I watched Ice Road: Vengeance (2025) because it follows an ice-road truck driver ( Liam Neeson ) who travels to the Nepal to scatter his brother’s ashes where he must fend off mercenaries.
BUT the movie is hilariously bad and inaccurate in describing Nepal.
It was filmed in Victoria, Australia, with the town of Walhalla serving as a double for a Nepalese village.
The production also utilized real footage from Nepal for scenes shot on LED screens at the studios.
Arriving in Kathmandu, Mike hires Dhani, a skilled local Everest guide. They join a group of passengers aboard the “Kiwi Express”, a tour bus navigating the perilous “Road to the Sky,” a narrow, high-altitude mountain pass.
They are literally taking a BUS to Everest Base Camp.
Dianne Whelan is the only person to complete The Great Trail (Trans Canada Trail), a network of greenways, trails, waterways, and roads that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic oceans.
It extends over 24,000 km (15,000 mi); it is now the longest recreational, multi-use trail network in the world
The 2023 Banff Centre Mountain Film and Book Festival is in Banff, Alberta, from October 28 to November 5.
… 84 films from 13 countries.
Online film screenings during the Festival are also back, bringing on-demand films to your homes in Canada/USA from October 28 through November 5, plus some award-winning films online from Nov. 6-8.
I’d recently enjoyed reading the young-adult wilderness survival novel series written by American writer Gary Paulsen. It starts with The Hatchet (1986).
Brian Robeson is a thirteen-year-old son of divorced parents. As he travels from Hampton, New York on a single-engine Cessna bush plane to visit his father in the oil fields in Northern Canada for the summer, the pilot suffers a massive heart attack and dies.
Brian tries to land the plane but ends up crash-landing into a lake in the forest.
He must learn to survive on his own with nothing but his hatchet—a gift his mother gave him shortly before his plane departed.
… He discovers how to make fire with the hatchet and eats whatever food he can find, such as rabbits, birds, turtle eggs, fish, berries, and fruit. …
Over time, Brian develops his survival skills and becomes a fine woodsman. …
I enjoyed the short book. But it’s far from realistic. The Alone (TV series) documented just how difficult it is to survive on the much easier west coast of Vancouver Island.
Many readers asked the author WHAT would have happened to this teenager if he had to try to survive the Canadian winter. Brian was rescued by floatplane in The Hatchet.
So — in 1996 — Paulson published what would have been a sequel IF Brian had not found the emergency beacon.
… still stranded at the L-shaped lake during the fall and winter, constructing a winter shelter, building snow shoes, being confronted by a bear, befriending and naming a skunk and learning how to make a bow more powerful. …
There are more books in this series. I’ll read those as well as I’ve grown to wonder how Brian adapts to civilization.
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