For many people (myself included), Apple isn’t just a brand or a portfolio of tech products. Apple is a way of life. It’s an obsession. The phone, the watch, the tabletĚýand laptop—these items have become fully integrated into our day to day routine. Life without them seems… empty. So we’ve found the best accessories that allow you to take your “precious” into the wild andĚýkeep themĚýsafe.

Lander Moab Apple Watch Case and Band ($30)Ěý

Most Apple Watch cases add considerable bulk to an otherwise slim wearable, but maintains a svelte look while still protecting your pride and joy from bumps and scratches. It’sĚýmade from a stiff urethane-carbon combo with built-in air pocketsĚýand it comes with a woven nylon band that’s DWR coated to help fight odor. Unfortunately, Lander doesn’t make the case for the Series 3 watch anymore, so this will only help you out if you’re rocking the Series 4.Ěý

Nomad Pod Pro Battery ($50)Ěý

Extra batteries are easy to come by, but is designed to simplify your mobile charging needs with a 6000mAh battery that can charge your iPhone and Apple Watch at the same time. It has enough juice to chargeĚýeach device twice in one sitting, which has made it my go-to battery for weekend excursions. Even more attractive is the built-in cord organization:Ěýthe Pod Pro has an integrated lightning cable for an iPhone and a magnetic system that keeps your Apple Watch cord wrapped inside the aluminum case. It’s certainly heavier than some featherweight batteries (Nomad says the Pod Pro is 4 ounces), but you’re getting two chargers and a cord organizer in one package.Ěý

Joby GripTight One GP Stand ($35)Ěý

For most of us, the iPhone has eliminated the need to bring a camera on our adventures. But if you’ve ever tried to prop up that phone to take a picture of yourself, you’ve certainly missed your old camera’s square body. Thankfully, Joby extended its GorillaPod tripod system to accommodate thin, unwieldy smartphones. The square grip can work on just about any phone, regardless of size. Just like the original GorillaPod, the legs can adjust to off-camber surfaces or wrap around small branches or fence posts. And yes, can also work as a selfie stick.Ěý

Catalyst Waterproof Laptop Sleeve ($55)Ěý

You’re not going to take your laptop kayaking, but how often have you been caught in the rain on a commute? It happens. Enter the , which is made from ripstop nylon with a DWR finish, welded seams, and a double closure system (waterproof zipper and a Velcro strap) for an IP66 waterproof rating.ĚýIt fits 13-to-15-inchĚýlaptops or tablets,Ěýand an interior padded sleeve helps protect your computer against drops. ItĚýalso comes with two straps and multiple D-rings so you can wear it as a standalone backpack or shoulder bag, but I like it better as extra protection inside my daily pack. There are also a couple of small pockets inside the bag that are big enough for your charger, phone, or wallet.Ěý

LifeProof LifeActiv Cable Lanyard ($40)Ěý

I hate packing charging cords (see my love of the Nomad Pod Pro). But Ěýprovided a solution to my gripe by transforming a cable into a lanyard that you can strap to a backpack or compatible phone case. When in use, it’s a 15-inchĚýlightning to USB charging cord that supports a 2.4 amp charging speed, but the ends screw into a cap to form a waterproof and dust-proof lanyard that doubles as a wrist strap for your phone (if you have the compatible ). Or you can hook it to your backpack so you have a charging cable handy.Ěý

Nite Ize HandleBand Handlebar Mount ($18)Ěý

I’ve used many different phone mounts for my bike over the years, but the wins for its combo of security and ease of use. It’s a completely tool-free mount, so you can move it from bike to bike with a rubber harness system that secures to your handlebarsĚýand wraps around your phone. ItĚýrattles a littleĚýwhen you’re on rough trails, but it’s plenty secure for road cycling and commuting, and it gives you easy access to maps, phone calls, and ride data.

The post The Best Outdoor Gadgets for Apple Products, Under $60 appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Summer offers up endless opportunities for adventure. Why not partake in a community of like-minded people?ĚýAt these sports, film, food, music, and other festivals around the country, you can watch top athletes perform, learn a new sport, get access to remote terrain, or kick back and watch The Killers in a field with a cold craft beer. Or do it all.

Action and şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř

şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Experience

Chicago, Illinois; JulyĚý13-14

In September 1977, the first issue of şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř was published in Chicago, which served as the magazine’s hometown for 15 years. On July 13-14, we’re returning to the Windy City for the inaugural şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Experience, a two-day event packed with SUPing on Lake Michigan, skills clinics, select flicks from the 5Point Film Festival, climbing walls, group runs, and whiskey tastings, with more than 200 top gear and travel brands on hand to help you demo equipment, check out adventure vehicles, and live bravely. To learn more, see the map above and .

GoPro Mountain Games

Vail, Colorado; June 6–9

Watch professional athletes compete in freestyle kayaking, slacklining, mountain biking, and the only U.S. stop on the . Better yet, sign yourself up to test yourself with any of the GoPro Mountain Games’ 30-plus events. Other highlights: big-air dog-jumping contests, three nights of free concerts including headliner Citizen Cope, and kid-friendly events like a push-bike race and a fly-fishing contest. (Free for spectators)

International Climbers’ Festival

Lander, Wyoming; July 10–14

Climbers of all abilities descend on Lander for that’s been taking place since 1994. Demo gear, take climbing clinics, and test your­self with the Limestone Rodeo redpoint competition by day, then watch climbing films and guest speakers by night. Local hotels offer discounts for attendees, or you can camp for free in Lander City Park. ($100)

Downieville Classic

Downieville, California; August 1–4

Hardy mountain bikers will love the 26.5-mile cross-country and 15-mile downhill fat-tire races that make up . Everyone else? They’ll enjoy a movie night, river swims, DJs, and food trucks at this former gold-mining town on the North Fork of the Yuba River. ($110)

Music

Forecastle Festival

Louisville, Kentucky; July 12–13

With headliners like the Killers and the Avett Brothers, you’d be forgiven for assuming that , which takes place every summer on the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville’s Waterfront Park, was just another music fest. But the event is also a strong supporter of environmental activism and showcases organizations like , , and . (From $185)

Shambhala Music Festival

Salmo, British Columbia; August 9–12

Welcome to , a massive underground electronic-dance-music party on a 500-acre working farm in a stunning corner of interior British Columbia. In addition to six stages that are as much art installations as they are music venues, expect daily yoga, vegan food vendors, and a geodesic dome turned art gallery. ($335)

Food and Drink

Seattle Street Food Fest

Seattle, Washington; July 6–7

With food trucks and 100,000 attendees taking over five blocks of the city’s burgeoning South Lake Union neighborhood, it can be tough to navigate this weekend-long fest. Two can’t-miss favorites: the Greek fries at Hallava Falafel, and the beignets at Where Ya At Matt. Between courses, enjoy DJs, an artists’ market, and craft beer. (Free)

Beer, Bourbon, and BBQ

Thirteen locations in the southeast; January through October

, you’ll find some 60 beers and 40 bourbons, plus a variety of barbecue, live music, a hot-sauce marketplace, and seminars where brewers, distillers, and pit masters share their craft. Some of this summer’s choice tour stops include Washington, D.C., Virginia Beach, and Knoxville, Tennessee. (From $40)

Vermont Brewers Festival

Burlington, Vermont; July 19–20

With some 48 Vermont craft breweries , you’re sure to find a beer or two or ten to love at this event on the shores of Lake Champlain. (But if you don’t grab a Heady Topper IPA from the Alchemist, you’re doing it wrong.) Enjoy local bands and food trucks, and stop by the Experience Tent and learn which Vermont cheeses pair best with your new favorite brews. ($44)

The post 9 Can’t-Miss Festivals for Summer 2019 appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

No one can say for certain how many people live in . The weathered wooden sign on the edge of the unincorporated town reads “Population: About 57.” The 2010 federal census puts that number at 37, but then again, Atlantic City residents aren’t the kind of people who like to be counted. This gulch community, which sits in the shadow of the Continental Divide, has been a loose confederacy of outlaws since its founding in 1867, at the height of the western gold rush.

Once upon a time, Atlantic City boasted the region’s only brewery and dance hall, along with a string of blacksmith shops, saloons, and livery stables. But then the gold veins dried up and the barons shuttered their mines. Businesses were next, with owners boarding up their storefronts and moving to more lucrative regions. Their employees and customers soon followed.

By 1900, the population of Atlantic City had dropped to just a handful. In the decades that followed, it sputtered upward, gradually attracting migrants in search of privacy and personal liberty.

Today, those values continue to unite the few dozen full-time residents. Make your way down the one gravel road running in and out of town, and you’ll find dusty lawns festooned with handmade signs condemning elected officials. Grannies at Atlantic City Mercantile proudly display sidearms and sleeve tattoos. Ranchers ride their four-wheelers in Stetsons and spurs. They drink red beer—half tomato juice, half Budweiser—and nosh on cooked bull testicles, all without an ounce of irony.

These residents are proud of their lack of cell service and absence of public officials. They delight in the fact that the nearest amenities or law enforcement are an hour away in the town of Lander, that most guidebooks list their little hamlet as one of Wyoming’s famed ghost towns.

But now Atlantic City is having something of a resurgence as it’s becoming a hub for hikers and cyclists on the Continental Divide Trail. This past season, close to 400 thru-hikers made their way up and down the 3,100-mile path, along with mountain bikers, equestrians, and even a few unicyclists. That pales in comparison to the thousands of backpackers on more populated National Scenic Trails like the Appalachian and Pacific Crest. Still, it’s a huge increase for the third—and longest—prong in hiking’s Triple Crown. (In 1978, three individuals completed the trail; five years ago, that number had grown to just 35.) The surge means both big and unexpected business for otherwise forgotten communities like Atlantic City.

Take the , for instance, one of only two bars and restaurants in town. Laurel Nelson and her husband, Dale Anderson, purchased the spot, whose motto is “suck ’em up and get the fuck out,” in 2009. Neither Nelson nor Anderson had a background in food service—he worked as a prison electrician; she was a Harley-riding hospice nurse from Columbia, California. But they took a beverage management course and carved out a successful routine for themselves, with the taciturn Dale slinging crab cakes and beef chimichangas in the kitchen and Laurel holding court at the bar, a pack of Marlboros usually nearby, as she chats up locals and the occasional snowmobiler.

Back then, hikers were what Nelson calls “a real curiosity,” with their ultralight packs and stanky polypro. Atlantic City residents were hesitant to give them hitches into town, and they’d come up short when asked for weird hiking supplies like baby wipes and squeezable chia pouches.

As the CDT presence began to increase, Nelson—who also serves as the town’s unofficial mayor—saw an opportunity. She began encouraging hikers to ship drop boxes to themselves at the Grubstake, offered up beds for rent in a bunkhouse ($20 off if you’re willing to do your own sheets), and erected a teepee for folks who wanted to sleep outside. She carved out one corner of the saloon to serve as a resupply shop and called it the Crazy Lady Cantina. She began making weekly trips to the nearest Walmart, where she’d buy everything from tampons and bug spray to powdered coconut milk and ramen (lots and lots of ramen), which she’d sell to hikers at a small markup. Meanwhile, she and Dale learned to anticipate the food whims of hungry hikers and cyclists, replacing a couple of Bud taps with IPAs from local microbreweries. After watching one hiker inhale a dozen corn dogs and a stick of butter in a single setting, Dale began keeping a crate of both in stock. Ditto for pints of ice cream and avocados and all the other luxuries not to be had on the trail.

It’s a hard balance to master in terms of timing. The hiking bubble lasts only about six weeks a year, from early July to mid-August. On one day, ten hikers may pass through. Another day, not one. Late-season stragglers continue to make their way through sometimes into October for as long as the snow allows.

Anticipating what they’re going to want when they arrive is even trickier. Still incomplete, the CDT remains one of the most rustic and wild of our nation’s scenic trails. There’s still no official guidebook, no list of helpful hostels or reviews of restaurants. News travels the old-fashioned way: through a game of telephone between hikers. Serve a chef’s salad special on a Wednesday, say, and hikers will be devastated if it’s not available a week later. So Dale started catering his menu accordingly and listened as tired backpackers fantasized about dream food. Instead of brined salmon and crab cakes, he started cooking half-pound burgers stuffed with bacon, cheese, and jalapeños and breakfast burritos bigger than a steer’s head.

When news began to spread that you could also have a hot foot soak with your meal, Nelson had to begin keeping huge bags of Epsom salt and peppermint oil in stock as well. She became an expert at lancing blisters and applying Betadine.

“They come in starving and beat up,” she says. “And some of these hikers don’t look like they’re really equipped to do this. My job is to patch them up and get them back on the trail.”

Sometimes that means loaning a hiker her personal four-wheeler so they can make the six-mile trip to the nearest post office. Other times it’s taking a pregnant hiker to Lander for blood work or wrapping up a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at midnight. Nelson says she kind of loves that, too.

“I’ve always been in medicine, which means I’ve always taken care of people,” Nelson says. “And it only take a couple of hours before these hikers start to feel like family. Their arrival is the highlight of the year for me.”

On the other side of town, Bill Moore and his wife, Carmela, have carved out their own niche. Moore owns Wild Bill’s Gun and Ammo. Located in the basement of his two-story log home, the shop offers everything from antique camel guns to handmade knives, along with big canisters of gas and kerosene. On most days, a few locals can be found there, leaning against their pickup trucks, talking about coon hunting and coyote traps. A few years ago, hikers started approaching them to ask if anyone had a room for rent. So the Moores opened Wild Bill’s Bed and Breakfast, a series of small cabins with double occupancy. Bill oversaw construction; Carmela handled decorations. “I always tell Bill, the key word has got to be cute,” Carmela told me inside a cabin tricked out in bear-themed flannel. He installed an electric-powered shower house along with a coin-operated laundry and started selling foil packs of tuna and Gatorade along with shotgun shells and silencers. Carmela learned to make vegan breakfast sausage and pancakes by the truckload.

“We’re one-half entertainers and one-half professional accommodaters,” Bill says. “If you want breakfast at 4 a.m., that’s what we’re going to do.”

Other residents have taken hikers fly-fishing or on tours of the mines. They’ve hosted family meals and stashed free supplies in beat-up coolers. The tiny one-room Episcopal church installed Wi-Fi and posted a laminated note informing hikers how to find a key to the building, day or night. Most Atlantic City residents I spoke with said they like keeping an eye on the hikers and bikers who now pass through.

Last season, a hiker broke his femur two days after leaving Atlantic City. When his father noticed his GPS tracker hadn’t moved for a day, he knew his son must be in trouble. So he called Wild Bill, who drove out in the middle of the night. He found the kid 30 miles down the trail and hauled him to a hospital in the back seat of his pickup truck. That, Moore says, is just what people do in Atlantic City.

“We’re a different breed here,” he says. “People want to do their own thing. You’re not going to see us sitting on each other’s decks drinking sweet tea. But when you need help, we’re sure as hell going to do it.”

That’s part of what Jill and Joel Kavanaugh, two thru-hikers from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, say they love most about Atlantic City: the authenticity and it’s-all-good vibe.

“When we walk around towns like Steamboat Springs, the people there will cross the street to get away from us, thinking we’re homeless,” Joel says. “Here, they know us. The ranchers and the trappers are the ones who see us out there. They get what we’re doing, and they’re the first to ask if we need anything.”

On the afternoon the Kavanaughs arrived at the Grubstake, a handful of cattlemen sat at one end of the bar, dressed in western shirts with embroidery and mother-of-pearl snaps. At the other end were two thru-hikers, taking a zero day in Chacos and hipster T-shirts. When Joel began opening his awaiting drop box, they all clustered around the table, laughing about his extensive resupply of Snickers and swapping shop talk over the best headlamps.

“I feel embraced,” Jill told me. “It really restores your faith in humanity. People here care enough to listen to what you have to say.”

It goes both ways, Nelson says. After meeting some of the CDT hikers a few years ago, her son Jake planned on attempting his own thru-hike. But a 2012 accident left him paralyzed. When news of his injury got out, hikers that season rallied together, sending get-well cards to Jake and offering to wait tables so Laurel could spend more time at the hospital.

Now 33, Jake is planning to do the trail on a handcycle bike in 2020. Laurel says she thinks that sounds like a nightmare of a bad time, but she gets that he wants to go through with it. She’s heartened by the fact that her son won’t be out there alone.

“He’s already had offers of support from hikers who have passed through Atlantic City,” she says. “It’s really cool knowing there’s an influx of people on the trail willing to come back and help Jake. That kind of thing puts wind in your sails for sure.”

The post The CDT Is Changing the Face of This Western Town appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

There are two choices when confronting theĚýcurrent chaos in the job market: Be afraid. (Useless.)ĚýBe bold. (That’s the spirit.) Because moments of turmoil present the biggest opportunities to take aĚýnew direction, to find an employer who gets your needĚýfor adventure, to finally break free of the cubicle.

The 30 winners of şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř‘s second annual Best Places to Work come in many forms adventure outfitters, tech firms, nonprofits, you name it but they all share a common belief: that the secret to success in any economy is empowering employees to live bigger, better lives. The hunch is that happy workers are good for the bottom line because they’re more committed, more creative, and more capable. So even in the current financial storm, these employers say, Sure, bring the dog, take a long ride at lunch, work from home today. What’s good for you is good for us. Oh, and one more thing: Many of them are hiring.

1. Intrepid Travel U.S.

FREQUENT FLIERS: “At this point, it’s where haven’t I been,” says Dyan McKie, the adventure outfitter’s U.S. sales manager. Hired in Intrepid’s Melbourne headquarters in 2001 before helping launch the U.S. branch, McKie has taken full advantage of employee travel perks—a free two-week trip upon hiring, then 70 percent discounts and $1,500 annual stipends—joining guided journeys on all seven continents. She has the time: All employees are granted four weeks of vacation.
OH, THOSE AUSSIES: McKie’s tasks include instilling the Boulder office with “Australian culture,” meaning a flip-flop- and dog-friendly atmosphere, communally cooked lunches, and (of course) Friday happy hours.
SAVE THE RECEIPTS: Intrepid reimburses up to $500 for sports activities (e.g., gym, ski pass) and $500 for being green, whether it’s riding a bike or bus to work or installing low-energy appliances at home.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
With 20 years of experience, Intrepid Travel is one of the world’s leading small-group adventure tour operators. Intrepid Travel takes around 80,000 travelers to more than 100 countries worldwide, each and every year. Intrepid trips are designed to go off the beaten track, meet the locals, and travel in an unconventional way, joining locals on their transport, in their markets, and even in their homes. Intrepid employs close to a thousand employees in nearly 20 countries worldwide.

FITNESS REIMBURSEMENT
In addition to fully funding a robust health insurance plan, we encourage our employees to stay fit with our Get Active program. We have reimbursed employees for season ski passes, new bikes, gym memberships . . . whatever works for them to get them out and get them active!

GREEN INITIATIVES
We recycle and compost. We use wind energy. We have recently implemented 30 new carbon-offset trips. We aim to be completely carbon neutral by 2010. And we encourage our employees to make a difference outside of work. Over the past year we have assisted in replacing non-efficient home appliances, distributed reusable grocery bags, and rewarded our employees for using public transit or walking to work.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
We offer flexible working hours and more. We feel strongly that those who are parents in the organization should never miss a child’s soccer game or teacher conference because of work. We don’t keep track of hours, and we trust our employees to do the right thing. Managers are encouraged to leave by 5:30 p.m. each night so their teams do not feel compelled to stay late.

OFFICE CULTURE
We’ve actually created the kind of company we all dreamed about when we worked at other companies. We live the corporate values we espouse: We act with integrity. We are passionate about what we do. We encourage personal growth. We have fun. We are creative and innovative. We believe in responsible tourism. We encourage our employees to dress in a way that inspires their best work. We want them to bring their dogs to the office. Every month we enjoy a lunch prepared by two of our co-workers. We share a round of drinks together every Friday evening to celebrate a great week. Yes, we always have a great week!

2. Natural Habitat şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs

UPPING THE OM: Last summer, travel outfitter “NatHab” relocated from Boulder 15 miles east, to the corporate campus of parent company Gaiam, a yoga-lifestyle brand. Smart move. Already-happy staffers accustomed to a “wacky” culture (roaming dogs, office keg parties) now have access to free yoga, Pilates, and other fitness classes, plus discounted meals in Gaiam’s organic cafeteria.
WORK TRIPS: Every year, each employee is given a spot on a two-week, all-expenses-paid expedition to one of 30 countries. NatHab is also the exclusive travel provider to the World Wildlife Fund and the first carbon-neutral outfitter in the U.S.
ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH: Flex hours and telecommuting are part of a “self-directed philosophy,” says director of marketing Matt Kareus. “It’s Colorado—there’s leeway.”

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Natural Habitat şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍřs specializes in environmentally conscientious small-group nature expeditions across the globe, from the high Arctic to the Antarctic, on seven continents and in more than 30 countries.

TELECOMMUTING/FLEXIBLE HOURS
Depending on their specific position, some employees have the option of structuring their schedules to work from home. About one-third of all employees telecommute for at least part of their schedule. Same with flexible hours—the main thing we are concerned with is job performance. If they can perform up to our and their expectations in a compressed workweek, then it’s 100 percent acceptable.

FITNESS & WELLNESS BENEFITS
We have free on-site yoga, Pilates, and other fitness classes as well as an on-site full-service cafeteria that serves healthy organic food including a full salad bar and a variety of hot and cold options that change daily. In 2009, the plan is for all food to be purchased from organic local farms.

GREEN INITIATIVES
We have a Carbon Pollution Reduction program through which we strive to reduce our C02 emissions, offset existing emissions, and educate our travelers and the traveling public about global warming. To this end, NHA is the first carbon-neutral tour operator in the United States. We calculate the C02 emissions from all of our trip-related activities and pay to offset them through MyClimate and Sustainable Travel International.

A 100-kilowatt solar installation on top of our building provides 20 percent of our energy needs. We also purchase renewable-energy credits. Kitchen cabinets and countertops as well as all of our carpet were made from 100 percent recycled materials. All other cabinets, countertops, cubicles, and furniture have been reused or repurposed from other businesses and buildings. All paint and glues used in the building are 100 percent non-VOC (volatile organic compounds).

COMMUNITY SERVICE
We support a local nonprofit called Global Explorers both financially and through volunteer activity. Global Explorers, through its international immersion adventures, teaches students about leadership, sustainability, and conservation and inspires them to become better global citizens.

OFFICE CULTURE
NHA has managed to be respected and successful in our industry while encouraging our employees to have fun, set their own goals, and pursue flexible schedules and their passions outside of work. We’ve seen substantial growth each year (20 percent-plus from 2002 to 2007) and have earned major accolades while staying true to our vision that our jobs shouldn’t rule our lives and that work should be fun. Employees bring their dogs to work, and leave early if they want to go mountain biking or head to the mountains to ski, without compromising the quality of what we do.

3. Clif Bar & Company

THEY NEED THOSE ENERGY BARS! And how. Clif offers its 182 Berkeley employees 32 fitness classes a week in an on-site gym/studio, supports two and a half hours per week of on-the-clock workouts, and reimburses up to $350 for race fees. Two full-time staff trainers provide one-on-one sessions and coordinate with the company’s wellness manager to create constantly evolving athletic programs; this spring, one trainer gave dawn-patrol surfing lessons. “We ask people what they want,” says Clif’s strength-and-conditioning coach, Stephanie Wu, “and management encourages us to give it to them.”
ASK JEEVES: A “concierge service” includes on-site car washing and haircuts, and subsidized take-home organic dinners. Dogs and kids are welcome anytime.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Clif Bar & Company is a leading maker of all-natural and organic foods and drinks, including the organic certified CLIF® BAR energy bar, delivering Nutrition for Sustained Energy®, and LUNA®, The Whole Nutrition Bar for Women®. Committed to sustainability, Clif Bar & Company works diligently to reduce its footprint on the planet from the field to the final product.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
Employees may opt to work a “980” schedule. In a 9/80 schedule, employees work 80 hours in nine days and take every other Friday off. This schedule assumes 9.5 hours worked Monday through Thursday and eight hours worked on every other Friday. On a case-by-case basis with manager approval, employees may occasionally work from home.

FITNESS & WELLNESS BENEFITS
Employees enjoy an on-site, fully equipped fitness facility, which includes danceyoga studio, a massage room, showers, and towel service. Clif Bar offers employees a menu of 32 complimentary fitness classes per week, including spinning, yoga, Pilates, boot camp, circuit training, and seasonal classes such as ski conditioning. Employees enjoy free personal training and receive 2.5 hours of paid workout time per week. We offer nutritional counseling; life coaching; subsidized massage services; an annual health fair with preventive health screening tests and info on holistic health options; wellness seminars on topics like healthy eating, stress and holistic health; and athletic event reimbursement up to $350 a year.

CONCIERGE SERVICES
Our “concierge services,” paid for by employees, include on-site car washing once a week; organic take-home dinners three nights a week; organic vegetable delivery; on-site haircuts; and laundrydry-cleaning pickup and drop-off. At the office, children (and dogs) are always welcome. We also have a private room for nursing moms complete with nursery-inspired decor.

GREEN INITIATIVES
We have recycling bins throughout the office for paper, glass, and aluminum, and employees have desk-side recycling bins. We reuse packing materials and plastic wrap, and offer on-site battery and electronic recycling. We have compost bins in each of our kitchens and “worm bins” in our warehouse. Through these efforts, Clif Bar has diverted approximately 70 percent of our waste from local landfills.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Employees volunteer at the organizations of their choice for as many hours as they like. In 2008, Clif Bar contributed more than 5,000 hours to community service and has an employee-participation rate of 98 percent. Beyond local efforts, Clif selects and sends volunteers to nonlocal special development projects—India, Poland, Romania, and, for the past two years, New Orleans.

OFFICE CULTURE
Clif Bar & Company believes that people should come to work as their “whole selves” and encourages employees to not only bring the professional expertise to their daily responsibilities but also to their authentic selves—their values, their uniqueness, and their passions. This allows us to connect on an emotional level to the company’s Five Bottom Lines—Sustaining our People, Sustaining our Community, Sustaining our Business, Sustaining our Brands, and Sustaining the Planet.

4. Smith Optics

WELCOME TO BRO-LANDIA: “People here have a lot of respect for powder days,” says communications manager Gregory Randolph. As well they should. The company makes high-performance goggles, sunglasses, and prescription eyewear; home is a classic mountain town; and founder Bob Smith started out by trading handmade goggles for lift tickets at western resorts. So if the snow is falling or the trout are biting, “the phone rings for a long time,” says Randolph. An 800-square-foot gear-storage area includes workbenches and bike and snow­sports tools and sits across the hall from a locker room and showers.
PAY FOR PLAY: Employees are given stipends of $1,000 to cover sports and wellness expenditures, plus all the products they can make time to test. Says Randolph, “Recreation is encouraged.”

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Smith Optics is a manufacturer and purveyor of sunglasses, prescription eyewear, snow goggles, moto goggles, and snow helmets, with its roots in the action sports industry. Smith designs, produces, manufactures, and sells these products in the U.S. and around the world.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
We work hard at Smith, and employees are expected to work 40-plus hours a week. Yet recreation and fun is what we sell, and our employee policy allows for extended lunch hours and, depending on job and department, flexible work hours to enable workers to get on the mountain, out on the trail, or on the river. Get your work done, get your hours in, and get your ski/bike/snowboard/fish on! We live in a pretty tempting place, and people find it pretty hard to just punch the clock.

OFFICE FACILITIES
Smith has a complete locker room and equipment/gear storage and maintenance room with tools. We are located literally minutes from a world-class ski hill, world-class nordic trail system, world-class fishing, and world-class mountain biking, not to mention across the street from a complete gym and physical fitness center. We make using these facilities as easy and convenient as possible by facilitating their use with first-class infrastructure.

FITNESS BENEFITS
We have mountain-bike/hike Thursdays, when employees can use their extended lunch hour to get out and recreate together. Employees receive an annual stipend of $1,000 to offset costs of ski passes, nordic passes, track fees, and pretty much anything else that can be loosely translated as our favorite excuse to get outside: “product testing”!

GREEN INITIATIVES
Ninety-six percent of all unpainted Smith goggle frames (snow and moto goggles) are made of recycled and post-consumer urethane. This is our largest-volume product and represents nearly 100,000 units a year. We also use 100 percent post-consumer and recycled wood fibers for the production of a majority of our sunglass, goggle, and helmet boxes and catalogs and other print materials. Smith purchases alternative-energy credits and uses energy generated in Idaho from wind- and hydropower. We do not use energy from coal power.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
We donate hundreds of thousands of dollars of our product for fundraising and nonprofit purposes. We financially support local programs like Sun Valley Ski Ed Foundation, Blaine County Food Bank, Women’s Shelter, Sun Valley Adaptive Sports, and national groups like the Outdoor Industry Association, International Mountain Bike Association, American Whitewater Association, dZi Foundation, and Right to Sight.

OFFICE CULTURE
We make products for the outdoor-sports world and encourage our employees to get out and participate in these activities for a hands-on experience, working knowledge of products, healthy body, and positive overall outlook on life! It’s not a typical company when the president comes over and eggs you into going skiing or your boss drags you out the door for a round of golf.

5. Tabar

CALL IT CAMELOT: “We’re a ‘one for all and all for one’ kinda place,” says president Gary Schloss. Indeed, while other companies on our list offer some jaw-dropping perks, this small, private-label glove-and-mitten manufacturer delivers with a meat-and-potatoes approach: health-care and vision plans covering 95 percent of costs, paid maternity and paternity leave, 2 P.M. closings on summer Fridays, flexible hours year-round, and generous bonus and profit-sharing plans. “We try to create a very stable platform so that people can live their lives,” says Schloss.
SAIL AWAY: That’s what VP of product development Bill McGown did for six months on his 2002 sabbatical, a benefit granted to Tabar employees on a case-by-case basis.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Tabar is an OEM supplier of high-quality technical glove, mitten, gaiter, and accessory products to leading brands in the outdoor-sports, tactical, hunting-and-fishing, motorcycle, bicycle, and alpine-sports markets. We work from concept creation and 2D spec, through prototyping, production, logistical services and financial services related to turnkey accessory programs to complement a client’s core offerings.

TEAM BUILDING
Every other year we hold a world team getaway. This is usually to a resort location, and we cover all costs for employees and the majority of the expenses for spouses, whom we encourage to attend. These are lavish events with gift packages and usually allow for free time to enjoy each other’s company, as well as training, team building, and learning components. Past destinations have included the Mohonk Mountain House, in upstate New York; CancĂşn, Mexico; Vail, Colorado; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Timberline Lodge, on Mount Hood, Oregon. The 2010 venue will be Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

OFFICE FACILITIES
We have areas for bike storage as well as a bath-and-shower facility.

TELECOMMUTING & SUMMER HOURS
We have some employees who telecommute a few days a week for childcare or cost-of-fuel reasons. From Memorial Day to Labor Day we add a half-hour Monday to Thursday, and close at 2:00 p.m. on Friday.

OFFICE CULTURE
The culture of the company is very employee-centric. We show our appreciation and recognition on a daily basis. Tabar treats each employee as if they have an ownership stake in the company. There are no time clocks, and we allow for individual and artistic expression. Some staffers have painted their offices lime green or pink. We compensate our people extremely well, and part of our mission statement is to provide each employee with a solid foundation from which to build their personal lives.

6. Dominion Digital

SMART TECH: In the field of technology consulting—defined by the overworked and overtraveled—Dominion stands out for its progressive policies. “We are ridiculously strong advocates of work-life balance,” says recruiter Tricia Rhodes. Need to telecommute on Tuesdays? Or dedicate midday hours to childcare? No problem. In 2009, Dominion is allotting roughly $2,000 and—even more impressive—two weeks per employee for training and development. “We’re a consulting firm—we need to be a step ahead,” says Rhodes.
ROLLER BAG NOT REQUIRED: Dominion’s focus on mid-Atlantic businesses is designed to reduce travel demands. The result: more nights at home and company-sponsored Friday-afternoon outings to the Appalachians.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Dominion Digital is a regional process-and-technology-consulting firm known for rapidly delivering value for its clients and providing right-size solutions to complex business challenges. Known for process-and-technology leadership, Dominion Digital has helped scores of companies realize dramatic gains in business-process efficiency and productivity, employing high-caliber, seasoned professionals passionate about producing results for clients.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
Team members are given the opportunity to manage their own schedules, and working hours that are conducive to their personal lives, assuming that it doesn’t impact their ability to deliver to our clients. Being a technology firm, we are committed to enabling our employees to be successful outside of the office. Dominion Digital provides each team member with a laptop and reimburses business usage of cellular phones as well as home Internet service. Providing this benefit to employees allows them to be productive and efficient both inside the office and remotely… It’s a no-cost perk that, we feel, increases productivity and enables Dominion Digital to help reduce energy consumption and emissions.

FITNESS BENEFITS
Dominion Digital encourages wellness for all employees and will reimburse team members up to $400 annually for memberships to a health club, YMCA, or other organization providing physical fitness and general wellness.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Dominion Digital is committed to supporting and enhancing our community—embracing this commitment as a duty and a privilege. The firm regularly sponsors community events and promotes a Matching Gift program. Team Dominion Digital is an annual community partner with Relay for Life, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, St. Baldricks’ Foundation, and the Boys & Girls Club of Charlottesville, to name just a few.

OFFICE CULTURE
From our open, collaborative office space and whiteboard walls to the superior benefits package and “family of co-workers,” Dominion Digital has continued to provide its team members with an energetic and motivating environment for its employees. The company believes that by developing healthy relationships, we will establish sustainable success for all we serve—most notably, our employees. Making employee satisfaction and motivation a strategic priority every year, we employ consultants who share our vision and commitment to service, value, passion, excellence, teamwork, and respect. Each employee is personally vested in the continued success of the firm.

7. SmartWool

POWDER HOURS: A typical winter morning at this maker of performance merino apparel: One group rolls into the locker room after a few hours carving fresh tracks on the ski hill while another preps for lunchtime skate skiing and yet another plans to sign out at 1 P.M. for afternoon turns. “We work hard and have professional jobs but still lead a mountain-town lifestyle,” says communications manager Molly Cuffe.
FIRED UP: The company keeps an outdoor gas grill fueled and supplied with mesquite chips. “Yeah, the chips were my idea,” says network administrator and grilling fanatic Jeremiah Baughman.
SERVICE FIRST: Employees are granted 40 hours of paid time per year to volunteer in their community.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
SmartWool is a leading performance brand offering wool-based apparel, socks, and accessories. Nothing can compare to SmartWool products for the ultimate in performance, comfort, and easy care. SmartWool fiber is superior at vaporizing moisture, controlling temperature and odor, and is guaranteed not to shrink. It’s also a renewable resource that illustrates the design genius of evolution.

SUMMER HOURS
SmartWool’s summer hours are in effect the Friday before Memorial Day through the Friday before Labor Day and are often extended through the last day of summer, September 21. Employees are required to work a 40-hour week Monday through Friday, but they can choose to compress the week with manager approval. The office closes at 3:00 p.m. each Friday, and no meetings are allowed to be scheduled after noon.

OFFICE FACILITIES
SmartWool allows flexible schedules and locker-room facilities in an effort to encourage employees to work out and promote healthy lifestyles. Due to strong participation, more employee bike racks were added outside Steamboat Headquarters, and a new self-bike-tuning area is currently in the works.

FITNESS BENEFITS
Upon purchasing an annual gym membership, employees are reimbursed $150 of the membership fee. Each employee is given an annual “activity pass” for his or her choice of activity such as a season pass to the local ski resort, golf course, or other activity.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
SmartWool also offers employees 40 hours of paid time per year to conduct community volunteer service. SmartWool employees volunteered nearly 1,000 service hours at charities in our hometown communities. SmartWool was named Philanthropic Business of the Year for Steamboat Springs.

GREEN INITIATIVES
We helped develop and adopted Zque, the world’s first wool accreditation system, ensuring best management practices for environmental, social, and economic sustainability and animal welfare. When possible, we partner with key vendors that formalize sustainability efforts. We have an offshore yarn-spinning partner who invested in a wastewater-treatment facility that returns approximately 50 percent of usable water to its facility.Smarties Commute is designed to get employees out of the habit of driving their own individual cars to and from work. Monday-morning commuter group breakfasts are paid for by SmartWool. Bike commuters receive discounts at local bike shops. At the end of the year, one lucky commuter will win a complimentary vacation for two.

OFFICE CULTURE
We are the people who live in the things we make. We are passionate believers in our products and the merino wool fiber. We really are experts at playing outside. We know how lucky we are that we live, work, and play in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. And we say thanks for our good fortune every day. The foot of the mountain is a step away, and we go there often. Our commute is often a bike ride, and a stroll is often a hike. Our kids’ after-school program includes ski lessons with a former Olympian, and our kids don’t even realize it. Our food-to-go is eaten on a trail, not in our car. In Steamboat Springs, our fashion cannot live without function—and having more fun is at the root of that function.

8. Paradigm Group

COLLEAGUES WITH BENEFITS: A healthy life balance is written into the core values of this small employee-benefits consulting firm. You can tell: Flexible hours, telecommuting options, 15 vacation days a year, and an in-house gym/training studio where employees can work out on company time are all part of the package. “If our folks are happy here, they’re going to work hard for their customers,” says Bob Levy, founder and president.
RETURNING THE FAVOR: A strong dedication to volunteer projects helps define Paradigm. As part of a team-building weekend in 2008, they helped restore a New Orleans baseball field damaged in Hurricane Katrina.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Paradigm Group is an employee-benefits, retirement-services, and HR consulting firm.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
One of our core values is work-life balance. Flexibility and support by our president to balance work and personal-life demands make it possible for employees to pursue a healthy blend. One of his frequent sayings is “We take our work seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously.” That attitude supports employees’ ability to manage their own schedules and fosters a spirit of fun in the office. Our schedule is flexible all year round, for whatever purpose. A private personal-training studio is located on the same floor as our offices. Employees may pay for memberships via payroll deduction and may work out during company time. The company provides a bountiful, healthy breakfast each Monday morning when the staff gathers for a staff meeting. The leftovers provide for snacking throughout the week.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Community participation is strongly encouraged. Staff members tend to migrate to areas of interest, including animal welfare, the arts, children’s issues, church-affiliated activity, Hands On Nashville, etc. The local United Way is one of our clients, so we participate in UW programs. One of our company trips included a workday to help clean up a baseball field in New Orleans. Part of our holiday gift to clients each year is a substantial donation to a local charity, which varies each year. Employees also adopt Salvation Army Angel Tree kids instead of exchanging gifts.

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION
We celebrate successes and individual achievements and personal events, which are generally formally announced at Monday staff meetings. For example, one of the staff recently passed the exam to become a Certified Financial Planner. We suffered with him while he waited for the results and celebrated when he learned he had passed. We hold monthly ice cream and cake celebrations for that month’s birthdays, and quite often the president gathers whoever is available and takes us to lunch. In past years we’ve enjoyed an annual off-site planning meeting in places such as Las Vegas, South Beach, Breckinridge, and New Orleans. This year, in view of the economic conditions many of our clients are dealing with, we will gather closer to home. Our profit-sharing awards are the primary means of recognizing achievement, and they emphasize one of our core values, which is teamwork.

9. Rally Software Development

SMART TECH: “I had poor experiences early in my career with another company’s management,” says CEO Tim Miller. “I told myself that not only do I not want to work for a company like that; I would never want to own one.” So Miller pays his team of project-management-software developers well (average salary: $105,000), covers 100 percent of their medical- and dental-insurance and prescription costs, and spends the first 15 minutes of monthly meetings recognizing employee contributions. “If you create a great work environment, you have a greater level of productivity,” says Miller.
BEYOND BONUSES: When Rally meets performance benchmarks, employees get rewarded: ski trips in the Rockies, summer outings to a lake, formal receptions, stock options.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Rally Software is the leader in Agile software development solutions, dedicated to bringing the speed, quality, and productivity benefits of Agile and Lean to large and distributed organizations. Rally’s Agile products, coaching, online training portal, and Web 2.0 community guarantee its customers success with Agile practices.

FITNESS & WELLNESS BENEFITS
Rally has an on-site gym that includes a weight room, aerobic equipment, and shower facilities. Rally provides employees a $25 reimbursement each month to offset the cost of health-club memberships. It has a full cafeteria in the office that serves breakfast and lunch. Founder Ryan Martens even sells free-range eggs from his farm right out of Rally’s refrigerators.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
As part of Rally’s 1% Fund program, employees are encouraged to spend 1 percent of their paid work time volunteering. Every quarter, the employee who logged the most community-service hours receives recognition at the company’s all-hands meeting. In 2008, Rally employees contributed 1 percent of their time, totaling 2,500 hours, to 90 nonprofits, including Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, Humane Society of Boulder Valley, American Red Cross, Hospice, Operation Respect, Adoption Exchange Guild, CSIA, and Tiny Tim Center, among others. As a company, Rally committed 1 percent of its equity to the local community as part of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado.

OFFICE CULTURE
The foundation of Rally’s employee-development practices lie in one of the company’s core values: to “create your own reality.” Rally understands that people are the key ingredient of a successful company and goes to great lengths to hire, develop, and retain the best employees possible. Employees are not hired to fill rigid job roles, but rather are encouraged to develop as individuals. Employees can sign up for biking and running e-mail lists that are used for coordinating lunchtime and after-work group outings, including Rally’s many cyclists who hit the Boulder streets in their Rally cycling uniforms. Some of the other practices that promote a healthy work-life balance: Quarterly company celebrations such as ski days and Rockies baseball games and a fully loaded game room for breaks, complete with everything from old-school arcade games to Ping-Pong to Nintendo Wii.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
Another core value at Rally is work-life balance, which means that employees are encouraged to work hard and play hard—on their own schedules. Employees have the ability to telecommute and work on adjusted schedules so they can effectively maintain balance between their personal and professional lives.

GREEN INITIATIVES
Founder Ryan Martens has a goal that Rally will become the first fully sustainable software company, and his passion for greening permeates the company. A recent initiative to encourage employees to use alternative transportation was the Rally Commuting Challenge. This monthlong program encouraged people to limit the impact their work commute has on the environment. Six gift certificates to REI were rewarded to those with the greatest reduction. Overall, Rally was able to reduce its CO2 emissions by 17 percent, or 3.1 tons. In addition, Rally diverts 800 gallons per month of typical office waste into single-stream recycling and composting. In 2008, Rally offset its server energy with wind credits and moved more IT services to the Internet by switching to corporate Google Mail and purchasing high-end video conferencing to reduce energy consumption and travel.

10. Carmichael Lynch

PRINCE PARTIED HERE: No, really. The century-old brick building that houses this advertising-and-marketing firm was once rented to the Minneapolis-born artist in the eighties. Today, the place runs on 100 percent wind energy and still buzzes with creativity, if less purple-powered funk. Carmichael Lynch develops campaigns for a slew of outdoor-industry clients, including Atomic Skis and Arc’teryx, and holds an annual talent show.
SUMMER LOVIN’: Sun season is celebrated with seven extra vacation days, plus “roofgating” parties and a family movie night. “Whether this is someone’s first stop in their career or the last stop, we want this to be their best stop,” says Doug Spong, the firm’s managing partner.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Carmichael Lynch is an advertising and brand-building powerhouse serving Subaru of America, Sierra Nevada Brewing Comapany, Noodles & Company, Aveda, Redfeather Snowshoes, International Mountain Biking Association, Harley-Davidson, SmartWool, and Camelbak, among others. Founded in 1962, the agency has been winning awards and international acclaim for inventive brand-building ever since.

OFFICE FACILITIES
Carmichael Lynch’s office is an old converted warehouse in downtown Minneapolis with large, energy-efficient windows and low walls to flood the space with natural light. The agency has have a full locker room and towel service used by those who work out during the day. The locker room is also used by those who bike to work. Bike storage in the agency, near an employee’s desk, is encouraged.

GREEN INITIATIVES
Carmichael Lynch is 100 percent wind-powered though Excel Energy’s â€�Windsource’ program and the agency has been named an EPA Green Power Partner. Our energy-saving programs combined to provide the agency with the greatest allowable energy rebate in a recent energy audit—the rebate money was plowed right back into Carmichael Lynch’s CFL bulb conversion program.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
Carmichael Lynch has a long tradition of a “Summer Time Off” program, whereby employees work longer days during the summer months, which allows for, essentially, seven additional summer days off on top of regular vacation days. Agency management says, “It’s cold here in the winter—we need employees to take full advantage of the glorious summer!”

OFFICE CULTURE
Carmichael Lynch’s culture is driven by creativity, inventiveness, collaboration, and hard work. People come here to do the best work of their careers for an enviable list of clients. Being so creatively productive and pushing the limits of strategic research and insights can be demanding and draining. That, plus the deadline-driven nature of the business, means employees need to blow off steam, have fun, and refuel often. Rooftop parties, the occasional Friday-afternoon beer cart, the infamous O’Gong Show (every St. Patrick’s Day, those new to the agency must perform a skit, song, or act—one act wins acclaim as O’Gong Show champion and joins other O’Gong Show legends), and the rotating art display keep things vibrant and inspiring. In the summer, Carmichael Lynch hosts family movie nights on its rooftop patio—it’s a drive-in without the cars.

11. Country Walkers

GREEN LIVING: At this specialized travel provider, based in the Green Mountains, a “late shift” policy allows for morning trail runs or ski turns at nearby Stowe Mountain Resort, and telecommuting is an option one day a week. On-the-job training for all staffers includes free passage on a Country Walkers trip. “They need firsthand experience so they can be passionate about what we sell,” says director of operations Jamen Yeaton-Masi. Employes are also encouraged to pursue volunteer opportunities, like joining a local school’s mentoring program, all on company time.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Country Walkers is a small company in the Green Mountains of Vermont that offers walking tours for travelers in more than 70 destinations throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and New Zealand. We have a staff of 20 and pride ourselves on offering top-notch customer service, a passion for our product, and unique, authentic experiences for our guests.

GREEN INITIATIVES
We pride ourselves on being green. We have an active Responsible Tourism Committee, which sets standards for our tours and office systems. Our kitchen provides dishware to discourage the use of paper products, and we recycle all paper, cardboard, and kitchen products. We are also hard at work to become a paperless environment.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
We’re committed to the communities in which we walk and support many service projects and organizations around the world. For example, we belong to the Travelers’ Philanthropy, which currently highlights our Dormitory Project in Patacancha, Peru—a project we funded to build a dormitory for schoolchildren in the Andes. Additionally, in celebration of our 30th anniversary in adventure travel this year, we are donating 100 percent of the proceeds from two special anniversary tours in Egypt and Vermont to local “giving back” efforts in those regions.

OFFICE CULTURE
We hold weekly Friday trainings for our entire staff. Typically these are tour destination trainings, which include tour images, regional music, food, and cultural highlights. Each staff member participates and takes turns leading the training sessions. In addition, all staff members—from the accountant to the mail room supervisor—have the opportunity to join our walking tours. Since we are passionate about our product, we believe it is essential for each employee to experience it firsthand. This may mean an eight-day trip to Crete or a 12-day trekking tour to Nepal. We have a casual, dog-friendly office. We promote open communication and have an open-door policy so everyone has a voice. To promote physical fitness, we offer a shower and locker facilities as well.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
Many of our employees enjoy our “late shift” option, which allows them to arrive at work late morning. This allows staff to bike to work or enjoy a few hours of skiing before coming to the office. Others utilize this schedule to spend more time with their children. This schedule is especially nice during the long winter days with limited sunshine. Some staff members also work what we call a “marathon” day in order to leave early on alternate days.

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION
We organize quarterly Staff Appreciation outings, such as our Fall Foliage Hike, Winter Ski or Snowshoe Day, Spring “Giving Back” Fling, and Summer Retreat. And since we are a walking company, we encourage everyone to take their lunch breaks to walk, play tennis, bike, or just enjoy lunch outside. We also encourage participation in local walks and races, and sponsor staff joining annual corporate walks.

12. Chesapeake Energy Corporation

FUN FARM: Headquarters at one of the country’s largest producers of natural gas includes a 70,000-square-foot fitness center, three gourmet restaurants, baseball and soccer fields, and a 220-seat theater. Special events include Screen on the Green, which is part carnival, part drive-in-movie night. “There’s competition in our industry for young talent,” says Martha Burger, senior vice president of human and corporate resources. “Making employees happy is good business.” A Living Well program pays employees up to $1,000 per year for participating in volunteer activities and exercise programs.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Chesapeake Energy is the largest independent producer of natural gas in the United States. Our strategy is focused on discovering, acquiring, and developing conventional and unconventional natural gas reserves onshore in the U.S., east of the Rocky Mountains.

FITNESS BENEFITS
Chesapeake offers an on-site 72,000-square-foot Fitness Center at our corporate headquarters. In addition to the best cardio and exercise equipment, our Fitness Center offers counseling from a registered dietitian, free tanning, more than 70 group exercise classes per week, recreation leagues and tournaments, an indoor climbing wall, an outdoor sand volleyball pit, weight-loss programs, free childcare, personal trainers, youth programs, maternity programs, and online exercise and workout libraries. We support and encourage all employees to participate in recreation leagues, tournaments, and community runningcycling events by covering all team expenses and entrance fees. In addition, we coordinate various off-site activities such as Golf 101, Sailing 101, scuba diving, skydiving, mountain climbing, and other outdoor activities for employees and their families. Employees can earn up to $1,500 per year through our Living Well program. Employees can earn $300 by participating in activities (Lunch & Learns, recreation leagues, etc.), $300 for taking a comprehensive health screening, $300 for exercising at least three days per week, $500 for maintaining a healthy weight, and a $100 bonus for completing all four.

OFFICE FACILITIES
In addition to the Fitness Center, Chesapeake has a 220-seat Blue Room Theater that becomes a movie theater after hours and on the weekends. Each month we show free movies on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights for Chesapeake employees and their families and friends. Chesapeake has three on-site restaurants that serve gourmet meals at a discount price, subsidizing almost $2 per employee.

EMPLOYEE APPRECIATION
At Chesapeake, we work hard to design and implement programs that encourage productivity while meeting the needs of our employees and their families. Listed below are just some of the unique family-friendly benefits we offer employees. Family Screen On the Green is Chesapeake’s version of a drive-in theater. The Chesapeake track and field transforms into a mini carnival and theater for employees and their families. The event includes numerous activities for children, such as inflatables, slides, and an array of carnival games. Guests enjoy live music, grilled hot dogs and hamburgers, and free snow cones, popcorn, and cotton candy. Healthy Moms, Happy Babies Maternity Fitness Program: Expectant mothers meet with a certified fitness instructor each trimester for a consultation and create an individualized exercise program that is safely designed for them and the baby. An additional fitness assessment and exercise orientation is offered postpartum once new mothers have been cleared by their physician to exercise. Boys and Girls Night Out: These special events, offered several times a year, give parents and their children a night out together. Boys Night Out is a real outdoor adventure for fathers and their sons, including a picnic, hayride, and fishing at Arcadia Farm, which is owned by Chesapeake CEO Aubrey McClendon. Father-Daughter Winter Ball is an annual event for Chesapeake fathers and their daughters. All are dressed to impress as they enjoy an evening of dinner, dancing, and rides in a horse-drawn carriage.

13. Redspin

HAPPY HACKS: An office 200 yards from the legendary Rincon surf break, twice-weekly workouts with a personal trainer, staff meetings on the beach, four weeks of vacation a year, and a commitment to the environment through financial support of nonprofits like Heal the Bay—all at a firm that does security audits for banks and corporations? It surprised us, too. “We need A-plus-plus people,” says John Abraham, Redspin’s founder and CEO. “So we’re building a company that you want to be a part of.”

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Redspin is a security-auditing firm specializing in network security and compliance, providing objective IT security auditing services to financial institutions, casinos, e-commerce, ATM providers, automated clearing houses (ACHs), utilities, defense contractors, and various mission-critical enterprises. Redspin services include penetration tests, Web application security assessments, IT security assessments and compliance audits (FFIEC, PCI, HIPAA, GLBA).

FITNESS BENEFITS
Redspin provides space for working out on-site and around the office. On-site for use, Redspin offers bikes, surf boards, paddleboards, Swiss ball, etc. We have a personal trainer that works out the team on Mondays and Fridays at 6:30 a.m. at the nearby beach. Redspin sponsors (pays for) the personal training sessions available for all employees and family members to participate. Additionally, we have an organic oatmeal breakfast bar three times per week, with all the fixings: nuts, fruit, honey, spices, wheat germ, protein powder, etc. We also provide daily snacks—fruit, protein bars, etc.—and beverages: tea, Peet’s Coffee, water, etc.

OFFICE CULTURE
Although we are an important part of our clients’ risk-management strategy and take our work very seriously, internally we like to have fun with our work and think about our work like this: “Hey, we get paid to hack! Cash! Hacking! It’s legal: Sweet!” We also take the time to go play beach volleyball to assist in dealing with stress levels, award work well done, and promote teamwork among the different departments. Our last all-company meeting was held at the beach on a beautiful day, with beach volleyball, pizza, salads, and drinks for all. We work hard and play hard. We also care about our beaches and participate in beach cleanup day and make significant contributions to environmental causes.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
We live and work in Southern California, so our “summer hours” are all year round. Also, our employees’ working hours are flexible—no punching a clock—which allows people to work out before work, ride their bikes to work, work out during their lunch break, etc. We have office space set aside for storage of bikes, surfboards, paddleboards, skateboards, waves, etc. We also assist our employees in finding housing in our beachside community.

14. şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Life

FAMILY AFFAIR: This international-travel outfitter’s home is a modified flat that feels like, well, a home. Attire is decidedly casual (it’s Montana), and parents can even set up a playpen next to their desks. “Going to the office and seeing my colleagues actually improves my day,” says Brian Morgan, şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř’s founder and president. All employees can opt for compressed four-day workweeks and, once a year, take a free şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Life trip—with a family member or friend to make sure it really feels like vacation.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Life is an adventure travel company committed to providing quality small-group tours that have a positive impact on the local culture and environment. We offer tours throughout the Andes, Amazon, Central America, Galápagos, and Antarctica. We are dedicated to expanding ecological and cultural awareness, and do this by utilizing local guides, family-run hotels, and the local transportation infrastructures whenever possible.

OFFICE CULTURE
We are a small office of 17 full-time staff, and while everyone in the office has independent positions and responsibilities, it is the team effort that makes this company work and thrive. The owner of şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Life, Brian Morgan, is in the office on a daily basis; he has an open-door policy and invites all employees to share their questions, concerns, and suggestions. Newborns are invited to come to work with the mother until baby (and mother) are ready to start daycare. And not only are newborns welcome at work, but other children are also invited to come to work when there is a scheduling conflict with daycare or an unexpected day or two school holiday, or if the child is not feeling well enough to attend school. Whatever the reason, children are welcome to come to work with their parents, and to ensure they do not interrupt other co-workers, we provide space (and a box full of arts-and-crafts supplies) for the children in the break room. There are also a number of gatherings and functions: Whether it is a wine-tasting party or an impromptu get-together after work, şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Life friends and family members are always welcome to these events, at the expense of the company.

TRAVEL OPPORTIUNITIES
As an adventure travel company, it is only natural that we attract staff who have a wanderlust. To show appreciation to our employees, we provide a Travel Education Opportunity program (TEO). The TEO is a method of educating employees on the destinations we serve, but furthermore allows employees to take some incredible trips to legendary destinations throughout Latin America and Antarctica. The TEO program allots specific travel funds to each full-time employee. If an employee does not take advantage of their TEO, a portion of their TEO can carry over to the following calendar year. A travel companion is also invited to join the staff member on their trip at a significantly discounted rate. After three years of full-time work at şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Life, an employee is rewarded five additional vacation days when they take advantage of their Travel Education Opportunity benefit.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
Providing flex time and ability to work remotely from home allows employees to accomplish their work without sacrificing time with their families. Life does not happen only on the weekends, and a typical nine-to-five work schedule is certainly not always accommodating with life. Coordinating schedules in a family is always a challenge; the more flexibility we can provide to our employees, the healthier the work environment. The most common option employees take advantage of is to work four-day weeks. Some employees have taken four-and-a-half–day weeks. The point is: The company is flexible about fitting the needs of employees without sacrificing the company’s performance.

FITNESS BENEFITS
Within the company we have developed soccer, volleyball, and softball teams. After work the staff can be found supporting each other and our passions outside of work through kayaking classes, Wednesday-night lap swims, Tuesday evenings at a local track, or simply scheduling a walk when the workday is through. Some staff members take advantage of a flexible work schedule and take time off during the afternoon to schedule in a half-hour run or bike ride. The point is, not only do we make it possible for our staff members to find a healthy balance between work and life; the office collectively supports this type of lifestyle.

15. Osprey Packs

NICE PACKAGE: “Work-life balance is ingrained in our culture,” says Sam Mix, associate marketing manager. Osprey starts employees out at three weeks’ vacation (they can build to over a month), grants a floating “powder day” in winter, and pays employees to bike or walk to work and to volunteer. In 2008, their Volunteer Incentives Program supported employees, who participated in 13 projects, where they did things like build trails. “When people get out of the office, they bring positive energy back into work,” says Mix.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
From its humble beginnings building custom backpacks and sleeping bags in Santa Cruz, California, to its current recognition as an industry leader, Osprey has always flown its own course. Our mission is to create innovative, high-performance gear that reflects a love of adventure and a devotion to the outdoors and the environment. Based in Cortez, Colorado, Osprey has more than 35 years of technical pack-making and design experience.

FITNESS BENEFITS
Discount ski passes are offered to Osprey employees, and all employees were awarded bikes in 2007. There are company-supported daily stretch and walking breaks, as well as lockers, bicycle parking, and shower facilities offered to every Team Member. Plus our unique location near world-class trail systems allow for trail runs and biking direct from Osprey Headquarters. Osprey pays for Rec Center and outdoor pool passes, allowing free access to these facilities. Sustainable Transportation Initiative pays $1 per day, encouraging Team Members to walk, run, or bike to work.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
The Osprey Volunteer Incentive Program allows every Osprey Team Member eight paid hours per year to volunteer either on company-organized volunteer projects or on approved volunteer projects under their own volition. Osprey also encourages its Team Members to go above and beyond, building a true culture of volunteerism. 2008 saw the program complete 13 separate and wildly varying volunteer projects donating approximately 240 hours of community service.

TIME OFF
Osprey base time off becomes available after a 90-day probationary period, allowing the new Osprey Team Member almost three weeks of vacation during the first year. Additionally, eight paid holidays are added to the mix, for just about one month off per year to start. Osprey also strives to achieve a healthy work-life balance by providing Team Members with a floating “powder day” holiday, allowing people to time this day off with a big snowstorm!

TESTING TRIPS
The Osprey Outings Team organizes several extended and overnight outdoor trips per year. This season alone, we did a raft trip of the Lower Dolores River in southwestern Colorado, a backcountry ski trip to the Ridgway Hut in the San Juan Mountains, and a canyoneering trip in the canyons of southwestern Utah. One of the reasons Osprey is headquartered between the canyonlands of Utah and the Rocky Mountains is not only because of the extensive product testing options available but also because of the quality of life that our big backyard offers.

16. Virgin HealthMiles

THE BEST MEDICINE: This division of the Richard Branson empire creates wellness programs for other businesses. Fortunately for employees here, Virgin “walks the walk,” says marketing manager Katie Tierney. Employees can earn $400 in rewards by participating in the award-winning wellness program (natch), spend workday hours in the fitness center or on the indoor running track, and telecommute one day per week.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Virgin HealthMiles provides employee health programs that pay people to get active. The company’s award-winning, Pay-for-Prevention approach, based on physical activity and healthy lifestyle change, attracts an average of 40 percent of employees who participate, which helps organizations reduce medical costs and improve employee productivity and satisfaction. Virgin HealthMiles focuses on getting members active and engaged in being healthy so they can adopt long-term healthy behaviors that will positively impact their company’s bottom line.

EMPLOYEE INCENTIVES
Employees are eligible for both individual and corporate performance-based bonuses twice during the fiscal year. Additionally, employees have the opportunity to earn cash rewards with our corporate wellness program. If employees participate in our wellness program and reach a key milestone in the program (Level 4 of 5), we cover 80 percent of their health insurance costs, and that benefit carries over to the next year.

FITNESS SCHEDULES
As a provider of corporate health and wellness programs, we believe strongly in “walking the talk.” We offer an on-site fitness center and a running track, and we encourage employees to be active throughout the day, whether they’d like to use the fitness center, take a few laps on the track, or go outside for a walk. Additionally, through our health insurer, employees who belong to a health club can receive up to $150 back each year.

GREEN INITIATIVES
We have recycling bins placed throughout the office and we ensure waste is properly recycled. We also have a kitchen fully stocked with dishes and silverware to eliminate unnecessary use of disposable products, and we actively monitor our carbon footprint and are reworking our product packaging to incorporate more renewable resources.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
We allow our employees to work from home at least one day per week. We also offer flexible hours, and employees have the option to work compressed workweeks at the discretion of their department manager.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Virgin HealthMiles believes in making a difference for consumers and the communities in which we work. Any employee who wishes to participate in community service may receive the day off paid in full. Virgin HealthMiles actively participates in the initiatives of Virgin’s charitable organization, Virgin Unite. Additionally, we sponsor internal step challenges with our employees in which they compete to raise money for causes. We also hold annual clothing, food, and toy drives and collect monetary donations to donate to the organization we raise awareness for each year. HealthMiles members can also choose to donate their rewards to charity.

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION
We provide recognition and rewards at least annually, and do so on numerous occasions throughout the year for exemplary service at company meetings, monthly events, and via e-mail to the entire company. We also provide a “Star” award annually, in which the recipient is recognized for their exemplary service and receives an all-expense-paid trip to the U.K. meet with Sir Richard Branson. We also have quarterly lunches with the Virgin Group CEO, Stephen Murphy, to recognize outstanding employees and promote intracompany communication. Additionally, as part of the global Virgin Group, Virgin HealthMiles employees have access to group-wide discounts from partners for numerous products such as airline tickets, vacations, consumer products, and more.

OFFICE CULTURE
Virgin HealthMiles is committed to recognizing and developing our employees and their active lifestyles, and we are committed to making a difference for our members, corporate clients, and the communities in which we work. We promote a fun, open, and collaborative atmosphere that places the emphasis on valuing and recognizing employees and their accomplishments, as well as corporate accomplishments. As part of the global Virgin Group, Virgin HealthMiles approaches everything we do in the spirit of the Virgin brand. Sir Richard Branson’s world-renowned lifestyle brand is revered as the consumer’s champion, and we always try to adhere to the core brand values of fun, value for money, quality, innovation, competitive challenge, and brilliant customer service. We are committed to providing unique experiences with fun, innovative, high-quality products and services, and believe that are employees are intregal in designing, developing and providing that experience for our customers.

17. USANA Health Sciences

GAMES ON: This manufacturer of nutritional supplements promotes worker wellness through more than free vitamins. They have a sand volleyball court out front, a 24-hour fitness facility with a full basketball court, classes for kickboxing and yoga, and free massages every Tuesday. “We have a genuine hope from executives on down for each person to be healthy,” says employee-relations specialist Melisa Torres. In 2008, the company installed solar panels on its warehouse, keeping 19 metric tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere in the first year.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
USANA Health Sciences develops and manufactures high-quality nutritional supplements, healthy weight-management products, and personal-care products, which are marketed by independent associates (distributors) in 13 international markets. With these science-based health products, USANA creates a rewarding financial opportunity for its associates, shareholders, and employees.

BONUSES AND INCENTIVES
Employees receive generous profit-sharing bonuses annually that are based on the sales and profitability of USANA. This program has allowed employees to earn an average of more than 12 percent of their base pay over the last several years. We offer an Employee Referral Bonus to employees who refer a candidate for employment who is hired. $200 is awarded to an employee for referring a non-exempt employee, and $1,000 is awarded to employees who refer an exempt employee.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
Several departments, including our manufacturing department, are working a compressed workweek of four 10-hour days. This cuts down on our carbon footprint, saving both commute emissions and the energy costs of manufacturing on Fridays.

FITNESS BENEFITS
We have a 2,500-square-foot strengthcardio area that includes 25 strength machines, dumbbells/free weights, functional training equipment, and six cardio machines. We offer a Nintendo WiiFit and full locker room facilities. We also have an indoor basketball court/group fitness instruction area that will include yoga, aerobics, and kickboxing classes once the sound system is installed. Two personal trainers work in the gym to assist employees. Employees and their families may enjoy the facility 24 hours a day. USANA was also one of only three companies recognized by the Utah Health Department for having an excellent Mothers Room to assist nursing mothers.

CONTINUING EDUCATION
For undergraduate programs, USANA will pay for the cost of two classes per semester and half the cost of books. For graduate programs, USANA will pay up to $10,000 a year and half the cost of books for job-related graduate degrees. Employees who receive reimbursement for graduate degrees must stay at the company for two years after graduation. Students must also be full-time employees and receive a C or better in their classes.

GREEN INITIATIVES
USANA’s solid-waste recycling plan includes systems for recycling confidential and non-confidential office paper, cardboard, fiber drums, plastics, and aluminum from office manufacturing, and warehouse operations. In 2007, USANA recycled more than 30 tons of office paper, nearly 140 tons of cardboard, and nearly 3,000 fiber drums. USANA installed solar panels on its warehouse in 2008 to provide green power to its building; so far, the solar panels have prevented more than 40,000 pounds of CO2 from being emitted into our atmosphere. USANA purchases 750 blocks of wind energy (75,000 KWh) per month. In 2007, this sponsorship offset the release of 800 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, the equivalent of planting more than 175,000 trees. The company underwent a major expansion in January 2008, installing high-efficiency windows, occupancy and photo sensors for lights, and solar panels. A major part of the project included xeriscape landscaping, where grass around USANA’s 3.25 acres of property was replaced with rocks, mulch, trees, low-water plants, walking trails and a sand volleyball court, saving us 1.5 million gallons so far.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
USANA has two community service initiatives: Kennedy Junior High (KJH) and Children’s Hunger Fund (CHF). Employees donate their time to the kids at KJH by tutoring or playing sports. Employees may buy dress-down stickers for $2, which helps buy coats for the kids at Kennedy and to the Utah Food Bank. USANA’s partnership with CHF has raised more than $8 million since 2001 from corporate, employee, and distributor donations.

OFFICE CULTURE
USANA was one of 21 Utah companies to receive a 2008 WorkLife Award in 2008 from the Utah Department of Workforce Services and the Office of Work & Family Life, in recognition of the company’s outstanding work-life balance for employees. We are willing to work with individuals’ personal needs in order to provide them with a positive work-life balance. Aside from creating a supportive and friendly work atmosphere, USANA invests a great deal in a truly unique wellness program that helps employees achieve their personal health goals. Employees leave at 5 p.m., regardless of whether they use our on-site workout facilities. USANA encourages employees to get home to their families.

18. TriSports.com

THE CONVERSION: “Before they ever walked into our warehouse, about 95 percent of our staff had a background in endurance sports,” says the retailer’s COO, Nik Hobbs. To encourage even more positive habits, TriSports awards $5 in store credit for every hour of volunteer work, worth up to $10,000 per year. “In December we visited a local park and handed out 100 sack lunches to the homeless that we’d loaded into our Burley trailers,” says HR manager Susan Meeker.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
We carry the highest-quality triathlon equipment, triathlon gear, triathlon apparel, and all of the hard-to-find necessities that every triathlete needs, including triathlon wetsuits, bike travel cases, aero race wheels, hydration systems, aerobars, triathlon-specific clothing, and much more. We are also an industry leader in both road-bike and triathlon-bike fitting.

BONUSES AND INCENTIVES
Each year we set company-wide or department-wide goals. The goal can encompass sales, commuting miles, volunteer hours, and return rates, to name a few. If the goal has been met, the rewards for each employee have ranged from a cash payout to a four-night cruise for two. Ten percent of net profits are split among eligible employees who have worked with the company for eight months or more. An employee’s portion of the profit is based on how much they make and how long they have been with the company. The plan is designed to reward those that have been with the company longer and helped its growth.

SPORTS AND FITNESS PARTICIPATION
Being a triathlon store, our business is centered around health and fitness. We encourage every employee to participate in either triathlons or other endurance events. We offer organized group runs and bike rides from the shop on a weekly basis, and we have a spin class once a week after store hours. TriSports.com also has a bike commuter program in place that encourages employees to bike to work. We have a dual-lane “endless” swimming pool, treadmill, and stationary bike trainers for employees to use. We also have a full locker room with shower where employees can shower before starting or returning to work.

VOLUNTEERING BENEFITS
We compensate employees $5 in store credit for every hour they volunteer in the community, with a company cap at 2,000 volunteer hours per calendar year. This is not paid time off, but giving a triathlete money to spend in a tri store is big.

GREEN INITIATIVES
With our Green Box Program, our customers are able to opt for a used box for their shipment. We also participate in Soles for Souls to recycle used shoes to others in need. We send all of our used bike parts to Resource Revival to make awards, clocks, and other art items. We reuse all packaging material when possible, and our recycle bin is four times larger than our garbage dumpster. We also use compact fluorescent lighting throughout most of the building; provided natural light in all workplace areas; purchased furniture made from recycled materials and/or able to be recycled after use; installed recycled carpet; installed super low-e glass throughout our storefront; multiple-zone air conditioning so areas of the building that aren’t in use can be turned off; and dual light controls in office areas to minimize light usage.

COMMUNITY EVENTS
Every year we host a triathlon where 100 percent of the proceeds are donated to charity—75 percent to the Challenged Athletes Foundation and the other 25 percent to the local Show Low Youth Recreation and Sports Foundation. This year through Pyramid Coaching we donated 10 bikes for the Jr. El Tour program to help underactive kids develop an enthusiasm for health and fitness through learning to ride bikes. We set up an aid station at the Ironman Arizona race and for doing so recieve $500 to be donated to our chairity of choice.

OFFICE CULTURE
TriSports.com has seen a tremendous amount of growth in its 8 1/2 years, and as we’ve grown we have always tried and most often succeeded in promoting people from within the company to new management and supervisory positions that open. Many employees work for us because they like the culture and the lifestyle we provide and they have a love for the sport. We have a “Fun Squad” that plans events for both the employees and their families. Our biggest asset is the feeling of family within our culture. Most of our employees are involved in either triathlon, biking, swimming, or a related sport; therefore we find ourselves working, training and playing together, yet manage to maintain the level of respect needed to maintain and grow a company. At TriSports.com, any two individuals can engage in a conversation about how some facet of the company should work; it speaks volumes for morale and company retention. Ours truly is an open-door environment. TriSports.com has attracted a very diverse group of people, from students to doctors to former business owners to architects to scientists to engineers. We don’t just sell things to promote a healthy lifestyle—we live that healthy lifestyle.

19. Mountain Hardware

KNOW YOUR STUFF: At this maker of performance apparel, product testing is imperative. “I’ve taken product managers to Rainier in storms,” says director of merchandise Ted Ganio. “They need to understand what it means to be pelted by ice.” HQ is on the edge of San Francisco Bay. Inside: loaner bikes for rolling to lunch and a rec room with a climbing wall and Ping-Pong table. şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř: the 240-mile-plus (and growing) Bay Trail, a kayak launch, and rooftop solar panels.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Mountain Hardwear makes cutting-edge mountaineering and outdoor equipment, apparel, and accessories for the most extreme conditions. Mountain Hardwear was established in 1993 by a group of outdoor-industry veterans and is based in Richmond, California. The company distributes its products in the United States and more than 40 countries worldwide.

FITNESS BENEFITS
We have a workout room with equipment and showers, a climbing wall, and Ping-Pong. An on-site yoga class is offered (based upon employee interest and scheduling), and a massage therapist is on site on Fridays, offering inexpensive massage to employees. Outdoor equipment, including bikes, kayaks, and camping equipment, is available for use. Departmental and company organized outdoor activities are common and encouraged to promote teamwork, test products, and support the company’s Gives Back employee arm.

GREEN INITIATIVES
The company is 100 percent solar powered. Designers and marketing managers are committed to using fewer resources, and recycled materials whenever possible, as they design and package our products. Our designers are committed to researching and testing recycled content for use in our products. We have found several recycled options that provide excellent quality, and currently several styles are made with partially recycled polyester fleece, shell fabric, or insulation. In 2008, two employees initiated an Alternative Commuting Program (ACP), which is funded by the employee arm of the company’s Gives Back program. Employees earn $2 a day for carpooling, biking, kayaking, walking, or using public transportation to get to work. Inside bike storage is available, as well as loaner bikes for exercise or errands. A shuttle to the nearby public transportation hub is available in the morning and evening.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Mountain Hardwear employees can take up to 40 hours of paid time off annually to volunteer for a community project or an effort that supports the company’s Gives Back initiative. Funds are available for employee-initiated projects as well. In addition, employees who organize a company volunteer project or participate in three company volunteer projects are eligible for şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Credits, which cover up to $1,000 in expenses toward a personal, mountain-oriented goal.

OFFICE CULTURE
Employees are highly valued. It is a very family-oriented atmosphere, and dogs are welcome. An outdoor culture is prevalent and encouraged with wall graphics. Gear is available, and the company has organized activities throughout the year. Employees are encouraged to test product samples and report back to the design department and partake in special employee versions of marketing promotions.

20. Eagle Creek

HIGH FIDELITY: Employee loyalty at this travel-gear manufacturer is considered paramount; hence the on-site gym, company-paid yoga instructor, $2,500 tuition reimbursements for continuing education, and an incentive-based volunteer program. Staff members with the most community-service hours are awarded a $1,000 donation to the charity of their choice. Oh, and the annual three-week-long horseshoe tournament, with cash prizes for winners, doesn’t hurt. “Everyone here is pretty competitive,”says human resources manager Parm Gulshan. “It’s an interesting few weeks.”

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Eagle Creek is the industry leader in adventure travel gear, luggage, and accessories and has been in business since 1975. We are a global organization with distribution in more than ten countries.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Our corporate culture promotes volunteering in many ways. Each month, employees have the opportunity to take paid time to volunteer for a charity of their choice. Each year we hold a food drive to benefit North County Community Services. Employees donate supplies and volunteer time to get our local community involved. Additionally we have a volunteer recognition program for completing community service hours through VF Corporation. Associates who accumulate the highest number of community service hours will be honored with a donation of $1,000 on their behalf to the qualified charity of their choice. All active full-time and part-time associates who average 20 hours per week and who have been employed for at least one year prior are eligible. This is done through a nomination process.

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION
We are oddly proud of our annual horseshoe tournament. From the draw of a hat, all employees are paired into teams and compete for the coveted plastic Horseshoe Trophy. The tournament ends with a companywide barbecue and trophy presentation. We have an “Eddy Out” committee that organizes such events each year—appropriately named from the kayaking term meaning a time of collecting oneself and relaxing between rapids. This committee is made up of a cross-functional group of individuals within the company whose sole purpose is to come up with fun and morale-boosting events throughout the year. Some examples include Halloween costume and pumpkin-carving contests, a Cinco de Mayo event with a salsa-and-guacamole-cooking competition, Easter egg hunts, and other holiday-related events.

OFFICE CULTURE
As we are a casual, family-oriented company, and we provide accommodation if necessary to allow employees to bring their kids and sometimes pets to the office. The culture has a focus on the outdoors, and we have a passion for preserving the environment through our sustainability efforts. We also see a lot of cross-functional work teams—because we have a “down to earth” (not corporate) environment and are relatively small, we have more team and committee involvement in our company’s initiatives. This is great because everyone is involved and everyone has some level of ownership in our business.

21. Restoration Services

CLEAN & GREEN: It’s demanding but meaningful work: meticulously erasing the environmental damage done at former uranium-enrichment sites through decontamination, demolition, and recycling. Perks include a $24 monthly health-club stipend, $3,500 in annual tuition reimbursement, travel vouchers, and some project-completion bonuses.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
RSI was formed by us more than 11 years ago as a very small woman-owned company that plans and executes highly complicated regulatory and field projects at radioactive-contaminated federal cleanup sites. Our goal was to offset the highly stressful positions engaged in the performance of this work by incorporating the owners’ positive life strategies. Using this model, we’ve grown to 100 employees working on five of the nation’s largest and most complicated environmental projects.

OFFICE CULTURE
We believe in the power of positive energy. At RSI our employees are encouraged to work hard, play hard, and enjoy life. This philosophy has manifested itself at the K-25 project in Oak Ridge. Decontamination and demolition of the former uranium enrichment site was named as one of the worst jobs in the United States; however, RSI employees were noted by the customer as “being happy” in the work environment. We firmly believe that our employees’ mental and physical sense of well-being is a key to our success.

FITNESS BENEFITS
Employee health and safety is our number-one goal. RSI employees are encouraged to follow an overall wellness program that incorporates personal lifestyle choices into workplace safety. We are involved in Tennessee on the Move, a program that holds various seminars on health and nutrition as work-life issues. Specifically, we’ve instituted a program for regular attendance at a regional fitness center. If an employee attends a fitness center eight times per month, the membership charges are fully reimbursed. In addition, we emphasize personal and workplace safety topics at a monthly safety meeting for all employees, focused on continued safety awareness as a proactive culture.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
The optimistic energy of our employees prompted the formation of the employee-led Outreach Committee, which offers a “hand up, not a handout,” to those in need. Funds are raised through selling of snacks and drinks throughout the year and at special events—silent auctions, lunchtime meals, after-hours activities. These funds go to such projects as Angel Tree, co-workers who need help, and other community projects. Our propensity to “give back” is becoming a reality in the startup of RSI University, a program that encourages hiring and cross-training of economically displaced workers.

FAMILY FRIENDLY WORKPLACE
RSI ownership and management are all working parents who deal with the anxieties of daily life. We believe that minimizing those concerns is a driver in maintaining a positive workplace environment and promoting a sense of well-being. We offer management-approved flexible work schedules to cover personal appointments, such as doctor visits and child-related needs. We also have many family-friendly practices that encourage our employees to spend quality time together; for example, our outreach committee holds a family game night, which is geared not only to employees but to their children as well.

22. Fitness Anywhere

ATHLETES ARE US: Makers of the TRX Suspension Trainer, FA offers free fitness classes, sports-related flex time, a well-appointed gym, and assistance paying for other active endeavors. Employees are encouraged to eschew internal combustion; the kid- and dog-friendly office has ample bike storage—but just ten parking spots.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Fitness Anywhere Inc. produces and sells Suspension Training® equipment and programs to trainers, athletes, the military, and active individuals. Suspension Training is a workout that develops strength, balance, flexibility, and core stability simultaneously. It requires the use of the TRX® Suspension Trainer, a highly portable performance training tool that leverages gravity and the user’s body weight to enable hundreds of exercises for every fitness goal.

FITNESS BENEFITS
It is a work-hard/play-hard organization. The team at Fitness Anywhere values a healthy lifestyle. As a fitness company, we encourage everyone within the organization to continue to test out our latest programming and products on a weekly basis, which means daily and weekly workouts. The company offers free fitness classes and pays partial costs to any health-related activities (e.g., marathons, health classes, health education, etc.). The TRX Training Center, an on-site fitness center, offers free classes to anyone who works full time at the company. Team Triathlons, lunchtime runs, and TRX workouts are one side of our culture here. But we like to play too. We have a co-ed soccer team (we also tend to win!), and we have competed in team triathlons and 5K runs together. Most of these events end with a beer or an iced tea, depending on what camp you’re in, but we all truly enjoy the team aspect of the company.

OFFICE CULTURE
Our company is heavily involved in the outdoors (skiing, climbing, surfing, cycling, triathlons, etc.), and we encourage our employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance. To accommodate scheduling, employees either come in early or stay later to handle their work and enable them to take the time off for their extracurricular activities. It is not a formalized program but self-monitored. Working on the roof deck during summer is a secret luxury at our office. There are five dogs in our office—Blue, Rosco, Cole, Barbie, and Bucky—and they usually tend to be running around like children, or sleeping under someone’s desk. Jeans are dressy. Where else can you wear your lululemon pants to the office and hop on a TRX at any moment of the day? Yoga poses are more frequent in our executive meetings than coffee, but we do like our coffee. Stability balls outnumber desk chairs. Being at your desk sweaty is perfectly fine. Our CEO wears workout gear four out of five workdays.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Along with supporting local charities, races, and nonprofit events, Fitness Anywhere recently launched the Wounded Warrior Fund; $5 of each “TRX FORCE Kit” that is purchased online goes into the Fund. The Fund provides support via education, training, and fitness products to support wounded soldiers who are going through recovery; more than 100 soldiers have already benefited from this program. To support our animal lovers, we recycle old TRX’s (made of industrial-grade nylon) into dog leashes and donate them to community dog walkers, SPCA’s, and groomers throughout San Francisco.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
We allow for flexible work time, which helps parents get to their kids’ soccer games or take them to school, doctors’ appoitments, etc. The company also supports a “start early, leave early” policy for ski season and for our summer sun lovers.

23. OluKai Premium Footwear

SOLE SURFERS: This four-year-old anatomical-sandal maker’s commitment to environmental responsibility is born out of the Hawaiian-bred founder’s wave-chasing way of life. The company devotes time, resources, and a percentage of sales to organizations engaged in the preservation of traditional Hawaiian culture. As if that weren’t enough, employees enjoy “Surf Wednesdays.”

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
OluKai is committed to creating quality footwear products while leaving the smallest footprint possible on the planet. We strive to be environmentally responsible as manufacturers and pledge to actively support and work for a clean environment and a better quality of life. We build premium footwear for the ocean lifestyle.

GREEN INITIATIVES
To reduce the use of plastics, primarily water bottles, we have provided our staff with reusable aluminum water containers for their drinking water. We also use reusable plates, ceramic cups, and silverware to reduce the use of paper and plastic products. We recycle our paper and cardboard and participate in our community’s trash-recycling program. Our product catalogs are produced using FSC-certified papers and printers. We use 100 percent recycled content and soy-based ink on our boxes and hangtags. When we manufacture our product, we make sure all of our leathers come from environmentally conscious ISO 14001–certified tanneries, and we use natural latex rubbers and repurposed compounds in our outsoles. We also encourage and reward OluKai employees who use a more sustainable form of transportation at least one day per week, such as carpooling, mass transit, or walking or riding their bike to work. Employees who partake in this program are rewarded with a variety of things—gift certificates, company product, and reserved parking—and receive company-wide recognition.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
We established the OluKai â€�Ohana Giveback Program to support people who are working to preserve and enjoy Hawaiian culture. Our â€�Ohana includes the Hawaiian Lifeguard Association’s Junior Lifeguard Program, Maui Cultural Lands, and Team OluKai of the Hawaiian Sailing Canoe Association. Each year we contribute time, resources, and a percentage of our sales to support the â€�Ohana initiatives. On May 16–17, 2009, we are holding our inaugural OluKai Ho’olaule’a Ocean Festival at Kanaha Beach Park, Maui, Hawaii. Part of the proceeds raised will benefit our â€�Ohana Giveback Program.

OFFICE CULTURE
We have a casual atmosphere that contributes to a family-like environment, which welcomes pets, who roam our facilities as office companions. Children of staff members are welcome to come to OluKai on days other than the official bring-your-child-to-work day. Our small office structure builds strong interpersonal relationships and allows for a communication system that supports individual input and ideas. Weekly, we encourage all staff to experience “Surf Wednesdays”—morning surf sessions at Trestles and San Onofre beaches. In addition, we celebrate every quarter with a company Beach Day. We like to play as hard as we work and also support our shared passion for the ocean lifestyle, our brand’s foundation and philosophy.

24. Patagonia

BY THE BOOK: Founder Yvon Chouinard’s manifesto Let My People Go Surfing says it all. The outdoor-apparel icon’s HQ is connected via a run/bike path to some of SoCal’s best waves, and the 434 employees here are encouraged to take advantage of them. The company also walks its well-known eco-talk, with Chouinard’s leadership in 1% for the Planet, a dedication to wind energy and recycling, and an on-site organic cafĂ©.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Patagonia is a designer, distributor, and retailer of high-quality, technical outdoor clothing, lifestyle clothing, and travel gear for men, women, and kids. We use environmentally preferred fabrics—such as recycled polyester, organic cotton, hemp, and organic wool—and seek to serve as a model of sound environmental and business practices. Patagonia Inc. is privately owned by Yvon and Malinda Chouinard.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
Patagonia allows employees to compress their weeks on an as-needed basis to help maintain the work-life balance. For example, an employee may work late one day so as to leave early on another. Many of our employees leave early on Fridays to get a jump on the weekend and make up the time earlier in the week. Our compressed workweeks are not so much a formal option, but they fall into our unique flex-time policy.

FITNESS BENEFITS
In our Ventura offices, we have a basketball court, volleyball court, yoga studio, weights and aerobic equipment, an organic cafeteria, and on-site showers. We offer yoga, aerobic, and Pilates classes, and we are located next to one of California’s best surfing spots via a bike and running path. Our Reno Customer Service Center is within close proximity to the Sierra, leading to all sorts of outdoor activities such as climbing, kayaking, fly-fishing, and backcountry skiing.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Employees have the opportunity to take a fully paid leave of up to two months to work full- or part-time for a nonprofit environmental group of their choice. We also have ConservaciĂłn Patagonica, a program that sends employees from all parts of the company to travel to Estancia Valle Chacabuco, a 173,000-acre sheep ranch in the heart of Chile’s Patagonia region.

GREEN INITIATIVES
We recycle everything we can. All employees have paper-recycling bins beneath their desks. Our bathrooms are equipped with recycling containers for used paper towels, which are made with 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper, and we purchase recycled paper. We also recycle our polyester and organic cotton T-shirts, and are working to expand that to 100 percent of our products. At present, approximately 67 percent of our styles for our fall 2008 line contain efiber (recycled polyester, organic cotton, hemp, and chlorine-free wool). Our Ventura campus is mostly powered by wind energy, and in addition we have a 66-kilowatt solar installation that generates part of our energy for one of our buildings. Our Reno Distribution Center has a 20-kilowatt solar array on their campus that generates a small portion of the energy used at the facility. In addition, we purchase renewable-energy credits (RECs) from Bonneville Environmental Foundation, Environmental Grants Program, Employee Match Program, 1% for the Planet, the Conservation Alliance, and Clothing Donations.

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION
Individual efforts of our employees are acknowledged in a variety of ways. Some examples include gift certificates for meals or travel, departmental or company-wide parties, and public recognition at company meetings. We award $1,000 after ten years of employment, and $2,500 after 20 years, and we have parties to celebrate these anniversaries. This past year, we’ve celebrated 26 ten-year anniversaries, nine 20-year anniversaries, and one 30-year anniversary! We also offer discretionary bonus payouts from time to time. Events are sometimes marked in unusual ways. For example, when we installed an array of solar panels at company headquarters, we brought in a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream truck to distribute their new flavor, “Fossil Fuel,” to all employees during an educational presentation about solar energy.

OFFICE CULTURE
We know employees are proud to work here; when asked what they do for a living, they often reply, “I work at Patagonia!” They don’t say they’re an accountant or a sales rep; their reply denotes the respect they feel as individuals in this community that is known worldwide for its commitment to its employees’ growth and development. Our owner and founder, Yvon Chouinard, recently wrote a book entitled “Let My People Go Surfing,” a great metaphor for the company’s general philosophy of, and commitment to, achieving good balance between work and life. It is culturally accepted for employees to take time off during their workday to pursue that balance, whether it is to take time off to spend with their children, go surfing or running, or participate in one of the company’s on-site sponsored exercise classes. We trust employees to figure out a schedule that allows them to get their jobs done and also take care of themselves and their families. We also have a Traveling Parent Support Program, whose intent is to provide an avenue for parents to feel comfortable being able to balance the needs of their families with the requirements of their professional position, especially when they are the person solely responsible for the child’s care. Accordingly, the company will pay for expenses incurred by a non-employee caregiver (spouse, parent, etc.) or a company caregiver as they accompany the employee parent and their children on business-related travel. By offering a program such as this, it extends a helping hand to our employees to help them truly balance work and life challenges. Our four-month leave-of-absence policy is also available to employees who may want to pursue a personal endeavor such as a multi-month climbing expedition, a surf trip to an exotic locale, or providing extended care on-site care to a family member. Knowing their job is being held for them and receiving their medical benefits gives many employees the freedom to follow their dreams or responsibilities in a way they never thought possible.

25. Amer Sports Winter and Outdoor

FULLY EQUIPPED: Mothership of adventure-gear brands Salomon, Atomic, and Suunto, Amer promotes a healthy work-play balance by offering flex time and providing bikes, skis, snowboards, and various electronics for employee use—especially fitting given that the Wasatch Mountains are right out the back door.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Amer Sports is the world’s leading sports equipment company. Amer Sports Winter and Outdoor, with its brands Salomon, Atomic, Arc’teryx, Mavic, and Suunto, is the world’s leading manufacturer of winter and outdoor products. The continuing trend toward outdoor-oriented lifestyles forms the basis for the success of this business segment. Amer Sports Winter and Outdoor’s core sports are alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, snowboarding, hiking, cycling, trekking, trail running, and diving.

FLEXIBLE HOURS
Telecommuting is an option and available for positions that may require it. This option is dependent upon business needs. Many team members have access to the ASWO computer system from their homes, home offices, and while traveling. Additionally, team members are provided BlackBerrys or cell phones. The flexibility ensures that key positions have the resources to perform and maintain a work-life balance. “Summer hours” begin in April and continue through September. Team members flex their time worked during the week to receive Friday afternoons off (or an alternate day). The philosophy behind the summer-hour program is to enhance team members’ outdoor experiences. ASWO encourages the team to get into the environment by hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing, trail running, diving, and golfing, utilizing the ASWO sport brands’ products. Snow Days are also provided for the team members. On these days, team members have the opportunity to spend their “paid” hours outside. Many go skiing or riding.

FITNESS BENEFITS
Fitness is very important to the company/team members. On-site locker/shower facilities are available to ease the transition from outdoor recreation to work. Bikes and helmets are available for use after hours, on weekends, or during lunch. Skiing and snowboarding equipment, wrist-top computers, heart-rate monitors, geocaching are available for all employees. Stability balls are an alternative option to desk chairs. Health and wellness holistic approaches are vital for the team. Benergy, an online health-and-wellness portal, is available via the Internet. This contains info on: improving personal health, encouraging healthy lifestyles, benefits, tips and hints, Annual Health Fair, health and dental vendors, pet health, environmental and community education, free flu shots, cholesterol, vision, BMI, and monthly info emphasizing fitness. Well-balanced, healthy lifestyles are encouraged. Salomon Center Gym Memberships are 100 percent paid for team members, and include a basketball court, fitness classes, pool, and personal trainer. Discounted passes are offered to team members’ families.

COMMUNITY SERVICE
Community service and partnering closely with organizations throughout the local community is strongly emphasized. Time off is allowed for participation and membership in several community and volunteer programs. ASWO is a member of Ogden’s Fresh Air Club and donated 25 bike racks to the community. Community initiatives that ASWO supports include: Ogden Nature Center, Weber Pathways, Boy Scouts, Vertical Challenge, High şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Mountain Film Festival, and the Sustainable Ogden Committee, among others.

GREEN INITIATIVES
Amer Sports products, when created, developed, and manufactured, are geared toward responsible solutions. These are part of the different “sustainable” initiatives we have launched to better the environment: Bamboo layers in skis and snowboards, organic fibers in apparel, shoe boxes out of recycled cardboard, and recycled rubber for footwear. Every desk has a blue recycling bin. On-site glass/paper/cardboard/plastic/tin and aluminum recycling bins are provided. And as a Visionary partner in Rocky Mountain Power’s Blue Sky Program, ASWO purchases credit that develops energy from wind power sources.

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION
Team members have the opportunity to nominate others for a Team Member of the Quarter award. The winner receives a $200 certificate for Amer Bucks, money to be used to purchase our products. Once a year, team members have the opportunity to nominate a co-worker for Team Member of the Year. Team members are nominated based on their performance and how they follow our values: determination to win, team spirit, fair play, and innovation. The winner receives a $1,000 certificate in Amer Bucks, a parking spot for the year, and eight hours of flexible time off, and their photo is displayed on the ASWO Wall of Fame bulletin board.

OFFICE ENVIRONMENT
Amer Sports recognizes the importance of physical well-being and maintaining a balance between work and leisure time for a healthy and gratifying personal and professional life. The casual atmosphere of our company, in the sporting goods industry, enables team members to feel at ease and comfortable in the environment in which they work. A healthy work environment/life is supported by our “open-door” policy. Team members and leadership are able to go to each other, at any time, with any issue without feeling shut out or unimportant. Many meetings include using the company bikes in the summer months. The benefit of no mandatory overtime also increases morale. The good morale and opportunities within the company allow team members the benefit of the outdoors and a pleasant place to build their careers. Amer Sports Winter and Outdoor is located just 30 minutes from various ski resorts. Close by, prolific hiking and biking trails offer opportunities for team members to enjoy non-motorized (silent) sports and our products. Bouldering fields, various crags, and the awesome mountains create the perfect environment for rock climbing. What better place to work than here?

26. Deckers Outdoor Corporation

HAPPY FEET: Deckers makes comfortable footwear—including Teva, Simple Shoes, and Ugg—and the laid-back, green ethos of its shoes extends naturally to the work environment. Casual dress is the norm, gym memberships are subsidized, recycling centers are abundant, and a fleet of bicycles is at the ready.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Deckers Outdoor Corporation builds niche products into the global lifestyle brands Teva®, Simple® Shoe, UGG® Australia, TSUBO®, and Deckers® Brand by designing and marketing innovative, functional, and fashion-forward footwear for both high-performance outdoor activities and everyday casual lifestyle use.

FITNESS INCENTIVE
Corporate headquarters employees are offered a subsidized gym membership to a local gym with several locations. Employees pay a small portion as a payroll deduction, and the company pays the monthly membership fee.

TUITION REIMBURSEMENT
Tuition reimbursement is available to employees requiring continued andor additional education that is directly related to their position. Deckers will pay all or a portion of the tuition and additional required fees on a case-by-case basis.

GREEN INITIATIVES
Simple Shoes uses the following recycled materials in their footwear: recycled inner tubes, 100 percent post-consumer recycled cardboard boxes, recycled PET and latex elastic, post-consumer paper, recycled car and bike tires, and recycled carpet padding.Employees who purchase hybrid vehicles receive a $1,000 donation to the charitable organization of their choice.

COMMUNICATION
Deckers has a very relaxed and flexible communication program. At each quarter end, the CEO calls an All Hands meeting of all employees in the corporate office to hear information on a range of topics, including financial earnings information, changes within the company, etc. The All Hands meeting often ends with a luncheon for employees. This type of meeting may be called at any time the CEO feels fit, and we feel this is a unique aspect of Deckers that contributes toward open communication and information to employees at all levels.

EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION
At Deckers Outdoor Corporation, employees are encouraged to nominate a co-worker who has made exceptional contributions and efforts to the organization each quarter. This Quarterly Employee Recognition Program is available to all employees in all locations of the company. This is announced during the All Hands meeting held each quarter, and the winner receives a plaque and a cash bonus. All nominees receive a letter recognizing their nomination that is signed by the CEO.

OFFICE CULTURE
Deckers Outdoor is a unique organization due to our casual, friendly, event-oriented work environment. The company hosts several employee events throughout the year, aimed to socialize and reward everyone for their continued efforts in their departments. These events include, but are not limited to, summer company picnic, holiday party, Halloween party where employees are encouraged to dress up in costu

27. Oakley Inc.

EYES ON THE PRIZE: Answers on this eyewear-and-apparel giant’s questionnaire sounded like hyperbole: “Our unique, playful spirit can be found throughout our unconventional headquarters.” But it’s all true. Oakley’s 400,000-square-foot fortress runs on geothermal power and is home to a sprawling fitness center, 400-seat theater, and an army of employees who can “test eyewear” on the surrounding motocross track or nearby trails.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
Based in Orange County, California, Oakley was created to serve the demands of world-class athletes, and they are the DNA of the company’s brand culture. Oakley has a very laid-back Southern California vibe that consists of a young and extremely active workforce. Employees are very passionate about what they do and enjoy the anti-policy, sports-focused work environment. Oakley earned its heritage of authenticity in the sports world by reinventing products from scratch, achieving superior quality and genuine innovation that delivers the unexpected. The company’s headquarters is a true reflection of this, with a one-of-a-kind design that leaves many visitors questioning when it was built.

FACILITIES
The 400,000-square-foot headquarters sits atop a hill across the street from Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, with views of the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island on a good day and beautiful rolling hills on a bad day. On the drive up to the front entrance, you will pass a motocross track, paved jogging trail, and helipad. Once you reach the traffic circle, you will notice a giant torpedo placed in the center as a landmark, surrounded by the company’s custom sports marketing trucks. Inside the building, the lobby features cathedral-style ceilings, flat-screen TVs, explosive-proof light,s and B-52 ejector seats in the waiting area. Oakley has a newly remodeled fitness center with free weights, weight machines, cardio machines, flexibility balls, flat-screen TVs, showers, and lockers. Employees use their lunch break to mountain-bike across the street at Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, and Oakley provides on-site bike storage. In the cafeteria, there are more flat-screen TVs and a Ping-Pong table for impromptu competitions.

OFFICE CULTURE
Summer bonfires can be found at Oakley’s giant fire pit in the back patio, along with a mini-car racetrack. Oakley’s 400-seat hi-tech theater is the ideal venue for action sports industry movie premieres. Impromptu concerts by visiting musicians or Olympic athlete sightings can happen any day of the week in Oakley’s hallways. Dogs and kids are a welcome addition as well. Individuality and self-expression can be found throughout the building and in employees’ extreme cubicles. Because Oakley is rooted in sports, it attracts many outdoor enthusiasts and ex–pro athletes who form running, cycling, mountain-biking and walking groups that use the facility and surrounding area to work out before/during/after work. Oakley also has a softball team in the Action Sports Softball League that competes against other companies in the action sports industry.

DRESS CODE
There is no dress code at Oakley. Flip-flops and boardshorts are encouraged.

28. Industrial Revolution

WELL-TIMED: Understanding that the best adjective to describe a weekend is “long,” this camping-supplies manufacturer offers a menu of compressed workweek options: four ten-hour days and one off; or eight nine-hour days, one eight-hour day, and a day off (yup, it adds up to 80). Bus passes are fully subsidized, and carpoolers are reimbursed for gas money.

29. SRAM

HIGH ROLLERS: SRAM is one of the world’s largest bike-component manufacturers. No surprise, then, that riding to work is the norm for the 85 employees at the downtown-Chicago headquarters, which offers a bike-storage room with workbenches for tune-ups, plus shower facilities to help you avoid the sweaty-headed “commuter guy” look.

30. National Outdoor Leadership School

MOUNTAIN READY: Employees in the eco-friendly Lander headquarters have the spectacular Wind River Range as their after-work playground, and NOLS offers the flex-time options (four ten-hour days) to enjoy it. Many staffers arrive early and leave early to take advantage of the local skiing, climbing, and biking. Vacation time is generous (23 days for new employees), and “Beer Fridays” are frequent.

ONLINE EXCLUSIVE: FROM THE COMPANY

ABOUT
NOLS, a nonprofit school, takes people of all ages on real wilderness expeditions, develops leadership, and teaches outdoor skills and environmental ethics. NOLS graduates are active, positive leaders with an environmental ethic and outdoor skills that last a lifetime. NOLS instructional skill areas include: wilderness medicine, mountaineering, sea kayaking, canoeing, rafting, kayaking, backpacking, skiing, rock climbing, sailing, and many more.

OFFICE FACILITIES
Our facilities have workout rooms with weights, rowing machines, treadmills, bikes, Stairmasters, or a climbing wall or a swimming pool. All of our facilities have locker/shower rooms. Employees can eat in our dining rooms for a nominal fee. In addition, we provide coffee, tea, and hot chocolate at no cost all day long. Department celebrations are rampant, and hardly a day goes by without birthday cake or some other snacks available. Beer Friday is a common event.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Our employees are very active in the community: They volunteer with the ambulance, fire department, and SAR, and they coach sports and volunteer in the school system. They are involved in local service groups such as Kiwanis and Rotary; serve boards such as AEE, Wilderness Risk Management, Yellowstone Business Partnership, etc. We do not have a formalized volunteer program. We allow our staff flexibility to balance their workload and volunteer time.

GREEN INITIATIVES
We recycle at all facilities, and half of our locations have composting systems in place and produce soil additives for on-site organic gardens that feed our staff and students. As an educational institution, we don’t manufacture a product. We have completed a schoolwide sustainability audit that informs our sustainability initiative, setting aggressive goals for reducing our environmental footprint. The initiative includes a climate protection goal to reduce carbon emissions annually. It also sets goals for working with product manufacturers in an effort to encourage them to develop more sustainable supply chains. Headquarters is a green building with numerous environmental design features including: building orientation that maximizes natural lighting; sun shades, insulation, tinted glass, and a rooftop garden to help minimize heat loss and gain; storm drainage that’s returned to irrigation canals; carpet, ceiling tiles, and tables made from recycled materials; flooring made from recycled tires; few private offices to reduce square footage.

SCHEDULES
We offer children-friendly scheduling, i.e. time off to volunteer in the child’s class, attend parent-teacher conferences, attend school events, or take a family member to an appointment. Children are welcome in the workplace. Many staff can work from home if necessary. We offer course discounts up to 75 percent for family members, including extended-family members such as nieces and nephews, parents, and others to take a NOLS course or WMI of NOLS course. We offer flexible work hours for most employees so they can balance their work-life needs. Staff can use NOLS equipment at no charge—backpacks, stoves, sleeping bags, skis, fishing gear, etc. Most of our locations provide easy access to backcountry areas. Staff get 50 percent off their lift ticket at one of the major ski areas in Wyoming.

The post The 30 Best Places to Work in 2009 appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Hanging 800 feet above Leg Lake, ten hours into a long summer’s day of climbing in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, Steve Herlihy was just starting to get comfortable. Getting into the bubble, he called it. He was tired but focused, feeling good about this latest adventure with his friend and mentor, Pete Absolon.

They were at the southern end of the Winds, three-quarters of the way up an enormous cirque that flanks the lake like a half-mile-wide backstop. Close to 12,000 feet above sea level, the cliff could be glimpsed from Absolon’s house on the outskirts of Lander, 15 miles away, a stumpy tooth among more sensuously contoured peaks. In 17 years of climbing the area, Absolon had never tried the cirque before; there was better rock not much farther away. But late in July he’d gone camping at Leg Lake with his wife, Molly, and their six-year-old daughter, Avery. He’d studied the cirque, particularly a long shadow where the wall turned a corner as it wrapped around the lake. Two weeks later he was back with Herlihy to try a line he’d found.

Herlihy felt honored to be included; Absolon was choosy about the climbers he took into the Winds. Despite their age difference—Pete was 47, Steve 30—Absolon had drawn Herlihy into his circle as if he were a younger brother. They’d met on a instructor seminar in 2001 and had worked together on and off since. Absolon, a sturdy blond athlete with a constant smile, had recently become director of the NOLS Rocky Mountain branch, while Herlihy had started law school in Laramie, at the University of Wyoming.

Absolon was amped for the climb—planning meticulously, leaving Herlihy a flurry of phone messages in the final hours before their departure. They got a late start from Lander Friday afternoon and camped by the lake. On Saturday, August 11, they rose early, left Herlihy’s two dogs at the cliff base, made their way across a talus field, and then climbed up 300 feet of steep slabs to a small ledge, where the line Absolon had spotted began in earnest.

The climb was slow and tough. They found a couple of old bolts below the ledge, then nothing farther up. The route was steeper than it looked, and there was a quarry’s worth of loose rock along the way. They cleared what they could, heaving the debris onto the glacier below, watching it land with hardly a sound. Herlihy started worrying about the amount of rock they were tossing and rappelled down to move his dogs back, then returned to the ledge.

Absolon led the crux pitch above the ledge, then two more pitches. Herlihy did his part, belaying and hauling and drilling in an occasional bolt. By late afternoon, they were 150 feet from what they’d agreed would be their goal for the day, a grassy ledge below the rim. Absolon set up an intricate belay; Herlihy was just below him and to the right. They lingered a few minutes, discussing how to handle the final pitch, a widening crack that curved right.

Herlihy was tired and ready to head down to camp. But Absolon wanted to nail the last pitch, and Herlihy agreed that it didn’t look like much trouble, particularly with Pete in the lead. But right in the middle of their conversation, something came hurtling down from above. There was no warning, Herlihy recalls. Just a sudden crack!—and then a kind of white noise buzzing inside his head.

As soon as he heard the sound, Herlihy instinctively curled up next to the wall. But whatever had ripped through was already gone, leaving silence in its wake. When Herlihy looked up, he saw Pete hanging from the ropes, staring straight ahead. His eyes and mouth were open, but he was absolutely still.

Herlihy reached up. His hand went to the back of Absolon’s neck and felt a warm dampness. He turned his friend around and saw the shards of his white helmet, the blood, the crushed skull. “His face was perfect,” Herlihy says, “but I just knew he was dead.”

To the RodolphĚýbrothers of Casper, the Leg Lake Cirque was known as the China Wall. They’d visited the rim several times before, coming up the back way, a steep but tolerable hike through neighboring Upper Silas Canyon. Aaron, 28, had backpacked in the area for a week at a time, and Luke, 23, had hiked the entire canyon rim by himself.

A large party of Rodolphs had made a three-hour drive from Casper to the canyon trailhead on Thursday, the night before Absolon and Herlihy left Lander. The group included Aaron, Luke, and their older brother, Isaiah; Eli Rodolph, a cousin from South Dakota; Eric McDonald, a family friend; and wives and girlfriends—eight adults in all, plus Isaiah’s four children. They set up camp at a no-name lake and spent Friday fishing and hiking. On Saturday, Luke and Aaron decided to take Eli and Eric to the China Wall.

Although the trail up the canyon ends at Island Lake, the four kept going, to the towering headwall of the cirque. They all walked to the rim, which offered a panoramic view of the basin, the surrounding peaks, and Lander in the distance. It was a favorite spot that neither Aaron nor Luke had seen for a while. Aaron had been building a landscaping business in Casper, while Luke had spent four years in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, including two tours in Iraq, before coming home to work with his brother.

They saw no one after leaving the trail. They spent half an hour on the rim, soaking up the scenery and tossing rocks down toward Leg Lake. Later, Aaron would estimate that the group had pushed four or five small boulders over the cliff. “It was really awesome to watch the rocks fall,” he recalled. “You could see every bounce, every hit, all the way to the glacier.”

Around five, the Rodolph party decided to make their way to a new spot a quarter-mile away, where the rim becomes a series of jagged overhangs above the basin—a good place to watch rocks fall, they figured. Luke led the way to a 15-foot promontory jutting into space. He went out a few feet, peered over the right edge, picked up a bowling-ball-size hunk of granite, and launched it into the void. Then he crouched down and leaned farther over the edge to watch its descent.

His new position gave him an unimpeded view of the area below. He saw, to his surprise, two men in white helmets 200 feet beneath him. And at the same moment he registered their presence, the plummeting rock struck one of the men directly on the head.

HerlihyĚýcouldn’t see whereĚýthe rock had come from, and he assumed it had broken loose naturally. In the suspended silence that followed Absolon’s death, he fought a surge of panic over the possibility that more was on the way. “I was a hundred percent sure the next rock to come down was going to hit me,” he says. “I tried to think like Pete.”

Herlihy wrestled with Absolon’s body to retrieve the gear he’d need to get down. Blood spilled all over him, on the rope, and on the haul bag. He considered bringing the body along but decided the effort would slow him down and might get him killed. Even without the extra weight, it took him an hour to rappel to the ledge. Once there, he tied the ropes together and fixed them for the final rap to the base. Then he ran—and stumbled—down the scree field in his climbing shoes.

Herlihy retrieved his dogs and dunked his head in the lake, trying to wash off the blood and spitting to get rid of the pungent, metallic taste in his mouth. He looked around in the twilight, not sure what to do. He was startled to see four young men running toward him. The first one was crying.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Aaron Rodolph said. He was panting after the long run down from the rim.

“What happened?” Herlihy asked.

A pale, lean young man, more subdued than the first, approached him. “I threw a rock,” he said.

Herlihy stared at him. “Did it hit another rock or something?”

“No,” Luke Rodolph said. “That was the rock.”

Herlihy took a moment to digest this. It wasn’t a loose rock that had killed his friend. This kid had thrown the rock. Herlihy didn’t know what to say. What came out of his mouth next amazed the Rodolph brothers, who were half expecting him to attack them. He looked at Luke and said, “I forgive you.”

Wordlessly, the four men gathered around Herlihy. Aaron put his arm around him and asked if it would be all right if they prayed. Herlihy nodded, and Aaron began murmuring softly in the dusk.

Ultimately, it would beĚýup to Steve Herlihy to tell people what had happened to his friend, to describe how one of Lander’s most respected, confident, and skilled climbers had died because a stranger threw a rock for fun. It was an awful story to tell, bound to trigger outrage and bewilderment, but Herlihy ended up recounting the details, Ishmael-like, again and again—to sheriff’s deputies, to colleagues, and to Absolon’s family and close acquaintances. It was important to him that people understand how alive Pete was, how suddenly he’d been snatched away.

But nearly 15 hours would pass before he had a chance to tell anybody anything. First he had to spend a long, surreal night with Luke Rodolph. Aaron told Herlihy he had called 911 on his cell phone from the rim and that help was on the way. Right after the impromptu prayer session, the others decided to return to the family campsite, while Luke volunteered to stay behind; he and Steve would hike out in the morning.

As the sun went down, Herlihy wandered out to the lake to be alone, but dropping temperatures soon lured him to the fire Luke had built. Over the next few hours, the two men talked, shared some whiskey, and waited for dawn. Herlihy spoke about Molly and Avery and what a great husband and father Pete was. Absolon had been his boss at NOLS, he explained, generous with his advice and hard-earned experience but never taking himself too seriously. He was, in short, Herlihy’s hero. Rodolph listened quietly.

“I know it probably doesn’t seem like it, but I am really sorry about what happened to your friend,” he said. “I want to cry, but I just can’t do it. I’ve seen a lot of death.”

In a flat voice, Rodolph described his time in Iraq—seven months in Fallujah, five in the northern Kurdish provinces. He’d lost a close friend two weeks into his first deployment, after they changed seats one morning in a Humvee. His buddy was sitting in Rodolph’s place when an IED went off. Luke said he lost five friends in all. The only comfort he could find, he added, was his Christian belief that the deaths had been God’s will. Everything happened for a reason.

The remark grated on Herlihy. He could see no reason why Pete was dead. But he didn’t want to argue; right now he just needed to keep talking. He asked Rodolph why he hadn’t run away—after all, nobody outside his family had to know he’d thrown the rock. Rodolph said he couldn’t run from God. He was willing to do whatever was needed “to make things right.”

“We had a long conversation about what that meant,” Herlihy says. “He thought he was going to jail.”

The talk, like the fire, died down after a while. At one point in the night, a helicopter circled above them, raking a searchlight across the face of the cirque. The next afternoon, a copter-borne rescue team from Grand Teton National Park arrived and got Absolon down. By that time, Herlihy and Rodolph had hiked to Herlihy’s truck and driven to his home in Lander. They spoke little on the way.

Herlihy expected the whole world to be changed, but when he reached his house he realized that almost no one in town had heard about Pete’s death yet; the coroner was waiting for the body to be retrieved before contacting the family. Once inside his front door, Herlihy started sobbing as he told his girlfriend, Wendy, what had happened. Then, leaving Rodolph standing alone in the front yard, he headed over to the Absolon place to do what he’d dreaded doing since he came off the wall: tell Molly that Pete was gone.

When he returned hours later, emotionally exhausted, Rodolph was still in the yard. He’d tried to clean the blood off the rope and haul bag and waited for Steve’s return so they could go together to give their statements to the police.

News of Absolon’s deathĚýspread across town like a stain, then all over the country. A week later, under lowering skies, more than 300 people streamed into a meadow near Sinks Canyon—a popular sport-climbing hub near Lander—for a memorial service. They all had Pete Absolon stories to tell, gleaned from what had been a full and remarkable life.

There were rock-climbing buddies from his early days as a guide at Seneca Rocks, West Virginia; tales of Mount McKinley’s West Rib and big ice in Alberta; former NOLS students and staff who’d had life-changing encounters with Pete; people who’d met him climbing, biking, or elk hunting; and local parents who simply knew him as an enthusiastic dad, deeply involved in his daughter’s school activities. Nobody could figure out how he made it all look so easy.

Lander-based NOLS instructor Gary Wilmot was once saved from serious injury by Absolon, who snatched him by the boot after he stumbled and slid headfirst down an icy gully outside of Cody, headed for a cliff. But he considers such heroics the least of his friend’s accomplishments. “Pete was a very good rock climber, an exceptional ice climber and mountaineer,” he says. “Maybe not world-class at any of these things, but there are very few climbers who put them all together as well as Pete did. He could always keep the rope moving up, and he got his students to believe they could make certain ascents and achieve goals far beyond what they thought they could do.”

Born in Minnesota, raised in Texas and Maryland, as a teenager Absolon went from Boy Scout hikes to hanging out at the Gendarme, the legendary climbing shop at Seneca Rocks. He persuaded proprietor John Markwell to hire him as a guide and began putting up bold new solo routes. “Many of Pete’s routes are thinly protected and just scary,” says Topper Wilson, another Gendarme alum, now living in Colorado. “But his legs never shook. When he got nervous, he’d start muttering and talk his way through.”

In 1986, while soloing at Seneca Rocks, Absolon came across 25-year-old Molly Armbrecht, a Yale graduate and climber who worked for the nearby Woodlands Mountain Institute. Absolon informed Armbrecht that she and a companion weren’t on the route they thought they were on. Armbrecht insisted she knew what she was doing. Molly and her friend pressed on, got lost, found their way down around midnight, and slinked past the Gendarme, where Absolon sat with his pals, watching with amusement.

The wedding came two years later, on top of the highest mountain in West Virginia. The couple moved to Berkeley, then Lander, where Pete took a NOLS instructor course and began working for the school. He called the place Blander at first but soon fell in love with it. At NOLS, Absolon emerged as a quiet but vital presence whose high spirits and people skills made him a valuable field instructor and administrator. Fatherhood compelled him to give up major expeditions, but he set up a swing for Avery at the base of Killer Cave, one of his favorite routes in Sinks Canyon, and continued to seek new adventures. He was always methodical and safety conscious—which made his sudden death an even greater shock.

The Lander community was still reeling from other fatalities, including the 2006 death of Todd Skinner, one of the area’s most celebrated free climbers, who died after his harness failed in Yosemite. But Absolon’s death was fundamentally different—not an equipment failure but a rock, thrown by a clueless hiker—and it sparked anger as well as grief.

“Pete was an extremely conservative and accomplished climber who was doing everything right,” says Phil Powers, executive director of the American Alpine Club and a NOLS staffer in Lander for nearly 20 years. “Climbers sign up for a certain amount of risk. But Pete didn’t sign up for this kind of risk.”

In the days before and after the service, reminiscences about Absolon piled up in a , a popular climbers’ Web site. “He had serenity in his life,” wrote Pete’s oldest sister, Mary, “and we are all the better for this because it is a whole lot more fun being with someone who is living out their passions!” But the tragedy also prompted a more vitriolic thread, in which people described their own near-death encounters with rock throwers. Some pointed out that climbers cast plenty of stones themselves—not just to clean a route but for the gravitational fun of it. “Everyone who’s never thrown a rock off a cliff, raise your hand,” wrote one poster. “Gee, there are no hands up.” Climbers even have a word for the pastime: trundling.

“Pete enjoyed trundling rocks,” says Wilson, “but he always looked first.”

Experienced climbers know to look carefully before they roll any rock, and the type of accident that killed Absolon is exceedingly rare. Falling objects are the third-most-common cause of climbing injuries, according to for its annual publication Accidents in North American Mountaineering. But Jed Williamson, the series’s managing editor, says that most accidents occur as a result of naturally falling rock and that, of some 625 reported deaths and injuries involving falling objects since 1951, only a handful resulted from rocks being thrown.

The worst case on record was a 1994 trundling incident that set off a 50-ton rockslide down the north face of 12,799-foot Granite Peak, Montana’s tallest mountain. The three young climbers who did it apparently thought there wouldn’t be a problem, because the north face was a difficult, less-used approach to the summit. Unfortunately, climber Tony Rich, 33, happened to be in the path of their barrage and was killed. The three were charged with negligent endangerment and received a combination of fines, community service, and jail time.

A few days after Absolon’s memorial service, Fremont County district attorney Ed Newell announced that he would not file charges against Rodolph. As he saw it, this case was better suited to possible civil litigation than criminal charges. Yet he was careful not to describe Absolon’s death as an accident.

“It was criminally negligent or reckless to throw the rock without first checking if anyone was below,” he said. But there was no evidence that Rodolph intended harm; he simply didn’t know Absolon was there. In addition, Newell noted, Rodolph had taken responsibility immediately, had been cooperative with authorities, had no prior record, and was a military veteran.

The decision distressed many of Absolon’s friends. Powers believes that trundling injuries are often dealt with lightly because they happen in remote areas, but in his view that’s precisely what makes them so dangerous. “If the argument is that this kind of thing happens because Pete was involved in a risk-taker’s sport in a less civilized place, then I push back on both fronts,” he says. “Yes, the rules are different in the backcountry: One’s personal responsibility is heightened, not diminished. The frivolous tossing of a rock is even more irresponsible in the wilderness because the repercussions can be so much greater.”

Not long after they cameĚýto Lander, the Absolons moved into an 1,100-square-foot log home east of town. The garage is now almost as big as the house; Pete added a climbing gym, financing the effort with $250 “membership fees” wrangled from friends. Mostly, though, it was a place where he could go to work out by himself.

“There are a lot of people who are members of that gym who have never climbed in it,” Molly Absolon explains. “Almost everybody got suckered into joining.”

These days, the phone rings frequently in the Absolon kitchen. Since Pete’s death, Molly has been inside a tight network of family and supporters. Seeing the Leg Lake Cirque from her yard every morning triggers a wave of emotions. It’s where Pete died, but it also reminds her of their last family camping trip, during which Pete and Avery sang and played games and Pete made fish chowder from the brookies that were practically jumping out of the lake.

“I remember thinking how great it was that she was comfortable in the mountains, that Pete was teaching her all this cool stuff,” Molly says, sitting at the breakfast table as she talks publicly about her husband’s death for the first time. “There are a lot of us who got to places we never would have gotten because he was willing to take us.”

Molly had worked at NOLS herself, and she climbed mountains and skied down couloirs next to Pete. They never had “a huge conversation” about risk, but they both scaled back considerably when Avery was born. “It’s the classic dilemma,” she says. “This is who this person is, this is what you love about him, that’s what our relationship is about. We thought we were being safe. It never, ever occurred to us that we had to worry about this—”

She breaks off. Molly shudders when she reads accounts that refer to Pete’s death as a “climbing accident.” Pete and Steve could have been at equal or greater risk from a thrown rock if they were hiking at the base of the cliff, she says. Such loose terminology is part of what troubles her about how the case has been handled by the authorities. “My anger at this point,” she says, “is directed as much toward Ed Newell as Luke Rodolph.”

Newell’s statement that he wouldn’t press charges mentioned that he’d consulted with Molly before reaching his decision—giving many people the impression that the victim’s family didn’t want to see Rodolph prosecuted. But Molly says she never took a position on the matter, that she told Newell it was his call to make. “I was still in shock,” she says. “It’s not like I could have any kind of perspective on the act or whether Luke did it intentionally. Newell showed me some law books, how this could be construed as a criminal case. Then he went into his reasons for thinking it wasn’t a good idea to pursue charges. He threw in Rodolph’s military service. But the fact that he’s an Iraq veteran shouldn’t be any part of the decision as to whether or not this is a criminal act.

“I agree that Luke Rodolph did the right thing after he did the wrong thing,” she says. “But I just lost my husband and the father of my child, and I’m mad and sad. I’m struggling with this feeling that Rodolph has gotten off really lightly.”

Newell declines to go into detail about his meeting with Molly but says he never intended to imply that she didn’t want to prosecute—or that her wishes, either way, would have dictated the outcome. “We always try to get with victims and get their input, but we never let them make the call,” he says.

His decision was based on a combination of factors, he adds, including the sheer freakishness of the accident. Locals say the Leg Lake Cirque attracts maybe one climbing party a year. Upper Silas Canyon is a popular hiking area, but few hikers go as far as the rim. For Absolon, Herlihy, and the Rodolphs to be in the same location at the same time; for Luke Rodolph’s throw to line up perfectly with Pete’s route—it all seemed to defy astronomical odds. “You could give somebody a pile of a thousand rocks and tell them to try and hit a dummy on the cliff, and he just couldn’t do it,” Newell told me. “It’s like getting hit by a meteor or something.”

Molly has made no decision yet about whether to pursue a civil suit. There’s some life insurance, but the family lived largely on Pete’s salary, and the prospect of going forward without her husband at her side, having to redefine herself and figure out how to live, seems overwhelming. “Money is not necessarily a determining factor in pursuing a civil case,” she says. “It’s not the point for me. I’m mainly looking for some accountability.”

Recently, Molly had a dream about Pete. He said he was “98 percent OK” but missed her and Avery. He also assured her that his death had been swift and painless. But the dream was scant comfort. “I feel like my rudder is gone,” says Molly. “More than anything, I’m just so sad for Avery. Pete was so involved in her life, and I was so grateful for that.”

She smiles grimly. “You should go look at the gym,” she tells me. “It’s hard for me to go in there.”

Since Pete Absolon’sĚýdeath, Luke Rodolph has lived quietly in Casper. He works for his brother’s landscaping service and spends a lot of time praying and trying to “stay focused on my walk with Christ.” The news that he wouldn’t be prosecuted was no cause for celebration.

“I don’t know if it was a relief or not,” he says, sitting at the kitchen table in Aaron’s house, occasionally wiping away tears with his sleeve. “Sometimes you feel like you should have to pay for what you have done. At this point, I’ve accepted that this is what God wants. But I take full responsibility for what I did. Pete’s death was my fault. I can’t ever justify it.”

Aaron nods solemnly. “I’ll never throw another rock off a cliff,” he says. “My dad told me, â€�That was an ignorant thing to do.’ Whether everybody else does it or not, whether you looked or you didn’t, it doesn’t matter. Maybe our experience up there just makes us more guilty.”

Before the memorial service near Sinks Canyon, the Rodolph brothers inquired discreetly whether they could attend and pay their respects. They were told to stay away. They haven’t tried to contact Molly directly, but they did issue a public apology during . One comment Aaron made to the reporter—”You know in your heart there is nothing you can do”—didn’t go over well in Lander, where a memorial fund has been set up for Avery. Aaron says he meant only that he couldn’t bring Pete Absolon back to life.

“There’s no way to repay Molly,” Luke says, “but if she asked us to do something, I’d do my best. I’d like to tell her to her face how sorry I am and be able to offer something. But I don’t want it to be seen as an attempt to cover up what I’ve done.”

The Rodolph brothers have left several phone messages for Steve Herlihy, who hasn’t spoken to either of them since the accident. Herlihy says he isn’t ready to talk to the brothers yet. He’s still haunted by his own relentless memories of Leg Lake, including the three words of absolution he offered Luke.

“I regret that, actually,” Herlihy says, “but that’s how I felt at that point. I feel some responsibility toward Luke. I don’t think he did it on purpose… but I feel guilty for not hating him. I feel guilty because of Molly. I lost a guy I knew, my hero. She lost everything.

“Maybe you don’t get forgiveness that easily,” he adds. “Maybe I need more time. In light of everything, why couldn’t he have just looked?”

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100-Proof Americana

AMERICA PICKED UP AND MOVED to the big city generations ago, and we’ve been second-guessing ourselves ever since. For every stifled small-town kid champing at the bit to split, there are a thousand grown-ups yearning to return—even if only for a weekend. We crave the comfort of community, but want wilderness and possibilities for wandering right out the back door. We feel an atavistic urge to put ourselves in a place where you have names for the faces. Where you can recognize a man by the tilt of his baseball cap. Where folks are not just citizens but characters.Ěý

Approach any small town with a reverence for what you can learn. Memorize the population sign. Small-town people love to out-small one another, and you must be prepared. Go to the café, order quietly, and eavesdrop shamelessly. Wander the local cemetery, study the headstones, note the spans of birth and death. These stratifications of time compose the foundation of the town. Browse the community bulletin boards and all announcements taped to the gas station door. In short order you will have clues to who has what, who wants what, who can fix your deck, who can stuff your deer, and who can save your soul.

Drive the outskirts. Consider the look of the town in the rearview mirror, as opposed to through the windshield, and think about how you feel; happiness can be a matter of global positioning. More to the point, if you find yourself trapped behind an old man doing 35 in a 45, don’t figure out a way to pass him—figure out a way to be him. And for the love of Pete, don’t moo at the cows.

Temper your expectations. The sepia tones of small-town life have been digitized. Little gray satellite dishes are everywhere. Your average bib-overalled rustic is conversant on topics ranging from T-bills to transgender bull riding. But if you are patient, the timeless things—a friendly wave, a seat and a howdy at the breakfast counter, the sounds of nothing much happening—can be yours. Ease on in—truly becoming part of a small town is a more passive than active process. Announcing your presence on arrival will set you back 20 years. Just nod at folks. Eventually someone will nod back. And then you will begin to feel at home.

Lanesboro, Minnesota

Root river revival

best American towns Lanesboro, Minnesota

FIRST-TIME VISITORS might be forgiven for asking, This is Minnesota? Indeed, the topography seems a little misplaced—there are no lakes in all of Fillmore County. (The last round of glaciers, geologists explain, missed the state’s southeast corner.) Instead you’ll find deep river gorges, limestone bluffs crowned with hardwoods, tumbling trout streams, caves, and sinkholes. Despite the woodsy aesthetics, Amish farmers and wild turkeys pretty much had the place to themselves until 1985. That year, the old railroad bed was paved, creating the 60-mile Root River State Trail, most of which meanders east from the town of Fountain along its namesake stream, through Lanesboro, and across 47 bridges, until it winds down in the town of Houston. Ever since, cyclists, paddlers, tubers, and (increasingly) nordic skiers have descended. Lanesboro’s picture-book setting, a collection of revived gingerbread Victorian houses, B&Bs, and shops fronting a 320-foot bluff, is just frosting on the cake.

OUTDOORS: The mostly flat trail and the mostly flat river are what lure weekenders from the Twin Cities, 100 miles to the north; come winter, the route is groomed for skiers. The ambitious can paddle 90 miles of the Root River to the Mississippi, keeping an eye out for beavers, foxes, egrets, and river otters. And while proclaiming the best fishing spot is a sure way to start an argument in Minnesota, the South Branch of the Root and its feeder streams are hard to beat for native trout.
REAL ESTATE: The truly diligent can find a three-bedroom starter home for less than $100,000, a quality ranch house for $120,000, and an exquisite two-story Victorian B&B-in-waiting for $400,000.
HANGOUTS: You can hardly go wrong with the Habberstad House, a century-old Queen Anne that’s painted in umpteen shades of green and red (doubles, $110 and up; 507-467-3560, ). No visit is complete without a meal at the Chat ‘n Chew, a greasy-spoon mainstay where old-timers gather to guzzle coffee and, well, chew the fat.

Etna, California

The Golden State’s last best place

best American towns Etna, California

THIS TIME-WARP RANCH TOWN in the Scott River watershed is one of the last untrammeled outposts of wild California—a well-situated launching point for backcountry rambles on foot or on water. In Etna’s quaint one-block downtown, it’s not uncommon to spot a cow or a horse shuffling down Main, past the barbershop and the hardware store. And the crime rate is low. “If somebody gets out of line,” a resident explains, “the officer takes ’em home.”

OUTDOORS: Think Yellowstone minus the gridlock. The Klamath National Forest and the Marble Mountain, Russian, and Trinity Alps wilderness areas are rich with snowcapped peaks, trout streams, and undammed snowmelt rivers (such as the Scott, as well as the Salmon and its forks) with long, plunging rapids and boulder gardens. There’s backcountry snowboarding off Etna and Callahan summits, downhill skiing at nearby Mount Shasta, granite climbing routes at Castle Crags State Park, and, about ten miles away, the Pacific Crest Trail.
REAL ESTATE: Equity-rich retirees from elsewhere in California are starting to discover the area, so prices are creeping upward. The housing stock is a mixed bag, everything from exquisite 1870s homes in town to hillside ranches on ten acres a few miles out, for $250,000 to $300,000.
HANGOUTS: The Motel Etna is a good bet (doubles, $40–$50; 530-467-5338). Get generous portions of chicken-fried steak and blueberry pie for cheap while listening to hay farmers griping good-naturedly (sort of) about “goddamn environmentalists” at Bob’s Ranch House.

Cashiers, North Carolina

It's one huge rush after another

COMBINE THE DRASTIC granite dropoffs of the Blue Ridge escarpment with more than 80 inches of rain a year and something dramatic is bound to happen. Around the town of Cashiers (pronounced CASH-ers), perched at 3,500 feet on the Eastern Continental Divide, the jackpot shows up in the form of waterfalls—everything from tiny cliffside seeps to 400-foot-plus cataracts that roar into deep gorges. The downtown is little more than a crossroads, the junction of U.S. 64 and North Carolina 107, and a mile or so radius of antique shops, high-end restaurants, and second-home clusters discreetly tucked into the woods.

OUTDOORS: Hikers can go short, on spur trails to waterfall lookouts, or take on longer segments of the Foothills Trail or the Chattooga River Trail. Fly-fishers and kayakers pilgrimage to the Nantahala, Ocoee, and Chattooga rivers. Panthertown Valley, a 6,700-acre wilderness area, is the closest fat-tire-trail web, and the Tsali Recreation Area, a one-and-a-half-hour drive west, is an off-roader’s dream, with more than 40 miles of epic singletrack. The thousand-foot cliffs of Whiteside Mountain provide the kind of hairy, multipitch, huge-exposure climbs that would almost make you swear someone had trucked the place out from Yosemite.
REAL ESTATE: If you can live without a water view or 18 holes, you can find something—an old Appalachian cabin in a hollow, or a two-bedroom condo—for $250,000 or so. But you’ll have to comb through humbling rosters of seven-figure properties first.
HANGOUTS: The High Hampton Inn & Country Club, on 1,400 acres, with a lake mirroring Rock Mountain, is all chestnut-rustic, with front-porch rockers (doubles start at $92 per person, including three buffet meals; 800-334-2551, ). Several pricey restaurants have opened around Cashiers: Wolfgang’s, 20 minutes away in Highlands, has a menu that bridges New Orleans and Bavaria.

Hood River, Oregon

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind

best American towns Hood River, Oregon

The Columbia River Gorge, the nation’s windsurfing capital

LEST THERE BE ANY UNCERTAINTY about what put this Columbia River Gorge town on the map, consider a few local businesses: Big Winds, Windance, Realwind, Windwing, and Second Wind. Or the fabled 20-knot clause,” the assumption that when westerlies blow hard into the gorge, productivity at the office takes a backseat. Over the past two decades, windsurfing has made Hood River—an hour east of Portland amid towering basalt cliffs—the fabled adventure hot spot that it is. The jocks that have stuck around have cultivated a taste for bistros, “brasseries, and manicured, century-old Victorian landmarks. They’ve also contributed to a tight-knit community. Parents take part in school programs, and pausing to chat with friends in the grocery aisles is an everyday occurrence.

OUTDOORS: Boardheads dominate the athletic scene; thousands windsurf the Columbia each year. But there’s also hiking, camping, and mountain biking in Mount Hood National Forest; glacier skiing and alpine climbing on 11,235-foot Mount Hood; and cycling on the Fruit Loop, a 47-mile road ride through apple, cherry, peach, and pear orchards, and the gorgeous Cascade foothills.
REAL ESTATE: The oldest east-side neighborhoods, adjacent to the downtown corridor rising from the riverbank, have some of the most coveted properties: Craftsman bungalows for $250,000, turn-of-the-century two-stories for $400,000, and 1970s ranch-style houses in the $200,000 range.
HANGOUTS: The Columbia Gorge Hotel is a quaint country inn with chandeliers in the lobby and a 207-foot waterfall on the grounds (doubles start at $199, including a mammoth breakfast; 800-345-1921, ). Brian’s Pourhouse, the 6th Street Bistro and Loft, and Three Rivers Grill are great spots to get your fix of organic greens and free-range cuts of meat.

Haines, Alaska

The big outside on the inside passage

MANY A TRAVELER washing ashore in Haines can’t resist mentioning the TV show Northern Exposure. Original, no; understandable, of course. Nestled on a peninsula between soaring 7,000-foot peaks at the northern end of the Inside Passage, the town is passed over by much of the typical Panhandle rain and gloom. Aside from native Tlingits, most year-rounders blew in from elsewhere and became true believers, so community spirit flourishes: Volunteers staff the Dolphins swim club, the fire department, the board of the brand-new library. Need to locate someone in town? Phone in a “listener personal” to radio station KHNS.

OUTDOORS: Twenty million acres of protected wilderness start right here, so a local’s quiver is incomplete without a kayak, Gore-Tex hikers, and a pair of backcountry skis. Sea kayakers head north to glaciers on the Lynn Canal fjord, mixing with sea lions and whales. Nearby raft trips range from lazy floats on the Chilkat River, past a wildlife refuge where thousands of bald eagles convene in late autumn, to weeklong (or even longer) whitewater epics on the Class II–IV Tatsenshini and Alsek. Trails for hiking and skiing start in town and head for hills like 3,650-foot Mount Ripinsky.
REAL ESTATE: Forty percent of property owners stay only seasonally, but their presence props up prices accordingly. Still, it’s not hard to find a simple cottage on an acre, with views of the mountains or the Chilkat, for less than $100,000. For something fancier on more land, the price shoots up to around $250,000.
HIDEOUTS: The Hotel Hälsingland was once the commanding officers’ quarters at the Army’s Fort William H. Seward, and harks back to Haines’s Klondike gold-rush roots (doubles, $89–$109; 800-542-6363, ). Klatsches convene over coffee at the Mountain Market and over halibut and chips at the Bamboo Room.

Lander, Wyoming

Rodeo hearts and adventure souls

IT’S PUZZLING WHY even more climbers don’t end up in Lander, where the high desert meets the Rockies and calm, sunny days are the norm. Everything from abundant bouldering routes to sandstone and limestone cliffs to multipitch granite peaks in the Wind River Range awaits—plus you can camp for nothing on the banks of the Popo Agie (pronounced Po-PO-zha) River in Lander City Park. If you need a Home Depot, you’ll have to head 25 miles northeast to Riverton, but that doesn’t mean Lander is a fudge-shoppe-and-wax-museum tourist town. Fremont County ranks among the top in the state for cattle, sheep, and hay production—those guys in cowboy hats aren’t poseurs. Throw in rock jocks, instructors from the National Outdoor Leadership School headquarters (on Lincoln Street), greenies, accountants, and lawyers and you end up with a serendipitous blend in this eight-block-wide town.

OUTDOORS: Sinks Canyon State Park, just nine miles south of Lander, has limestone cliffs and routes ranging from 5.5 to 5.14a. Wild Iris, a summer favorite at close to 9,000 feet, boasts nearly 250 more routes. By the time you factor in the 318,000 acres of the Popo Agie and Fitzpatrick wilderness areas—with 256 peaks higher than 12,000 feet, and populations of elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and even grizzlies, wolves, and mountain lions—you’ll be lucky if you ever see Lander.
REAL ESTATE: If a quaint little one-bedroom just big enough to hold your gear will do, you can likely land one in town for $75,000 or so. The 80-year-old cottonwood-shaded homes along South Third Street, just a few blocks from downtown, list for $300,000 to $400,000.
HANGOUTS: The Pronghorn Lodge is a log-cabin-themed motel within walking distance of downtown (doubles, $74-$90; 307-332-3940, ). The Blue Spruce Inn, an Arts and Crafts brick house built in 1919, has a porch swing on the front veranda (doubles, $85; 888-503-3311). The Gannett Grill, with its shaded patio, buzzes with a lively summer-night scene; it and the adjacent Lander Bar, a classic western watering hole, host functions during the International Climbers’ Festival each July.

Sandpoint, Idaho

The cool northwest’s hot property

best American towns Sandpoint, Idaho

IT’S EASY TO GET SEDUCED by Sandpoint: You cross the two-mile bridge over Lake Pend Oreille (pronounced Pon-der-AY) and drink in the spectacular Selkirks mountainscape looming over downtown. But what really reels you in is Sandpoint’s small-town sense of community, with the restored Spanish-mission-style Panida Theater and all manner of city-sanctioned excuses to lollygag (like Winter Carnival or the Lost in the ’50s nostalgia fest for muscle-car buffs). And then there’s the big-town lineup of restaurants: “The best place to eat in Spokane,” goes the joke about the city of 194,000 lying 75 miles southwest, “is in Sandpoint.”

OUTDOORS: The twin playgrounds of the lake and 8,000-foot peaks prevent any dead spots on the calendar. Schweitzer, the uncrowded local ski mountain, has 2,400 feet of vertical, 2,500 skiable acres, and a nordic trail network. Summers bring huge-scale paddling, sailing, and fishing around the lake’s 111 miles of shoreline, plus mountain biking on stellar singletrack tracing the peaks and creeks.
REAL ESTATE: Following a spate of recent media valentines, demand has spiked to the point that nearly any house priced under $200,000, says Charlie Parrish, of Evergreen Realty, “is getting snapped up almost overnight.”
HANGOUTS: The Coit House, a 1907 Victorian with six guest rooms and a wraparound porch, is close to both the lakeshore and the heart of downtown (doubles, $70–$110; 866-265-2648, ). Check out Eichardt’s Pub, Grill & Coffeehouse for elk burgers, seared ahi tuna, and live music.

Mountain View, Arkansas

Ozarks unplugged: pick, paddle, and roll

“WHEN YOU FIRST PULL into town,” says a woman who moved to Mountain View 20 years ago, “you just feel like you came back home.” Might be the human-scale topography of north-central Arkansas—rolling farmland mixed with steep sub-2,000-foot peaks and tall cliffs, prettified by blooming dogwoods and redbuds come springtime. Or it might be the down-home Ozarks mentality—especially the nightly impromptu pickin’ sessions on Mountain View’s courthouse square—which, on the hipness scale, registers somewhere between O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Hee Haw. You can hardly spit without hitting some grinning guy with a dulcimer.

OUTDOORS: Almost the entire 150 miles of the free-flowing Buffalo River, 35 miles west of town, are protected, and its fast currents (on upper stretches) and green pools flanked by sandstone bluffs (downstream) are perfect for lazy summer idylls. Anglers love the White River for its willing trout and bass, and the Ozark National Forest contains hundreds of miles of paths for pedalers and pedestrians, including the new Syllamo Mountain Bike Trail, 40 miles of roller-coaster hills and stream crossings (with 60 miles in the works).
REAL ESTATE: Houses of recent vintage, with rustic wood siding, average in the $100,000 to $130,000 range. Cedar cottages in the woods typically list for $60,000 and up.
HANGOUTS: Pinewood Cabins, within walking distance from downtown, oozes hand-hewn rusticity (doubles, $59–$110; 870-269-5900, ). Best place for a cappuccino: the Old Bay Cafe, right on Courtsquare. Best place for a real drink? In your room—Stone County is dry.

Silver City, New Mexico

You, too, can hide out in this outlaw town

best American towns Silver City, New Mexico

THERE ARE PLENTY OF 19th-century ghost towns in the untamed mountains and canyons of southwestern New Mexico, but Silver City isn’t one of them. It’s still thriving. Billy the Kid launched his criminal career here at age 15 by holding up a Chinese laundry. In 1904, a flood bisected the town; the 55-foot-deep, cottonwood-shaded arroyo of Big Ditch Park was once Main Street. The latest flood (more of a trickle, really) is of retirees and artists heading south to join the 1,700 full-time students of Western New Mexico University.

OUTDOORS: Geronimo was once holed up in the side canyons and steep terrain of what is now the 3.3-million-acre Gila National Forest, and it’s still a great place to vanish. About a quarter of the forest is designated wilderness, laced by more than 1,600 miles of hiking trails. Mountain bikers make tough singletrack ascents to the nearly 9,000-foot Continental Divide, and rafters, kayakers, and canoeists run a 32-mile section of the Gila River just north of town.
REAL ESTATE: The market is strong, with recently built adobes starting at around $180,000. Listings around $300,000 often include wooded acreage and views of the Gila.
HANGOUTS: The Palace Hotel, an 1882 Victorian with a skylit garden room on its top floor, is a fetching downtown throwback (doubles, $38–$62; 505-388-1811,Ěý). Bear Creek Cabins, 7.5 miles north of town, is a quieter alternative, nestled in the ponderosa pines at 7,000 feet. Diane’s Restaurant, opened in 1996 by a former Santa Fe pastry chef, provides friendly service and dishes like spanakopita, grilled lamb, duck breast, and four-layer chocolate cake.

Cedar Key, Florida

Even the fish here are on island time

best American towns Cedar Key, Florida

Florida’s sea cow, still seducing mariners

“AN IDEAL PLACE,” a visitor noted nearly 40 years ago, to “live in shorts, go to seed, and rock away warm afternoons on shadowy porches.” Little has changed since then, or since Cedar Key’s 1800s timber-and-fishing heyday. This island outpost three miles off the mainland—at the southern end of the state’s marshy-edged Big Bend—ought to trademark its łľ˛ąĂ±˛ą˛Ô˛ą pace and old-Florida vibe. Brown pelicans drowse on worn pilings, underemployed artists cast for redfish on the turtle grass flats, and sporadic migrations of Gainesville undergrads inevitably think they’re the first to discover the place.

OUTDOORS: Paddlers on the sparsely visited “Nature Coast” have more playgrounds than they can find hours for, timing the tides to make beach landings on the 13 islets of Cedar Keys National Wildlife Refuge, or meandering upcoast on the Big Bend Saltwater Paddling Trail, 105 miles of wild shore linked by primitive campsites. The clear waters of Manatee Springs State Park, on the mainland, draw wintertime snorkelers, cave divers, and swimmers scanning for the sea cows that early sailors, it’s said, mistook for mermaids—corpulent mermaids, that is: Some weigh as much as 3,000 pounds.
REAL ESTATE: Marshfront homes on stilts and two-story showpieces with proximity to the compact historic district fetch upwards of $280,000. For under $200,000, you get one of the last buildable lots or a tiny, seriously weather-beaten but quasi-charming artist’s shack.
HANGOUTS: Rent a room at the authentically funky 1859-built Island Hotel & Restaurant (doubles, $80–$135; 800-432-4640, ). The Island Room (no connection to the hotel) earns raves for its catch-of-the-day concoctions, like pecan-encrusted grouper with a sherry beurre blanc.

Lincolnville, Maine

The upside of the good life down east

best American towns Lincolnville, Maine

Ply your kayak where the mountains meet the sea

best American towns Lincolnville, Maine

WITH ITS ALLURING CONTRAST of mountains giving way to Penobscot Bay, on Maine’s jagged central coast, Lincolnville attracts people who could live anywhere: artists, writers, boatbuilders, and Silicon Valley icons like Ethernet inventor and 3Com founder Bob Metcalfe. Plus, you can take advantage of the highbrow cultural agenda in Camden, just ten minutes down Route 1: foreign-affairs and technology conferences, a refurbished opera house, and, for a real change of pace, a summer harp workshop.

OUTDOORS: Spectacular, expansive, and right outside the door. Camden Hills State Park, most of it within Lincolnville town limits, offers more than 30 miles of hiking and cross-country-skiing trails, some with Camden harbor views from atop 780-foot Mount Battie. The massive “ponds” (Norton, Coleman, Pitcher) are peaceful redoubts for swimming and canoeing. Possibilities for sea kayaking and day sailing are practically limitless; a $45 membership to the Maine Island Trail Association grants visitors access to the 325-mile waterway that links the coast with 48 islands, many of which have campsites.
REAL ESTATE: Anything on salt water fetches a high price (don’t bother looking for even a three-season cottage for less than $400,000); older farmhouses along the Atlantic Highway (a.k.a. Route 1) with a glimpse of ocean list for $175,000 to $350,000. Inland in Lincolnville Center, three-bedroom farmhouses on a couple of acres start at $175,000.
HANGOUTS: The Youngtown Inn, a restored 1810 farmhouse, sits in the Camden Hills just five minutes from the Lincolnville harbor (doubles, $110–$165; 800-291-8438, ). Tilt a glass of locally brewed Andy’s English Ale, summer or winter, at the waterside Whale’s Tooth Pub, on Lincolnville Beach.

Salida, Colorado

Where the Rockies get real

“NOW THIS,” BRAG THE SIGNS on highways “is Colorado.” Refugees from Front Range cities like Denver and Boulder are drawn to this oasis at 7,038 feet in the Upper Arkansas Valley, near the center of the state—as are the hordes who come to run the Arkansas River. The sweetly unpretentious town of Salida has a thriving arts scene, century-old crackerbox cottages, two whitewater play holes just steps from downtown, and a municipal pool filled with hot-spring water.

OUTDOORS: Courtesy of the mild banana-belt climate, locals can bike (on pavement and off), hike, fish, and paddle nearly year-round. The 148-mile Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area, punctuated by Class II–V drops, slices through Salida’s historic district. Northwest of town, the Sawatch Range boasts 15 fourteeners, more than a quarter of the state’s total, and hundreds of miles of hiking trails. Nearby Monarch Ski and Snowboard Area, at 11,961 feet, averages 30 feet of snow a year.
REAL ESTATE: Most properties fall somewhere between two poles: small, aging downtown fixer-uppers of 1,200 square feet or so, starting at around $150,000, and newly built custom homes on an acre (or two, or five) priced at $400,000 and up.
HANGOUTS: The River Run Inn (doubles, $100–$125; 800-385-6925, ), in an 1892 building, offers a great room with rolling library ladder, plus a quarter-mile of Arkansas riverbank. Laughing Ladies (euphemistically named after the prostitutes of Salida’s mining-and-railroad era) is the town’s finest restaurant, but the definitive gathering place is the Victoria (“the Vic”), a bar with pool tables and live music.

Georgetown, South Carolina

Hey y’all, it’s a southern thing

IT’S A TOSS UP trying to decide which is more astonishingly preserved: the downtown of South Carolina’s third-oldest municipality, bordered by the Sampit River, shaded by live oaks, and riddled with dozens of pre-Revolution buildings; the southern hospitality of the well-established families who live here; or the unspoiled natural riches nearby.

OUTDOORS: Five meandering rivers drain into Winyah Bay, providing weeks’ worth of canoeing or kayaking alongside alligators, egrets, and the remains of 18th-century rice plantations. And to the southwest, Francis Marion National Forest offers a quarter-million acres of lakes, rivers, and low country, threaded by the 42-mile Swamp Fox–Palmetto Hiking Trail and 40 miles of doubletrack on the Wambaw Cycle Trail.

REAL ESTATE: Colonials—some built before 1800—in the laid-back historic district start at $170,000, though at that price they may have issues (hello, dry rot!). Newer homes in outlying neighborhoods can run as high as $400,000 (for a gorgeous spread along the riverbank).
HANGOUTS: Harbor House, a three-story Georgian bed-and-breakfast of 1700s vintage, affords a pelican’s-eye view of the shrimpers and sailors docked along the Sampit River (doubles, $135–$175; 877-511-0101, ). At the Thomas Cafe, a lunch counter on Front Street that opened in 1928, choose from Cajun omelets, crawfish-cake sandwiches, and bread pudding with bourbon sauce.

Brattleboro, Vermont

Classic New England in every shade of green

best American towns Brattleboro, Vermont

Vermont’s got you covered: a bridge near Brattleboro.

best American towns Brattleboro, Vermont

A FAIR NUMBER OF PLACES are described as “a college town without a college,” but Brattleboro, in southeastern Vermont, fits the bill better than most. There’s the requisite 19th-century backdrop—spiring steeples, white-painted clapboards, stately maples—overlaid with a post-hippie capitalist vibe: handcrafty galleries, bookstores, a co-op spotlighting local cheesemakers, and lots of beards and fleece. Brattleboro’s bustling, but not so manic you forget you’re in Vermont.

OUTDOORS: It’s the classic New England hodgepodge. Downhill and cross-country skiing are within an hour’s drive, at Mount Snow, Haystack, and Stratton. Bikers ride the rolling loops in the Connecticut River Valley, the steep climbs into the Green Mountains, or a web of old logging roads and trails. The broad, flat Connecticut draws canoeists and kayakers, and twice a year, dam releases on the nearby West River create a whitewater rodeo ground a little less than three miles long.
REAL ESTATE: Nearly half the houses in town predate World War II. Buyers can get on board with a modest frame house for $150,000 to $180,000; plan on $250,000 for a Victorian with curb appeal.
HANGOUTS: The 1930s art deco Latchis Hotel is a downtown landmark (doubles, $55–$145; 802-254-6300, ). The West River Marina, with an outdoor deck overlooking its namesake creek, serves up burgers and steamed mussels to refueling river rats and cyclists.

Land Safely

How to Buy

Everybody dreams of owning a place to get away from it all. Since escapist fantasy isn’t always congruent with second-home-owner reality, we checked in with the experts for tips on buying smart.

NEVER BUY PROPERY SIGHT UNSEEN
“Considering what you’re investing in,” says Pam Long, a sales associate at Haines Real Estate, in Haines, Alaska, “it’s worth it to spend $300 to $600 on a plane ticket and pay a visit.”

WISE USE
Is this going to be an every-weekend escape or a twice-a-year vacation spot? “If you need to put renters in it to help pay the mortgage, you have to assess the market,” says Tom Kelly, co-author of How a Second Home Can Be Your Best Investment. “Is there enough of a population to supply long-term renters? Are there amenities for other vacationers?”

TALK TO NEIGHBORS
Your building inspector is not going to point out the sinsemilla operation two doors down. And your realtor may not come clean about the vast subdivision breaking ground next year. Don’t shy away from knocking on doors and asking questions about your future ‘hood. Is it safe? Quiet?

THE RIGHTS STUFF
Those 20 acres might look vacant during the walking tour, but others may have a right to use them for their own interests. Make sure the seller is asked to disclose any preexisting rights (such as water or mineral) on the title report.

NO RURAL REMORSE
“It’s still the wild, wild West out here,” says Charlie Parrish, owner of Evergreen Realty, in Sandpoint, Idaho. “When people start looking for something too far off the grid, I try to steer them back closer to town.” In some remote areas, he points out, municipal services aren’t available.

IF YOU BUILD IT
Floodplain designation can derail construction of your dream home, as can setbacks. “It’s worth the money to find out where you can and can’t build,” says Doris Hellermann, an agent with Pelican Realty, in Cedar Key, Florida.

WATCH THE WEATHER
Chances are, you timed your first trip when the weather was on its best behavior. Better find out what the conditions are like the rest of the year, especially in an extreme climate like Alaska. “It’s paradise here,” says Pam Long, in Haines, “but it’s not paradise for everybody.”

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THE INEXPLICABLE disappearance of Amy Wroe Bechtel, on July 24, 1997, near Lander, Wyoming, awakened the town’s close-knit outdoor community to a frightening realization: that a disturbed sociopath could be lurking in the trailside shadows.

On the morning of her disappearance, Bechtel, a 24-year-old runner and Olympic marathon hopeful, said goodbye to her husband, climber Steve Bechtel, and drove into town. The last verifiable sighting of her was in a local art gallery at about 2:30 p.m., wearing a yellow shirt, black shorts, and running shoes.


When Amy hadn’t returned home by 10 p.m., Steve called her parents to see if she was with them. She wasn’t. Shortly after, he called the sheriff’s office. Amy’s car was found at about 1 a.m. on Loop Road, which runs through the mountains of the Shoshone National Forest just outside of town. The car was unlocked, with the keys under Amy’s to-do list on the passenger seat. She had been planning a 10K race in the area, and it is suspected she was scoping out the course. Before dawn, a group of Steve and Amy’s friends began scouring the nearby woods but turned up nothing. As continued searches—involving horses, dogs, helicopters, the FBI, and the National Guard—came up empty, theories proliferated: She’d been a victim of a hit-and-run, and the driver had buried her body or sunk it in a nearby lake; she’d been attacked by a mountain lion or bear; or she had run away.


The authorities, faced with few other plausible options, began to focus on her husband. Steve Bechtel, now 33, says he was rock-climbing with friend Sam Lightner 75 miles north of town on the day Amy disappeared; Lightner backed up this alibi. But some, including Amy’s mother, JoAnne Wroe, continue to suspect that he may have been involved. Steve, who has never been charged, has steadfastly maintained his innocence and has remained active in ongoing efforts to find Amy. The most recent twist in the case is the pending trial of Dale Eaton, a Wyoming man accused of the 1988 sexual assault and murder of an 18-year-old Montana girl whose car was found buried on his property, north of Lander. Fremont County sheriff’s sergeant Roger Rizor, the lead investigator in the Bechtel case, has declined to comment until Eaton’s trial is resolved.


“None of us are ever going to have all of our questions answered,” Steve says. “That’s going to be a really hard thing to deal with for the rest of our lives.”


Amy’s mother disagrees. “We will find out,” Wroe says. “Whoever is responsible is going to make an error at some point that will lead us to answers.”

Stranded

Roanoke Colony vanishes forever

IN 1587, a group of 117 English colonists sailed to North America to establish a city on Chesapeake Bay but ended up on Roanoke, a small island near the Outer Banks of present-day North Carolina, stranded at the end of the summer with few supplies. Their governor, John White, returned to England with the ships that had brought them, promising to be back by spring. It took him three years.


When White finally returned, he found little trace of the former inhabitants except for a few abandoned cabins and the word CROATOAN carved into a tree. None of the colonists was ever seen again. The most plausible explanation is that some of the settlers traveled to a more hospitable island 50 miles south, while others crossed over to the mainland. Residents of Jamestown, established in 1607, heard tales of white people that had been massacred by Indians, or held by inland tribes as slaves; others reported seeing wild, blue-eyed children in the woods. But relentless research (four books on the mystery have been published recently) hasn’t turned up anything conclusive. Four hundred years later, America’s original missing-persons case is still its most mysterious.

Chainsaw Massacre

Accused tree-killer Grant Hadwin may still be armed and dangerous

THE QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS, a world biosphere reserve 60 miles off the coast of British Columbia, was home to the earth’s last giant golden spruce—a single specimen of Picea sitchensis “Aurea.” The tree had stood for 300 years, and was fast becoming the Queen Charlottes’ main tourist attraction. But Grant Hadwin had other plans for it. A former logger and gold miner known for erratic behavior, Hadwin ripped into the six-foot-diameter spruce with a chainsaw on January 20, 1997. Two days later the legendary tree toppled.


Hadwin, who immediately claimed responsibility for the act, sent a Unabomber-style rant to local papers, indicting “university-trained professionals” for “the destruction of life on this planet.” He was charged with criminal mischief and the illegal cutting of timber, and a trial date was set for February 18. But Hadwin, who left Prince Rupert Harbor on a stormy February 13 in his kayak, never made it to court. Four months later, pieces of his smashed boat were found on an island 70 miles north of Prince Rupert. Investigators at the time believed the wreck couldn’t have been more than a month old. Hadwin could have capsized in the water or been killed in his kayak by enraged locals. But it’s equally plausible that he paddled up the coast, went ashore, and then set his boat adrift. He was a competent woodsman and would have had no problem traveling inland through the bush and back into mainland civilization anonymously. (Some speculate that Hadwin was involved in the 2000 chainsaw vandalism of Luna, the redwood tree that Julia Butterfly Hill made famous.)


Back in the Queen Charlottes, local Haida Indians took cuttings from the golden spruce and planted one of the saplings in a park. It is surrounded by a chain-link fence topped by barbed wire—in case Hadwin ever returns.

Escape Artist

How one man faked his death—twice

ALL MILTON HARRIS wanted was to disappear—permanently. A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Harris faked his own death twice in an attempt to collect on nearly $3 million in life insurance policies, and then fell off the face of the earth for the (presumably) final time in 1995.


His first vanishing act was staged on a ferry off the coast of South Australia, where in May 1985 he jumped from the deck en route from Adelaide to Kangaroo Island. Reportedly, Harris was sitting on the seafloor breathing from a concealed oxygen canister when found by a 70-year-old retired police officer who had jumped in to save him. Four days later, Harris turned up in New Zealand, where he paid a young hitchhiker to help him disappear again. This time, Harris slipped off a New Zealand ferry as it departed. Once the boat reached open water, his accomplice shouted, “Man overboard!” and threw a life buoy with Oscar-worthy enthusiasm. Harris was gone.


Four years later, Harris was picked up by New Zealand police in Auckland, sent to the U.S., and sentenced to five years in prison for insurance fraud. Three years after his early release in 1992, he went missing again. “The authorities gave up searching for him,” says Harris’s sister, who wishes to remain anonymous. “It’s one of those things that you’ll always wonder about: Was there foul play, or did he pull another disappearing act?”

One Giant Leap

With $200,000 strapped to his body, D. B. Cooper stepped out the back of a plane and into history

AT 2:53 P.M. on November 24, 1971, a tall, nondescript man boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle. Five hours later, with $200,000 in ransom money tied to his waist, he parachuted out the back of the Boeing 727 into the dense forests of southern Washington—and into the pantheon of folk heroes.


The man gave the alias Dan Cooper when he bought his ticket (an erroneous news report supplied the name D. B., which stuck). Wearing sunglasses and a dark suit, he found a seat in an unoccupied row. As the plane was taking off, he passed the flight attendant a note stating that he had a bomb in the briefcase on his lap and demanding $200,000 in small bills and four parachutes when they landed in Seattle. When his demands were met, Cooper released the passengers and directed the pilot to take off toward Mexico at an altitude below 10,000 feet and a speed of less than 200 miles per hour. Shortly after 8 p.m., Cooper ordered the flight attendants into the cockpit, put on two of the parachutes, lowered the aft staircase, and stepped out into the stormy night somewhere near the Washington-Oregon state line. To this day, it stands as the world’s only unsolved skyjacking.


Despite one of the most extensive manhunts in FBI history, agents found no body or parachute and never determined the hijacker’s real identity. Meanwhile, Cooper was rumored to be drowned in the Columbia River, dead and eaten by animals in the forest, laundering his cash in Reno or Las Vegas, or alive in New York, Florida, or Mexico. People came forward with skulls, deathbed confessions, and tales of a man who looked like the FBI’s composite sketch, but none of it ever amounted to anything. Cooper’s legend blossomed, inspiring a 1981 movie, The Pursuit of D. B. Cooper, with Treat Williams in the title role. In 1978, a hunter in Washington found a plastic placard that was verified to be from the rear stairs of the 727. In 1980, an eight-year-old boy playing in the sand on the banks of the Columbia River unearthed $5,880 of Cooper’s loot. Those 294 bills are the only part of the ransom that has ever surfaced, and they seem to lend credence to retired FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach’s less than romantic version of what really happened.


“Most likely he was injured on impact,” says Himmelsbach, who worked on the case from 1971 to 1980 and posits that Cooper died by the side of a creek. “And then later, the creek overflowed and carried him and the money downstream, where the money was found.”


Sounds logical, but logic never killed a folk hero. The most recent fuel for the fire comes in the form of Duane Weber, a 70-year-old Florida man who, as he was dying in 1995, confessed to his wife that he was Dan Cooper. His widow, Jo Weber, contacted the FBI. She began to wonder about some of Duane’s strange behavior—like the 1978 nightmare in which a sleep-talking Duane said something about fingerprints on the aft stairs, or the 1979 vacation to Washington during which Duane walked down to the banks of the Columbia by himself just four months before the portion of Cooper’s cash was found in the same area.


“If Duane was not Cooper, someone will have to explain a lot of things to me,” says Weber. “It is a story with so many coincidences that it defies the odds.”


The FBI recently visited Weber’s Florida home and removed gloves, an electric shaver, and hair samples, presumably for the purpose of extracting Duane’s DNA to compare with that extracted from cigarette butts that the hijacker left behind. The FBI has confirmed that the case is still open, and will remain so indefinitely.

Gold Fever Dreams

Buried treasure beckons on the Atlantic coast

OVER THE PAST TWO centuries, six men have died in the Money Pit on Nova Scotia’s Oak Island, site of the world’s most famous treasure hunt. Legend has it that when the Pit claims its seventh life, the treasure will be revealed.


The Pit—which has lured FDR, John Wayne, and Errol Flynn to the hunt—has been variously rumored to hold the loot of Captain Kidd and Blackbeard, the crown jewels of France, and the Holy Grail. In 1795, as the story goes, three local teenagers discovered the shaft and eventually dug to a depth of 90 feet, encountering a stone that supposedly told of a treasure buried another 40 feet down. At 93 feet, they struck a booby trap that filled the cavern with water from the sea.


The Pit has now been explored to more than 200 feet, with little to show for it but several links of a gold chain and persistent rumors of a severed human hand and a preserved corpse deep inside. According to professional skeptic Joe Nickell, who has debunked mysteries from the Shroud of Turin to Jack the Ripper’s diary, the shaft and the flood tunnel are natural features in the region’s porous limestone geology. “Instead of asking, ‘What might this fabulous treasure be?’ we should be asking, ‘What treasure?'” says Nickell. “If it sounds too good to be true, maybe it is.”


Or maybe not.

No One Knows

Was 20-year-old Everett Ruess a suicide, murder victim, or something else?

“WHEN THE TIME COMES to die,” wrote 18-year-old Everett Ruess in a letter in 1932, “I’ll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is.” No one could have predicted it would happen so soon. In November 1934, just shy of his 21st birthday, Ruess left home and never came back. It was the end of a long, strange journey he’d begun four years earlier.


In 1930 Ruess, a dough-faced boy from Los Angeles with dreams of becoming a painter, set off alone into the Sierras with a set of watercolors, a camera, and a journal. A peripatetic loner, he ranged through the Sierras and later the Four Corners region, sending home paintings and ecstatic letters describing the natural world—an ebullience that contradicted his darker musings. Ruess’s story bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Chris McCandless, the 24-year-old wanderer who died in the Alaskan wilderness in 1992. (Jon Krakauer devotes a large section to Ruess’s story in Into the Wild.) Like McCandless, Ruess was charismatic and self-confident but also exhibited extreme mood swings. He dodged practical concerns—money, work, or parental expectations—that interfered with his free-spirited ramblings. Each year Ruess pushed deeper into the wilderness. When he hit Utah’s rugged Escalante country in November 1934, the letters home stopped. Three months later, his burros, a bridle and halter, and candy wrappers were found in Davis Gulch, an offshoot of Escalante Canyon. Searchers followed Ruess’s footprints out of the gorge, but the tracks disappeared at the base of the Kaiparowits Plateau. The only other clue was the word NEMO—Latin for “no one”—scratched into a rock and an old native dwelling in Davis Gulch.


Neither Ruess’s body nor any conclusive evidence of his fate has been found, spawning endless speculation. It has been suggested that he was murdered by a Navajo named Jack Crank, who supposedly hated whites. Others are convinced that he was killed by cattle rustlers. Then there’s the possibility he committed suicide, and left the NEMO carving as his farewell note. In 1999, the excavation of a mound thought to be Ruess’s grave, near Hole-in-the-Rock, Utah, was discovered to be nothing but a pile of dirt.


W. L. Rusho, author of Everett Ruess: A Vagabond for Beauty, doubts Ruess made it out of Escalante alive, and guesses that the lad fell while climbing or got himself trapped in a side canyon. “It’s very doubtful at this time that anyone could find Ruess’s remains,” says Rusho. “I think Everett’s fate will always be a mystery.”

Without a Trace

The mountain gods swallow another life

ON JULY 8, 1999, Bronx-born journalist Joe Wood hiked up to Mount Rainier National Park’s Mildred Point Trail. A 34-year-old African-American editor for a New York book publisher, Wood was in Seattle for a minority journalists’ conference when he decided to spend a day bird-watching. He was not a novice in the outdoors—he’d been an Eagle Scout—but he may not have been prepared for conditions in the park. Rainier had received the fifth-heaviest snowfall in its history, and the six-mile hike was lined with tree wells and treacherous snow bridges.


On the trail, Wood encountered Bruce Gaumond, a retired Boeing employee who came forward after he heard that Wood was missing. Gaumond told the National Park Service that the two had chatted briefly about birds, the length of the trail, and a dicey creek crossing ahead. Wood was never seen again. Did he fall into the creek or stumble off a snowy cliff? The Park Service thinks so, but Wood’s mother, Elizabeth, is not so sure. She remains haunted by the possibility that some kind of foul play may have occurred. Searchers scoured the area for five days, but a warm spell had melted the snow, obscuring Wood’s tracks. When a final search in September 1999 turned up nothing, Joe Wood was listed as the 65th person to disappear on Rainier.

An Untimely End

A photographer turned up dead in placid Isabella Lake, and there’s no explanation

ADVENTURE PHOTOGRAPHER Barry Tessman survived a lot during his ten-year career behind the lens—two years in Siberia; ventures in Tibet, India, and Pakistan; and Class V torrents from China to northern Canada. But it was on a cold, calm day, on a glassy lake he’d paddled hundreds of times, that Tessman met his fate.


At 7:30 a.m. on January 16, 2001, Tessman, 41, a Class V river guide, backcountry ski patroller, and trained EMT, loaded his 19-foot Phantom racing kayak onto his truck and set out for the North Fork Marina for an hourlong flatwater workout on Isabella Lake, near his home in Kernville, California. By 10:30 a.m. he had not returned, and his wife, Joy, seven months pregnant with their second child, called Tom Moore, Tessman’s friend of 20 years, to find out if he’d seen him. Moore had not, but promised to check the marina. Using binoculars, he spotted Tessman’s kayak floating in the middle of the lake with its paddle stowed, but Barry was nowhere in sight. A 50-person sweep of the lake turned up no sign of the missing paddler. Then, on February 18, a Kern County park ranger discovered Tessman’s body floating near Boulder Gulch, three-quarters of a mile from where his kayak had been found. The official cause of death was drowning, but a second autopsy showed that Tessman had also suffered blunt-force trauma to the head, raising the disturbing specter of foul play, and prompting his family to post a $20,000 reward for information about the case.


No one has stepped forward, and investigators at the Kern County Sheriff’s Department have deemed Tessman’s death an accident, while admitting to a lack of evidence. “We are no closer than we were the day his body was discovered,” says Moore. “All the different theories we’ve come up with have gaping holes in them.”


It’s possible that Tessman flipped his boat and somehow cracked his head on an exposed rock, but that wouldn’t explain why his paddle was stowed. He may have gone ashore to scout photo locations on Rocky Point, fallen, hit his head, and then slipped into the water. And then there is the more troubling scenario: Was he a victim of a random act of violence?


Tessman’s death may never be fully explained, leaving his loved ones to grapple with the mystery. “Maybe they needed a photographer up in heaven,” says Moore. “That’s the only peace I can make of it.”

Forever Wild

We don’t know where Edward Abbey is buried. Maybe it’s better that way.

“THE LAST TIME ED SMILED was when I told him where he was going to be buried,” says Doug Peacock, an environmental crusader in Edward Abbey’s inner circle and the prototype for Abbey’s most famous character, George Hayduke, in The Monkey Wrench Gang. On March 14, 1989, the day Abbey died from esophageal bleeding at 62, Peacock, along with friends Jack Loeffler, Tom Cartwright, and Steve Prescott, wrapped Abbey’s body in his blue sleeping bag, packed it with dry ice, and loaded Cactus Ed into Loeffler’s Chevy pickup. After stopping at a liquor store in Tucson for five cases of beer, and some whiskey to pour on the grave, they drove off into the desert. The men searched for the right spot the entire next day and finally turned down a long rutted road, drove to the end, and began digging. That night they buried Ed and toasted the life of America’s prickliest and most outspoken environmentalist.


Abbey’s grave, a closely guarded secret for 13 years, has become a legend. His friends broke several laws by transporting Abbey’s corpse without a permit, interring him illegally on federal land, and forging a death certificate. Ed would have been proud. Peacock and Loeffler, both of whom have written about the backcountry funeral, refuse to spill the beans, saying only that Abbey’s grave is somewhere in the southwestern Arizona desert, decorated with feathers, shells, rocks, and other trinkets. There is a rough epitaph hewn into a nearby rock. It is, according to friends, one of the most beautiful and fragile spots in the American desert—a good reason why Peacock and his undertakers hope to keep the secret forever.


If by chance you find yourself in southwestern Arizona and accidentally stumble upon a decorated mound of dirt, avert your eyes, take a swig of whiskey, and head in the opposite direction. Some mysteries are best left unsolved.

It’s Weird Out There

From Sasquatch to the Mothman, our writer takes on the supernatural

Paranormal mysteries are rarely solved; they’re just tarnished by schlocky film adaptations. Mel Gibson’s performance in Signs couldn’t stop the centuries-old CROP-CIRCLE phenomenon, in which large-scale patterns mysteriously flatten sections of wheat fields and other crops. Teenage pranksters claimed responsibility for the 15 interconnected circles that turned up in June in a wheat field near Fairfield, California, but true believers (known as “croppies”) suspect aliens at work…. SASQUATCH, the hairy North American man-beast still reeling from the box-office stinker Harry and the Hendersons, took another one on the chin last December. That’s when the son of Northern California logger Ray Wallace announced that his pop had punked the world by faking the footprints that spawned the modern Bigfoot legend, in 1958. Ray died a few days before the announcement…. Meanwhile, the Brits keep hunting for Big Shaggy’s snowbound Himalayan cousin, THE YETI. Scientists were baffled by the DNA in so-called yeti hair discovered by a British expedition in Bhutan two years ago. “It is not a human, not a bear, nor anything else we have been able to identify,” said Bryan Sykes, of Oxford University’s Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine. “We have never encountered DNA that we couldn’t recognize before.”… Nobody’s filmed the MOVING ROCKS IN DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK yet, although creeping boulders would have livened up Matt Damon’s 2002 wander-in-the-desert snoozer, Gerry. The rocks, some as heavy as 700 pounds, inexplicably move across a region of the park known as Racetrack Valley, leaving long trails on the hard desert floor. One theory holds that rainstorm runoff saturates the ground, making it slippery and allowing heavy gales to push the rocks. Another says a thin coating of ice might move those big boys…. Richard Gere’s recent thriller The Mothman Prophecies hasn’t inspired any new sightings of the MOTHMAN, the bizarre seven-foot-tall, winged apparition that haunted the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in 1967. Perhaps Mothy moved south and mutated into EL CHUPACABRA, the feared Latin American goat-sucker that’s said to resemble a fanged kangaroo with wings. Chupa began draining the blood of goats, chickens, and rabbits in Puerto Rico in 1995. Since then, reports of Chupa have come from Mexico and Central and South America. Some believe the critter was born of a NASA genetic-tinkering experiment gone horribly awry. The Chilean news agency EFE quoted a Chilean architect as saying, “The gringos had at least three genetic experiments run away from them.” Calling Hollywood: Can we get a Chupa biopic in development already?

Enduring Enigmas

These classic cases have stumped investigators for years—and perhaps always will

AMEILA EARHART

The 39-year-old aviator disappeared in the central Pacific on July 2, 1937, near the end of her 29,000-mile around-the-world flight. Neither her body nor her plane was ever found. Were Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, U.S. spies, and were they captured by the Japanese? Was Earhart the voice of WWII radio broadcaster Tokyo Rose? According to American explorer Dave Jourdan, who’s planning a two-month 2004 expedition to search for the missing aircraft, the truth is much more mundane: Earhart likely ran out of gas and drowned when her plane crashed into the ocean.


JOHNNY WATERMAN

Waterman proved his alpine skills with a five-month first ascent of Alaska’s 14,573-foot Mount Hunter in 1978. But as Jonathan Waterman (no relation) reported in his 1994 book In the Shadow of Denali, Johnny’s behavior became increasingly erratic after that climb. On April 1, 1981, 28-year-old Waterman attempted a solo first ascent of the east face of Alaska’s 20,320-foot Mount McKinley. Witnesses say he carried very little food and gear when he started up McKinley. Did Waterman slip into a crevasse, or did he deliberately die on the mountain—as his father, Guy, would do 19 years later, freezing to death on New Hampshire’s Mount Lafayette? GLEN AND BESSIE HYDE

The Idaho newlyweds were last seen walking down a Grand Canyon trail toward the Colorado River in November 1928. A month later, their wooden scow was found floating right side up at the western end of the Canyon, sans the Hydes. In 1971, a client on a Grand Canyon rafting trip claimed that she was Bessie Hyde, and that she had murdered her husband on the river years earlier. But Canyon locals long suspected that river guide Georgie White was the real Bessie; the Hydes’ marriage certificate was said to be in her possession when she died in 1991.


CHRISTOPHER MCCANDLESS

McCandless headed into the Alaska wilderness in April 1992 to live off the land. Four months later, hunters found the 24-year-old dead outside of Denali National Park. As chronicled in Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book Into the Wild, McCandless likely died of starvation. Journal entries indicate that he’d become too weak—possibly after eating poisonous seeds of the wild sweet pea—to continue foraging. But the question still remains: Was McCandless simply naive, or did he have a death wish? “If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again,” he wrote to a friend before his trip, “I want you to know you’re a great man. I now walk into the wild.”

Case Closed?

After years of investigation, these fatal mysteries—from a trailside murder to the fate of a missing snowboarder—are now filed under “solved”

DRY CRIME
THE CASE: Best friends Raffi Kodikian, 25, of Pennsylvania, and David Coughlin, 26, of Massachusetts, got lost while hiking in the arid canyonlands of southern New Mexico’s Carlsbad Caverns National Park in August 1999. When park rangers found their campsite four days later—just a mile from the trailhead—Coughlin was dead, and Kodikian confessed to killing him.
THE LATEST: At a May 2000 trial, Kodikian claimed that after several days without water, both men had become dehydrated and delusional. When Coughlin allegedly begged to be put out of his misery, Kodikian obliged and stabbed him twice in the chest with a folding pocketknife. Kodikian served 18 months for second-degree murder in a New Mexico prison and was released in November 2001.


MOUNTAIN MANHUNT
THE CASE: In 1998, when federal investigators fingered Eric Rudolph in a series of bombings—including the 1996 incident that killed one and injured scores more at the Atlanta Olympics—the 31-year-old carpenter headed deep into the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina. The feds combed the Nantahala National Forest on foot, with bloodhounds and heat- and motion-detector-equipped helicopters, but the wily Rudolph eluded capture for nearly five years.
THE LATEST: In May, a rookie cop busted Rudolph digging through a dumpster in Murphy, North Carolina. The grizzled survivalist has pleaded innocent to charges of bombing an Alabama abortion clinic. He’ll go on trial in early 2004.


TRAIL OF TERROR
THE CASE: Hikers Lollie Winans, 26, of Maine, and Julianne Williams, 24, of Vermont, were found bound, gagged, and stabbed to death at their creekside campsite near the Appalachian Trail in Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park in June 1996. The FBI interviewed thousands of locals and hikers, to no avail—and anxiety levels in the area soared.
THE LATEST: After nearly five years of investigation, in April 2001, federal prosecutors charged Darrell David Rice—a Virginia prison inmate serving 11 years for attempting to abduct a female cyclist in Shenandoah National Park in July 1997—with the 1996 AT murders. His trial is scheduled to begin October 20.


MISSING SNOWBOARDER
THE CASE: Twenty-three-year-old Duncan MacPherson, a professional hockey player from Saskatchewan, took a beginner’s snowboarding lesson at Austria’s Stubaier Glacier resort on August 9, 1989. Afterward, he had lunch with an instructor and got on a nearby chairlift. MacPherson’s car was found later in the resort’s parking lot, but he was never heard from again.
THE LATEST: In July 2003, a Stubaier resort employee found MacPherson’s frozen and partially buried body near a chairlift, at 9,800 feet. An autopsy is pending at press time.

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Late fall in Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area

Q: Do you have ideas for great backpacking trails in the Flaming Gorge area of Wyoming? We will be with two children (eight and ten years old). Thanks!


— Luckey,
Avon, Connecticut




şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Advisor:

A: On the Wyoming side of Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, the backpacking routes are cross-country rambles through red rock canyons and badlands—not the kind of landscape that’s likely to impress an eight-year-old. What I’d recommend instead is heading across the border to Utah, where the other side of Flaming Gorge has clearly marked trails that lead to comfortable, shady camping spots with plenty of water (and fishing) nearby. The area around Brownie Lake is a great option. From Manila, take Highway 44 south to the bottom of the Sheep Creek Geological Loop and follow the signs to the lake. There’s a parking lot at trailhead #017. For maps and info call the district ranger’s office: 435-784-3445.


For a Wyoming adventure that’s not so kid-friendly, you should try the Popo Agie Wilderness in the southern Wind River Mountains. There’s a weeklong backpacking loop that follows the Popo Agie River to Wind River Peak (13,192 feet). After rock-hopping your way to a popular waterfall, you’ll walk through meadows to trout-filled alpine lakes that sit in the shadow of the surrounding peaks. The route ends with a cross-country, non-technical climb to the summit. For maps and info contact the Washakie Ranger District in Lander: 307-332-5460.

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Gatorade was on sale at Safeway for 89 cents a 32-ounce bottle, and Mr. D’s, just along Main, had knocked down country-style ribs to $1.39 a pound. The school district and the Gannett Grill needed cooks. It was Thursday, July 24, 1997, in Lander, Wyoming, and the twice-weekly State Journal had thunked onto porches the afternoon before. Its lead story: Police Chief Dick Currah was pressing the city council to crack down on street parties. Jesse Emerson of the Spirit Freedom Ministries would speak that evening about family alcoholism and drugs. Here was a one-bedroom apartment for rent: $350 plus utilities. No pets. Someone in northern California wanted a nanny. By midafternoon, thermometers would crawl toward ninety. It would be lip-cracking dry, under a ferociously blue sky. Clouds big as counties would bunch up to the northeast, where the Owl Creek Mountains meet the Bighorns, and just west, in the Wind River Range, Lander’s backyard. They might shape themselves into massive anvils and shoot lightning down to the high plains. Or they might just light up gold as the sun fell away and be gone by morning.

To all appearances, it was going to be a spectacularly ordinary high-summer day.

What happened instead was something strange and nightmarish, the kind of nightmare that begins with innocuous moments that become harrowing only in hindsight. A casual good-bye kiss. Three quick glances at a wristwatch. A cheery wave.

It would be the day that a Lander resident named Amy Wroe Bechtel—24 years old, five-foot-six and 110 pounds, Olympic marathon hopeful, amateur photographer, friend, employee, daughter, sister, wife—fell off the face of the earth.

At the northwestern edge of Lander, past the Toyota dealership, on a rise above the tidy town, ten identical frame houses face the Wind River Range. Small and scraped-looking—former company houses from some gone-bust outfit in Rock Springs—they line one side of a street called Lucky Lane. The residents, many of them, are young, ardent, competitive rock climbers. An intense little bohemia of mountain-town athletes.

Todd Skinner, their de facto captain, lives in number ten with his wife, Amy Whisler, also a climber. Skinner, 39, has led four of the most notable first free ascents of recent years: Half Dome’s northwest face, the SalathĂ« Wall of El Capitan, Proboscis in the Yukon, and the Nameless Tower in Pakistan’s Karakoram Range. Mike Lilygren, who accompanied Skinner on that 1995 Pakistan climb, lived last summer in number seven. (He recently moved in with his girlfriend down in town.) Skinner’s sister Holly lives in number eight. And until July 24, Amy Wroe Bechtel lived with her husband, Steve, one of Skinner’s Half Dome and Nameless Tower partners, in number nine.

In the early nineties, the rock climbers began to arrive in Lander, drawn by some of the most difficult walls in America. An intense little bohemia of mountain-town athletes—young, ardent, and competitive—lived on Lucky Lane, among them Steve and Amy Bechtel.

When they woke on that morning, Steve and Amy faced a busy schedule. They had the day off from Wild Iris Mountain Sports, the local outdoor equipment store where both had part-time jobs. Steve’s plan was to drive with his yellow lab, Jonz, to Dubois, 75 miles north, meet his friend Sam Lightner, and scout some possible new climbing routes at Cartridge Creek.
Amy drove her white Toyota Tercel station wagon to the Wind River Fitness Center, another of her part-time employers, and taught an hour-and-a-half kids’ class in weight training. She was upbeat, says owner Dudley Irvine, though “a little high-strung because she had a lot to do.”

Indeed. Three days earlier, Amy and Steve had closed on a new house a mile toward the center of town from Lucky Lane, and she was busy organizing a 10k hill climb, scheduled for September 7. The runners would puff up a series of switchbacks not far out of town and then jump into Frye Lake and finish up with a picnic.

Her to-do list was long: run & lift, recycling, call phone co., electric, gas, insurance, get photo mounted or matted, flyers for race, get more boxes, mow lawn, call Ed, close road?, have Karn do drawing.

We know this: Amy taught the fitness class and picked up the center’s recycling. She contacted the phone and electric companies. She stopped in at the Camera Connection on Main and asked owner John Strom about several photographs she planned to submit in a competition.

She was 11 days short of her 25th birthday, 13 months into her marriage—a radiant young athlete, small, lithe, determined, thoughtful, even-tempered, trusting. That’s the capsule description and it varies not a whit, whether the describer is an acquaintance, like Strom, or a family member, or a close friend.

Strom, reserved and bespectacled, remembers that Amy was in running togs: yellow shirt, black shorts, running shoes. That she seemed cheerful and busy. That he sent her to the framing shop upstairs to see about matting. That it was midafternoon.

She talked with Greg Wagner at Gallery 331 about her photos. He says that in the course of 20 minutes or so, she looked at her watch two or three times. She left the store. Call it 2:30.

At this point, while quotidian life went one direction in Lander—while the shopper at Safeway reached for discount Gatorade and the fisherman eyed the gathering clouds and the golfer double-bogied the difficult fourth hole at the local municipal and Jesse Emerson rehearsed that evening’s presentation—life for Amy went another.

At this point, everything about Amy Wroe Bechtel—her movements, her well-being, her very existence—becomes subject to speculation.

Lander is one of those pleasant, historically undistinguished western towns that borrows most of its reputation from what it is near and what it is not. It is 7,500 souls living a mile above sea level. Butch Cassidy was once arrested here. Its most famous resident was an old buckaroo, Stub Farlow, whose image atop a sunfishing bronc adorns Wyoming’s license plates.

What it is near is the spectacular eastern front of the Wind River Range—fierce, sharp peaks that give onto gentler ones that give, in turn, onto the oceanic high plains. It is terrain of such starkly heroic proportions that it can make other American vistas—the silo-anchored fields of the Midwest, the nubby Appalachians, even the punched-up Pacific Coast Ranges—seem like the Land of Toys.

And what is Lander not? It’s not rich-thick Jackson, 160 road- miles northwest—though like many small western towns with a view, it fears it may become that. Landerites cast wary glances at Jackson’s log palaces, its sleek fleets of celebrities and wannabes and wealthy kids who fall from the sky in western costumes and $300 haircuts for some quality mountain time.

But truth be told, that’s a transmutation Lander won’t have to worry about any time soon. It has no downhill ski area and no prospect of one. Its snowfall, relative to much of the mountainous West, is sporadic and undependable, and its periodic winds are the kind of hellers that make it sad to go outside. (“Due to high winds please return carts to corral in parking lot,” pleads a sign outside the Safeway.) Fishing is fine, but hardly world-class. Hunting is seasonal. Snowmobilers have been part of things for a long time, and the hipness quotient, measured in the New West by the ratio of cappuccino to Folgers, is negligible. The modest Magpie is still the only sit-down coffeehouse in town.

What else is Lander not, besides Jackson? It is not the gritty, extractive, assault-and-battery West of, say, Rock Springs. Or the university-town West that is Laramie. Or the strafed and struggling Indian West of the Wind River Reservation, just north of town.

Lander was the original home of High Country News, the feisty biweekly environmental newspaper (it moved to Colorado in the early eighties). In 1965, the National Outdoor Leadership School, which trains about 2,800 students each year in outdoor skills, was established in Lander. A few years before that, prosperity had descended on Lander in the form of a U.S. Steel iron-ore mine. In 1985, increasing foreign imports and other economic woes, so said U.S. Steel, prompted the company to pull out, putting 550 people out of work. The streets were suddenly dense with For Sale signs.

Lander, however, took stock. Regrouped. Hired some crackerjack community resource personnel and realized that its big selling points were its size, its civility, and its proximity to forest, wilderness, and mountains. NOLS stayed and prospered. The town promoted itself as a friend of small business. It aggressively advertised for “vigorous retirees.” It expanded the golf course. It upgraded and modernized its sewer and water systems and remodeled Main Street with tasteful streetlamps, flower boxes, and litter baskets.

In the early nineties, the rock climbers began to arrive, drawn by some of the most accessible and difficult walls in America—notably the two-mile-wide dolomite, sandstone, and granite cliffs of Sinks Canyon, nine miles from town, and a higher area known as Wild Iris, with its 200 bleach-white climbing routes (featuring difficulty ratings from 5.9 to 5.14), 26 miles from town.

Business is good now, based mostly on recreation and light industry; growth is steady and calm. Lander keeps its boots shined and its troubles to itself.

The town’s resident climbers—perhaps two-thirds of them male, most of them from west of the Mississippi—are a furiously healthy, adrenalinized, unironic group. They describe themselves as factionless middle-roaders of the sport—not the somber Brahmins, forever talking about how it used to be done, and not the young punks who scramble up the rock walls, headphones blasting, knocking a cliff all to hell in search of a few kicks.

The Lucky Lane bunch appears to waste little time on bad habits or generalized angst. Any outright oddnesses or furies seem to get channeled into climbing, and what’s left over is small-town camaraderie (potlucks, fireworks on the Fourth), lots of rock-talk, and the edgeless high jinks of a platoon in the movies, of the spirited kids on the team bus. They tend to keep their doors unlocked and share equipment, climbing plans, social lives, workplaces. Skinner and Whisler are part owners of Wild Iris, the outdoor-gear store where Amy and Steve Bechtel and Mike Lilygren were on the payroll, and they own the house that Steve and Amy were renting. (Steve also works as a sales rep for DMM, a climbing hardware company, and for Stone Monkey action wear.)

At times, the in-without-knocking, post-collegiate communalism wore against Amy’s need for privacy and order, according to Jo Anne Wroe, her mother. She wanted a home of her own and couldn’t wait to move into the crisp ranch-style house they had just bought—an in-town place with flowers, a lawn, space for a darkroom. In fact, Amy’s original plan for July 24 was to drive three hours north to her parents’ home in Powell, Wyoming, to pick up furniture that her father, Duane, had been refinishing for the young couple.

Jo Anne remembers that Amy called the night before and said, “Would you feel really bad if I didn’t come tomorrow? I’ve got about a million things to do, and it’s my only day off.” Jo Anne, her voice taut, adds, “Later I thought, Why didn’t we just make her come that day? Those ‘almost’ moments. They’re the things you think about.”

Steve Bechtel says he returned from his rendezvous with Sam Lightner about 4:30 that afternoon to find the house empty. He and Amy were not in the habit of leaving notes about their whereabouts, and anyway, Steve had returned earlier than he’d planned. No reason for alarm. After a bit, he spoke with Todd Skinner and Amy Whisler next door, but they hadn’t seen Amy since midday. He turned down an invitation to go for pizza with some of the Lucky Lane bunch, and waited. Had she gone climbing? No, her gear was still in the house. Had she gone to take some photographs? No, her camera was in the house. Her jeans and T-shirt were on the bedroom floor, and her running shoes were gone.

At about 10 P.M., he called her parents to see if perhaps Amy had driven there on the spur of the moment. When they asked him if anything was wrong, Steve, who later said that he was starting to worry at this point, replied with a casual white lie: “No.”

Skinner and Whisler had gone to the 8:45 P.M. showing of Con Air, and they arrived home around 11 to find that Amy still wasn’t back. By this time, Steve had called the Fremont County sheriff’s office, which sent two deputies to the house, alerted the night shift, and began to organize a search-and-rescue team to head out at daybreak. Skinner and Whisler, meanwhile, went to look for Amy’s car. They drove downtown, turned right at the Safeway, and followed what’s known locally as the Loop Road, a 30-mile affair through the Shoshone National Forest.

At about one in the morning, Whisler used her cell phone to call Steve: They had found Amy’s white Toyota Tercel station wagon at a place called Burnt Gulch, up in the mountains about 45 minutes from town. The car was unlocked. The keys were under Amy’s to-do list on the passenger seat, next to her $120 sunglasses. Her wallet was not in the car. Nothing—except Amy’s absence and the wallet’s absence (she never carried it running)—seemed awry. It was as if she had simply parked the car and stepped away for a breath of night air.

Steve and his friend Kirk Billings grabbed lanterns, a sleeping bag, and matches and drove to Burnt Gulch. The little group arrowed flashlights past tree trunks, into blurry undergrowth. They called and called Amy’s name, were answered with wind through the trees. They summoned more searchers.

Long before dawn and the arrival of the official search party, a dozen friends were looking for Amy-with-a-sprained-ankle, Amy-with-a-broken-leg, or Amy-attacked-by-a-bear. No attempt was made to preserve the integrity of what would later be presumed to be a crime scene. This was merely a lost runner. “I expected her to come stumbling out of the woods,” said Billings. In retrospect, that assumption would seem disastrously naive.

Certain couples can look to outsiders like some platonic combination of health, beauty, and uncomplication. There is Amy in their wedding photo, smiling serenely, almost remotely—as if she’s listening to a happy story she’s heard before. Her pale blond hair is a shiny cap, her skin golden, her carriage slim and erect, her dress a simple, sleeveless column of white.

And there is Steve, strong-jawed and smoothly handsome in a tuxedo. And shorts. And Tevas. He’s the cut-up, the counterpoint.

Steve and Amy met at the University of Wyoming in Laramie in December 1991, took exercise physiology classes together in the spring, and were dating by the fall of 1992.

Amy is the youngest of four closely spaced siblings, allies and friends during their growing-up years. Their father, Duane Wroe, 66, is a retired city administrator—intelligent, gaunt, testy, chain-smoking, a former big-time drinker (he gave it up 20 years ago). The family moved to Jackson in 1973, not long after Amy was born, and Duane was city manager there and later in Douglas and Powell. These days he keeps his hand in politics—he’s been spearheading an initiative that would codify ethics requirements for Wyoming officeholders—and he tinkers with furniture and works on his and Jo Anne’s modest house.

Jo Anne Wroe, 12 years younger than her husband, quiet-voiced, is a dark-haired version of her three tow-headed daughters. She can seem tentative, forthcoming, and insightful, almost in the same breath. She worked as a teacher of handicapped preschoolers for many years and now substitutes in the Powell school system.

A large photograph of Amy in kindergarten, part of the hallway display that Jo Anne calls her “rogues’ gallery,” shows a canny, appraising child of five, looking out from under a shock of white-blond hair. Even then, her parents say, she was thoughtful, orderly, highly focused—the kind of kid who sets goals and when she does, says Duane, “you better get flat out of her way.”

Amy got the running bug in sixth grade. She wasn’t, by all accounts, very good, but she kept at it through high school in Douglas and at the University of Wyoming. By her junior and senior years in college, Amy started winning everything in sight. She was captain of the UW cross-country and track teams, got named to the Western Athletic Conference’s all-star team, and still holds the UW record in the 3,000 meters: 9:48.9. After college, she continued to compete in both regional and national competitions. In 1996, she ran the Boston Marathon in 3:08:33. Though Amy finished 41 minutes behind winner Uta Pippig, and though her time was 33 minutes behind the 1996 American Olympic marathon qualifying time, Steve Bechtel would matter-of-factly tell anyone who asked that his wife was hoping to qualify for the 2000 Olympics. He and her friends pointed to her heart, her drive. What, in the face of willpower like Amy’s, is 33 minutes?

Steve, 27, grew up in Casper, the son of Thomas Bechtel, an architect, and Linda Bechtel, who is the director of a school for developmentally disabled children. Steve has a younger brother, Jeff, and an older sister, Leslie.

In his teens, Steve turned his back on team sports and skiing and pointed himself at rock-climbing, the sport that has obsessed him since. And like Amy, he progressed through sheer doggedness.

Getting lost or injured near Lander is like having your house catch fire next to the fire station. Scores of rescuers—fit and mountain-wise—live within rifle shot of city hall, and Amy’s disappearance prompted an all-out response. She should have been found.

“Steve doesn’t have the natural build of a climber,” says Mike Lilygren, who was his college roommate. “You want to be lean, skinny, wiry, small, compact, like me. Steve is big, barrel-chested, and he’s got those big legs to haul around.”
Steve is talkative, quick, and according to his friends, engagingly zany. He knows by heart the lyrics to the complete works of They Might Be Giants. He programmed his computer so that when it came on, it screamed out one of Holly Hunter’s lines from Raising Arizona: “Where’s Junior?” By Lucky Lane standards, these are examples of full-frontal madcappery.

When it comes to his sport, however, Steve is known for a singularity of purpose unusually intense even for a big-wall climber. When Skinner began assembling a five-member team for the celebrated 1995 scaling of the Southeast Face of Pakistan’s Nameless Tower—a 3,000-foot granite spear, also called Trango Tower—he picked Steve for his bulldog tenacity, his “mono-focus,” his ability to Be Positive.

“An expedition team is an organic unit,” Skinner says. “I guess I’m the mind; Lilygren, the good spirits, the sense of humor. Steve is the heart.” Skinner speaks emphatically and with much eye contact. He is often out of town, giving motivational speeches to various organizations, corporate and noncorporate.

Steve was dropped from the expedition at base camp because of a severe sinus infection and eye hemorrhages. It was a bitter disappointment. The rest of the team spent two months on the Tower, waiting out storms in hanging tents or on narrow ledges, before completing an ascent in which they relied on no climbing aids—only their hands, their feet, and safety ropes.

If there is a moral to their adventures—and you hear it from the Lucky Lane climbers again and again—it is that tenacity buys victory, that you can hang for a long damn time four miles above sea level and still make the top, that hopelessness, failure of will, can be lethal.

Positive mental attitude. Focus. Your mind on the task, on the problem and nothing else. Quitting is not an option. Those were the mantras at Lucky Lane, even during the best of times. When Amy disappeared, climbing a cliff became finding a person.

“Amy is the summit,” said Skinner, the motivational speaker, during the early days of the search. “We’re trying to get to that point.”

Getting lost or injured near Lander is like having your house catch fire next to the fire station. Scores of rescuers, fit and mountain-wise, live within a rifle shot of city hall. Amy’s disappearance prompted an all-out response from the county’s search-and-rescue volunteers, many of whom are NOLS staff and students; from Lander’s extended climbing community; and from Amy and Steve’s family members and a number of their college friends. By the weekend, the company of searchers grew to nearly 200.

“We know what we’re doing,” says Dave King, the Fremont County sheriff’s deputy who became the case’s lead investigator. “We have 50 activations a year. We have specialists in steep-angle searches, swiftwater searches, cave rescues. We have trackers, air spotters, and what are called cadaver dogs, which supposedly can catch scents even under water. We can bring people out via Life Flight or horseback or on a stretcher. Me? I round up the volunteers. I provide the authority, and I take the blame for bad decisions, but I’m not the expert. I feel foolish sometimes—directing traffic that includes people who have written books about mountain search and rescue.”

King is 41 years old, squarely and solidly built, with a spiky haircut that looks like something his 13-year-old daughter urged on him in the interest of with-it-ness. He’s Lander born and bred, with such an engaging lack of bluster or antagonism that it’s easy to overlook the fact that he keeps his cards very close to the vest. He summarizes, he confirms, he returns calls, he expresses his frustration at being literally clueless.

Investigators had discovered, on the bottom of the to-do list found in Amy’s car, a milepost description of landmarks that she apparently jotted down, while referring to her odometer, along the first section of the proposed 10k race route—one more indication that Amy herself drove the Toyota up into the mountains before she disappeared. Therefore the search centered on the upper sections of the Loop Road, which begins as a paved highway flanked by ranchettes on the immediate outskirts of Lander. It parallels the Popo Agie River through Sinks Canyon State Park, where visitors can watch the river vanish into a mountain cave and then walk a quarter-mile to watch it emerge at a quiet pond called the Rise of the Sinks. Water should make this underground trip in a few minutes—instead it takes two hours. More water emerges than has disappeared. Go figure.

Beyond Sinks Canyon, the pavement turns to gravel and switchbacks, rising 1,500 feet in six miles to Frye Lake—the hill climb Amy was scoping out for her 10k.

Still heading up through the Shoshone National Forest, the road passes campgrounds, firewood-gathering areas, Louis Lake, snowmobile and hiking trailheads. It crests above 9,000 feet and then descends to connect with Wyoming 28 near the skeletal mining hamlets of Atlantic City and South Pass City.

The Loop Road is essentially a horseshoe tipped on its ends. A vehicle has one way in, one way out. During the day, traffic is sporadic but not infrequent. At night, the Loop feels very empty, very close to the stars, suspended in a soft rush of treetop wind. About halfway along the road, in the westward shadow of Indian Ridge, the loop passes through a fire-thinned forest of lodgepole pines. A rutted side road used by firewood cutters heads off into the trees toward Freak Mountain. This is Burnt Gulch, the place where Skinner and Whisler found Amy’s Tercel.

In the days that followed, searchers painstakingly staked out and scoured roughly 20 square miles around Amy’s car. They almost literally combed the five-square-mile area closest to the Toyota. They walked, four abreast, the length of the Loop. It was both a “wallet toss” search—covering the distance that someone could discard a wallet—and a “critical separation” search, in which volunteers, depending on the terrain, maintain only enough distance between themselves so as not to miss anything: The “critical separation” might be ten yards on a sandy plain, ten inches in a rainforest.

Horses joined the hunt, and then the cadaver dogs and the national guard. ATVs scampered over the land. A search plane buzzed overhead. Helicopters, including one equipped with infrared sensors, thwacked over the mountains for hours, days. Radios crackled. Passing motorists were stopped and questioned. It went on from dawn to dusk for more than a week.

She should have been found.

If she had been attacked by a mountain lion or a bear, searchers should have found disheveled underbrush, scraps of clothing, blood, remains. If she had become injured or lost, the searchers—who went everywhere she could have managed to take herself—should have come upon her, and come upon her fast. It was a Rolls-Royce of an operation—nothing haphazard or skimpy about it—and it yielded not a flicker of Amy Wroe Bechtel.

Beneath Lander’s just-folks exterior is a town that has not been able to fence itself off from trouble. Still, the piney mountains have always seemed an antidote to human poisons and sorrow.

The first day, the second day, the fifth day. Searchers returned to camp exhausted, pained, and baffled. There was not, according to King, a snip of cloth, a drop of blood, a single verifiable track, a sign of a scuffle—anything to indicate unambiguously that Amy was physically present, alive or dead, on the mountain. There were only a car, some keys, sunglasses, and a to-do list, with four of its 13 items checked off.

Landerites like to say that they live in a town that’s free from big-city crime—the kind of random or serial mayhem that seems most possible when everyone’s a stranger. But that’s not strictly accurate. Beneath Lander’s just-folks exterior is a town that, like most others, has not been able to fence itself off from trouble. A terrifying series of break-ins and rapes that began in the fall of 1993 prompted women’s self-defense classes. In 1995, a self-described “hobo” was committed to the state hospital after being convicted of four of the attacks.

In February 1994, a local teenager was shot five times in the head and torso in the Sinks Canyon parking lot by a drug dealer who thought the victim was a police informer. The editorial headline: “Have Big-City Problems Invaded Our Secure Little Mountain Town?”

There have been unsolved murders. A woman and two children disappeared in 1980, and her blood-spattered car was found 30 miles outside of town; the bodies were never found. There was a brawl after the Lander-Riverton football game a few years ago. Shots were fired. Authorities confiscated bats, metal pipes, and a nine-millimeter pistol.

Still, Lander retains a sense of itself as a friendly, essentially innocent sort of place. Its motto could be “bad things happen, but they are not who we are.” And always, the piney mountains just outside town have seemed some kind of antidote to human poisons and sorrows. That’s where you could go to relax, to breathe in deep, to listen to your best self.

So, five days after Amy disappeared, when the search turned into a full-blown criminal investigation—when 25 FBI agents arrived from Denver and Virginia and from elsewhere in Wyoming, set up shop in the sheriff’s office, and began to question anybody who knew anything about the young woman who seemed to have evaporated from their midst—Landerites reacted with fresh shock, followed by the scramble to impose some kind of logic on an inexplicable event. Very quickly, everyone seemed to have an opinion: the skinny, insistent drunk at the Gannett Grill who said the husband did it; the hacker on the 12th hole who was sure that someone with the wiles of a Ted Bundy had taken her away; the customer at a restaurant who said Amy was at the bottom of a nearby lake with a chain around her neck; the store owner who wondered if “maybe she just ran away.” There was the half-remembered story of another young, athletic, blond woman named Ann Marie Potton, who vanished without a clue in British Columbia three years earlier after setting out for a hike on Whistler Mountain, and vague recollection of the “mountain men” who abducted a young blond athlete named Kari Swenson while she was jogging on a Montana mountain road in 1984. (In a curious coincidence, it turned out that one of Swenson’s cousins is married to the owner of the Wind River Fitness Center, where Amy worked.)

Hikers and runners in the Lander area and beyond, especially women, began to look over their shoulders, to run in pairs or with dogs or with pepper spray.

And then the yellow ribbons appeared. Yellow ribbons on parking meters, on telephone poles, on trees, on tee-marker signs at the golf course: Come home, Amy. We’re here. Come back, and the mountains will be safe again.

There are no yellow ribbons anywhere on the Wind River Reservation, which begins a few miles north of Lander. It is as if the Shoshone/Northern Arapahoe reservation occupies another country and another time, and the drama of Amy Bechtel plays faintly, far, far away.

Captain Larry Makeshine, at tribal police headquarters in Fort Washakie, heard about Amy’s disappearance soon after it happened, but Fremont County authorities never contacted his office directly. Makeshine also heard that the FBI had sent in 25 agents, and he was mystified.

“I’m not questioning it,” he said, several weeks after the FBI had come and gone, “but if I’m going to be quoted, I’d say I’ve never seen it done that way before.”

Makeshine, a wry and circumspect man in his forties, said two agents from the FBI office in Riverton conducted interviews after several mysterious deaths on the reservation during the past year, including the hit-and-run homicide of Daniel Oldman Jr., the teenage son of another tribal policeman. But Makeshine said that he doesn’t know the status of those investigations, because “they didn’t keep us posted.”

Not far out of Fort Washakie, there is a little cemetery on a hillside where the Shoshone say Sacagawea, the heroic guide and interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition, is buried. A number of historians say otherwise—that the evidence points to an early death at Fort Manuel, far to the east in the Dakota Territory—but the Shoshone story is that she wandered for years after the expedition and came home finally to her people, who had long given her up for dead. They called her Wadzi-wipe: Lost Woman.

A month has gone by. Thousands of man-hours have been expended on generating publicity and following up on the hundreds of tips that have come in. By now, Steve and his friends have learned to discriminate between the promising and the ludicrous.

Two or three dozen psychics have offered their services. Some want money up front. Some just offer their insights. Some of the insights are theoretically helpful. “Let’s say someone says, ‘Check out a yellow mobile home off the highway ten miles from Lander,'” Steve says. “We can do that. If someone says, ‘I see a white pickup in Utah,’ well, tell me another.”

Jim and Wendy Gibson, owners of Lander’s Pronghorn Lodge, have told investigators they passed a slender blond woman wearing dark shorts running in the same direction they were traveling on the Loop Road—away from town—late on the afternoon of July 24. They had taken some visiting relatives, Nebraska flatlanders, up to the mountain for some predinner sightseeing.

“That’s unusual,” Wendy recalls saying as they drove by. “Someone running, way up here.”

The runner was swift, swifter than any town jogger clomping the pounds away. Jim made a little joke: “She looks like she’s running away from something.”

On the way back to town, at Burnt Gulch, Wendy noticed a “dirty white vehicle” but had no reason to connect it with the young runner they’d seen earlier. Wendy remembers seeing “something red” in the car, something that reminded her of camping. A little farther toward town, they noticed a gray truck with half a load of logs and a man standing nearby, shirtless, holding a plastic container.

There was a report of gunfire on the night of July 24 at Louis Lake, eight miles from Burnt Gulch, and a voice yelling, “Come on, you sissy, do it, do it!”

A kid found a bottle in the river near Main Street in Lander. Inside the bottle was a note: “Help. I’m being held captive in Sinks Canyon. Amy.” The handwriting, predictably, was not Amy’s.

Wavery memories, contradictory as dreams. Dots to be connected. Frail clues. Cruel hoaxes. Shadows demanding to be tackled, to be pinned in place.

It is the end of August, then early September. Search headquarters has moved from the mountains and into town, and the taciturn, professionally noncommittal FBI agents, after an investigative blitz that lasted a week and a half, have returned to Denver and Cheyenne and Quantico.

A room in the sheriff’s office has become the new command post. The walls are thick with time lines and topographic maps. In one corner sit three computers; in another, a small table with a pair of size-eight Adidas Trail Response running shoes and a mannequin torso wearing a yellow Stone Monkey T-shirt and black running shorts.

The concrete world of a physical search—gullies, cliffs, thick copses—has given way to the more abstract realm of an investigation: theories, networks, possible sightings, criminal profiles.

The vast majority of violent crimes against women are committed by a friend, an acquaintance, or a relative of the victim. The authorities quickly became interested in Steve and in a small number of men who had exhibited particular interest in Amy or her running career, but no one has emerged as anything approaching a clear suspect. Sam Lightner, the climber whom Steve drove to Dubois to meet on July 24, corroborated Steve’s account of his whereabouts that day; still, no third party as yet has provided firm independent corroboration of the two climbers’ account.

Meanwhile, Steve Bechtel and Amy’s friends and relatives are doing what they compel themselves to do, acting as they have trained themselves to act.

They have converted Todd Skinner’s garage on Lucky Lane into a search headquarters. The place is hot, cluttered, airless. Two women, including Steve’s sister Leslie, stuff envelopes with canary-yellow flyers—a photo of Amy, her vital statistics, the date and place of her presumed abduction, a phone number to call, a heading: HAVE YOU SEEN AMY? $10,000 REWARD.

The group has mailed out or directed “satellite” volunteers to mail out more than 80,000 flyers. Addresses are gleaned from E-mail chain letters and Internet phone directories: bars, pawn shops, convenience stores, truck stops, motels, bus lines, Adopt-a-Highway sponsors, film processors. There is an Amy Web site; more than 200 other Web sites have links to it, and there is a goal of 1,000 links. The search is out of the woods, onto the computer screen.

Aphorisms are handwritten on the garage walls: “Miracles come after a lot of hard work.” “You wouldn’t want to quit and then find out later you only had inches to go…” Kipling’s “If” is taped to a cupboard door.

A separate room at the back of the garage is the Lucky Lane climbing gym. One wall tips forward in a dizzying replica of an overhang. Mattresses cover the floor. On a side wall, scores of routes are listed by category: Easy, Tricky, Hard, Desperate, Savage, Hoss. Scattered randomly are yet more aphorisms: “Die Young! Die Strong!” “Life is Pain / I want to be insane.” “No prisoners / No Mercy!” “You must Get Weak to get strong!”

In Steve and Amy’s house, across the street, taped to the group’s central computer, is another: “You’ve got a date with the ultimate burn.”

There are few mysteries more potent than that of someone who vanishes without a clue, who seems to inhabit an ordinary day and then does not, who becomes the presumed victim of a crime only because the other alternatives seem less likely.

A missing person is not fully alive or fully dead. She does not age. She exists in a shadow land that we, the waiting, invest with both our fantasies and our nightmares. What if she simply slipped out of her life and started another from scratch? It’s a theme that runs deep in America—the idea of leaving behind the complications and sorrows of one’s day-by-day existence to make a fresh start as someone new, to lose one’s past.

The FBI’s National Crime Information Center listed approximately 35,000 adults missing at the end of 1997. But if history is any guide, the majority will return on their own or will otherwise be accounted for. Only 2 or 3 percent of the missing will turn into outright, long-term mysteries involving assumptions of foul play.

No one who has known Amy Bechtel seems to believe that she would simply cut all the traces and disappear, that she could impose that kind of open-ended pain on those she left behind. And so the imagination moves into a more dire realm, but one in which it is still possible to invest the missing person with the qualities of one’s own, most survivable self. Maybe she is a prisoner, waiting for her chance. Or she is wandering in an amnesiac state but will someday recall her name and her history and reclaim them in triumph after a strange, long time in which she was lost to her searchers and to herself.

Beyond that, there is murder. That is the first terror-dream when a person is missing, and it is linked to a second: that of dying in such a way that one is never conclusively missed, never completely mourned.

Steve Bechtel enters the garage from across the street. He is wearing a T-shirt, shorts, sandals. In the weeks since Amy disappeared, his perennial tan has faded, though his face remains preternaturally smooth and unlined. His demeanor has taken on the alert exhaustion of an air traffic controller. With reporters, his manner is energetically neutral, like a young surgeon describing a harrowing operative procedure. A fancy new anesthetic gets the same buoyant description as the details of sawing through a limb. His cheerful tone of voice, his amiability, remains constant, whether he’s talking about the details of rock climbing or the possibility that his wife has been raped and murdered.

“He’s hurting,” says his friend Marit Fischer, in Denver. “But he will never show them he is.”

“Them” could be the reporters, or the volunteers in the garage. Or they could be those who are angry and confused by Steve’s refusal to take a lie detector test.

Early on, the authorities—the FBI, chief investigator Dave King, sheriff Larry Matthews—and many townspeople and even Amy’s parents took the position that if Steve was innocent, he had nothing to lose by sitting for a lie-detector test. Steve, most of his intimates, and his lawyer—Kent Spence, stepbrother of one of Steve’s climbing acquaintances and son of that Spence, Gerry—felt quite differently. They said that Steve had already submitted to four formal interviews with the investigators, and they pointed to study after study about the unreliability of polygraph tests.

Further, Steve and Spence accused the cops of picking at straws in the wind, of relying on “profiles” of perpetrators, of wasting their energy badgering and frightening Steve when they could be tracking down potentially fruitful leads and suspects.

“The FBI in their usual sensitive manner attacked Steve Bechtel when they became frustrated with their failure to come up with any clues,” Spence said shortly after taking on Steve as a client. “They pointed their cannons at him and accused him of being involved, when they had no evidence whatsoever.”

Steve speaks of an FBI agent who he says told him, point-blank, just two weeks or so after the search for Amy began, “We have evidence you killed Amy.” Steve uses the words “preposterous” and “unbelievable” to describe the situation. What he seems to be saying is that he has been put in a predicament in which he has to bear not only the loss of his wife, but the open-ended suspicion that he was her killer.

“This sounds strange, but we hope that she’s been abducted,” he says. “With that option, there are unlimited scenarios. One is that she was grabbed, raped, and killed…” He clears his throat. “We think that is unlikely. We think she’s still alive, being kept alive, and has left the area. Maybe she has amnesia. That she is being kept by someone infatuated, obsessed with her. That is why we’re making this a nationwide search.

“She’s a very trusting person. She thinks that people are generally good. I think her thinking will change, has changed.”

Nine miles from town, in the Sinks Canyon State Park Interpretive Center, among other exhibits, is a mounted photograph of a rock climber. The photo, shot by Amy Wroe Bechtel, placed third in the action category in a local contest. The climber, leaning against air, seems to be hanging onto the mountain by his very fingernails.

Two months after she disappeared, the Amy Bechtel Hill Climb took place. One hundred and forty-six runners stretched and shivered and high-stepped in a parking lot not far from Sinks Canyon State Park. Soon they would head off, climbing past killing switchbacks, toward Frye Lake, ten kilometers distant.

You know the drill: large dogs barking, tights, running shorts, sweat pants, ski caps, singlets, gloves, Marmot, Columbia, Patagonia, The North Face, pre-race babble.

There was Steve, greeting friends, being hugged. There were Jeff, Steve’s brother, and Jo Anne and Duane Wroe, and Todd Skinner. There were Tom and Linda, Steve’s parents, and Casey and Jenny, Amy’s sisters.

Steve, in shorts, bareheaded, raised his hands and quieted the crowd. “Amy has wanted to do this race for a couple of years,” he said. “She was always told the only people who would show would be eight of her former track teammates.”

Laughter. Cheers.

“We’re in this together. We know Amy’s alive.”

Cheers. Yes.

“OK…” His voice quavered. He paused. When he spoke again, it had returned to full strength.

“One last thing: Please wait for me after you get to the finish line.” Laughter.

Ray Candelaria, Lander Valley High School cross-country coach, said, “Runners, on your marks,” and pointed his starter’s gun to the sky.

We are not an especially admirable species. We are suspicious, violent, maladroit. We leave unholy messes wherever we go, despite our best intentions.

By the start of the hill climb, everyone was tired. They had been a long time on the mountain. Things had gone wrong. The original 800 number on the missing posters—all 120,000 of them—turned out to be invalid when dialed from out-of-state. Todd Skinner and Steve blamed the cops. The cops expressed surprise at this, claiming that Steve and Todd had told them the mistake wouldn’t really matter, since a correct local number was also printed on the poster.

While the climbing community in Lander remained solidly loyal to Steve, things had unraveled badly among the family. Tempers had shortened. Alliances had frayed. A few weeks before the race, Amy’s parents and siblings met with the FBI and the Fremont County sheriff’s office and poured out their anxiety. Why were they so focused on Steve? Where was the investigation leading?

The authorities produced Steve’s journals, or portions of them, selectively highlighted (or not—it depends on who’s telling the story). As volatile and intriguing as the journals may be, they have not been made public, and the import of their contents varies wildly with the account of each possibly unreliable witness. Nels Wroe, Amy’s brother, and his wife, Teresa, who is the director of a center for domestic-abuse victims, were shocked at what they felt were indications of violent tendencies in the writing, of obsessive thinking on Steve’s part. Soon after, Nels restated—for a reporter from the Casper Star-Tribune and on a Wyoming public radio news program—his fervent wish that Steve would take a polygraph test. Duane Wroe agreed. Jo Anne said little. Amy’s sisters, on the other hand, remained publicly loyal to Steve.

“It’s not within me to be angry at someone for having feelings or thoughts and for dealing with them by placing them on a piece of paper,” Casey Wroe-Lee told the Star-Tribune.

Nels said that Steve denied the journals’ currency, that Steve said they were written in high school. Steve denied Nels’s version of his denial and stated that while the entries do run up to a week or so before the disappearance, some of the disturbing entries were only gonzo song lyrics, written in high school.

Nels pointed out, as an example of Steve’s obsessive jealousy, that Steve had refused to accompany Amy to Nels and Teresa’s wedding because of the likely presence of a possible former boyfriend of Amy’s.

Nels and Teresa didn’t attend the hill climb. They said they didn’t want to cause a stir, to have the families’ choppy sorrows upstage an event that should focus exclusively on Amy.

So, as the runners headed toward Frye Lake, what had been envisioned as a day of sad but positive solidarity, of communal bolstering, had become—certainly for the families of Amy and Steve—grim, stiff, heavy, angry. The grand blue Wyoming skies had curdled.

Winter would arrive.

Steve would start working again at Wild Iris, and he would begin fixing up the house he and Amy have yet to occupy together. He described himself, wearily, as “functioning, able to work and continue living.” When asked about his anger at the cops, at Nels, he said, “I don’t really have the energy to get pissed-off at anyone these days.”

The mouth of the Sinks was searched by divers. Old mine shafts in Atlantic City, Wyoming, were explored.

At a University of Wyoming football game, the scoreboard lit up with Amy’s photo, the familiar phone number, the request for any information.

Todd Skinner and Amy Whisler headed south to their winter climbing headquarters in Texas. Skinner went on to Mali to climb Fatima, a 2,000-foot quartzite tower.

In mid-November, Skinner was asked about “Amy as the summit,” about never giving up. He replied that in the absence of new clues, the primary task had become supporting Steve. “We never really started climbing anyway,” he added. “We were stuck at the base of the mountain, walking in place.”

Steve and Nels met at a race for Amy held in Laramie. They spoke briefly, cautiously, civilly.

Dean Chingman, a young Indian from Ethete, on the Wind River Reservation, went missing in early November. The search-and-rescue effort included search dogs and one airplane. Two FBI agents were assigned to the Chingman case.

Everyone waited for news from NASA on whether photographs that might have been taken by Russia’s Mir space station on the day of Amy’s disappearance would reveal new clues. Eventually word came that no such photos existed.

In mid-October, the FBI and the local investigators, having dropped their demand that Steve Bechtel submit to a polygraph test, asked him to come in for another general interview, but on the advice of Kent Spence, his attorney, he declined. “They’re just trying to poke and poke, and hope that they get something,” Spence said recently. “They’ve made it look like Steve has something to hide.”

The Bechtel case was on the docket of a grand jury, convened in Casper in late November. Grand jury proceedings are unnervingly secret affairs. None of the officials involved would comment on the deliberations, though one of the subpoenaed witnesses said that the jury was mostly interested in a former acquaintance of Amy’s whom authorities have been unable to locate.

The reward for information leading to the recovery of Amy Wroe Bechtel now stands at $100,000.

All these strands, these smears, shadows, whispers, shards—they have come to naught.

Early storms arrived, left. Deer hunters—objects of an intensive, dedicated, but fruitless flurry of Have You Seen Amy? publicity—came and went.

The Loop Road became impassable and was closed.

Winter lasts a long time in Lander. Forget the brochures, forget Jackson Hole. It is a punishing time. It is not the winter of whooping skiers and snowboarders, of fresh flocks of pink-cheeked tourists. It is unfathomably cold. It is knife-blade winds. It is the season of iron silence. Time to take shelter. To regroup. To gain faith—faith that the snow, the cold, will vanish. It has to.

It is also the season of memory’s distortion. The golds of autumn become more golden; the greens of summer, greener; the warm, clear days, warmer, clearer.

But not this year, not in Lander. A woman is still lost. Friends and loved ones still grieve, wonder, rage: Where is Amy? And so her life, and the lives of those who care most about her, are suspended. In place of logic, movement, and resolution, there is stasis: a young face on a poster, a dusty Toyota station wagon, blinking cursors.

These won’t do—not at all. They don’t recall Amy, and they don’t convey the knee-buckling anguish of this bottomless mystery. To glimpse even a measure of these things, you could return, perhaps, to a moment in September, nearly three hours after the first runner in the Amy Bechtel Hill Climb crossed the finish line at Frye Lake. The last four walkers are approaching the line as one, holding hands: Amy’s mother, Jo Anne; Amy’s sister, Casey; Casey’s young daughter, Jillian; and Jillian’s friend, Hanna.

Jo Anne Wroe’s face is pulled long. She is limping. Strands of her rich black hair stick wet to her face. She looks bewildered, beyond exhaustion, like death itself.

Montana-based Bryan Di Salvatore and Deirdre McNamer are both completing books. His is a biography of John M. Ward, the nineteenth-century baseball player and union organizer. Her third novel will be titled My Russian.

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