Verno turned around, the spotlights were on him and he was shadowboxing, getting ready to walk out to the ring for his fight, and he looked at me and said, ‘Bro, you all right?’

Boxing may seem like a strange stop on the path to inner peace. From outside the ring, the sport resonates violence, fury and chaos. The most direct path to victory is to knock your rival into a stupor.

In 2010 the federal government gave the National Park Service $2.7 billion and the return on investment was $31 billion and 258,400 jobs. According to a just-out, peer-reviewed study on the economic value of the NPS, most of the revenue was generated by lodging and food bought by visitors, who totaled a whopping 281 million — the equivalent of 90 percent of the U.S. population.

We had a lot of fun with the mountain bike ownership analysis a couple weeks ago and now it’s time to delve into some trail stats. Ever wonder which US states have the most miles of mountain bike trails? Or which states have the lowest trail use densities? We did–and here are our findings.

Climate change is altering the face of the Himalayas, devastating farming communities and making Mount Everest increasingly treacherous to climb, some of the world's top mountaineers have warned.

Matt Cudmore always wanted to own a ski shop. The idea struck Cudmore in his time as a ski instructor in Germany. Three years ago, the 32-year-old found himself drinking beers with his neighbor in his garage and threw the idea out there again.

The technique is solid: weight firmly on the downhill ski, eyes ahead, shoulders square. There’s fire in the eyes, determination there. There’s also beauty and grace and something timeless.

One of the most clever and crude climbing route names ever is in Colorado — Eldorado Canyon’s “Your Mother,” a 5.12d sport route on the west aspect of the Bastille. The possibilities for conversation for men giggling like high school freshmen are endless: “I was on Your Mother last Saturday,” “I just got off Your Mother,” et cetera. And yet you don’t have to worry about explaining the name to your 10-year-old when you’re at the crag, should he or she find it while flipping through a guidebook.

Small Wyoming ski resorts have been folding in the past decade, but there may be hope for their futures. White Pine Ski Area has now gone up for sale, while Antelope Butte may see a resurrection.

Late last year a proposal to tie together Solitude and The Canyons ski resorts raised a fairly huge dustup in the normally quietly pro-business politics of Utah. When most of Utah’s congressional delegation began their push in Washington to bypass state and federal impact studies, as well as local input, local politicians in Salt Lake City and County pushed back hard, not least because Big and Little Cottonwood canyon waters are all that prevent the most populated portion of the state from returning to a desiccated husk.