Outside Magazines 10 most Inspirational Outsiders of the year, Climbing, for Families and Inspiration, Swimming, Skiing, Environmentalists, Seattle and Fairbanks, Alaska and the Northern Lights.
Friday 5/8
INSPIRATION/CURRENT EVENTS, Text courtesy of Outside
The 2019 Outsiders of the Year, According to Outside Magazine
Outsiders of the Year list honors the most influential people changing our outdoor world. For 2019, our staff and contributors nominated an original list of 81 candidates, then got busy whittling them down to a select few.
U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team
Athletes Dominating the Pitch and Fighting for Equality
They move across the field as one, shifting with the ball, actions precisely calibrated. A beautiful, brutally efficient machine. And an unbeatable one.
CLIMBING, and other influential people.
Selah Schneiter
Youngest Person to Climb the Nose
In June, Schneiter, a ten-year-old from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, climbed the Nose, the iconic 31-pitch route up El Capitan in Yosemite. She completed it in five days—most do it in three or four—with her dad, Mike Schneiter, and a family friend. She shared her account of the trip with Outside.
My dad wanted to do a shorter route. But I wanted to do the Nose. It’s a classic. It stands out. To prepare, I had to learn some new skills. We did a practice night on a portaledge in Colorado. People ask, “What if you fall off in the middle of the night?” I say, “Well, you’re still tied in.”
That morning I ate vanilla-blueberry granola with whipping cream. As we were hiking to the base of El Cap, I was scared I might not get to the top. But mainly I was excited.
I’ve been climbing since I was a toddler. Climbing has always been something we do as a family. I thought I might be one of the youngest girls to climb El Cap, but that’s not why I was doing it. I was doing El Cap because I climb and it was one of my goals.
I’m in fifth grade. When people at school ask what I did over the summer, I don’t like to brag, but I also don’t want to not share, because climbing the Nose is cool. I’m trying to inspire other girls to climb and be active. —As told to Megan Michelson
Mountain Biking
Kate Courtney
Mountain-Bike Racer Bringing the Wins—and the Fun—Back to the U.S.
Kate Courtney can barely keep up with her Instagram. She has more than 300,000 followers (@kateplusfate), and the din of notifications can feel overwhelming. But she keeps an eagle eye out for one type of post. “I try really hard to message back all the NICA kids,” she says, referring to the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, which organizes middle and high school mountain-bike races across the country (Courtney is a proud NICA alum).
It’s not enough just to be fast anymore. Pro athletes are expected to be Very Online. Some polish their profiles to a high shine; Courtney rides her own line.
Caeleb Dressel
Your Reason to Care About Swimming in 2020
You might not know his name yet, but 23-year-old Caeleb Dressel is taking swimming by storm—and breaking Michael Phelps’s records. In July, Dressel won eight medals at the World Championships (six of them gold) in Gwangju, South Korea, eclipsing the seven-medal record set by Phelps at the Shanghai worlds in 2011. Here’s what it took to make history. —G.M.
49.5: Dressel’s time in the 100-meter butterfly semifinal, which outdid Phelps’s ten-year-old world record by 0.32 seconds.
0: Individual gold medals won by other American men at this year’s World Championships.
21: Heats Dressel swam on his way to eight medals.
6: Number of drug tests Dressel estimates he underwent at the World Championships.
5: Records set by Dressel in South Korea, the most held by any swimmer at a World Championship meet. (The previous was four records at a single worlds meet.)
9: Wins Dressel will need at the 2020 Games in Tokyo to break Phelps’s records of gold medals won and total medals won in a single Olympics.
50/25/25: The percentage of Dressel’s meal plate that he targets for carbs, protein, and veggies and fruits, respectively. “I don’t count calories, I eat until I’m full. That is my body’s way of telling me how much fuel I need,” he says.
3: Times Dressel has read the book Zen in the Martial Arts, by Joe Hyams. “I read it in high school before the junior worlds and in 2017 before the World Championships [in Budapest, where he won seven golden medals]. I read it again before the World Championships in 2019. So I need to start keeping that a tradition,” he told NBC Sports in August.
3: Animals Dressel has tattooed on his body—a bear (his favorite animal), an eagle, and a gator (he’s from Florida).
Check out the others. The link is above.
RUNNING
Caster Semenya
Runner Standing Her Ground on Inclusion
For most of her career, Caster Semenya, 28, has had to convince people that she has the right to compete with other female athletes.
CLIMBING
What ‘The New York Times’ Got Wrong About Climbing
“As a bigger guy who finds climbing so rewarding and healing, this quote really hurts,” Drew Hulsey, a climber from Nashville, Tennessee, told me. “I’m doing everything a fit climber does. I’m leading outside, I’m in the gym four times a week. It just hurts to read something so demeaning.”
It’s also plain wrong. Climbing is one of the best sports in the world, precisely because it’s open to every age, gender, and ability. The scene at any gym or crag is one populated by people from three to 70-plus years old—women, men, nonbinary—all climbing with each other, all building trust, connection, and friendships.
Setting the paper of record straight
SKIING
Lindsey Vonn
Skiing’s G.O.A.T.
Lindsey Vonn never wanted to be the best female skier of all time, a title she locked up with her 82 career World Cup wins. She wanted to be the best period. And while she retired in February four victories short of all-time record holder Ingemar Stenmark’s 86, the 35-year-old boasts wins in five downhill disciplines—a feat of versatility Stenmark never achieved. Throw in the grit she’s displayed through one post-crash comeback after another (and the fact that heir apparent Mikaela Shiffrin is still 20 victories shy of Vonn’s mark) and we’re ready to say the world’s greatest skier just left the building. Fight us. —Gloria Liu
Did you know….
CLIMBING IS AN OLYMPIC SPORT?
An ODE to CLIMBING MENTORS
The Mentor, from filmmakers Dan Holz and Paul Lebel, in collaboration with Osprey, chronicles climber Marcus Garcia’s friendship with climbing legend, Jimmy Ray Forester, who died in 2006 while soloing Scariest Ride in the Park, a 5.9 route in El Potrero Chico, Mexico.
The Mentor, from filmmakers Dan Holz and Paul Lebel, in collaboration with Osprey, chronicles climber Marcus Garcia’s friendship with climbing legend, Jimmy Ray Forester, who died in 2006 while soloing Scariest Ride in the Park, a 5.9 route in El Potrero Chico, Mexico.
Deadlifts may be the perfect exercise, but climbing is way more fun, filled with amazing people, and ripe with opportunity to travel.
Meet the Women Reshaping Climbing
AUDIO.
PODCAST I Listen to. This is a great podcast to listen to the Community of Climbing and the Inspirational kinds of people living this lifestyle. http://thefirnline.com/evan-phillips/
What ‘The New York Times’ Got Wrong About Climbing
“As a bigger guy who finds climbing so rewarding and healing, this quote really hurts,” Drew Hulsey, a climber from Nashville, Tennessee, told me. “I’m doing everything a fit climber does. I’m leading outside, I’m in the gym four times a week. It just hurts to read something so demeaning.”
It’s also plain wrong. Climbing is one of the best sports in the world, precisely because it’s open to every age, gender, and ability. The scene at any gym or crag is one populated by people from three to 70-plus years old—women, men, nonbinary—all climbing with each other, all building trust, connection, and friendships.
Setting the paper of record straight
SCIENCE
The Freshwater Giants are Dying
The Freshwater Giants are Dying
FIELD TRIP
Seattle, empty Streets during Covid 19 Project.
Field Trip, Fairbanks Alaska.
A Virtual Dogsled tour to See the Northern Lights in Alaska.
What Causes the Northern Lights?
Look this up.
Discuss with a your family members and friends.
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