If you find yourself having next Wednesday off work and you live close enough to make it to a national park, you're in luck; Charlotte Durif can hang with you unless you're one of about 10 male climbers in the world; of course someone is planning to open a hotel in space -- next up, expeditions on Olympus Mons; go Meb; well, maybe that wasn't Everett Ruess after all, LOL, WTF; and Dr. Christopher Thomas Thompson, the douche that tried to kill a couple of cyclists in California last year, could get a well-deserved five years in the can after an LA Superior Court found him guilty last week.

• Free Admission To National Parks On Nov. 11
• Wyoming To Consider Bill Requiring Hikers To Carry Bear Spray
• Frenchwoman Charlotte Durif Puts Up Two 5.14c FAs
• Kelly Cordes Shares 'The Fun Scale'
• Space Hotel To Open In 2012, If You Have $4.4 Million To Burn
• Shark Bites Surfer, Surfer Punches Shark
• Meb Keflezighi Wins NYC Marathon, Now Let's Argue What 'American' Means
• Everett Ruess Maybe Not Actually Found, Says DNA Test
• Asshole Doctor Who Hit Cyclists Guilty Of Being Asshole, 7 Other Counts

Employees of a few energy companies in Colorado had become fond of a big horn sheep that had peeled off its herd and made a home in De Beque Canyon. Local residents and employees of the energy company that use a road near the animal had taken to seeing it on a daily basis and shooting pictures of the animal. On October 30th, a person found the animal dead with a single shot to its neck. They contacted authorities who put the word out in the neighborhood to try to find the poacher. The energy company found out about the poaching and has offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who turns in or helps catch the poacher.

Man, energy companies are like the mob. The guy who shot and left this animal has a price on his head. We're so accustomed to hearing about energy companies screwing us over, and the one time they do something cool they're motivated only by their sense of vindictiveness. Anyone who can turn the poacher in can collect the cash through Colorado's Division of Wildlife.

The Gilt Groupe is an estrogen focused shopping site for private sales, i.e. you have to be a member in order to enjoy the significant savings.  Started by a pair of pretty hawt Harvard grads and now CEO'd by a pretty high powered business veteran, the company seems to be going in the right direction.  The addition of a travel private sale vertical and now mens - Gilt Man rounds out the offering.  I haven't bought a thing on the site, nor really looked at it, but Gilt Man does focus on higher end fashion brands like D&G, Black Fleece, Y-3.  However, Gilt Man has a significant number of private sales with outdoor brands - Mountain Smith, Kaenon, Cloudveil, The North Face.  Alas, you have to be a member to access this crap, but I'm in a good mood, I'll 'invite' anyone who wants - realize I get $25 for everyone I refer, I think, but it's free for you.  However, any referral fees I get, I'll buy something at Gilt and offer it as a prize for a future giveaway on GetOutdoors.  Who says I don't give?  You can email me at ebomb(at)getoutdoors.com.  Enjoy, read more here.

Welcome to Gilt Man

Gilt Man grants you exclusive access to curated sales of designer gear and gadgets, at up to 70% off.

    * Members Only

      Membership is free but limited to referrals. Invite a friend and receive $25 after his first order has shipped -- because friends should always give you credit.
    * Latest and Greatest

      Our team is always selecting new styles from top brands at the deepest possible discount. Each sale lasts about 36 hours before a new sale starts.
    * Instant Gratification

      Don't like snooty store clerks? Neither do we. Hassle-free shopping means you choose something you like and we send it right to your door.

I've seen both of Alstrin Films' previous videos, and was at the premiere of their last work about the first ascent of the Supercrack of the Desert. Solid work, both of them. The newest, The Continuum Project, looks like it should be up to par. DVDs ship Nov. 27. More info at AlstrinFilms.com.

I'm on the fence about the Helmet Flag (music link warning). I can't decide if it's the work of a laid-off web developer keeping his skills fresh by creating an outrageous parody website; or rather it's the work of a Utah family trying to keep their 15 kids safe. Either way, the Helmet Flag is insanely awesome. Short people could wear it at work when they have to walk around cubicle farms, and people who work on golf ball driving ranges could attach the flag to their helmet. It sells for $25 without a helmet attached. Cyclists who fear they'll look like a loser if they wear a helmet will likely have a seizure if they see someone wearing a Helmet Flag. Become the 25th fan on their Facebook page and be part of "the next Big Idea."

A recent study found that despite widespread attention to the importance of helmet use, not only has helmet use not gone up, but the severity of cycling injuries has greatly increased. The researchers looked at cyclists admitted to a trauma center in Denver over 11 years. During that time, the severity of injuries and the length of stay for rundown cyclists dramatically increased. The obvious answer is that more people are riding their bikes, which is great, but the bad news is that the cycling infrastructure can't handle all the new riders. Inexperienced people are getting on their bikes to be healthy and avoid oil wars, and more of them are getting run over.

The Freakonomics blog on NY Times ran a similar article that posed the questions, "Will Bicycling to Work Get you Killed?" They found that bikers are 12 times more likely to be involved in a fatal accident than car drivers, but also that drivers have a 39% higher mortality rate. Basically, if you can survive the bike ride to work, you'll live a longer life.

Not to pooh-pooh that other race that went on this weekend and the American citizen who won it, but let's talk about some real news. The Denver Gorilla Run set a record on Saturday: Most people dressed as gorillas in one location -- 1,061. The run is a 5.6K starting at the Wynkoop Brewery in downtown Denver, and I'll say from experience that it can be a little creepy being in the middle of that pack when the race starts, and hundreds of gorillas are chasing three cyclists in full banana costumes, making all kinds of noises our simian ancestors made. Anyway, the fastest runner finished in 22 minutes.

As our friends over at Climbing Narc noted, "While the interpersonal relationships of climbers is not normally appropriate for discussion on this blog, Beth and Tommy had built a pretty powerful brand around their being a climbing couple so the fact that they are no longer together seems like “news”. " But more importantly for GoBlog, it seems like the entry of two hot climbing ladies back into the dating pool has got the hormones running of quite a few lonely climbing dorks and it's driving mad traffic to the site. Over 75 people a day looking for information on these divorces. We call that newsworthy, at least in the sad fantasy lives of hundreds of climbers around the world. That's the only thing we can think of when we look at our search logs and scratch our heads at the sheer volume of traffic the words "beth rodden divorce" and "step davis divorce" drive to the site. So naturally we were curious what Google had to say as a gut check, so we pulled the numbers from their the Ad Words Keyword Selector tool. Here's the data they gave:

Phrase	Google Global Monthly Search Volume
steph davis divorce	46
beth rodden divorce	58

Looking through our logs, we'll have to say this is just directional and its underestimating the query volume by a large magnitude, because we see over 50 visitors a day alone searching for information on Beth Rodden's divorce. Less from Steph Davis. It's truly bizarre. Are the guys, and you have to assume it's 99% guys doing these searches, sitting in front of their computers going, "She's so hot, now I have a chance at her. Let me just confirm she's divorced and it's on!" And for that matter, why are they not searching Step Davis as often? Is she not as desirable as Beth when it comes to climbing dork fantasies hierarchy? You could also slice and dice this data and get anonymous demographic data. Like some lonely guy from Yale searched "tommy caldwell and beth rodden divorce" during his lunch hour today and a guy from Seattle searched "beth rodden divorce". Maybe we should put the data together and give it to Beth so she can avoid the towns with high rates of stalkers/searchers. And just to be honest, it's not just the hot climbing lady celebrities that get all this attention. People are always Googling "Chris Sharma girlfriend" to see if he's single. Because, you know, they have a shot if he is...Internet. Truly a weird and scary place.

Lance Mountain has been doing this for the last 30 years. The guy was an original member of the Bones Brigade, and here is still showing us how to rip it. He was also the inventor of fingerboards, making them out of cardboard, pencil erasers, and disassembled Hot Wheels toys (at least according to Wikipedia). The guy's badass, and this video's a good reminder why.

via All Hail the Black Market

We tend toward hyperbole and humor here at GoBlog, because it helps distract readers from the bad writing and lack of substance we generally provide. Yet, strangely, we're one of the largest outdoor blogs around, so what does that say about you, gentle readers? But we digress. If you read about the world's most expensive ski boots we posted about a few weeks ago, and decided you must have a pair, why not add a pair of the world's lightest powder skis to your shopping list? Weighing in at 2000 grams (4.3lbs) for a pair of 175s, the Black Powder aim to be the GoBlog of mountaineering skis: fast, light, good in the sack on the mountain. Wooo. From their press release:

• Is ultra-light so that the energy saved on the way up leaves you the strength to enjoy the descent
• Is not too long in order to facilitate kick turns while climbing, to be maneuverable during the descent and to move easily around obstacles (narrow corridors, trees)
• Its width at the waist is compatible with all crampons
• The width at the tip allows easy lift off of powder, while remaining reasonably narrow to break trail on the way up

How did they accomplish this feat of engineering marvel? Again, we defer to their press release:

The BLACK POWDER is a ski with a "partial core" (AlpControl patent) which is shorter than the ski, so that the upper and lower layers of carbon sandwich come together to form carbon/epoxy composite monoblocs at the tail and spatula. Because a ski should remain flexible, we ruled out fibers too rigid (high modulus) and instead selected the strongest "high tensile" fiber: the Toray T700S.

The T700S is one of the rare fibers in the world with a rate of elongation before break well above 2%, ensuring a high tolerance to shock.

The catch is you need to use their binding it appears, the Mountain Spring, which secure your plastics to the skis. Alright, enough shop talk. Suffice it to say they were a finalist for an ISPO this year. Read about them yourself on the AlpsControl website. Download their the Black Powder techncial spec doc and press release here (pdf).

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