Professional skier Burke, 28, is a three-time X Games gold medalist in the superpipe. Look for her in the new women-only ski film Say My Name.

Sarah Burke

Sarah Burke

1. NEVER RENT BOOTS: You can get second-hand skis, but if there's one thing to splurge on, it's boots: See a boot fitter if they don't fit right. And always take them with you. It's OK to rent skis, but not boots. They likely won't fit you well, so you won't have good edge control. Plus they're nasty and they stink. There's nothing good about rental boots.

2. FOLLOW YOUR NOSE: I don't look at a map all that often. If I see terrain that looks interesting, I just head that way. And because you don't always have cell service at most resorts, I always bring my Spot [$150; ], a little GPS device that sends out a signal and an e-mail with your exact coordinates. If you get injured or lost, you can send friends and family a message that you're OK or need help.

3. TRY THE PARK: Everyone I take into the park has a great time. Boxes are good for beginners: You have a lot more control, and they're more friendly than rails if you split or fall back. Start on the small ones and work your way up.

4. NEXT, SHOOT FOR THE PIPE: You can slowly work your way up the walls until you're comfortable actually getting air out of the pipe. Work on getting higher and higher every time. And don't cut anybody off. Putting your pole up just before you go is a good way to let everybody know you're dropping in.

5. AND DON'T FORGET TO POP: Wherever you are, the park, pipe, or just exploring the mountain, you won't get better at tricks—or simply get more air or land more easily—if you don't know how to properly pop off kickers. You want to have your arms in front of you, with forward pressure on your boots, and then keep that forward momentum through the transition. As soon as you get to the takeoff, extend your legs and really explode!

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A great meal in a mountain town used to mean a decent burger. But now top chefs—like these five masters from Colorado—are realizing that there's no better pairing than fine cuisine and high-altitude fun.

Locavore
Mark Fischer has ridden the Leadville 100 on a single-speed (twice), skied from Crested Butte to Aspen in the Elk Mountain Grand Traverse, and finished two Ironman triathlons. But he's received the most recognition in the kitchen. Not only has the James Beard Foundation Award–nominated chef founded two of Carbondale's most beloved restaurants, Six89 and Phat Thai; he's also largely credited for energizing the eat-local movement in the Roaring Fork Valley, thanks to Six89's weekly “100-mile” (as in radius) dinners. “Nine times out of ten, what we can buy right here is gonna taste better than that which comes freighted from some other time zone,” says the 52-year-old Fischer. Next up: This December, Fischer plans to open an American eatery, the Pullman, in Glenwood Springs.

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Rahm Fama

Rising Star

Rahm Fama

Rahm Fama

Rahm Fama has always had a “fascination with meat.” At nine, his grand­father taught him how to slaughter a lamb, on his family’s ranch in Chama, New Mexico. Today, Fama wants to teach the rest of us to savor our food. “We eat because we have to,” says the 36-year-old. “But how many meals do you actually remember? That’s why I became a chef.” For the past four years, Fama crafted unforgettable elk, antelope, and even rattle­snake dishes as the executive chef of the Wildflower, the restaurant at the Lodge at Vail. But you can now experience his cooking in your own home: In September, he debuted his show Meat & Potatoes on the Food Network.

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Clint Ketchum

High Rider

“My parents never approved of me being a chef,” says Denver native Clint Ketchum, “but food was my passion, and I did what I wanted.” After working his way up the line in some of Colo­rado’s swankiest eateries, including Denver’s award-winning Papillon Cafe, Ketchum is now the chef de cuisine at Breckenridge’s Relish. And while he manages to snowboard some 120 days a year, his biggest rush still comes from serving up locally sourced buffalo, lamb, and trout to diners at this upscale but unpretentious joint. “We have an open kitchen,” the 31-year-old says. “It’s one of the best feelings, to see a table that’s really loud and having a good time go dead quiet when the food arrives.”

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Q. What are we going to eat when the earth can’t produce enough food?

A. You mean, like, when are we going to start cracking open tins of Soylent Green? That 1973 sci-fi flick was prescient in several ways, foretelling everything from global warming to globe-altering famines. There are already famines, of course, and we’ll probably be exploring outlandish nutrition sources this century as the world adds another 2.5 billion people by 2050. ” There just aren’t enough resources to support this kind of demand,” says Arnold van Huis, a professor of entomology at Holland’s Wageningen University and a consultant for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. The average American eats more than 200 pounds of red meat and poultry per year, and each pound of beef requires six pounds of feed to grow. Scientists like van Huis think we can do better. One answer, he argues, is insect farming. Aside from being easy to raise and nutrient rich, insects require a third as much feed as mammalian protein sources. Better yet, they create a fraction of the CO2 and methane emissions. Still, though grasshoppers and larvae are a delicacy in countries like China and Thailand, making them palatable to an American appetite is a tall order. To solve that problem, van Huis has a plan to turn insect protein into something that looks and tastes similar to a hamburger patty.

The Wild File: Altitude Acclimatization

Your urgent inquiries about the world. Answered

Q. How are Tibetans able to acclimatize so easily?

A. It’s in their genes, of course, but the precise mechanics are still a mystery. This summer, researchers identified 30 genes with DNA mutations that are more prevalent in Tibetans (and presumably Nepali Sherpas) than in ethnic Han Chinese. Tibetans split off from the Han less than 10,000 years ago, a fact that allows scientists to determine which specific genes gave them a high-altitude advantage. Variants of one in particular, the so-called “super athlete” gene EPAS1, have already been linked to improved performance. “Tibetans have a mutation in that gene that is very, very rare,” says University of California at Berkeley geneticist Rasmus Nielsen, who worked on the analysis of the Tibetan data. “Presumably, that is one of the particular variants that helps them perform well in a high-altitude environment.” But how it all works isn’t completely understood. When you or I head to the Himalayas, our bodies compensate for the thinner oxygen levels by producing more hemoglobin, increasing the blood’s ability to transport oxygen. But more hemoglobin also thickens your blood, making it harder for the heart to pump and sometimes leading to acute mountain sickness. Tibetans produce less hemoglobin in their blood yet function well at altitude. Still, not having the gene mutation doesn’t mean you should forget about climbing in the Himalayas. Good training can get you to the top, too.

The Wild File: Carbon Fiber

Carbon is the sixth-most-common element, but while pure carbon in nature can take the form of both diamonds and graphite, you’ll never find carbon fiber in the ground. The high-tensile gossamer strands—which are reinforced with epoxy to make pricey carbon-fiber bikes, fly rods, and tennis rackets—are formed under extreme temperatures in an artificial, inert-gas atmosphere. “The capital investment to make those strands is huge,” says Luc Callahan, engineering manager for road bikes at Specialized. “Like a billion dollars huge.” Indeed, there are only a handful of companies capable of making carbon fiber—all of them focused primarily on aerospace. Once you get beyond startup costs, the raw material isn’t cheap, either. Unlike diamonds produced for industrial use, carbon fiber starts not with graphite but with a tough-to-brew chemical polymer called Polyacrylonitrile. “Compared with steel and aluminum, the inputs are much more expensive,” says Callahan. And, finally, there’s the market. Since carbon fiber’s development, in the late 1950s, demand for it has been set by the aerospace industry. Sports manufacturers get the scraps and don’t even have access to the best military stuff. “We could get 50 percent stronger in some grades,” says Callahan.

By the Numbers
CARBON FIBER
75 Percentage of the carbon-fiber supply used by the transportation, infrastructure, and electronics industries
7 Percentage of the supply now used to fabricate wind turbines
65:35 Ratio of carbon fabric to epoxy resin needed to produce a stable composite in a typical bicycle
42 Man-hours a frame takes to make
$250,000 Cost of the molds and tools for the production run of a single carbon-fiber bike model

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ONE

Chrissie Wellington

Ironman triathlons Wellington entered (and won) before crushing her competition in the 2007 Ironman World Championship

1,754
number of the world’s top male and female athletes Wellington beat en route to her 2009 victory

17
years Paula Newby-Fraser’s course record (8:55:28) stood before Wellington broke it in 2009 with a time of 8:54:02

TWENTY
minutes it took the 2009 runner-up at Kona to finish after Wellington broke the tape

TWO
athletes who’ve won four consecutive Ironman World Championships

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The Unselfish Surfers

Behind the lens

To see trailers from these directors’ latest films, go to outsideonline.com/video. Wanna make your own adventure film? Check out upcoming ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Film Schools in Colorado, Tahiti, Everest, and more at .

Jonno Durrant and Stefan Hunt

Jonno Durrant (left) and Stefan Hunt

Not long after JONNO DURRANT and STEFAN HUNT—Australian surfers, filmmakers, and self-described “absolute kooks”—heard about Mission Mexico, an orphanage and surfing school run by fellow Aussies in Tapachula, Mexico, Hunt, 22, decided to volunteer. A week later, he was so moved by the experience that he sent an e-mail to Durrant, 28, with a simple message: “Bring the cameras.” They finished Somewhere Near Tapachula this past February. With sponsors like Hurley and Global Surf Industries footing most of the film’s bill, 100 percent of the profits are going to Mission Mexico’s education fund. In July, Hunt and Durrant handed the nonprofit a check for $100,000. The next project for the childhood friends? Surfing the 28 states of India (inspired by their first film, Surfing 50 States). “Everyone says it is crazy, colorful, diverse, friendly, dangerous, warm, cold, cheap, fun, scary, and mind-blowing,” Durrant says. “We hope it is all of that.”

On Durrant: Soft Shirt by Dockers ($38; ); Double L Button-Front Cardigan by L.L.Bean ($40; ); Dane Reynolds Pants by Quiksilver ($55; ); Recyclus El N911 shoe by El Naturalista ($250; )

On Hunt: Rugger shirt ($125) and Rugger corduroy blazer ($498) by Gant (); Flathead tee by O’Neill ($20; ); Windowpane Khaki pants by Dockers ($58; ); Haberdashery Scarf by SmartWool ($50; ); shoes his own

The River Keeper

From filming paddling expeditions to taking on environmental issues, filmmaker Trip Jennings is making a difference.

Trip Jennings

Trip Jennings

For 28-year-old TRIP JENNINGS, it’s not that filming paddling expeditions in Papua New Guinea or first descents on the Congo River got old, but rather that the environmental devastation he witnessed began to matter more. His most recent short documentary, Flathead Wild, is about how one of the most intact ecosystems in North America, British Columbia’s Flathead River, is being threatened by a large-scale mining project. “I wanted people to see that this place is beautiful and special,” says the expedition kayaker and co-founder of multimedia company Epicocity Project. “I wanted them to feel what it would be like to lose it.” So far his plan is working. In February, British Columbia and Montana signed a “Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation” to retire all mining claims in the area. Next up: an investigative documentary about elephant poaching in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Ditch flannel shirt by Quiksilver ($55; ); Blue Jean Zip Cardigan ($42) and Waxed Cotton Down Vest ($89) by L.L.Bean (); K-1 Khaki pants by Dockers ($68; )

The Rope Guns

Filmmakers Nick Rosen and Peter Mortimer have done the seemingly impossible: made climbing movies for the mainstream.

NICK ROSEN and PETER MORTIMER, the 36-year-old owners of Boulder, Colorado–based Sender Films, have done the seemingly impossible: made climbing movies for the mainstream. Since teaming up in 2006, the friends, who met while attending Colorado College, have focused on character-driven narratives rather than straight-up rock porn. The culmination of those efforts is First Ascent:
The Series, a six-part series—available on DVD now and airing on the Travel Channel this winter—that includes a profile of free soloist Alex Honnold and the tragic story of friends Jonny Copp, Micah Dash, and Wade Johnson, who died last year on China’s Mount Edgar. “What makes it great is the intensity,” says Rosen. “But I don’t know that we’ll go rushing back out to repeat that.” The pair are now working on a documentary about the history of climbing in Yosemite, due out next year.

On Rosen: Rugger twill plaid shirt ($125), Rugger flannel one-button blazer ($498), and Rugger vintage chinos ($138) by Gant (); Beartooth Hoody by SmartWool ($165; ); sneakers his own

On Mortimer: Rugger wool cardigan ($165), Rugger yellow flannel shirt ($125), and Rugger corduroy trousers ($138) by Gant (); Kilauea shoe by OluKai ($150; )

The Accidental Detective

When film director Josh Fox got letters from energy companies offering him almost $100,000 to drill for natural gas on his land, he became a natural-gas detective.

Josh Fox

Josh Fox

In the spring of 2008, when 38-year-old theater and film director JOSH FOX got letters from energy companies offering him almost $100,000 to drill for natural gas on his rural Pennsylvania land, he decided to look into the possible side effects himself. “Am I gonna become a natural-gas detective?” he asked. “I guess so.” That decision led this engaging, banjo-playing filmmaker on an everyman’s investigative journey from Dimock, Pennsylvania—where people living near wells reported dizzying headaches and suddenly hairless pets—to states like Wyoming and New Mexico, where the boom is biggest and the health scares are even worse. The resulting documentary, Gasland, produced by Fox’s International WOW Company, is by turns horrifying and hilarious; it took the Special Jury Prize at Sundance last January and is slated for big-screen rollout this month.

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