From the sun-scorched sands of the Kalahari to the snake-infested jungles of the Amazon, Les Stroud has survived it all. Now, the creator, producer, and host of the hit television show Survivorman shares his field-tested expertise and gives you a no-nonsense look at the real world of survival. …
The Last Nomads, a film that tracks Canadian linguist Ian Mackenzie deep into the endangered Borneo rain forest in search of one of the world’s last remaining hunter-gatherer cultures, has won the Grand Prize at the 2008 Banff Mountain Film Festival. Produced and directed by Andrew Gregg, the film follows Mackenzie, who has spent years trying to finish a dictionary of the vanishing language of the Penan people. It was the scientist’s passion and single-minded devotion to this unique project that swung the Film Festival jury in its favour, and was one of many films awarded this year that bring audiences into little-seen cultures and environments.
â€This is beautifully and sensitively crafted film that delivers a strong message without being evangelical, weaving Mackenzie’s views with a look at a disappearing world on the edge of an insatiably encroaching world,†says jury member Brian Hall. …
Danny Brown put together an interesting art piece.
A short film that is played entirely in reverse and involves the “reverse destruction” of balanced rock sculptures. There is one character in the movie that appears to magically create these sculptures. Although the film is played in reverse it appears as the man who is doing his magic is going forwards in time.
If you hike, you should share your photos and trip report with the world.
Popular blogger Tom Mangan gives the pitch:
… Heck, if John Muir were alive to day, he would have a blog. How do I know? Because the only thing as voluminous as Muir’s backcountry travels was the volume of his writings documenting them. Muir was eloquent, passionate and observant, and obsessive about writing it all down. If you are any or all of these things, why not put ‘em to good use and share with the world? …
… The movie, photographed in high-definition video by Erich Roland, is an undeniably impressive visual spectacle that follows the sport from Wyoming to France, British Columbia, Iceland and Alaska. Like that of its sister sport, surfing, extreme skiing has a history of one feat topping another as techniques are developed and challenges devised.
The worldwide search for the highest wave is paralleled by the search for the steepest, wildest, most dangerous slopes and for perfect snow. Perfection is to be found, according to the movie, in the extreme-skiing mecca of Valdez, Alaska, where the white stuff has the texture of velvet.
“Steep†arbitrarily begins its history with a lone descent of Bill Briggs in 1971 on Grand Teton mountain in Wyoming. His accomplishment, witnessed by no one but attested to by aerial photographs of his ski tracks, was all the more remarkable because he was born without a hip joint, and multiple surgeries had left him with a limp.
Since then a widening search for adventure has sparked the popularity of what is called big mountain skiing, two of whose hubs, visited by the movie, are Chamonix, in the French Alps, and Valdez. The sport’s popularity has been spread by video, with Greg Stump’s 1988 film, “The Blizzard of Aahhh’s,†cited as a seminal work. …
… Whether I go solo or with others, I’m taking the Stick Pic with me every time. I consider it to be even more versatile than my Joby Gorilla Pod because you can do Les Stroud-style videos of yourself as well as still shots. …
Fears of road construction ruining our #8 trek in the world have been somewhat exaggerated.
Hikers are concerned when they see articles like this:
… Late last year, the Australian tour operator Peregrine Adventures, which has organised trips to Nepal for more than 30 years, abandoned the “classic” Annapurna Circuit, which stretches for 300 kilometres and reaches altitudes of more than 5000 metres.
“We’ve dropped that trip altogether because of the road,” operations director Tietse Stelma says. “Ten years ago it was such a beautiful trek going up into the mountains with the Annapurnas in front of you. Now you have more and more traffic on the road and building activity – when you go on a trek, you don’t want to hear that.” …
A via ferrata (Italian for “iron road” … is a mountain route which is equipped with fixed cables, stemples, ladders, and bridges. The use of these allows otherwise isolated routes to be joined to create longer routes which are accessible to people with a wide range of climbing abilities. Walkers and climbers can follow via ferratas without needing to use their own ropes and belays, and without the risks associated with unprotected scrambling and climbing. They are found in a number of European countries, including Italy, Germany, France, Austria, Slovenia, Switzerland, Spain and Sweden; and a few places in the United States, Canada and England. The first via ferratas were built in the Dolomite mountain region of Italy during the First World War, to aid the movement of mountain infantry. …
