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LittlePo climbing Aconcagua

Having already played enough in Alaska, climbing blogger Szu-ting has announced a trip to the highest mountain outside Asia over New Year’s Eve.

… its elevation is 22,841 feet (6,962 m). My biggest worry is therefore altitude sickness. Right now I can still remember the tears I dropped on Denali; I had to turn around from the summit at 19,400 feet because my body couldn’t receive well executed commands from an oxygen-deprived brain. Aconcagua is higher than Denali and much higher. I know that Denali might have higher physiological altitude, due to its higher latitude (see reference 1) and I know that previous high attitude experience does not necessarily imply how my body will react upon my next encounter; however, every time I think about this climb, I can’t help but keep telling myself “remember to drink water, breathe more, and you can always turn around.” …

LittlePo

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larger size – flickr – winkyintheuk

She’s NOT planning to descend with the 2700m south face in 5min on skis with parachute like this guy.

I’d much rather hike Aconcagua.

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National Outdoor Book Awards 2008

The winners were just announced.
Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes was — predictably — chosen. It’s been nominated for a Pulitzer, as well.

The second most interesting book to me was in the History/Biography Category, as well:

Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of Grand Canyon

Winner. Grand Obsession: Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of Grand Canyon. By Elias Butler and Tom Myers.

Harvey Butchart was the legendary hiker and canyoneer who explored more of the Grand Canyon than any other person. He was largely known through his sparse and somewhat cryptic hiking guidebooks. But even more cryptic was Butchart himself. Who was this man, and why did his interest in the canyon become an obsession that consumed his life? You’ll find out in this uncommonly well researched, well-structured and well-written biography.

See the rest of the Winners – National Outdoor Book Awards

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Last Nomads wins Banff Festival 2009

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.

”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. …

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Banff Centre

The Festival has posted a list of the other Award-winning Films.

I’m looking forward to the world tour highlights videos.

(via Outside)

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Industrial & Urban Trekking

Baytown Bert from Texas has a personal fitness blog with an interesting twist:

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Industrial & Urban Trekking is using available resources to climb and hike a series of obstacles in the form of hills, bridges, stairs and ladders in the workplace and your neighborhood/city to promote good fitness and health.

He calls this “IndyTrekking“.

(It sounds a little like a hiker’s version of Parkour / Free Running.)

Beautiful cool and sunny weather beckoned me to climb the towers and reactors today. I did a level two, which entails climbing three towers/structures, walking a half mile, climbing three more structures and finishing with another half mile walk.

It felt great as I finished in fifty-five minutes and today, I feel invigorated due to yesterdays exertion. We have the same weather today, so maybe I’ll attempt a level three, which adds two more structures for a total of ten evolutions.

Knocking out a Level Two

I love it.

Industrial & Urban Trekking – blog

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most hazardous walk to school

The world’s remotest school

Children in a remote part of China face a hazardous walk to school – because it is halfway up a sheer cliff.

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The school in Gulu village, Sichuan province, lies halfway up a mountain and climbing up from the base takes five hours.

The elementary school has only one teacher who has been there for 26 years, reports the West China City Daily.

Villagers say going to school is very dangerous for the children, since the path is only 1ft 4ins wide at the narrowest point and has a sheer drop on one side.

Walking along the narrow, zigzagging path also makes the children feel dizzy, they say.

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The school has five concrete buildings and a playground with a basketball hoop made of two wooden poles and a broken blackboard.

However, the children are allowed to only pat the balls, as if they throw them and they go over the edge of the cliff, it would take half a day to retrieve them.

Shen Qijun, 45, the teacher, has threatened to quit several times, but each time the villagers plead with him to stay as there would be nobody else to teach their children. …

Ananova

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

Check, too, their “Most Dangerous Roads in the World” Series.

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an elephant in the lobby

A regular occurrence at the Mfuwe Lodge in the South Luangwa National Park in Zambia where the lodge was unwittingly built on the Elephant’s traditional path through to some wild mango trees on the property.    The herd of a dozen or so elephants walk through the lodge’s reception area at least twice a day for about 4 weeks and then sporadically for about another 3 weeks to feed on the trees.   No incidents reported to date! 

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more photos – Elephants march through hotel lobby after it was built on their migration trail – Gossip Rocks

I’d love to spend a night there. ($300 / night during high season.)

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larger original – flickr

Thanks Rocco.

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Banff Mountain Film Festival – best books

Last year I stayed the entire week in Banff for the famous festival … and was somewhat disappointed.

This year — though it’s only an hour away — I’m giving it a complete miss.

Here’s the first review I’ve seen online:

I arrived at the Banff Film and Book Festival last night to find snow flurries and white-capped gorgeous Canadian rockies surrounding the Banff Center, and where last night a few Outside colleagues took top honors at the Book Awards. Out of 113 entries from 14 countries, these were the winners:

1) Outside contributing editor Nick Heil’s book, Dark Summit, The True Story of Everest’s Most Controversial Season, won the John Whyte award for Mountain Literature. …

2) Former Hardway columnist Mark Jenkins’ book, A Man’s Life: Dispatches From Dangerous Places, a collection of his popular Hardway columns, won the Adventure Travel writing award. …

3) The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek by Sid Marty won the Canadian Rockies award, which celebrates regional talent.

4) Mont Blanc by Mario Colonel won the Mountain Image award for best photography.

5) Fallen Giants by Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver won the mountaineering History award. It was annouced that the book also has been nominated for a Pulitzer.

6) Lofoten Rock by Chris Craggs won the Mountain Exposition Award.

7) The Grand Prize was shared by Sid Marty’s The Black Grizzly of Whiskey Creek, and The Wild Places, by Robert McFarland.

8) Fatal Tide: When the Race of a Lifetime Goes Wrong by David Leach received a special mention.

Tons of terrific authors are in attendance at the Festival this year, including Jennifer Lowe-Anker (author of Forget Me Not: A Memoir, about her life with Alex Lowe); Maria Coffey (author of Explorers of the Infinite); Topher Donahue (author of Bugaboo Dreams); climber Majka Burhardt (who gave an inspiring presentation about her book, Vertical Ethiopia); and Dr. Geoff Tabin, author of Blind Corners: Adventures on Everest and the World’s Tallest Peaks (who gave a hilarious and moving presentation about his work performing cataract surgery in the Himalaya, and whose projects were written about by Dark Summit author Nick Heil in Outside and filmed by Serac Adventure Films’ Michael Brown.

—Mary Turner – Outside – The 7 Best Adventure Books at Banff

This is the one I added to my “to read soon” list:

A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes
Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes

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hiking popular in Norway

I keep hearing that hiking is getting less popular in North America.

Not so in Norway:

… the Norwegian Trekking Association has 222,291 members. Around 7000 of these joined this year, an increase of 3.6 percent compared to last year.

A trend?

Head of communications at DNT, Merete Habberstad speculates as to why membership keeps increasing:

“It may have something to do with the current situation, I don’t know. However, in the past we’ve seen that times of financial troubles have given our organisation more members,” Habbarstad says.

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All-time growth for Trekking Association

related article: When the going gets tough, Norway’s ‘tough’ go hiking

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Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal

My buddy Grant Assenheimer just emailed:

Leaving tomorrow for the Annapurna Base Camp.  Have to get my permits today, pick up a sleeping roll and sleeping bag and some chocolate and I’m good to go.  Haven’t managed to find anyone to go with me yet but I’m not going to let that slow me down.  Should be able to find someone in Pokara and, if not, surely on the trail!  No guide or porter…I agree with you and don’t think it is needed at all!!
 
I’ll send you a pic!

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larger version – flickr – mikemellinger

more interesting photos of Annapurna Base Camp

My own solo trek to ABC in Nepal was one of my personal best hikes.

Here’s an excerpt from my 1998 trip report:

… Access to the Sanctuary is via an intensely scenic gorge; a narrow, winding trail through dense bamboo and huge trees. You scramble over river boulders; gnarled, polished hardwood roots; traverse the most recent avalanche tracks; climb bamboo ladders.

There are no permanent settlements here. This is the only major trekking route in Nepal subject to serious avalanche risk. Occasionally backpackers are trapped at basecamp when tons of snow collapse into the gorge from the unseen. On November 11, 1995 a freak early winter storm resulted in the death of 63 people in Nepal. This caused a bit of unease when it started raining, hailing, and snowing while I ascended to the notch of the Sanctuary gate.

The basecamp itself is bleak. An eerie calm. No wind, though clouds swirl in every direction up on the mountain tops. The scene is dominated by huge, white, vertical Annapurna — one of the most difficult faces ever climbed. On Christmas day 1997 an avalanche here killed Anatoli Boukreev, the Tiger Woods of high altitude, and subject of the best seller, The Climb. …

Annapurna Sanctuary – trip report

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original – flickr – Gianni Scopinaro

related: besthike Annapurna Circuit information page