besthike.com

April 10, 2007

only 6,875 miles left to hike

Andrew Skurka has begun his â€œGreat Western Loopâ€ â€” nearly 7,000 miles!

I’ll be following this adventure. It may just be the greatest thru hike of all time.

You can get email updates by signing up on his official website. (The RSS feeds for photos and podcasts are not up-and-running as yet.)

April 7, 7AM – Just about everything has come together over the last 24 hours and I am feeling confident in my level of logistical preparedness for this trip.

My maildrops are about 75 percent packed (all the maps, most of the supplies and food, and some of the gear), my extra gear has been neatly organized in the basement so that it can be sent out quickly and correctly when I need it, the website is pretty much dialed ….

Andrew Skurka

(via Cutter’s blog)

April 10, 2007

McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica

I’d love to hike Antarctica.

Realistically, the best destination would be out of McMurdo.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of valleys in Antarctica located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The region includes many interesting geological features including Lake Vida and the Onyx River, Antarctica’s longest river. It is also one of the world’s most extreme deserts.

… the largest relatively ice-free region in Antarctica. The valley floors are covered with a loose gravelly material, in which ice-wedge polygons may be observed.

… Scientists consider the Dry Valleys perhaps the closest of any terrestrial environment to Mars, and thus an important source of insights into possible extraterrestrial life.

McMurdo Dry Valleys – Wikipedia

The superb photo blog Dark Roasted Blend has done it again. These are just a few of the pics they posted in a series on the McMurdo Dry Valleys.

more photos in this series on Dark Roasted Blend

The photos originally came from a Russian website. Spacibo!

April 9, 2007

where NOT to hike – Saul, French Guyana

Two French hikers who got lost in thick jungle in French Guiana survived for seven weeks by consuming turtle meat, big hairy spiders and river water.

The men were rescued on Thursday, exhausted and dehydrated.

Loic Pillois and Guilhem Nayral disappeared on 14 February, having set off from the Grand Kanori rapids bound for the village of Saul.

Guilhem’s brother Gilles said “they ate palm seeds, insects, mygales (big spiders) and two turtles” to survive.

Mr Pillois, 34, emerged at Saul at 1000 (1300 GMT) on Thursday and told the authorities that his friend Guilhem, 34, was about six hours’ walk away to the south, the French news agency AFP reported.

Rescuers found him and brought him out by helicopter. One of them, gendarme Martin Andre, said Guilhem was “stretched out on the ground, completely exhausted, very thin, dehydrated”.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Lost Frenchmen ate jungle spiders

original map – Lonely Planet

(via WildrLog)

April 9, 2007

trekking in Laos

Though jungle treks have been popular in northern Thailand for decades, similar adventures in Laos are just starting to get popular.

Justine Vaisutis, Lonely Planet travel guidebook writer, published a brief article.

In a pocket of the world renowned for package holidays, shoestring extravagance and faux bling, Laos remains an unadulterated enigma. It’s the ideal asylum for fugitives from urban routine, with the majestic curves of Luang Nam Tha Province offering the best refuge of all.

Hemmed in by the mighty Mekong to the west and China’s great girth to the north, this province devotes almost a third of its ground cover to the Nam Ha National Protected Area â€” 550,000 acres of untamed forest.

The jungle, mountains, waterfalls, rivers and lofty plateaus in this conservation area, coupled with the culture of some 30 ethnic groups, created the ideal canvas for hiking, which in this densely forested region translates to “eco-trekking” â€” one of those phrases often hijacked by wily sharks with eyes for the tourist trends and appetites for commerce. …

I’m joined by seven fellow trekkers on my two-day escapade. Our destination is Ban Nam Lai, a small Akha village tucked high in the folds of a mountain. The Akha are woodsmen, and their affinity with the forest is legendary. Our multilingual guides each lead a trek once a month, sharing the vocation with 30 others, a number that ensures the tourist wealth is evenly spread and that no one discards his or her traditional source of income….

The progress and the crowds are inevitable, but we have a quiet faith that Nam Ha is destined for years of preservation yet.

Trek though jungles, mountains of Laos

source – Flickr – Mat Honan

(via Two-Heel Drive)

April 9, 2007

new language translation on this site

We’ve added the Google web page translation service and placed it in a more prominent position than our old AltaVista Bablefish link. Click on the desired flag near the top of the navigation column.

(I know how frustrated I get trying to translate wonderful trip report from another language.)

Since the scope of besthike.com is world-wide, we wanted to make it as easy as possible for non-English speakers to read this blog.

example – Mandarin

April 8, 2007

unbelievable cloud photos

Last September we posted rare â€œMammatusâ€ cloud photos.

Many of those same pics are in a larger, better collection of cloud and wind photos posted by the always interesting Dark Roasted Blend photo blog.

If you love great sky vistas â€” and what hiker doesn’t â€” check out Mammatus, Lenticular & Other Extreme Clouds.

April 8, 2007

best section of the Colorado Trail?

Running 479mi from Denver to Durango, the Colorado Trail is a classic. It shares about 200mi with the CDT.

planning – ColoradoTrail.org

For those of us who do not have a long month, what’s the best section?

Outdoor Magazine recommends:

… concentrate your efforts during a ten-day romp along a remote 95-mile ribbon that runs just east of San Luis Peak to Molas Pass, in the southwestern part of the state.

Start at Spring Creek Pass, 33 miles northwest of Creede amid the 13,000-foot-plus San Juan Mountains. Plan on grinding up to 15 miles a day along airy ridges, down steep gorges, and up winding switchbacks.

You’ll spend four days cruising above tree line, at nearly 12,000 feet, and the closest you’ll come to a town (Lake City) is about 17 miles, which means tackling thousands of vertical feet each day with a heavy pack.

Take a break and frolic in Snow Mesa, a flat, grassy expanse so huge it takes a few hours to cross.

Outdoor

Sounds great. We’ve added San Luis Pass to Molas Pass to our list of the best hikes of the world.

ColoradoTrail.org calls it Section 6 – San Luis Pass to Molas Pass (advanced difficulty).

Next, what’s the best guidebook?

Colorado Trail: The Official Guidebook (Colorado Mountain Club Guidebooks)

Get packing!

April 7, 2007

wet feet trekking Greenland

Christian Davies from Denmark recounts a 180km (112mi) trek from Kangerlussuaq (Sdr. Stromfjord) to Sisimiut (formely Holsteinsborg) on the west coast of Greenland.

One hiker had to be left behind.

His feet were all swollen and had deep blisters. Although we were so close to our destination we couldn’t tell for sure how long time, it would take to walk the last part of it.

The pace was about 1 km/h and it could be even lower for the last part. We shared our rations and made sure that he had food for 4 days and we all said goodbye to him. That was one of the most surrealistic thing I ever have experienced.

To finish the story shortly, everything went well and we got to the town. The one we left was brought home on a snowmobile by one of the locals in town.

After all this struggle and all these days with wet feets and the freeze dried food, I still miss that magical moment from that time. Non of us will never forget what we experienced together.

As for the picture goes, it shows a moment where we all were very tired and a bit exhausted, but there was still energy to take pictures and enjoy the moment.

Live Your Life