So God Made the World's Hottest Pepper

The Atlantic

Searching for a winner in the cutthroat world of competitive chili pepper growing

Meet the Carolina Reaper. It is an evil looking pepper—a gnarled, lumpy pod with a sucked-up belly and a small tail reminiscent of wasp’s stinger. When ripe it is a luscious Crayola red. Its looks are a carefully crafted marketing scheme that screams “Danger: Do Not Eat.” But it was those looks that immediately drew Ed Currie, a South Carolina chili pepper grower, to the Carolina Reaper, the latest and most controversial contender for the crown of world’s hottest pepper.

How Mountain Biking Is Saving Small-Town, USA

Outside

From Nevada to Minnesota, hollowed-out mining towns are seeing economic revitalization on trails and tracks that attract mountain bikers from far and wide

Nearly 50 years ago, the iron mining companies that were once the backbone of Crosby, Minnesota’s economy pulled the plug, leaving behind a scarred landscape of open pits and piles of unwanted red dirt. The area soon became an illegal dump that looked more like Mars than Earth, and the town became the kind of place where visitors locked their doors as they drove through. Then in 1993, the mines and the surrounding land were designated a state recreation area to preserve their mining heritage, and the state cleaned it up as best it could, hauling truckfuls of garbage out. But no one visited much, and the area sat mostly forgotten and untouched. Over the next two decades, the land recovered, Crosby did not.

A League Of Her Own

5280

Pack Burro Racing’s Most Dominant Donkey Starts Her Quest for a Third Triple Crown

You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but Buttercup the miniature donkey is a fire-breathing dragon. At least that’s how Brad Wann, media relations director for the Western Pack Burro Association, described her in 2019 as she toed the usually crowded starting line at Fairplay’s annual pack burro race, the sport’s first Triple Crown event of the season. At home, she has the easygoing disposition of a therapy animal, but that day, she bounced on her hooves, held back by her owner and racing partner, Marvin Sandoval. The competitive energy was enough that her full-size, four-legged rivals gave her a wide berth.

“Marvin had his own little corner to himself,” Wann says, “and we were all like, ‘Come on! She’s 250 pounds soaking wet and taking these 900-pound donkeys to task.’ ”

Colorado’s Fly-Fishing Industry Faces the Growing Threat of Climate Change

5280

Are the state's guides, outfitters, and anglers ready?

“As water gets warmer, it holds less dissolved oxygen,” says Tom Rosenbauer, a fly-fishing educator and Orvis’ chief enthusiast (which is, apparently, a real job title). “So when you go and jerk trout around on the end of a line, you are stressing them further. They can literally suffocate.”

By this past fall, Hutchinson had seen enough. At an alliance board meeting in September, he told his fellow members that fishing outfitters in the valley and around the state needed to start thinking seriously about how to adapt their businesses to accommodate climate change. “These discussions need to happen now,” he says, even if it’s “probably already too late.”

OFF THE WALL

Arkansas Life

Though it’s grown considerably over the past nine years, the 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell climbing competition has remained faithful to its roots—and it’s still one heck of a party

It’s 11 o’clock in the morning, and a rebel yell is echoing off the canyon walls loud enough to encourage some skittish birds to flee their trees for the safety of the open air. And they’re not the only ones taking flight. All around me and all around this sandstone-ringed valley just outside Jasper, men and women, young and old, are climbing.

They are stuffing whole fists into cracks in the sandstone cliffs. They are stuffing calloused hands into chalk sacks for that extra bit of grip. They are pinching minuscule outcroppings of rock between fingers and thumb. They are clipping rainbow-hued ropes into bolts sunk deep into the rock (or bypassing them entirely). They are hanging upside down. They are costumed. They are bare-chested. They are slipping. They are falling. They are caught midair as their partners lock down the ropes. And every hour on the hour for the next 23 hours, they’ll scream, they’ll hoot and they’ll holler to mark the passage of time.

A KILLER IN THE DARK

Arkansas Life

The race to save Arkansas' bats from the deadly white-nose syndrome sweeping across the country

It’s late in the afternoon by the time Ron Redman, Patrick Moore, and Daniel Istvanko begin their third cave survey of the day on Jan. 11. There is nothing special about the cave itself. It’s not pretty. There are no vaulted cathedral ceilings, no slender stalactites and stalagmites. If it weren’t for the 100 or so endangered bats living inside that the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission needs counted, there would really be no reason for these three to be there. But in less than 15 minutes, a discovery will be made that will make it arguably the most important cave in The Natural State. Unknown to anyone, a killer has struck.

The three surveyors suit up in white Tyvek coveralls and check their gear. The entrance to the cave is steep, and Redman, a 22-year veteran of the state’s endangered-bats surveying program, warns his young companions—both grad students in their first full season of counting bats for the Game and Fish Commission—that they’ll need to look down, so they’d better have their headlamps cinched tight. He has seen many a light take a tumble in this cave. Then they head into the darkness.