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What should you do if you run into a cougar in the backcountry? answer

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Outside Magazine October 2001

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Experts

Ski Tuner Surfboard Shaper Mountain Bike Builder Fly-fishing Store Life Advice

THE BEST SKI TUNER
Jim Deines, PRECISION SKI, FRISCO AND KEYSTONE, COLORADO
Precision Ski co-owner Deines and his 25-person crew have been putting out top-flight tunes since the early eighties, combining time-tested hand skills with machine techniques on the highest-quality Montana stone grinders. Their expertise is



	Jim Deines

sought nationwide: In addition to regular grinds for the U.S. Ski Team, Precision once tamed former Iditarod champ Jeff King's dogsled runners. They'll take care of your beveling no matter what kind of board you ride.
$45 for a full-service tune-up; 970-668-3095
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THE BEST SURFBOARD SHAPER
Rusty Preisendorfer, RUSTY SURFBOARDS, SAN DIEGO, CA
Now known the world over by the letter R., Preisendorfer built his first surfboard factory in 1969 out of a high-school friend's converted chicken coop. His reputation grew steadily throughout the 1970s at other outfits, like San Diegobased Gordon and Smith, but Preisendorfer really hit it big in 1984 when Aussie surfing legend Mark Occhilupo dominated the world pro tour on a Rusty tri-fin thruster. Two years later, more than half of the world's top 16 surfers were riding Rusty's shapes. Today, his company makes custom boards for grommets and pros—including those for C.J. Hobgood, the number oneranked surfer in the world at press time—and Rusty himself still comes into the shop on most weekends to shape boards for a few lucky friends.
Starting at $430; 858-578-0414; www.rusty.com
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THE BEST MOUNTAIN-BIKE BUILDER

MOOTS, STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, COLORADO
Established in 1981 by mountain-biking pioneer and Hall-of-Famer Kent Eriksen (above), Moots is a small customizing outfit that pushes the envelope of design. The shop's 12 employees hand-build a modest 650 bikes per year. In 1986, they helped initiate full suspension with the YBB (Why Be Beat), the first all-suspension bike to win a NORBA cross-country championship, and in 1991, they made the revolutionary switch from steel to lightweight titanium. A Moots-built bike won't come cheap, but acquiring the latest design, the Smoothie, will leave you with the strongest, lightest, most durable cross-country mountain-bike frame on the planet.
$5,175 for a Smoothie; 970-879-1676; www.moots.com
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FLY-FISHING STORE
Jack Dennis's Pro Tackle Shop
A stupendous combination of five 20-year-veteran employees, some 700 fly patterns (many tied locally), and Jackson, Wyoming's most experienced stable of guides easily qualifies Jack Dennis's Pro Tackle Shop as the best in the country. Need more proof? Among a slew of other notables, regular customers in the shop have included four of the last six presidents (Ford, Carter, Bush Sr., and Clinton).
800-570-3270; www.jackdennis.com
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The Best Advice
"Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am—a reluctant enthusiast...a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: You will outlive the bastards."
— Edward Abbey (1927-1989), author of The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire, at a 1987 Earth First! rally at the Grand Canyon. Abbey was an Outside correspondent from 1980 until his death.
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