Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
(via tywkiwdbi)
Laugavegur trek, Iceland
James Handlon signed on with adventure travel company Arctic Adventures to finally trek Laugavegur.
After several hours of bumpy off-roading we finally arrived late in the day at the Landmannalaugar campsite, a weird mix of surreal landscape, Glastonbury Music Festival and refugee camp all thrown together creating the most bizarre of places to start a trek .…
Gorgeous.
Read his entire trip report following the links from the bottom of THE LAUGAVEGUR ICELANDIC TREK – DAY 1 page.
Overland Track, Tasmania
It’s on our list of top 10 hikes in the World. It’s on many top 10 lists.
What’s it all about?
Discover Tasmania calls this the best Overland tramping video they’ve ever seen. Kids, rain, mud, snow … and plenty of FUN on a family adventure. 🙂
Click PLAY or watch it on Vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/30842951
If interested in making the pilgrimage to Tasmania yourself, check our NEW Overland information page.
It’s been updated with advice from local expert Warwick Sprawson.
Alastair Humphreys – Greenland
In the last 100 years, twelve people have stood on the moon, more than 500 have been into space, and more than five thousand have climbed Everest. Yet the journey Captain Scott and his team died trying to complete a century ago remains unrealised. No one has ever walked from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back again.
… Ben Saunders, Alastair Humphreys and Martin Hartley take on arguably the most ambitious polar expedition in the last century: the four-month Scott 2012 – the first return journey to the South Pole on foot, and at 1,800 miles, the longest unsupported polar journey in history. …
Click PLAY or watch 2012 training expedition on Vimeo.
The Scott Expedition did not go in 2012.
Instead, an expanded Team starts October 2013. Wish them luck.
Jennifer Pharr Davis on the AT
The Trail can change you.
Click PLAY or watch it on Vimeo.
It’s impossible not to love this woman. 🙂
Polar bear attacks hiker
… pulled from his tent and attacked by a polar bear in Torngat Mountains National Park in northern Labrador.
Matt Dyer, a lawyer from Maine, was badly injured during the attack at around 1:30 a.m. AT on July 24. …
The bear ripped through the electric fence the group had set up around their campsite that night.
When the campers realized what was happening, they acted quickly and fired flares to try to scare the bear away. …
Parks Canada strongly advises visitors to hire an armed bear guard during their stay, but it is not mandatory.
The Inuit bear guards are hired through the Nunatsiavut base camp set up within the park.
However, Castaneda-Mendez said his group was never offered the armed bear guard, and said that the outfitter they hired insisted it was not necessary. He said his group was under the impression the portable electric fence was an adequate deterrent. …
related – Polar bear attack survivor played dead to save his life
NEW – GR 20 Corsica
We’ve posted a new information page on the GR 20 in Corsica, France.
I hiked the more difficult, rugged northern half in 2011.
… The trail (conceived by Michel Fabrikant back in 1970) is long (even if you walk half of it) and tough. Don’t underestimate it! You need to be fit, well trained but most of all you must be highly motivated. …
The path is basic: i.e. there actually is no real path underfoot for 98% of the time. So much that on many occasions if you don’t see the next waymark or cairn you won’t know where to go. Seriously. In addition to that forget the flat path you’re probably used to; most of the time you’ll walk on rugged and tormented terrain, rocks, stones galore, granite slabs … you get the idea. Get used to it. …
The huts are basic. If we leave out the minor exceptions of the decent buildings at Haut Asco and Castel de Verghio, the huts are small rudimentary (some of them) bergerie-style buildings with small suffocating dormitories …
My advice instead is to bring your own tent. …
AT A GLANCE
one of the best treks in the world- 180km
- 15 days (many hike only half)
- 19,000m of ascent and descent
- sleep in tents or mountain huts (refuges or gîtes)
- hiking permit not required. Reservations for the refuges recommended.
- located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the Italian island of Sardinia
read more – BestHike GR 20 information page
fastest PCT ever – Heather Anderson
High Country News:
Heather Anderson, 32, arrived in the dark around midnight on Aug. 7, exhausted and alone.
… she set two even more impressive records, becoming the fastest woman to hike the PCT (in 60 days), and the fastest self-supported hiker – male or female – breaking a 2011 record by nearly four days. …
HCN: What motivated you to try to set a speed record?
HA: I first thru-hiked the PCT in 2005, and it’s one of those funny things you think about while you’re out there. I saw people attempting speed records and wondered how fast I’d be. I like the idea of seeing how far I can push my body. (I had) a lot of fears and weaknesses that I wanted to address, and there had never been a woman that had done a self-supported attempt of this length. …
HCN: How many miles a day were you hiking?
HA: Between 40 and 50 miles every day. I hiked a lot in the dark. That was one of the challenges that I knew I wanted to overcome. I was scared of mountain lions, and I’ve always been terrified of being out at night. In the past, if it was starting to get dark and I hadn’t found a place to camp, I’d literally be running down the trail almost crying. So on this trip I made myself hike three or four hours each night. I saw four mountain lions. …
Red Rock Canyon, Waterton
trip report by site editor Rick McCharles
Three teens from Calgary SOMEHOW had never been to Waterton Lakes National Park, even though it’s only 3hrs drive from their homes.
Almost immediately we came upon 4 bears grazing the hillside.
Like adjacent Glacier National Park, Waterton is a great place to see wildlife.
Due to bear problems in the National Park campgrounds, tenting was not allowed at Crandell Mountain Campground in 2013. We decided to stay outside the Park at Crooked Creek.
We shared the Creek with a family of Beavers.
Red Rock Canyon is a classic day hike, an easy loop.
More adventurous is to follow the Canyon up the mountain for as long as possible.
The guys ended up scrambling over and under logs, getting wet and generally having a blast.
All and all, a pretty good introduction to the joys of Waterton National Park.
more Waterton photos
Crypt Lake trail
Highly recommended. 🙂
We had a terrific adventure.
The Crypt Lake Trail is one of the premium hikes in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada. It is accessed by a dedicated ferry service operating from the Waterton Park Townsite. …
Voted “Canada’s Best Hike” in 1981 …
The crux comes at the top.
… ledge is about 50 cm wide, and continues over to a steel ladder and access to the tunnel. For nearly 100 ft you crawl through a natural mountain tunnel before arriving at the cable traverse. This section of the hike involves a scramble along a sheer cliff, with the assistance of a steel cable. …
The hike is a total of 17.2 km round trip, with a gradual 2,300-foot elevation gain. …
besthike.com 