Best hikes, treks, tramps in the world.
From Reykyavik, Iceland …
It’s an incredible place, surrounded by an unrelenting and spectacular landscape that might only be described as an ice-age Wyoming.
As harsh as that might sound , the single emotion that came back in my luggage from Iceland with me was none other than jealousy.
Things can go wrong, fast.
A series of decisions, all which seemed reasonable at the time. Even experienced hikers can get lost in canyon country.
Three friends, planning on a challenging day hike on the standard Syncline Loop in Canyonlands National Park, Utah, got stuck overnight without provisions. One suffered some hypothermia.
Rich posted a detailed account of how it happened:
Now, we didn’t really have much in the way of food. I had brought a few slices of bread, some saltines, a jar of peanut butter and, of course, plenty of water. We each had a similiar supply.
We planned on stopping at the grocery store on our way to Moab but, somehow that slipped our minds. …
So, we figure … we’d probably find a bit of trail food at the visitor center.
Well, we soon found out there was nothing at all in the way of trail food at the visitor center. The Island of the Sky Visitor Center is a little more than a Ranger Station. In fact, I really like Canyonlands because it doesnt have any amenities.
The desert is one place your really do need the 10 essentials. And extra water. Even if setting out only for an hour or two.
They made one last urgent scramble to get up and out.
… we saw … a potential exit. It was crazy and we were all really uncertain but, we pushed on. Every second getting closer to darkness.
Of course, as they do in the desert, temperatures plunged with the setting sun. Thankfully, we still had clear skies and little to no wind. We climbed higher and higher.
… It is endless!!!
For certain, that mile or so was the most intense and rugged hiking I have ever done in my life. Naturally, I loved every minute of it but, my lungs would argue otherwise. We had been on the trail for nearly 10 hours.
No pretty pictures on this post. Just three wiser hikers the following morning when the sun finally came up. Cold, but never in any real danger.
Canyonlands National Park – WikiTravel
UPDATE from Brad in California:
Unlike every other report I’ve read on the internet, Brad’s actually been there.
It’s a good sidetrip out of Xian, site of the astonishing Terracotta Warriors.
A few more facts: It is not "Mt." Hua Shan. It is just Hua Shan. …
A hostel is available on the mountain top — what a cool place for a midwinter honeymoon?! Despite the vigor and risk involved in the climb, it is crowded in fair weather! …
The mountain has multiple summits, and looks somewhat like a blossoming tulip: hence the name flower mountain.
You can take a cable car to the vicinity of the lowest summit, or you can hike about 5 or 6 klicks to the same area. The "hike" option is very worthy, with incredibly lengthy and steep staircases carved into the stone, — awesome. Rusty chain handrails are anchored into the rocks.
Once on the lowest summit, you can climb the circuit of the other higher summits. This is where you will encounter the most harrowing exposures, and the pictures that accompany this page.
Again, on a crowded day, it would suck! Everything is one-way, or narrow, etc… We went on a rainy day, with fog, and had the mountain almost to ourselves. It was incredible when the fog cleared!
Snow or freezing rain would make this hike very dangerous. I would not do it!
Mount Hua (Hua Shan) – Wikipedia
We’ve added Hua Shan to our list of the best hikes in Asia.
Click PLAY or watch a “hiker” on the route on MetaCafe.
Snapple Scores With Super Premium Tea Ad During Super Bowl XLI – Click here for funny video clips
==== original post Nov. 6th, 2006:
The most dangerous tourist route in the world is located in Tibet.
Damn Cool Pics: Worlds Most Dangerous Tourist Route
But … they have the location wrong.
It seems these photos are actually from (or Mt Hua or Mt Hua Shan) in Shaanxi province, China. It is the Western Mountain of the Five Sacred Mountains. This error was pointed out in a comment on Cool Pics by JJ.
More photos:
Welcome To China – Welcome2CN.Com
photo set – Fosdick
To a hiker like me, this scramble looks like good fun. Similar to Half Dome in Yosemite.
Jiankou Cliffs is the steepest, most vertiginous, most dangerous section of the entire Great Wall of China. But would we at Walking the Wall let a few sheer hundred-metre dropoffs stop us?
I’m going to miss this blog when the trip is done. It’s one of my favourites.
This somewhat tongue-in-cheek post is well worth the read. As usual, Skyler Baguta’s aim is true.
She doesn’t name Tom of The Trout Underground as specifically destroying the Park. But we get the idea.
(Come to think of it, I seem to recall Tom telling me he doesn’t fish Yellowstone.)
I have a bit of pity & some sympathy for the poor journalists in this part of the country. I just plain pity the journalists in the rest of the country.
When it comes to reporting about Yellowstone National Park they have a long list of topics that they cannot report about. They have, after all, advertising and public sentiment to deal with. The scribes, either through fear or ignorance refuse to address the problems caused by the Sacred Cows of Yellowstone.
Read the rest of this article: The Sacred Cows Of Yellowstone « A Step Apart
Non-hikers assume that what I do is “dangerous”.
I always pooh-pooh the notion: “It’s more dangerous driving to the trailhead than hiking the trail.”
The only time I really got in trouble was in Venezuela. I learned important lessons the HARD way.
From my 1997 photo travelogue:
… Mérida boasts the world’s highest (4765m) and longest (12.5km) cable car. Unfortunately, in the 1980s a car on the top crashed killing an undisclosed number of tourists. The last section of the ride up was never repaired. …
Still, I could ride to 4000m and hike from there. Overnight camping is technically illegal so almost no one knew where I was going as I headed up the mountain.
I climbed a ridge. The vista was magic with clouds blowing in and out. I dropped my pack at the first possible tent site & continued up looking for a better spot. The terrain was steep, exposed & rugged. Not many options for a tent.
I knew that at the top of the mountain was The Virgin of the Snows, a statue of the Virgin Mary. She led me on.
On a whim I decided to kiss the Virgin — once the dayhiking tourists had departed for the day.
I was careful to note landmarks on my way up so I could return to the pack. Unfortunately they all disappeared in the clouds.
Blast.
Lost in the Andes above 4000m. I vainly searched for the ridge back down to my tent, pack and sleeping bag. Finally, as night fell, I resolved to take refuge in a grotto beneath an overhanging rock. I had water but no food.For 10 hours I huddled shivering, calculating the probability of death from hypothermia in just a t-shirt and fleece pants. I’d like to tell you I learned something from this experience — but I didn’t. It was a drag.
At first light I tried another long route down. What a relief when, four hours later, I bumped into an elderly Swiss couple on the trail! They gave me a cookie & directions. I had been hopelessly lost.
To add insult to injury, officials on the cable car wanted to arrest me for camping illegally.
Lesson learned? Never leave your pack.
Click through my annotated photos from that adventure
OK — hypothermia is no joke:
Early warning symptoms include intense shivering, fumbling hands and poor coordination. Shivering is the body’s attempt to generate heat. A simply field test for mild hypothermia is to try touching your thumb to your little finger on the same hand. If you have difficulty doing this, it’s time to seek shelter and warmth.
Later hypothermia symptoms include slurred speech, mental confusion and unconsciousness. Often victims do not recognize the symptoms and fully understand the dangerous situation they face. The victim needs warmth immediately and protection from further body heat loss. Hypothermia is a medical emergency that requires immediate attention.
(via My Outdoor Gear)
Honestly, I estimated that I could survive one more night of hypothermia. But not two.
I’ll never leave my pack again.
You won’t be surprised to learn that I want to return to Mérida, to hike La Travesia Mucuy – Mérida.
I’ve only done it twice — both times to Mt. Assiniboine — and can confirm riding the bird is … GREAT.
Sure I’m polluting the atmosphere. And distracting the teeny tiny hikers below, sweating the 8hr uphill slog with a full pack. (It takes me 8min.)
But on arrival it’s like you landed in Heaven. Fresh. Excited. Already at altitude.
Wow!
A little more thoughtful analysis from John Flinn in the San Francisco Chronicle arrives at the same conclusion:
I’ve known about heli-hiking for years, but stayed away until last fall because of three big concerns: Are the wilderness lodges a burden on the fragile alpine landscape? Do the frequent helicopter sorties spoil the solitude of those who walk into these mountains under their own power? And would I feel the same mountaintop exhilaration if I didn’t “earn” it through sweat equity?
In other words, is heli-hiking cheating?
By the end of my three-day stay, though, I was pretty much won over. Now my biggest concern is the cost: Unless you have the net worth of a CEO — and many guests do — the $700-a-day price puts it into the splurge-of-a-lifetime category.
Heli-hiking keeps high peaks within reach
Happily for the environment I can rarely afford the high fee. You’ll normally find me sweating on the trail, cursing the lazy so-and-sos that chopper past overhead.
Jason Klass put up a beta version of a site dedicated to video.
His most recent video is one of great interest to me personally.
A great slide show of the trip Ben2World, Dusty Boots, and Jason Klass took to Canyonlands National Park. Witness Jason’s dirty Jeep and his heroic leap across an eight-foot canyon! This was a great trip and we saw lots of geological and archaeological wonders.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Salt Creek Canyon, Utah – BackpackingVideos.com
(via Two-Heel Drive)
This is a good start. No doubt hiking videos and photo slideshows will become increasingly popular in the future.
But the best site I know is Outdoor Video Magazine out of Canada. I linked to their Mt. Robson / Berg Lake video.
Here are hikers doing it right.
They posted a blog dedicated to organizing an upcoming trek on our #1 hike in the World. Good luck guys!
Some of their posts:
This can’t be right:
Maximum operating altitude: 3,000 metres (10,000 feet)
My Rio Cali flash drive MP3 player worked perfectly up to 5000m.
Leave a comment if you know of an iPod Nano on Everest or other high peaks.
Likely Apple is being overcautious.
UPDATE: Consensus of opinion is that flash drive Nano iPods should be OK at altitude. But that spinning disk drive iPods are at risk.
Fedak pointed me to a pilot’s blog: He had problems at 19,000ft unpressurized.
Hard drives work by levitating a head a very small distance from the media; unlike floppy or tape, where the media actually touches the head. The distance between the rotating media and the head is regulated using a very small wing on the head. The head literally ‘flys’ above the media.
When the pressure inside the drive is reduced, the wing will need a higher angle of attack, until finally the wing stalls, and the head impacts the media. The term in the industry for this behavior is called a ‘head crash’. Very apropos, no?
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