If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide or self-harm, call theÌęÌętoll-free from anywhere in the U.S. at 1-800-273-8255.

The last time I skied with my dadÌęwas Easter Sunday, 2020. Though a late-season storm had blanketed western Montana in seven inches of snow overnight, by 8 A.M. the spring sun was already melting the white landscape. But that didn’t stop my dad, a man ofÌęendless optimism.

After scarfing down a breakfast of elk sausage and eggs, he told meÌęwe were going to head toÌęthe hills above the house for a few turns. I looked at him skeptically. But before I could protest, he grabbed his telemark skis, corralled our dog, Walter, and walkedÌęout the door. I followed, barely able to catch up. Even at 66, my dad was an ox.

In 2016, my parents moved from Missoula, Montana, where they’d lived for 31 years, to Potomac, a bucolic valley 20 miles east that’s tucked among the Garnet Mountains and cut through byÌęthe wide and meandering Blackfoot River. Their house sits in a thick forest of larches, firs, and pines overlooking a rolling meadow where elk graze in the spring. I hadn’t lived in Montana for nearly a decade. But just a few weeks prior to theÌęski outing, as the reality of the pandemic set in, I made a mad dash home from California, where I was finishing my PhD in geographyÌęat the University of California atÌęSanta Barbara. The world was fraught with uncertainty—few people knew how bad things would get, nor was there any end to the pandemic in sight.

As someone who —specifically how climate change may render large portions of the most populated places on the planet inhospitable to human life—I spent much of graduate school weeping under my desk or having panic attacks between classes. One attack sent me to the emergency room, another to student counseling, which led me to a local therapist who repeatedly told me,Ìę“There’s nothing you can do about climate change.” It got to the point where I contemplated suicide.

As I pulled into Missoula at two in the morning, COVID felt likeÌęthe start of a terrifying new normal.

My dad, Jack Tuholske, grew up in Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of Saint Louis. Though my grandmother was a kind, persistent force, his childhood was chaotic. He was adopted at birth and lost his adoptive father young, followed shortly thereafter by his stepfather. As a teenager in the early 1970s, he became fixated on the environmental movement, sparked by the revolutionary optimism of the previous decade. But in seeking to emulate the 1960s, the only part he got right at first wereÌęthe drugs. By high school he was regularly injecting methamphetamines and carousing with his friends while tripping on LSD.

Though he never specified whoÌęexactlyÌęhelped him change his ways, IÌęcredit my grandmother, who sent him off to a National Outdoor Leadership School course in Wyoming. Weeks spent among the granite walls of the Wind River Range forged a lifelong infatuation with the mountains and imbued him with his mantra of choice: All problems are solvable.ÌęHe would later tell me he “realized that shooting up speed and talking politics all night with my friends was not going to save the planet.” He began to ski and climb. By his mid-twenties, my dad had finished a degree in political scienceÌęat the University of Washington and married my mom, who soon gave birth to my oldest brother. The three of them moved to Missoula so my dad could attend law school at the University of Montana. He graduated with honors and immediately began his own public-interest environmental law practice.

Montana became a part of him. He spent countless days adventuring—climbing remote routes in the Bitterroot Mountains with dirtbag partners, telemark-skiing with my mom on the Beartooth Plateau, and leading my brothers and I on backpacking trips across the Bob Marshall Wilderness. And he spent his life defending the state he loved. He litigated well over 200 cases to safeguard Montana’s public lands and waters, winning dozens of favorable judgments at the Montana Supreme Court and U.S. NinthÌęCircuit Court of Appeals. He almost never lost. The cases he argued led to the listing of the bull trout—a char that haunts any angler who has thrown a line into the Blackfoot—as an endangered species. Thanks to that designation, more than 19,000 miles of streams and rivers in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Nevada are now protected.

His success depended upon fostering community and building partnerships, often among unlikely allies. Only by cultivating trust could he convince Montana’s ranchers, tribal groups, and hunters and anglers to work in tandem withÌętree huggers to achieve his biggest victories against some of the United States’Ìęmost powerful people. In an increasingly red-versus-blue world, it was a rare accomplishment.

In May 2019, my dadÌęwas diagnosed with inoperable liver cancer. His doctors said he only had a few months to live. But when we set out to ski that Easter morning,Ìęhe had already lived a year with cancer and did not look sick when we began descending the meadow. I saw optimism.

Within seconds, we both fell flat on our faces. Giant clumps of wet snow stuck to the bases of our skis. The night before, we forgot to divert our flood-irrigation system, turning the meadow into a soup of sticky slush. Nonetheless, my dad persisted. He scraped off his skis and started climbing into the timber above the meadow, Walter in tow. After 45 minutes, he found a shaded, north-facing opening with still crisp snow. An ear-to-ear grin spread across his face, and he accelerated into a single, final arcing turn. He died six months later.

On a day in late FebruaryÌęthis year, I went skiing alone at Montana Snowbowl, where I learned the sport as a kid. The temperatureÌęwas below zero. Winter had arrived late but in full force, dumping four feet of snow in two weeks. Storms like that often cause undue climate optimism, which is reinforced by social media feeds falsely proclaiming that all is well because the powder has arrived. But the fact of the matter is that for the hottest year on record. Yet last year may end up being among the coldest we experience going forward. Like much of the Mountain West, snowpacks across Montana are and earlier.

As I rode the lift in the frigid wind, I thought about my dad. From when I returned to Montana, in MarchÌę2020,Ìęuntil his death last October, I watched how he woke up at 4:30 A.M. every day, did yoga and push-ups, wrote briefs, taught remote law-school classes, and graded papers. Even on days he couldn’t walk, he still spent his afternoons on the Blackfoot, a fly rod in hand, with my mom and their grandchildren. It took watching him die—watching how he died—for me to begin living with newfound resilience and joy. For my dad, battling cancer during a pandemic, like battling those who threaten Montana’s public lands and waters, was just another problem to solve. There was never a need to be daunted. Instead, he lived with dedication and gratitude, day in and day out. “I am the luckiest man alive,” were the last words he spoke to me, another ear-to-ear grin on his dying face.

Climate change, too, is another problem to solve. But in doing so, it need not be a monastic quest towardÌęnihilism. In April, I went skiing alone again. It was 68 degrees, 14 degrees above normal, and were being broken across the state. The spring runoff again came early to the Rockies, forcing me to dodge huge brown patches of grass as I cut turns through the soft snow. That day, like every day since my dad died, I woke up well before sunrise to work. I returned from skiing and worked late into the evening. I no longer think about killing myself due to existential climate dread. It wouldn’t do anything to fix our climate problems. ButÌępretending thatÌęeverything is all right won’t either. Rather, like my dad, I strive to remain stoic in my resolve and optimistic to my core. Every problem is solvable.

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Things aren’t looking so great for public lands right now. The acting director for the Bureau of Land Management is someone who previously advocated for selling off the acreage he now oversees. The Department of Interior is Ìęto oil and gas drilling and mining. The U.S. Forest ServiceÌę on a new policy that would drastically scale back public input on proposed projects.

Despite the fact that the people in charge are bent on undermining them, nonprofits and NGOs have been working tirelesslyÌęto save our public lands, and now they’re getting some backup from craft breweries.

This fall, , based in Missoula, Montana, released Public LandÌęOwner, an American pale aleÌębrewed for everyone who enjoys or appreciates suchÌęplaces.Ìę“We wanted to appeal to the craft-beer drinker, but we wanted it to be sessionable enough”—that is, consumed it in large quantities over a lengthy period without the drinker fading—“to also appeal to a wide audience,” says Hannah Talbott, Highlander Beer’s general manager.Ìę

Three percent of the beer’s proceeds will benefit , a North American network of sportspeople that works to protect public lands. It’s also headquartered in Missoula, and Talbott says many of the brewery employees are BHA members. “It really aligns with our values, so it was a perfect fit,” she says.

The name of the beer comes from the BHA’s most popular T-shirt, which is splashed with the same words. “Everyone is a public-lands owner,” says Talbott. Which means all of us should have a stake in what happens to one of our most precious resources—and we should never forget it.

Right now, Public LandÌęOwner is only available in Montana, but Highlander isn’t the only beer company supporting these treasured places. Fat Tire just wrapped up that raised $160,000 for public-lands-focused groups, including the Trust for Public Lands, , and . The breweryÌę, based in Bend, Oregon,Ìęgives 1 percent of its proceeds annually to Outdoor Alliance, another nonprofit focused on public lands and conservation issues. offers two beers, Long Root Pale Ale and Long Root Wit, and the brandÌęhas been one of theÌęfiercest corporate fighters for public lands over these past few years.ÌęÌę

To be totally clear, though: buying beer is not enough to get us through this fight. Yes, it’s a great way to support businesses that care, but we can’t sip our way to victory. Call your elected representatives, volunteer with your local advocacy group, and donate money to organizations leading the charge. Once you’ve done all that, then you can toast your good work.

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When I moved from Los Angeles to Montana in my mid-twenties, I became well acquainted with the clichĂ©s of mountain-town dating, went through a period of swinging singledom, and then met the man I thought I might marry. Years later, we became each other’s greatest heartbreak. I emerged in my thirties to the same small-town dating scene of my twenties and found it no longer fit what I was looking for.

Unlike much of the ski-town crowd, I don’t live in a van or a tiny home (although I’ve been known to live out of the back of my truck for weeklong stints). I’m a classic weekend warrior, generally working full-time as a freelance writer and marketer. I like to have money in my bank account and an adult home, and I tend to choose a nice bottle of wine over a night at the bar these days. I chase winter, but I put down roots where I land instead of blowing through in a hedonistic storm. I want a mountain man who’s similarly mature, adventurous, and self-sufficient (did I mention employed?).

I’d like to think depth in a relationship and the mountain lifestyle aren’t mutually exclusive. But when the pool of single men is notoriously overcrowded with Peter Pans and 40-year-old ski bums, the search for a mature, healthy relationship starts to resemble a quest for the holy grail.

And so I set out on my quest in ski towns across the world in search of real romance. These are my dating dispatches from a year traveling through three different mountain locales.

The Hazardous Ski Lift Meet-Cute

Missoula, Montana

What It’s Known For: More nonprofits per capita than literally anywhere else; ; and Snowbowl, the local ski hill with unpredictable southern exposure and the best Bloody Mary around.

The Scene: I’d spent the fall of 2015 in Missoula without meeting anyone of note, and I was ready to give up. Enter winter and Snowbowl’s aging two-person ski lift, which has been sneakily matchmaking the locals for years with its interminable rides and frequent breakdowns.

One day in December, I yelled, “Single!” and hopped on the lift with another single dude. We were well into acquainting ourselves on the slow ascent when the lift lurched and stopped abruptly. As we hung there for 45 minutes, waiting for our death-defying rappel rescue by the ski patrol, we talked about work, passions, and life goals.

Before we’d even been lowered to the ground, I decided I would ask him out. He beat me to it.

The Outcome: Bachelor #1 and I dated for several months. Over the course of this relationship, I became deeply familiar with the iconic commitment-phobia of lifelong ski bums. This category of man can typically be found on the ski hill or in the backcountry for as many days as there’s snow. He doesn’t work in winter, holding down summer seasonal jobs long past his twenties to fund his powder habit. While Bachelor #1 bucked many of the common stereotypes, he was unable to fit anything (or anyone) into the ski bachelor lifestyle he’d been living for so long. I ended it in favor of finding someone for whom I would be a priority (and in favor of chasing winter).

The Swiping Experiment

Wanaka, New Zealand

What It’s Known For: Mellow vibe, Treble Cone’s big lines, and badass Kiwis.

The Scene: I left Missoula in the spring of 2016 to chase winter in New Zealand and landed in the paradise that is Wanaka. In the spirit of adventure, I decided to try dating apps for the first time. I quickly encountered all the classic hazards of small-town Tindering, including repeated awkward encounters in our only grocery store with that dude I accidentally Superliked and running into all three of my most recent matches in the lift line.

I met Bachelor #2 when I commented on the speed-flying photo in his profile. He offered to take me out, and I was booked for my first full-day outdoor Tinder date.

We drove to the Old Man Range and sledded around in search of an appropriate learning slope. He gave me a quick safety talk on how to operate the wing, and I took off on my first attempt—promptly crashing after about 45 seconds in the air. I hit the snow laughing, lucky not to have injured myself spectacularly. The wing wasn’t so lucky: I’d grazed the only rock on the entire slope during the crash, tearing a hole in Bachelor #2’s $2,000 piece of gear and effectively closing the door on a second attempt (and a second date).

After that, I decided to expand my Tinder search into neighboring Queenstown. I matched with Bachelor #3, whose beat-up truck was a little too beat up to make it over the icy pass. He hitchhiked over to Wanaka for our first date, wearing a costume tiger onesie in the hopes that it would facilitate being picked up on the side of the road. I gave him points for guts.

The Outcome: We drove my slightly more-functional station wagon to the shores of Lake Wanaka and made dinner over a fire. We dated for the rest of my stint in New Zealand, making time for ski missions between his 50-hour-a-week startup gig and my budding freelance career. Only my expired visa interfered with what could have been an endgame romance.

The Too-Friendly Town

Revelstoke, Canada

What It’s Known For: Drool-worthy big-mountain terrain on Rogers Pass, a legendary snowpack, and ’s extreme vert.

The Scene: Revelstoke is renowned as a seasonal ski destination, its population of almost 7,000 swelling by as much as 2,000 people in winter. When I arrived there for the winter of 2017, I was in the market for a lasting relationship, but little did I know I’d be viewed as a nomadic ski bum myself.

I met Bachelor #4 at the resort. He was smart, funny, a badass skier—and a local. We went on one of those dates that evolves from skiing to beers to dinner. In this case, it evolved into dinner with his best friends, the ski-town equivalent of meeting the parents right off the bat. However, Bachelor #4 was the male version of me: mid-thirties and looking for a lasting relationship. Ultimately, I couldn’t prove to him that I’d still be there when the snow melted, and that was that.

Shortly after, I broke my ankle in a high-speed ski crash, effectively ending my run on the Revelstoke dating scene. After all, being laid up with a broken bone is not an ideal way to meet men in a ski town. That is, until I crossed paths with Bachelor #5, one of #4’s best friends whom I’d met on that fateful dinner date.

Bachelor #5 was a recovering ski bum just trying out the professional life, and he offered to take my broken self out on his snowmobile for a sunset sled after work. Having suffered a season-ending injury of his own the previous winter, he understood my craving to get into the mountains—whether I could take turns or not. I brought Montanan IPA to share, he brought local red wine, and we had an unexpectedly awesome happy hour on the cat track.

The Outcome: The next morning, I snuck out of his house and ran smack into Bachelor #4, who was picking up #5 for a morning ski mission. I decided that while this overlap is part and parcel of mountain-town dating, it was more than I could handle—a decision that also, unfortunately, precluded me from dating about 82 percent of Revelstoke’s male population.

My quest for the holy grail of meaningful relationships is ongoing, but I refuse to let all the clichĂ©s of mountain-town dating win. Somewhere out there, among the 40-year-old ski bums and seasonal liftees, there’s a unicorn in ski pants looking for a dawn-patrol partner before we both head to our full-time jobs. It’s only a matter of time before we run into each other on the mountain.

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Last Wednesday, around the ninth switchback in the M Trail at the University of Montana, my legs and lungs screamed at me to stop, or at least walk instead of run. I wheezed, my chest heaved, but I kept running. Mostly I was trying to get to the top of the trail, but part of me was trying to run back in time.

I moved to Missoula almost 16 years ago, and in a little less than two years, the town gently grabbed the proverbial steering wheel of my life and turned it down a completely different road. So now, every time I’ve visited, it fucks me up just being there. Maybe you have a place like this, too.

The spring after my 23rd birthday, my dad and I flew from Iowa to Missoula for a visit to check out the journalism school at the University of Montana. Dad hadn’t been in the mountains for about a decade and his face lit up as we flew in over the southeast side of the valley. One of our afternoons there, we heard about the M Trail, the steep path that climbs to the big white “M” on the side of Mt. Sentinel above campus.

If you hike the M Trail, you might find it a stout exercise, and you might be thankful that there are benches at a couple of the switchbacks. Sixty-five stories up from where you started, you arrive at the bottom of the M, and the view of campus and the town below either makes you fall in love with the whole place, or 
 well, I don’t know what happens if you don’t fall in love with it, because I did.

When I first moved to Missoula to start classes the following fall, I was scared shitless for a number of reasons: I was far from anyone I knew, I was newly sober, and I had no idea who I was, as I . My first year in Montana was probably one of the toughest years of my life, and definitely one of the loneliest and saddest. I spent almost every weekend night smoking cigarettes on the front porch of my apartment, watching as my neighbors came and went from parties and bars. But I discovered mountains, gradually hiking deeper and higher into them, and I absorbed all I could about writing, lit with a dim hope that I had it in me—whatever it was that it took to be a writer.

In 2004, I shot out of Montana in a crappy car on my way to Phoenix for a lady and hopefully a job, not particularly sad to be leaving Missoula behind. Most people who have lived there will tell you that this isn’t a common sentiment. Like my friend Alex, who said his first time in town, he knew that if he ever moved away, he’d always be thinking about it. But I was done with school, and I figured it was time to move on.

I didn’t go back for almost eight years. And when I did in 2011, I had changed. I had gotten some writing published in magazines, learned to climb, learned to ski in the backcountry, and was on the cusp of being able to go full-time as a freelance writer. Missoula had changed a bit too, but not as much. A couple coffee shops had closed, some businesses had moved, and the journalism school had gotten a new building, giving my old haunt to the forestry school. But the town felt the same to me: a meeting point of the Pacific Northwest and the Rocky Mountains, mountain-town but cosmopolitan, isolated but cultured and academic. I walked around campus, trying to remember what it felt like in 2002, trying to recreate some of the feelings I had back then—because they were big, dense feelings. Compared to other chunks of my life after I left UM, like my first newspaper job in Arizona and my second newspaper job in Denver, my time in Missoula just felt so important, like something was happening. And of course, something was happening.

When they say you can’t go back, I think they mean because you can go back to a place, but you can’t go back to a feeling, or back to the person you were. Which is maybe why nostalgia is such a strange, heavy, sad, and happy feeling—sad that something is gone, happy that it happened, and sad you can’t manage to get there again, no matter how hard you try.

When I visited UM back in 2011, I decided to run to the top of the M Trail for no real reason. I made it, barely, sure I was going to throw up at the top—but throw up out of my lungs, not my stomach. Maybe I was trying to prove that I was an improved version of the person who went to grad school in Missoula a few years ago. After all, I had never run up the M Trail when I lived there—I was still smoking a pack a day back then.

Last week in Missoula, I had just turned 39 1/2. I’m not feeling that young, noticing wrinkles, gray hairs, and definitely taking note that my hairline is no longer at high tide. I’ve been a full-time writer and filmmaker for six years, and gotten to spend way more time in the outdoors than I ever dreamed would be possible. Since I graduated from UM, I’ve spent less than two weeks total in Missoula, or under one day per year.

But when I roll back into town and see Mount Jumbo and Mount Sentinel from the Higgins Street Bridge, I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel like home. I joked to my friend Forest that Missoula is like Boulder but for more normal people, or in my case, Chamonix for Iowans. I walked across campus and texted my girlfriend that an older, happy man was trying to reconnect with a younger, sad man.

Grad school, for me, was a place full of possibility and promise at a time when the world hadn’t kicked my ass too much yet. Going back to visit—and maybe we all feel this in the places where we really grew up—makes me wonder if I actually want to live there, or if I just want to be young again. It’s like seeing an old flame after 10 years and irrationally thinking, “I wonder if we could make it work this time.”

In the hot mid-July sun, almost-40-year-old me kept “running” to the top of the M Trail, gulping air, ignoring the screams of my quads, and not wanting to admit that I took off a little fast at the start. If I hadn’t proved I was still young, at least I was still dumb. Forest and I posed for a quick photo at the top, and I didn’t even vomit. I looked down at Missoula, and my heart didn’t explode, but I wondered if I actually left a big chunk of it down there in 2004.

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It’s summer: The season of picking ticks off your dog, spending way too much time with your extended family, and looking like you swam to work when really you just rode your bike. But if the sweatiest season has an upside, it’s this: Ice cream becomes socially acceptable to eat for any (and all) meals. In fact, for these few glorious months, ice cream becomes its own food group.

But not just any ice cream will do. Let’s be clear: This is a guide to the best ice cream shops in America. No frozen yogurt or low-fat dairy desserts allowed. This is about tasty, creamy, full-of-fat and oh-so-wonderful ice cream.

Sweet Cow

Boulder, Denver, and Around Colorado’s Front Range

makes its ice cream from locally sourced ingredients in small batches with to-die-for flavors like honey with mint, PB&J, and banana and Nutella. On particularly hot days, duck in for a scoop of Gatorade sorbet, which is basically a health food. Find details on Sweet Cow’s six locations and roving truck .

Sundae School

South Dennis, Massachusetts

In our book, good ice cream can be a religious experience, and at , it is. Since the 1970s, this family-owned shop has been serving super-high-quality scoops. All fruit flavors are made from fresh fruit. The not-to-be-missed menu items are the fruit sundaes, which mix scoops of ice cream with fresh fruit and are topped with homemade whipped cream and a locally grown cherry.

The Parlour

Durham, North Carolina

When making small-batch ice cream, less can definitely be more. That’s the case at the , where there are only a handful of flavors each day, but the flavors are unforgettable. Try the lavender vanilla or the blueberry buttermilk. If you want something richer, opt for the tiramisu, made with real mascarpone and ladyfingers.

J.P. Licks

Boston, Massachusetts

This is a Boston-area institution, and although also serves frozen yogurt, we’re putting it on this list because it is just that good. The shop is known for big, bold flavors—expect loads of cookie bits in the cookies and cream and plenty of tang in the strawberry rhubarb. One other thing that makes this place so lovable is that it’s extremely sensitive to dietary restrictions. Gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan flavors are all available and noted as such on the menu.

Ample Hills

Brooklyn, New York

Organic, grass-fed milk gets mixed into unique flavors like Snap, Mallow, Pop (think Rice Krispy treat somehow made into ice cream) and Gooey Butter Cake. People who visit are often so enthralled that they want to take it back home with them—so now the company ships nationwide. But standing in line surrounded by a mix of humanity on a hot summer night in Brooklyn is part of the experience, so if you can make it in person, go.

Dave and Andy’s

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Homemade waffle cones and chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream that’s more cookie dough than anything else? Yes please. This Pittsburgh institution makes great ice cream cakes, shakes, and sundaes. FYI, is cash only, so come prepared.

°­ŽÇ±è±è’s Frozen Custard

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

If you’ve never had frozen custard, get thyself to America’s Dairyland, stat. Frozen custard has more eggs than regular ice cream and gets less air beaten into it during the churning process. The end product is deliciously dense and smooth—like soft serve on steroids. is the best place to get the quintessential frozen custard experience. You can choose from chocolate, vanilla, or the rotating flavor of the day. Whatever you opt for, we personally guarantee you will love it.

Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream

Seattle, Washington

Sourcing is important to , and everything from the milk to the strawberries and mint comes with its very own origin story. Where a lot of our favorite shops rely on classic flavors—like cookies and cream—Molly Moon goes out on a limb with options like Earl Grey, German chocolate cake, and vegan Thai tea. Not sure what to get? This is Seattle, so you can’t go wrong with a double scoop of Stumptown coffee.

Ruby Jewel

Portland, Oregon

Salt and Straw gets a lot of the love in Portland, and it’s really great, so, by all means go there. But ’s three shops deserve a visit, too. The ice cream is fabulous, but the ice cream sandwiches—made with homemade cookies—are the kind of thing you find yourself craving long after you’ve left the city. In summer, reach for the brown sugar cookies wrapped around Oregon strawberry ice cream or the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with butterscotch ice cream.

Frozen Gold

New Smyrna Beach, Florida

Look, hipster places that source milk from cows that only listen to the National and other underground bands have their place. But so too do iconic old-school spots like . For years, families have made this stand an after-beach tradition, and while it is neither fancy nor hip, it is delicious. The soft serve stirs something deep within our nostalgic hearts. Get yours dipped in chocolate for the ultimate trip down memory lane.

Big Dipper

Missoula, Montana

This is big sky and big scoop country. Portions at are large, prices are reasonable, and if you’re struggling to choose just one flavor, servers will “split” a scoop for you. Don’t miss the huckleberry flavor, though the cardamom is also wonderful.

Clumpies

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Pay by the ounce means you can get as big or small of a scoop as you’d like—but honestly, we think you’ll want to go big at . There’s a regular cast of flavors with all the things you might expect, plus rotating options like carrot cake, coconut lime sorbet, and mint julep.

Smitten

Bay Area, California

Leave it to the Bay Area to turn ice cream into a tech experience. Place your order at , and a “brrrrista” (yeah, we rolled our eyes too) pours an ice cream base into a machine that uses liquid nitrogen to freeze your scoop. The idea is that the just-frozen product is smoother and creamier than something that has ice crystals from a week ago embedded in it. But like everything in the Bay Area, you will pay a premium.

Mariposa Ice Cream

San Diego, California

If Smitten is one extreme, is the other. This shop proudly boasts that its ice cream is so good it needs no gimmicks or trendy mix-ins. Flavors are basic, like banana walnut and peach, and there are plenty to choose from. We also adore that Mariposa makes its own hot fudge and dulce de leche—something too few shops do.

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Just south of Missoula, Montana, a little house stands against a backdrop of the Bitterroot Mountains. Through the front door, past a 35-degree, 12-by-16-foot climbing wall is a small, well-lit studio where Jessi Lewis makes jewelry.

The studio is chaotic, but that’s how she likes it. Hundreds of colorful stones, like turquoise, Montana agate, and labradorite, are scattered on one bench, and strips of old metal lie on another. It’s all spread out so Lewis can see what she has to work with, how it’s all going to fit together and be transformed into danglers, cuffs, and rings. Her favorite stone is desert jasper, she says, because it looks like tiny paintings of red dirt and blue sky. Most of the time, Lewis sets the stones in reclaimed silver, often etched or hand-pierced with a ridgeline, lupine, or even a pronghorn—things that remind her of Montana and the West.

The 36-year-old self-taught metalsmith first started hammering away 15 years ago, but in recent years, Lewis has gained a strong following (36,000 on and 3,600 on ). Her business, , is a one-woman show, so she can restock her online shop just once or twice a month. Most of the time, everything’s gone in five minutes.

A quick Google search for “mountain-inspired jewelry” will turn up more than ten pages of artists who use the natural world as inspiration for their wares. So what’s so unique about Lewis’ work? Well, if you’re looking for perfect, this isn’t it. Her stuff has nicks and scratches; it’s rugged, raw, and flawed. But the way she sees it, that’s how the mountains should be.

Lewis grew up in Missoula. Her family didn’t have a lot of money, but Lewis says despite that she was a happy kid and spent a lot of time outside. Her mother, Paula, was a painter, social worker, and teacher. The quiet kind of mom, Paula is introspective and sweet. Her father, Bernie, is the opposite. A blacksmith and welder, he is loud and full of fire. He was gone a lot, traveling for his job, while Lewis was growing up. “My dad is a rambler. A real wild man and free spirit,” Lewis says. “Even to this day, he’ll be in Alaska, then Montana, just all around.”

When Bernie was home, he was in his shop. He fixed things like boats and fences and did high-end finishing work for yachts or private planes. And he moonlighted as a gunsmith, using old-school blacksmithing tools and human-driven methods of forging metal to fashion revolvers that were works of art. Lewis would often find herself in the shop, fascinated with the big machinery, the laser cutters and steam presses. So Bernie would hand her a respirator and a broom, and she’d sweep and watch him work.

When Lewis got older, she did a bit of her own rambling. She started college at the University of Montana. She took breaks and traveled in Asia. She completed a yoga teacher training in Nepal and lived in New Orleans for a while. Eventually, in 2003, Lewis found herself back in Missoula. When she was 21, she began dating her husband, Kyle Neeley, a nurse and a man who loved the mountains as much as she did (and could climb 5.14—hence the climbing wall near the front door).

That was the same year Lewis started tinkering with metal. She picked up tools at pawn shops and read how-to books. “We had this little apartment, and I’d do it in my kitchen at first, which was disgusting,” Lewis says. “There would be metal in our cereal.” But it was not uncommon that she’d be walking down the street and women would come up to her and ask about the jewelry she was wearing. She’d sell the bracelet right off her own wrist.

“She is so passionate about what she does, and it comes through in her work,” Neeley says. “She has an infinite amount of ideas. That’s how you know you are in the right field of work—when you don’t have to look for inspiration, it’s just there.”

It took ten years of metalsmithing before Lewis was able to commit to jewelry full-time. She had secure jobs working as a yoga teacher and social worker for the state of Montana. “Because I grew up the way I did, there was always a part of me that was worried about money, so it was hard to let go of that security. And I was knocked up at the time,” she says.

Lewis remembers being really sick when she was first pregnant with her child, Indie, in July 2016. She was exhausted,Ìęworking nights, and trying to run a small business on the side.Ìę“I was violently ill, but I’d get up every morning with the dogs and slowly go up this little mountain behind our house. One morning, I puked on the side of the trail and sat down. I was sitting there feeling pulled in all these different directions. I was like, I need to spend my energy in ways that matter to me right now. That was the real beginning of Ruby and Revolver. I was 33.”

Finding old pure silver isn’t easy, and figuring out how to turn an old shoe buckle into a necklace is even harder. But Lewis does it anyway because it feels like a contradiction to craft a mountain range out of materials that were possibly taken from earth in a less than ethical way.

Lewis reshapes and reworks old buckles, chains, cuffs, and broken jewelry into her own creations. “The metal I get, I don’t have endless options,” she says. “I don’t know its history before I get it. I can’t just do anything. I can’t make any size or any texture. I have to work with constraints. It’s not a clean slate.”

But as it turns out, her customers like her work’s imperfections. Currently, Lewis has 4,000 emails in her inbox. People who want her to create commemorative pieces for lost family members, friends, or dogs. Mothers write to say they’re nervous to take their kid outside and want Lewis’ advice. Young women who are trying to learn metalsmithing reach out to her.

“I struggle with this a lot, and it’s been coming to a head lately since having Indie because of my limited time,” she says. “How much time can you really spend online? I don’t want to look back on her childhood and be like, ‘Well, I got through all my emails.’ I don’t really have answers, but lately I’ve had to pull back from it. The world is not going to end. I hope people are gentle with me. I need to be honest with my limitations.”

When she’s not with Indie or her jewelry, Lewis is in the wild. The Bitterroots, the Sawtooths, and the Frank Church Wilderness inspire her work. So do hikes to the middle of nowhere, trips to the desert to climb, and the woods behind her house. “The ruggedness and structure of mountains just draws your eye in,” she says. “And the mountains are where I’m happiest; it’s where I draw the most inspiration. There is a lot of beauty in the natural world. My best self is in the outdoors.”

That’s why Lewis wants to take Ruby and Revolver on the road. She bought a Stealth trailer that she’s remodeled into a studio. She and Neeley also have a slide-in camper that will go in the back of the truck. “How cool would it be to be in a place where you are really inspired and create right there? And I think out and about is where I am the happiest and where is my husband happiest. I think that rubs off on your kiddo. I want her to be able to hold on to the ability she has now to see the wonder in the world.”

They plan to hit the road in the near future. But for now, Lewis will be in her studio, with the back door wide open, listening to the sound of the creek as she crafts new stories with silver and gold.

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In 2009, San Diego native and surfer found himself in Missoula, Montana and had to adapt his ocean knowledge to find adventure in the waterways of his new home. The Endless Wave, from , explores Christiansen's life guiding and surfing Montana's rivers.

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Residents of Whitefish, Montana, were curious about why the ski resort just north of town left the lights on all night. Night skiing ended March 3, and now it was Saturday, March 17—Saint Patrick’s Day. If they had pulled out binoculars, they would have caught glimpses of a lone headlamp inching up Ed’s Run, a steep intermediate shot that drops right into the mountain village. That headlamp belonged to professional ultrarunner Mike Foote, 34, of Missoula, who was attempting to break the world record for most vertical feet climbed and skied in 24 hours.

Austrian ski-mountaineering racer Ekkehard Dörschlag set the existing record—60,350 feet—back in 2009. Foote was shooting for 61,200 feet with a plan to make 60 laps of the 1,020-foot Ed’s Run. At about 9 p.m. on Friday night, he was more than halfway done, with 31 laps under his belt in less than 12 hours. But the conditions were deteriorating as snow that had warmed and melted during the day began to freeze into chunks the size of small hailstones.

Foote’s skis were beginning to slide backwards on the last pitch of the run, which was the coldest, windiest, and steepest. His laps were gradually slowing down as his body started to show the effects of the more than 30 miles he had already skinned, all of it straight up. He’d built a buffer that morning under an unusually blue sky—Whitefish Mountain Resort is famous for its inversions—shaving more than two minutes from his projected average of 24 minutes per lap for the first 20 laps. By late afternoon, Foote had bought himself two laps’ worth of time—but now the knife was cutting the other way.

At the base of the run, Foote’s support crew of more than a dozen friends manned a folding table with homemade snacks and an assortment of fluids, like water mixed with supplements and warm tea. Foote was burning an average of 500 calories per hour—twice what he consumes while running. His crew made sure to have a pair of skis waiting for him with skins already mounted so Foote wouldn’t have to waste a second during transitions. He skidded down from lap 31 and made a sweeping turn around a stake planted in the snow that served as the official lap marker. He popped out of one pair of 65-millimeter-waisted pink and green Dynafit race skis and stepped right into the next pair. Without a moment of pause, Foote stepped off.

A support crew member walked beside him for the first hundred yards, holding a bag of potato chips and a plate with boiled sweet potato slices, preopened energy gels, and bacon-and-rice balls. Foote gobbled as much as he could stomach, took a swig of Coca-Cola from a two-liter bottle, and said, “I should do this more often.” He mustered a half-smile and was off again into the night.

Foote grew up in Jefferson, Ohio, a town of a few thousand an hour east of Cleveland. The highest point in Ashtabula County is Owens Mound, which, at 1,150 feet, is not quite 600 feet higher than nearby Lake Erie. Needless to say, Foote was not born with hooves like his rivals in the Pyrenees and the Alps, or like his longtime friend and training partner Luke Nelson, a native Idahoan and a top-ranked American skimo racer and ultrarunner.

Foote didn’t start running in the mountains until 2004, when he moved to Missoula to study environmental science at the University of Montana. He had been a baseball player in high school, but out West he quickly developed a love of trail running and started competing in short races around Missoula. After working a few years as a raft guide in and a ski patroller at , Foote moved back to Missoula and took a job at the Runner’s Edge, where he eventually became the race coordinator.

In 2009, Foote ran his first ultra, the . “I had no expectations. I just wanted to survive,” Foote told me. He ended up finishing in the top ten. “I caught the bug then,” he said, “but I didn’t ever want to do a 100-miler again. It was horrible. Super painful. My body was destroyed. I just wasn’t used to it.” After that first 100-miler, Foote’s feet were so beat up that he didn’t run a step for six weeks. But he was hooked. In the years since, he’s finished second in the in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains three times and snagged two top-ten finishes in the , which runs through the mountains of France, Italy, and Switzerland. Now it only takes about a week of rest after a 100-miler before Foote starts running again.

Foote devotes his winters to high-intensity skimo races all over the world. The idea of setting a new vert record came to him in July 2017, after Hardrock. He wanted to do something on skis that would emulate the roughly 24-hour effort of a 100-mile race. It was only after he came up with the idea that he found Dörschlag’s record. “It was pretty esoteric,” Foote said.

His girlfriend, Katie Rogotzke, 30, a nurse practitioner who has completed a 50-kilometer race, captained his support team. “I was pretty incredulous,” she told me with a laugh as she changed out Foote’s skins between laps. Rogotzke said she never doubted him once he made the decision to train for the record. “He’s super steady. He likes faraway goals and getting into a Zen state of focus,” she said. “And the steeper the better.”

To prepare for the feat, Foote worked with coach Scott Johnston, who co-founded with legendary alpinist Steve House. Johnston said determining a race pace was the primary challenge in designing a training program for such a niche event. They settled on a goal of 2,560 feet per hour, including an anticipated average descent time of about 3.5 minutes per hour.

“Once we knew that was the race pace, we had to design a training schedule to optimize his physiology for that pace and develop his efficiency strategy,” Johnston said. Since Foote had such a depth of training experience from 100-mile and skimo races, Johnston said it was “just a matter of extrapolating” what they already knew about his metabolism and applying it to the unique demands of going uphill at a consistent grade for 24 hours. In the training jargon, Foote trained himself to become highly “monodirectional.”

“Rather than going out and doing shorter high-intensity work that’s faster than race pace,” Johnston said, “we needed to make him very efficient at that particular pace.” Foote’s training began last November and reached its apex in early February with two back-to-back 22,000-foot days at Montana Snowbowl, in Missoula. Foote stashed a duffel bag in the trees and set a skin track in fresh snow and banged out laps for about eight hours each day, proving to himself that he had the fitness to maintain race pace for at least a third of the distance, even alone and unsupported in less than optimum conditions.

Unfortunately, those two days took an unexpectedly severe toll on Foote’s body. “He didn’t recover well from the workout. It put him in a hole, and it took awhile for him to climb out,” Johnston said. “We had to go into emergency mode after that, but it’s a testament to Mike that he got the train back on the track again.” Johnston said he was confident Foote could’ve broken the 60,000-foot record then, and when race week finally came around, he told Foote, “The money’s in the bank. You know what you need to do.”

Foote said he had “a lot of nerves” on the day of the event and that he actually began to doubt himself during the first few laps. “I didn’t feel good at all. My heart rate was through the roof. It was just not clicking. I was sweaty,” Foote said. “But then I set into a groove. Having an aid station every 30 minutes forced me to eat and kept my energy levels constant.” The darkest hours of night were the most challenging, not least because the icy conditions forced Foote to yard on his poles to power through the final pitch, which was demoralizing in addition to creating an unanticipated energy demand.

By then, Foote had pacers leading him up the hill, including Nelson, which allowed him to turn off his brain and focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Foote’s community of support from his years as a ski patroller at the mountain paid off. The grooming machines came through and ran extra laps on the downhill portion of the run to soften the snow. At the beginning of the day, the downhill had been Foote’s only rest period. By 3:00 a.m., his quads were shattered, his feet were torn up, and he was screaming in pain with every turn on the downhills.

“When the sun started coming up, I started to feel good,” Foote told me, “or maybe I was just smelling the barn.” His pace had slowed to about 27 minutes per lap, but he was still barely within the window to complete 60 laps in less than 24 hours. When he finished lap 59, Foote officially broke the record with 60,180 feet gained. “The last couple of hours I thought, ‘I feel stable enough—this is probably going to happen,’” Foote told me from his bed at a nearby condo an hour after the finish.

“I felt a little emotional. I put a lot into this. It’s definitely one of the biggest goals of my life so far, and I was very much not confident that I’d be able to pull it off as the day approached. So I felt happy,” Foote said. “But I didn’t really have time to think about it, because we wanted to get an extra lap.” A dozen of his friends stepped off with him for the final lap, and with Nelson pacing him, Foote left them scrambling to catch up. Lap 60 was one of the fastest of the entire effort. He finished with five minutes to spare.

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This weekend, the community of Seeley Lake, Montana, was supposed to be hosting the , in honor of the author ofÌęA River Runs Through ItÌęandÌęYoung Men and Fire.ÌęMaclean wrote the book that made Missoula’s rivers famous in a cabin here; his son, John, has used the cabin as a base while writing about . But the festivities have been moved to Missoula, where the smoke is a little less thick.

Much of Seeley Lake has been evacuated due to the , a 120,759-acre fire that’s been burning sinceÌęJuly 24, has so far cost $32.6 million, and is just 5 percent contained. Its western edge is just a couple miles from the high school. Just about 15 miles to the west is another blaze, the—current size and price tag: 23,053 acres and $16.6 million. Seeley Lake has become a makeshift operating base for an interagency team of 725 Forest Service firefighters, water tenders, and excavator operators, as well asÌęprivate contractors, all working long hours through one of the most devastating fire seasons in recent memory.

Women and men from the National Guard zip around in fatigues, while in Cory’s Valley Market firefighters with smudged faces and cargo pants buy soda. The air has a thick and pale yellowish sheen. An air quality specialist “a hideous brown spiral of misery and despair.”

“If the fires weren’t going we’d probably be in a hurricane,” a public information officer for the Forest Service named Mike Cole told me, with something like a sigh.

With the Gulf recovering from a deadly hurricane, Florida preparing for one, and Mexico rattling from a magnitude 8.2 earthquake, it’s easy to forget that . Large swaths of Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho, and Montana are burning. In Montana, more than one million acres have burned, and some residents have complained about a lack of attention from national media. YesterdayÌęon the radio, an expert cheerily noted that it’s so dry in Glacier National Park that rocks are catching fire. The moon is the color of a plum, the sun a bit lighter.

This summer, two firefighters have lost their lives in Montana, one of them a 19-year-old near Seeley Lake in July. So far, further tragedy has been avoided, but only just: last Saturday, three firefighters (including two hot shots) on the Liberty Fire temporarily before winds shifted, allowing them to escape to a safe zone. They’ve since left Montana, replaced by the next round of cavalry. The flights in here are full of firefighters—from West Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, all coming to do their 14-day stint on the line.

The weather forecast suggests that they’ll keep arriving for the foreseeable future. The smoky inversion hovering over the area has made for grim breathing, but it’s scheduled to lift this afternoon, bringing new worries: the forecast calls for potential thunderstorms, followed by winds that could fuel the flames. “Stay tuned,” Cole said, “when the weather changes.”ÌęÌę

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There were no lines outside Missoula’s Fact and Fiction bookstore on April 21, when Jon Krakauer’s latest book was released. “Nothing like when a new James Lee Burke goes on sale,” says storeowner Barbara Theroux. Still, there was a steady stream of people—several hundred in the first week—trickling in to buy their own copy of the most controversial book in Missoula.Ìę

Krakauer has made a brand out of his I’m-not-here-to-make-friends reporting. His books have excoriated Everest climbers, unmasked the Mormon church, and lambasted Greg Mortenson for fabricating parts of Three Cups of Tea.ÌęBut it’s usually in service of what he sees as an important cause.

His latest work is no exception. Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College TownÌę($29, Doubleday) is a page-turning primer on acquaintance rape—the most underreported crime in America—and a revealing account of a sexual assault crisis at the University of Montana from 2008 to 2012. Missoula’s poor response to these rapes led to national scrutiny and a yearlong Department of Justice investigation.Ìę

“It’s not always an easy read,” says Theroux, who is donating proceeds from the book’s sales to two local sexual assault response centers. “There are some tough sections. But I think it has achieved the goal of starting a discussion about rape on college campuses and what communities should do to help.”Ìę

That discussion began in February, when news broke that Krakauer was releasing a book about rape in Missoula, titled Missoula.ÌęThe town of 70,0000 in western Montana is accustomed to recognition for being an outdoorsman’s paradise; to be branded as a case study in campus rape was something new. Even before it was released, the book was stirring up plenty of local ire.

“I am so disappointed in the title of your book,” said one woman on Krakauer’s Facebook page. “I hate to see a lovely town’s reputation get destroyed.”Ìę

In his book, Krakauer did point out that Missoula’s rape rate—350 reported rapes in just over four years—is slightly less than average for a town of its size. But many Missoulians felt sucker-punched for a problem that affects communities nationwide.Ìę

Last night, Krakauer faced the town for the first time since the book’s release. The ballroom of the Doubletree Hotel was filled to capacity with more than 600 people—including a few of the prosecutors, detectives, and lawyers Krakauer wrote about—as he answered questions from Larry Abramson, dean of the University of Montana’s School of Journalism. Krakauer may have expected a tide of detractors, but the audience gave him a standing ovation when he was introduced.

Abramson asked Krakauer why he chose to write about rape in MissoulaÌęwhen he could have written about his own hometown, Boulder, where the University of Colorado is under federal investigation for the way the University of Colorado handled sexual violence complaints. “I wish someone would write a book about Boulder,” Krakauer said. “I like Missoula. It’s a wonderful town. It didn’t seem like this town would be so defensive.” Ìę

Krakauer said he set out to write about sexual assault after learning that a family friend had been raped by an acquaintance. He was tracking rape cases around the countryÌęand came to Missoula to attend the sentencing of Beau Donaldson, a University of Montana football player who pled guilty to raping his childhood friend, Allison Huguet.Ìę

“I was riveted,” Krakauer said. “She was so courageous. I literally wanted to stand up and cheer.” He knew he could write a short book about that case alone. But once he started digging, he found a pattern of rape cases falling through the cracks of the justice system. “There were good people making bad decisions, there were bad people making bad decisions,” he said. “I wanted to tell the victims’ view.” Ìę

Seated in an armchair on a small stage, Krakauer was at turns impassioned, cantankerous, and unapologetic. He didn’t pander. At one point he said that many prosecutors needed to “get [their] fucking act together” and pursue more rape cases.Ìę

Abramson pointed out that Krakauer wrote most of the book based on transcripts and recordings and didn’t even try to interview key players like the county attorney or the university president. “My plan from the get-go was not to rely on interviews,” Krakauer said. “I needed to get documents.” It was partly a legal concern—he was writing about litigious people and didn’t want his book stuck in libel limbo. It was also a matter of perspective. “I have a point of view in this book,” he said, “but it’s balanced. I really despise this ‘he said, she said’ journalism.” Ìę

Some feminists have criticized Krakauer for cashing in on a subject that women have written about for years. Others complain that he fails to explain the greater cultural context—binge drinking on campuses, male entitlement—that enables rape. Krakauer said he made a conscious decision to focus the book on victims. “It is what it is,” he shrugged. “It has its limitations. It’s the best I could do.”

When asked how communities can prevent rapes, Krakauer said the criminal justice system is a good place to start. “Rape is a serious crime that is not being taken seriously,” he said. Krakauer doesn’t deny that people are wrongly convicted of rape. “I’m just saying for every one, there’s at least 100 women raped, and their rapist walked away laughing.”Ìę

Before the forum ended—abruptly, with a heckler being —Abramson asked Krakauer if he would send his daughter to college in Missoula. “I would,” he said. “I think the university is safer now than most schools. Missoula is a lot better than most places. You have this big problem, but you’ve gone a long way toward fixing it.”

Krakauer spends most of his book diving into the problem side of that equation. He highlights the yearlong Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation that exposed shortcomings in the way the University of Montana, Missoula Police Department, and Missoula County Attorney’s Office handled sexual assaults. But he spends little time discussing the specific changes initiated by the DOJÌęand what they mean for sexual assault victims in Missoula.Ìę

“The DOJ investigation, the immediate coverage after it, and the Krakauer book have fundamentally changed the dialogue in Missoula,” says victims advocate Shantelle Gaynor, the program supervisor for Missoula’s Relationship Violence Services, a public victim’s advocacy office. “It’s created movement.”

In the three years Krakauer spent writing Missoula, the University of Montana (UM), the police department, and the prosecutor’s office have all established agreements with the DOJ to reform their handling of sexual assault. (The prosecutor’s office agreed to oversight by Montana’s attorney general onlyÌęlast June, after first filing a lawsuit against the DOJ.)

The university’s response to sexual assault began at the end of 2011, when it hired former Montana Supreme Court Justice Diane Barz to investigate an eruption of rapes on campus. That report, and specific demands in the subsequent DOJ agreement, led to UM implementing training for everyone on campus. Students, faculty, and staff all conduct mandatory online tutorials on sexual assault. The university has ordered any faculty or staff member who learns of a rape to report it to the Title IX office within 24 hours. It also collects data from students in an annual “climate survey.” The DOJ has called its agreement with UM “a blueprint that can serve as a model for campuses across the nation.” Currently, 55 colleges and universities are facing federal investigationsÌęover how they investigate campus rape.

“What’s happening at the university is important, but it needs to be part of a much larger conversation,” Gaynor says. “There’s no magic presentation that’s going to change the world. There’s a whole lot of culture this message is up against.”Ìę

But every additional layer of education helps, she says, from Ìęto dorm presentations. “The criminal justice system alone is not going to end these forms of violence,” Gaynor says. “We need to do much more work on the prevention side.”

The changes are also important for the university’s bottom line. Concern lingers over how the book—the cover of which features the campus’ÌęMain Hall—will affect already shrinking enrollment. “I hope that it doesn’t,” says university legal counsel Lucy France. “Personally, I grew up here. I raised my kids here. I think it’s the best place in the world to live.”

For its part, Gaynor says the Missoula Police Department has become more victim-focused in its investigations. Krakauer cites cases in which officers doubted or even blamed women who reported being raped. (Statistically, fewer than 10 percent of rape allegations are false.) Now, police are trained to work with traumatized victims. More officers are assigned to sexual assault cases, and a victim’s advocate assists in investigations. The changes may be working. Reports of rape nearly doubled between 2012 and 2014—ironically, a good sign. Ìę

“When you see increased reporting,” Gaynor says, “it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s an increase of crime. It often means there’s an increase of trust.”

Getting more sexual assault victims to step forward is important because only about 20 percent of rapes are reported. “The police have made some fundamental changes,” Gaynor says. Fewer victims are backing out of investigations, and surveys indicate victims feel they are being treated well by officers.Ìę

That doesn’t mean Krakauer’s book is going over well among the rank and file. “Very few have read it,” says Public Information Officer SergeantÌęTravis Welsh. “I don’t have any plan to read the book.”Ìę

Krakauer reserves most of his criticism for Kirsten Pabst, who left her position as chief deputy county attorney to successfully defend star UM quarterback Jordan Johnson in a highly publicized rape trial. After his acquittal, she was elected to county attorney, having campaigned on a promise of reforming the office to show more compassion toward victims. Given her history, Krakauer and many Missoulians question her commitment to prosecuting sexual assault cases.Ìę

Pabst refused to answer emailed questions for this story; instead, she sent a list of the changes the Missoula County Attorney’s Office (MCAO) has made at the behest of the DOJ and Montana’s attorney general. The MCAO created a Special Victims Unit, in which four full-time prosecutors focus on sexual assault and family violence. These prosecutors have special training and a smaller caseload. They meet weekly with police to discuss cases. The office has also created a “softer” conference room to interview victims in a less intimidating atmosphere. An independent technical adviser has been hired to monitor their effectiveness for two years.Ìę

“Has their prosecution of sexual assaults increased?” Gaynor wonders. “Statistically speaking, it’s too soon to tell. The one thing that hasn’t changed for them is that they still have a huge caseload. Even in the Special Victims Unit.”

And that gets to the heart of the matter, Gaynor says. “Law enforcement and prosecutors are a reflection of what the community thinks of these issues,” she says. “At first there was no attention, then there was shock and outrage, now comes the commitment.”Ìę

When the limelight fades, will taxpayers be willing to fund the additional personnel and ongoing training needed to create sustainable change in holding rapists accountable? “Time will tell,” Gaynor says. “If it was cheap and easy, it would be done already. Just like smoking. Just like drinking and driving. Just like getting people out of their chairs and into the woods. It takes so much to change behavior.” Ìę

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