Posts

Posted on

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

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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

Posted on

mountain biking the Dolomites

The Adventure Life caught my eye with this compelling photo.

dolomites20

more photos

That article links to this important advice:

Timing Your Visit

Ski Touring : March – May 1
Road Biking : May – October
Mtn Biking : June – October
Trail Running : June – October
Hiking : June – October

So much in the Dolomites depends on the huts being open. To come to the Region and have the huts all closed would mean missing out on a lot of the culture, it would also mean a heavier pack. May and June can have periods of great weather for cycling, and the roads are empty. But, it can be quite wet as well. Again, the huts are closed from late April to 20 June.

The time frames above are not fixed, only general references. Also, for the off season you can visit lower, nearby areas and hit the Dolomites in periods of perfect weather. The Lake Garda area is a fantastic escape when the weather is bad, or the perfect spot to base yourself off season.

An interesting thing occurs in Italy each August. The majority of the country goes on holiday. Literally. Unless you live in a holiday area (like the Dolomites), you go on vacation. The interesting thing is that Italians like to stay in Italy, they see little reason to leave, they know it is about the best place on the planet. Why risk leaving where the food is bad and the coffee terrible (good point)?

So, they pack nearly everything they own into their tiny cars and head to either the Dolomites or the beach. At about the same time, the Germans, who love the German speaking Sud Tirol Region, arrive en masse in campers, big Audi’s and motorcycles.

Given the option – do not come to the Dolomites in August – steer clear. The roads are frightening, the trails have traffic problems, the huts are full and the locals are somewhat grumpy. …

read more – DolomiteSport

Posted on

Adventure Sports Week on Gadling

We are getting some good press.

Best was The Adventure Blogger, Kraig Becker, giving us a nice shout out on his Gadling travel blog:

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho plays host to Adventure Sports Week 2009 , which got underway this past weekend in beautiful Farragut State Park, located just outside the mountain community. Hundreds of endurance athletes descended on the region to take part in the first time event, which is already becoming one of the premiere outdoor sporting competitions of the year.

Billed as “10 days, 24 races, 1 big party”, Adventure Sports Weekly has something to offer just about anyone who enjoys an outdoor athletic challenge. For instance, things kicked off this weekend with a triathlon clinic, and ramped up from there with two orienteering competitions, a pair of duathalons, and three triathalons, including an official XTERRA series event, which was won by Dan Hugo and Melanie McQuaid in the men’s and women’s categories respectively.

Things don’t slow down any next weekend either, when the adventure racers take center stage for the Crux and the Crucible races, both of which combine mountain biking, trekking/trail running, and kayaking, amongst other discplines. There will aslo be marathon and half-marathon length trail runs, a paddling race, and more. …

Gadling – Adventure Sports Week begins in Idaho

Michael Emde
Michael Emde

Do you know Gadling?

It’s the world’s best travel blog.

Check out their home page – Gadling.com