Author: Rick Mc

Career gymnastics coach who loves the outdoors, and the internet.
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Canada, Russia new National Parks

The Great White Norths.

… the Russian government created a new Arctic park for endangered wildlife, banning all industrial activity on and around the northern tip of Novaya Zemlya, a long island that stretches north into the Arctic Circle, south of Franz Josef Land’s popular spring break beaches.

Outside Blog

Much better, me thinks, is the newly expanded Park in my homeland.

… the Canadian government finalized the expansion of the Nahanni National Park on the border of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. …

After a 35-year effort from CPAWS, the seven-fold expansion adds the granite formation known as the Cirque of the Unclimbables, one of Canada’s best big wall climbing venues, to the National Park.

… read more – Outside Blog

Cirque of the Unclimbables - click for larger photo
Cirque of the Unclimbables - click for larger photo
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15 best mountain towns in Summer

By Kelly Gray on a new UK outdoor magazine called Wide World:

Just because there’s no snow on the ground doesn’t mean you can’t go to ski resorts. In fact, it’s a fantastic time for a mountain getaway – plus there are less crowds. White water, raw natural surroundings, forested canopies – perfect for mountain climbing, white-water rafting and challenging hikes. So put away your skis and snowboards and head to the hills in the ‘off season’. Here’s WideWorld’s pick of the 15 best.

1. Telluride, Colorado

2. Zermatt, Matterhorn

3. Chamonix, French Alps

4. Mammoth, California

5. Poiana-Brasov, Romania

6. Whistler Blackcomb, British Colombia, Canada

7. Ben Nevis, Scotland

8. Snowdonia National Park, Northern Wales

9. Angel Fire, New Mexico

10. Vail, Colorado

11. Queenstown, New Zealand

12. Valberg, France

13. Pamporovo, Bulgaria

14. Åre, Sweden

15. Sierra Nevada, Granada, Spain

Click through for links and details on each – Wide World – 15 AMAZING MOUNTAIN TRIPS

The obvious omission that jumps to mind is Banff, Alberta, Canada.

No worries. Banff is hardly underexposed. Better people be reminded of Åre, Poiana-Brasov and Pamporovo that are lesser known.

No RSS feed for Wide World? That’s lame. I won’t be back very often. RSS is essential in 2009.

Pamprovo

Pamporovo – the pearl of the Bulgarian mountain resorts, nests in the heart of the Rhodopes, 260 km from the capital Sofia, and 85 km south of the city of Plovdiv. …

REMAX

(via Kraig Becker on Gadling)

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Is Half Dome in Yosemite safe?

UPDATE:

Nohara fell to his death in 2007. Kumar fell and died in 2009.

==== original post: Half Dome is certainly one of the best hikes in the World.

Fantastic.

Half-Dome
flickr – TeecNosPos – larger version

more interesting Half Dome photos

But, once again: “Rangers re-examining safety of popular hike after a fatal fall from cables during final ascent”

It was crowded on the climbing cables leading to the top of Half Dome, but Hirofumi Nohara was seemingly giddy with excitement on what could only be described as a gorgeous Saturday in Yosemite National Park.

The 37-year-old Japanese citizen was talking and laughing with his four friends as they worked their way up the nearly vertical granite slope, witnesses said.

Then he slipped.

Nohara didn’t have time to speak or even shout before he slid off the side of Half Dome to his death, becoming the third fatality within a year off the 4,800-foot granite dome. …

SF Gate – Deadly trek up Half Dome

… or is that news story wrong?

An earlier SF Gate article identifies the hiker who tumbled to his death as Manoj Kumar, a 40-year-old software engineer from San Ramon, California.

Who was it that fell? Leave a comment if you know.

Tom Mangan weighs in with his advice to hikers considering Half Dome:

1) Assess your fitness and fear-of-heights issues

2) Research your hike in-depth before you start

3) Train

4) Ask yourself ‘why’

read more on Two-Heel Drive – Is Half Dome safe? A cautious maybe

Related book: Amazon – Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite

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Must Have iPhone App for Hikers

Wow.

The Best iPhone 3.0 Beta app award at the Apple Design Awards last week is for trekkers.

Rave review … at least if you hike in certain parts of the U.S.A.:

… I haven’t used the application on a hike yet, but the mapping content on the application is very rich, and you can see what the surface of the terrain looks like. The drawbacks are you can’t zoom in as far as the iPhone Google Earth application lets you, and it doesn’t use the iPhone’s auto-tilt function to move to another part of the map like Google Earth does.

AccuTerra lets you share your outdoor experiences with others via Facebook and email. You can post a link of your trek to your Facebook profile or email a link to family and friends that includes the route you traveled and pictures you took along the way. …

Intermap created AccuTerra to fill the void of the modern-day GPS: off-road mapping. Though GPS does a “wonderful job on the road,” acknowledged Thomas, it’s not as useful “once you get to the end of the pavement.” The application also has a library of maps of U.S. national state parks and forests for each state. It had an extensive list of popular hiking and biking trails in the Bay Area, including my favorites, Alum Rock Park and Rancho San Antonio County Park. …

GigaOm – For Hikers, Bikers & Trekkers, Accuterra a Must Have iPhone App

You can get a better idea of how it works on the official mobile AccuTerra website.

Or watch a short introduction video on YouTube.

More video tutorials.

I think I’ll try it if and when I get an iPhone. That might be SOON.

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checking out … Outdoor Bunnies

Szu-ting Yi recently launched an online network of bloggers called … Outdoor Bunnies.

You may know Szu-ting Yi as LittlePo.

The name of her new site itself may draw undesirable lurkers. Most will go away when they realize the kind of bunnies on display.

… Outdoor Bunnies is the safe and supportive community for women of the wilderness (outdoor bunnies) to connect and grow with each other. At Outdoor Bunnies, outdoor bunnies share their thoughts, insights, emotions, and wisdom inspired by their outdoor endeavors. Its purpose is to empower fellow bunnies to take initiatives to pursue wilderness adventures, to engage intellectually with nature, or to simply enjoy what the great outdoors has to offer. …

Outdoor Bunnies Launch Statement

Outdoor-Bunnies

home page – Outdoor Bunnies

The site is hosted by WordPress using BuddyPress. Members can add their own blogs, if they wish. Very cool.

I am subscribed. And have added the new site in the right hand navigation under BLOGS.

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trail running Zabriskie Point, Death Valley

My favourite vista in Death Valley is one of the most popular.

As well as being a curious film by Antonioni (1970), Zabriskie Point is an elevated overlook of a colorful, undulating landscape of gullies and mud hills at the edge of the Funeral Mountains, a few miles from the edge of Death Valley …

American Southwest

Zabriskie
flickr – wenzday01 – larger version

I did a very popular hike / trail run from Golden Canyon trailhead in the valley. Up to Zabriskie Point. And back.

Fantastic.

A longer alternative is to add Gower Gulch making it a loop.

A number of deaths due to heat emergency are well documented here. Warnings are numerous.

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Adventure Sports Week – whither Team Nike?

UPDATE – Team Nike Beaver Creek won the first annual Adventure Sports Week 2-day Adventure Race.

Team-Nike-Beaver-Creek-small

For this race the team was made up of Mike Kloser, Gretchen Reeves and Jay Henry. Congratulations.

official results

The win was far from easy, however. Nike was pushed hard by Team Life Cycle: Jared Hanly, Roger Viollette and Ian Hoag.

=== Original post posted after day 1:

We were thrilled that a Team Nike was willing to race in our first annual Adventure Sports Week. They instantly became the favourites.

But the team, led by Mike Kloser, seemed on day 1 to be cursed. (Or sabotaged, as I joked.)

Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

pushing Mike's bike
pushing Mike's bike

They had far too much Adventure, not enough Race.

Happily, The Crux and The Crucible Adventure Race this weekend in gorgeous northern Idaho is 2 long days of 13-14hrs.

Nike got out to a better start this morning, day 2, at 6AM. Trail run, lake swim, portage, kayak …

No disasters, so far.

I suspect by late Sunday night they will have found a way to win. Despite all the setbacks.

I’ll update this post with results after the race.

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honeymoon on the Annapurna Circuit

Backpacker associate editor Shannon Davis and his wife Emily decided on an outdoor adventure to celebrate their nuptials.

They chose one of our top 10 hikes in the world.

The blissful couple at 17,768-foot Thorung La in Nepal.
The blissful couple at 17,768-foot Thorung La in Nepal.

… The 128-mile horseshoe-shaped route circles Nepal’s heaven-high Annapurna range, and it’s been hailed as the holy grail of trekking since it was first opened to foreigners in the early 1980s. Travel writers and hikers everywhere gush about the trail …

Season
October is the most popular, thanks to reliably pleasant weather (80°F and humid at 2,000 feet; 20°F and dry at 17,000 feet) and clear skies. …

Map and Books
The best trail guide is Annapurna Trekking Map and Complete Guide, by Partha S. Banerjee (Milestone Guidebooks, $10); it can be found at every bookstore in Kathmandu. Use Trails Illustrated map Annapurna #3003 (natgeomaps.com, $17) and Nepal (Lonely Planet, $25) for pre-trip planning.

Permit
Every trekker needs a permit ($25), but no reservations are necessary. Just pick one up in Kathmandu at the Annapurna Conservation Area Project office on Tridevi Marg (open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily). ntnc.org.np/trekking.php

Trailhead
The trek starts in Besisahar (catch a bus at Kathmandu’s Gongabu Bus Park; they leave regularly) and ends in Pokhara (return on a Greenline Tours bus, greenline.com.np).

Cost (Less Airfare & Rental Car) DIY: Less than $500 // Guided: $1,000-$1,499

Cheap and Easy

Annapurna’s teahouses beat the huts on other classic treks in terms of convenience, cost, and local color. Teahouses charge about $12 per day for a room and meals, and they’re never more than three hours apart, making is easy to keep a flexible itinerary. But that’s not to say there aren’t rules. Here are six: Choose a teahouse before 3 p.m. to beat large guided groups to the nicest places; choose a smaller one for better meal service; take showers immediately after arriving (most hot water is solar heated); order breakfast before going to bed to speed your morning departure; and bring a padlock for your room and a ground pad for the beds, which may be foam, straw, or just blankets.

read the trip report – THE PERFECT CIRCLE: HIKING THE ANNAPURNA CIRCUIT

A follow-up article is equally informative – HIKING THE ANNAPURNA CIRCUIT: Q&A WITH SHANNON DAVIS

Want to organize a trip for yourself?

Check our Annapurna information page.

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more Adventure Sports Week photos

Just added 20 new pics from our sprawling Adventure Sports Week event in Idaho.

Danelle Ballangee leading a pre-race clinic
Danelle Ballangee leading a pre-race clinic

see more on flickr

The Crux and The Crucible Adventure Race starts tomorrow early. Teams hope to finish each of the next 2 days within 14hrs.

Hints from event organizer David Adlard lead us to understand it’s going to be a difficult, particularly grueling course. Best strategy might be to go for only the mandatory check points, and finish safely within regulation time.

Me?

… I’ll be a comfortable volunteer, cheering on the serious athletes.

… On Saturday, at Idaho’s Farragut State Park, the second phase of the inaugural Adventure Sports Week will kick off with adventure races for athletes of many calibers. Some of the sport’s top athletes will be there, including five-time world champion Mike Kloser and two-time world champion Danelle Ballengee, who made national news in 2006 when she fell during a Utah trail run and might have died if her dog hadn’t gone for help.

But the weekend is designed to offer something to everyone. Short-course adventure races are available to amateur athletes interested in sampling the sport, said Todd Jackson, one of the co-founders.

“All you need is yourself and a partner and a mountain bike. …

Seattle Times – World-class adventure racers to compete in Idaho