used “whatever was on hand” wherever he was traveling. He always brought a spare set in his pack in case his primary pair broke or became too soaked to work effectively.

In the Pack

Preferring to travel light, Dines minimized his time in avalanche terrain, since he usually skied alone. But he still packed a shovel, beacon, and probe when conditions called for it. “If I’m doing laps somewhere in-bounds or not in avy terrain, I leave my pack at the bottom,” said Dines. “I’m not carrying water with me, and only rarely an extra layer. I’ll bring a second pair of skins, and a spare pair of gloves, because wet gloves can be such a day-ruiner. And then you’ve always got to have carbs on hand.”

What About Nutrition?

Dines didn’t obsess over calorie counting. When I asked him about his daily caloric intake, he said, “My watch usually spits out 5,000 to 7,000 so I’d imagine somewhere in that range.” But he believes his nutritional approach helped him surpass the previous record, held by Aaron Rice, who struggled to recover from each effort as the year wore on.

“We know a lot more about sports nutrition than we did a few years ago,” said Dines, who looked to professional cyclists’ fueling regimens to shape his own carb-heavy diet. “When I’m on the hill, it’s just carbs, and afterwards it’s mostly carbs, too.”

“Carbs, carbs, carbs. So many carbs.” he added. “There were times when I didn’t want to keep eating but knew I needed to eat more—I would just be so sick of chewing.”

Dines didn’t have a go-to meal or snack, instead eating the local fare—which included lots of bread, butter, and pastries in Europe, meat in Chile, and plenty of candy wherever he went.

How Do You Train for World-Record Fitness?

Preparation

Dines is a lifelong runner and cyclist, and he believes his cross-training helped prepare his body for the massive yearlong effort on skis. “My background is as an endurance athlete, so I didn’t do anything special to prepare physically for this year,” said Dines. He climbed a combined million vertical feet across skiing, cycling, and running in both 2022 and 2023.

Recovery

Dines said his approach to rest is simple—he gets off his feet. “I don’t have any cold baths, no massage gun, nothing crazy. But just plain old resting is really important to me,” said Dines. “And not fake rest, like hanging out with friends and going out to eat. That’s not rest, that’s almost rest. But just sitting with my legs up. Like, I want my watch to think I was asleep—when my watch tells me I took a nap even though I didn’t, that’s high praise.”

How Did Dines Stave Off Boredom During the Challenge?

“I sort of have a hierarchy,” said Dines when I asked how he occupied himself during the hours on the slope. “Friend vert is free vert—skiing with somebody is best, because then it’s just hanging out.” By his estimate, friends accompanied him for approximately 5 percent of his skiing this year. “After that, the next best thing is talking on the phone. My grandparents have gotten a lot of Noah time this year, because they’re pretty available. Friends back home, friends I haven’t talked to in five years.”

Dines also listened to podcasts and music on shuffle. He dictated text messages and scrolled social media. And oftentimes, Dines simply soaked in the scenery and the sounds of the mountains.

How the Hell Does Anyone Afford to Do this?

Dines covered his expenses for the year with a mix of sponsorships, GoFundMe donations, and personal savings.

Advice for Future Record-Seekers

Anyone wanting to take on the yearlong vert challenge can start by picking up the phone. “My main advice to someone trying to break my record is to call me,” said Dines. “Greg Hill, who skied 2 million feet in 2010, and Aaron Rice have both offered me so much help and support. I plan to do the same for whoever wants to try next.”

The post What Does It Take to Ski 3 Million Vertical Feet? We Asked Noah Dines. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

The Western States Trail Ride, also known as the Tevis Cup, was born in 1955 out of a simple question: Could modern-day riding horses travel 100 miles in 24 hours? Several riders set out from Lake Tahoe, California, and journeyed southwest through the Sierra Nevada to the town of Auburn, proving the answer to be a strong yes. In the years and decades that followed, equestrians would retrace the trip as an annual race, testing themselves on a grueling route with more than 35,000 feet of elevation change along rugged mountain trails.

Damien Maloney, a Los Angeles–based photographer, learned about the event from a neighbor and was drawn to the competition’s Old West ethos, so different from the strict equestrian tradition he knew growing up in Waco, Texas. “It was interesting to see a horse culture that isn’t fussy or fancy,” says Maloney. “It’s humans and horses, and everyone’s having fun, but it’s still really hard. There isn’t any pageantry.” In the summer of 2023, he set out to document that unpretentious spirit, capturing horses and people as they navigated the dusty trails.

The post Experience Frontier Culture at America’s Oldest Endurance Horse Race appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On July 26, the 2024 Olympic Games kick off in Paris, and thousands of athletes will compete for medals across 32 sports over the course of three weeks. Millions viewers—myself included—will watch some of these Olympic sports and athletes for the first time.  That’s part of the fun of the Games: niche sports and lesser-known athletic heroes get a moment in the spotlight.

But if you, like me, enjoy these athletes for their impressive backstories and amazing personal histories, I have six individuals for you to follow. You don’t even need to know anything about their respective sports to cheer for these stars. Some of the athletes on this list are medal contenders—others simply have an Olympic backstory that is worthy of our attention.

Tom Pidcock; Great Britain; Mountain Biking and Road Cycling

Pidcock is the defending Olympic mountai-bike champion, and he is the favorite to take home gold in Paris. But his success isn’t limited to one cycling discipline—Pidcock will represent Great Britain in road cycling as well. In fact, he’s racing in Paris just a few weeks after competing in the Tour de France (he dropped out after stage 9 with COVID symptoms). I’m a fan of Pidcock because he does absurd and charming biking stunts, like home from the airport, or casually pedal from Germany to the Czech Republic the day after winning a cross-country mountain biking World Cup. The man clearly just loves to ride bikes, and I love that about him.

Suppenkasper the horse, aka “Mopsie” aka “Rage Horse;” USA; Equestrian

You don’t have to know anything about equestrian to find Mopsie the horse and his rider, five-time Olympian Steffen Peters, wildly entertaining. During the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Mopsie and Peters—who is 59 years old—went viral for their The horse gracefully trotted and hopped in perfect time to a custom-composed EDM beat. To be totally honest, I’ve never watched a dressage competition in full, but apparently the event is by how precisely horse and rider execute specific steps and motions, which sounds stuffy and boring until you watch a 900-plus pound animal get down like it’s Saturday night at the club (Snoop Dogg himself that Mopsie can “crip-walk” better than most humans).

Ai Mori; Japan; Combined Boulder and Lead Climbing

According to our friends at Climbing, reigning Olympic gold medalist Janja Garnbret of Slovenia is the in the women’s combined boulder and lead climbing event. But Japan’s Ai Mori is one of a handful of athletes who could challenge Garnbret for the top prize in Paris. There are a handful of climbers who could win, including , and the structure of competition may enable Mori to do it in a particularly dramatic fashion. In the combined category, athletes earn scores in two distinct disciplines of the sport, boulder and lead, which are added together for their final ranking. Mori holds her own in bouldering in international competitions, but is very good at lead—and since the lead portion of the event is held second, Mori will enter the final rounds with particularly strong chance to improve her overall score.

Simone Biles; USA; Artistic Gymnastics

Yes, Biles is probably the most recognizable athlete on Team USA, and it almost goes without saying that I’m excited to watch her in Paris. I don’t have any wisdom about her excellance that hasn’t already been shared. Still, I just can’t wait to see the seven-time Olympic medalist, 23-time world champion, and best gymnast of all time to get back on the Olympic mat after her case of the “twisties” in Tokyo.

John John Florence; USA; Surfing

Florence has already cemented his status as one of surfing’s all-time greats. The 32-year-old grew up on the North Shore of Oahu, with legendary waves in his backyard. He was winning surf competitions and sponsored by wetsuit and board brand O’Neill when he was just six years old; by the time he turned 23, he was widely considered to be the best surfer in the world. In the years since, he’s gone on to win surfing’s biggest competitions. Florence came in ninth in Tokyo and is going into the Paris Olympic competition—which will be held in Tahiti—at the top of the World Surf League rankings. It’s hard to put into words exactly what makes Florence such a compelling surfer to watch, especially since I have never surfed in my life, but just watch a minute or two of and tell me you’re not entertained.

Sifan Hassan; Netherlands; Marathon, Athletics

At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Hassan ran in three events (1500 meters, 5000 meters, and 10,000 meters), winning the longest of the three and getting bronze in the 1,500. When Hassan, who was born in Ethiopia and competes for the Netherlands, decided to branch out from middle distance to marathons at the 2023 London marathon, she pulled off a stunning come-from-behind victory. Later that year, in Chicago, she ran the second-fastest women’s marathon ever. Hassan has qualified for four events in Paris: 1,500, 5,000, and 10,000 meters, plus the marathon. If she decides to compete in all four—which she opt to do—she would surpass the already unprecedented competition schedule she pursued in Tokyo. And even if Hassan doesn’t participate in every event she’s qualified for, her running prowess over such a broad range of distances makes her an athlete worthy of my attention and cheers.

The post Six Olympians We’re Excited to Watch at the 2024 Paris Olympics appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.