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another reason to love flickr … NOTES

Photo sharing site flickr popularized this feature called “NOTES”. And it is fantastic.

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(Left to Right) Paiju Peak (Trango II?), The Trango Monk, Trango Nameless Tower (6,239 m), and the mass of the Great Trango (6,286 m) on the northern lateral moraine of the Baltoro Glacier in the Baltoro Muztagh Range. …

K2 Basecamp Trek
Baltoro Glacier
Pakistan
Late July 2006

Rockclimbing Hell on Flickr

Ahmad A Karim has many wonderful photos on flickr, by the way. Here’s another:

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larger original

Sunrise from the top of Gondogoro La (5620m) on a very cloudy morning.
Between West-Vigne and Gondogoro Glaciers
Baltistan District, Northern Areas
Pakistan
3 August 2006
LAS Summer Trek 2006

And if NOTES does not impress you, Alex on the photopreneur blog posted 36 more Reasons Flickr is a Photographer’s Ultimate Tool.

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scrambling Woodson Mountain, California

Have you tried the sport of geocaching?

Here’s a good trip report:

San Diego rocks!

Indians called it “Mountain of the Moonlit Rocks”, while early settlers dubbed it “Cobbleback Peak”, both names appropriately describes the rugged, boulder strewn slopes of Woodson Mountain.

However, this mountain for the past 100 years appeared on maps simply as “Woodson Mountain”, in honor of Dr. Woodson who homesteaded some property nearby over 100 years ago. …

Hiking Woodson Mountain- The Mountain of the Moonlit Rocks « Our Beautiful World at the Backroads

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cantilevered “potato chip rock” near the summit of Woodson Mountain

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by pack raft to Juneau, Alaska

I’ve been following The Journey on the Wild Coast blog since July. That’s the 9 month pack raft trip from Seattle to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska by human power — Erin McKittrick and Bretwood (Hig) Higman.

I think this is their best post yet:

… After four months in the Inside Passage, we had come to wonder how much it had left to offer us: thinking of drizzly coastlines and thick forest brush, and turning our thoughts prematurely to the open Gulf of Alaska coast… But there are always suprises. The ocean between Petersburg and Juneau was one of the most alive chunks of coast we’ve seen the whole trip.

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Humpback whales sang for us the rest of that night, and a good part of the next one. During the day, white columns of whale breath were visible everywhere we looked, cruising Stephens Passage. We could hear the spouting, honking, and squeals of the closest whales, watching their rounded backs and the occasional graceful flash of a tail.

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Humpback whale tail

Just when we were wondering if we might get close enough for a picture, a humpback surfaced twenty feet from my packraft. Half of me was terrified it would flip me, while the other half marveled at the knobby texture of the whale’s skin, imagining that great big eye underwater, peering at my small yellow boat…

read more … – Journey on the Wild Coast: Trip Blog » Calm Oceans, Stormy Woods

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why besthike is not a wiki

Our list of the best hikes in the world should be a wiki.

Seriously.

But the wiki software available as of today still … sucks.

Those packages are unusable by normal hikers.

Internet Duct Tape explains why. And holds out a glimmer of hope for the near future:

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Any day now Google will be opening up registration for it’s JotSpot wiki software. It’ll be interesting to see if they can get over their product schizophrenia and intelligently integrate wikis with wordprocessing, spreadsheets, slides, blogs, email, calendar, rss readers and build an intranet solution that far outclasses anything currently available. They have all the pieces, and the killer knowledge that everyone is missing — how to build an intranet search that works over all the formats.

Do You Make These Mistakes with Wikis? 9 Ways To Build a Wiki That Doesn’t Suck « Internet Duct Tape

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We will certainly put our database of best hikes into a wiki format once the software gets good enough.

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Jaccuzzi on Mont-Blanc summit

We love hikes to hot springs. But this is ridiculous …

After over six years of evolution, the concept of “jaccuzzi events” has led to the realization of a dream. …

For us, Jaccuzzi Events are parties that are thrown in unexpected and exceptional places. …

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more amazing photos – Jaccuzzi on mont-blanc summit – Jaccuzzi.ch

Jaccuzzi on Mont-Blanc summit 15771ft (4807m), September 13th 2007

(via GO blog)

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camping – where is the salt?

Oh … taped to the meal package. Of course!

Thanks Jason!

One thing I’ve tried to do over the years is to simplify my in-camp procedures by reducing the number of odds and ends I carry. Something that’s always bothered me is fumbling through my Ziplock of condiments to dig out that one specific spice I need for the meal at hand. Then, I had one of those “why didn’t I think of it before” moments last week.

goose-creek-029.jpgSimply put, I figured I could tape meal-specific condiments to their respective packages with masking tape, thus eliminating one more storage bag from my pack. Now, I plan ahead so when mealtime comes, I have exactly what I need all in one place.

… Here you can see salt packets taped to the top of dehydrated eggs.

Homemade Backpacking Gear | by Jason Klass

Jason posted a video of this so-simple-I-never-would-have-thought-of-it-on-my-own idea on his Gear Talk blog.

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The Beckoning Silence – Joe Simpson returns

The Beckoning Silence is one of the compelling mountaineering books written by Joe Simpson. It’s not as good as his Touching the Void, in my opinion, but is still brilliant:

The Beckoning Silence

The Beckoning Silence – Amazon

This month a documentary — also called The Beckoning Silence — with Joe Simpson as narrator, will be released. The film is loosely adapted from Joe’s book and was created by the same team that made the BAFTA-award-winning documentary Touching the Void, my favourite outdoor film ever. (It happened in the remote Huayhuash Mountains in Peru.)

The new film The Beckoning Silence is …

… the true story of four twenty-something climbers … who attempted to climb the notorious North Face of the Eiger in 1936. They began their ascent via an access shaft from a railway tunnel that ran halfway up the mountain, but before long, tragedy struck.

… unlike Touching the Void, this distinctly chilling story does not have a happy ending. All eventually perished. Kurz was the last to die, spending a frostbitten night within feet of rescuers before signing off with the line: “Ich kann nicht mehr” (I cannot go on). …

Joe Simpson: High flyer – The Independent

If it’s half as good as Touching the Void, it will be well worth getting a copy of the new film. (Available on 4DVD on November 5th.)

The Beckoning Silence will be shown at the Kendal Mountain Film Festival in the UK November 17th with Joe and the production crew in attendance. I’d love to be at that screening!

(via The Piton)