If a life of working out and playing in the outdoors has led to good cholesterol and normal blood pressure and you’ve made it at least into your 40s with these stats it means you’re very unlikely to blow an aorta or suffer a stroke. So says a new study from the New England Journal of Medicine. The bummer? “If at age 45 you have two or more of either elevated blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes or smoking, and you’re a man, then there’s a 50-50 proposition that you will have a heart attack or a stroke during your remaining lifespan,” says the head of the story. Oh snap.

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Club Med says it’s the largest ski lodging outfit in the world — it has 18 resorts in the Alps — and is confident it can crack the market here. Specifically the mega-developer is said to be shopping for property in Colorado, California, and Quebec, and with real estate in the dumps it’s probably a good time to be looking. But for world-famous Club Med to succeed it’s going to have to dispel its cheesy stereotype. That is, a tacky buffet, battles at the bar for your one free drink, and hairy chests decorated with gold chains.

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The crew we all aspired to join in our childhoods, the Bones Brigade, is coming out with a documentary. If Stacey Peralta has shown us one thing, it’s that he adores being a talking head in documentaries. The film showed at Sundance this year, but the official trailer has yet to be released. Skate and Annoy is hosting a few early-look clips.

A massive avalanche struck Taylor Mountain on Teton Pass near Jackson Hole this week after a backcountry skier ski-cut the slope, triggering a slide that covered the Coal Creek drainage for 500 yards with debris up to 30 feet deep. No one was caught in the slide, either on Taylor or in Coal Creek, a major exit for skiers coming off Mt. Glory and adjacent slopes. The outcome could have been far worse, given the huge amount of backcountry traffic on the pass, and the incident set of a “blogalanche” of fiery debate at Teton AT over the skier’s action, responsibility, and liability. There’s a predictable amount of self-righteousness in the comments, but also a lot of excellent points wrestling for definitive answers to questions that might not have them. If you care about snow and avie safety, you should give it a read. You’ll get a fair dose of the mosh pit that is the Jackson backcountry community, too. Via Teton AT.

Normally I can’t abide this kind of thing, but I love the idea of grass between my toes while standing on the subway platform. Hopefully no rats run over my feet. Kusa’s grass flip flops are made with artificial turf and sell for about $30.

The Maine Hunting Shoe upon which the L.L. Bean Bootmobile is quite loosely based was born in 1912 and was (and still is) considerably more fashionable than a giant boot with an Ford F-250 underneath it, but any boot you could buy wouldn’t be SEVEN FEET LONGER than the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile, nor would it commemorate a 100th birthday in a big way. Naturally, you want to know what size shoe it is, right? Try 747. No joke. Nor is the way-too-earnest Youtube video where you can learn all about the making of the Bootmobile, Orange County Chopper style.

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It won’t be the last name in the coffin of stretching for performance, but it might be one of the first. In 2010, researchers at Florida State shows the static stretching before time trial running decreased efficiency by 5 percent and distance by 3 percent. A new study of dynamic stretching by the same group of scientists is just out and it reveals that stretching had no significant impact in distance or efficiency. Stretches does increase flexibility, which is a good thing, but as performance edge? Nyet. Via Sweat Science.

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A skier at Montana’s Snowbowl filed an anonymous complaint about what he considered to be a dangerous runout at the resort. His complaint went unheeded. So he reached out to the Lolo National Forest District for help. The story picked up some news coverage, and Snowbowl found out through the Forest Service who had filed the complaint. Instead of looking into the matter, the head office at the resort decreed that he would be forbidden to ski Snowbowl. After a few press calls to the Forest Service, they asked Snowbowl to back down. Which they did, sort of. Instead of selling him a season pass, they’ll allow him to buy non-discounted daily lift passes. Then when he hits the threshold for what it would have cost to get a season pass, he’s allowed to continue going to the lift ticket office to pick up “free” passes. What a wonderful way to begin every day at the resort, waiting in line at the lift ticket office and then trying to explain that you’re due for a free ticket. I’m sure they’ll be very accommodating.

via Adventure Journal

Joel Sartore’s shooting wild animals at a scale where they become, well, objectified — kind of the way photographers shoot human models. He’s going to zoos and bringing a portable studio. He’s snapping the animals on pure black, or pure white backgrounds. He’s already photo’d 1,800 animals for a project with National Geographic, and he feels he’s racing the clock to capture as many species as possible, before they’re lost. And for us to weigh the cost of losing them. As Sartore writes: “The clean background, combined with nice light, allows the viewer to look every species in the eye, the window to the soul. I hope these portraits will connect with viewers and get them to understand that all creatures have at least a consciousness as well as a basic right to exist.”

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