Last weekend, almost 60 years after the
first ascent by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay,
fights broke out between three Western climbers and a group of sherpas, at around 7200m on Mount Everest.
[more inside]
posted by daveje
on Apr 30, 2013 -
47 comments
Becoming the All-Terrain Human: [New York Times] "Kilian Jornet Burgada is the most dominating endurance athlete of his generation. In just eight years, Jornet has won more than 80 races, claimed some 16 titles and set at least a dozen speed records, many of them in distances that would require the rest of us to purchase an airplane ticket. He has run across entire landmasses (Corsica) and mountain ranges (the Pyrenees), nearly without pause. He regularly runs all day eating only wild berries and drinking only from streams."
posted by Fizz
on Mar 23, 2013 -
24 comments
"Edlinger began to climb. As the last competitor, everyone at Snowbird knew how high he must get to beat his rivals and win the event. With apparent ease, he climbed past their high-points, until pausing beneath a huge overhang that had defeated all-comers. At that moment,
a narrow shaft of sunlight pierced the cloud cover and illuminated Edlinger. When he completed the route, the only one from the world's best to do so, the crowd erupted. Until this point, American climbers had been unsure about competition climbing. After Edlinger, they were converted." - Patrick Edlinger, age 52, died on December 10, after years of battling depression following a near-death fall in the nineties that prevented him from climbing at the same level.
[more inside]
posted by Riton
on Dec 23, 2012 -
10 comments
"As a climber goes up even higher in altitude, into the so-called death zone, the dangerously thin air above 26,000 feet, there is so little oxygen available that the body makes a desperate decision: it cuts off the digestive system. The body can no longer afford to direct oxygen to the stomach to help digest food because that would divert what precious little oxygen is available away from the brain. The body will retch back up anything the climber tries to eat, even if it’s as small as an M&M."
-
Excerpt from
To the Last Breath: A Journey of Going to Extremes
posted by Brandon Blatcher
on Aug 7, 2012 -
39 comments
Towering over New Hampshire at a height of 6,288 feet,
Mount Washington is the highest peak in the Northeastern United States. It has been ascended by countless hikers from all walks of life, including (for the first time ever)
a paralyzed dog.
[more inside]
posted by dhammond
on Sep 22, 2010 -
41 comments
Cerro Torre is a
magnificent,
bleak shard of granite in Argentina's
Parque Nacional Los Glaciares. In the Patagonian summer of early 1959,
Cesare Maestri, Toni Egger, and Cesarino Fava began their attempt to be the first to climb the daunting face of Cerro Torre's
northeast ridge. Halfway up the climb, at the Col of Conquest, Fava gave up and turned back, while Maestri and Egger forged on. Six days later, while packing to leave and despairing of ever seeing his friends alive again, Fava found a half-frozen Maestri wandering alone in the snow at the base of the east face. (more inside)
posted by the painkiller
on Jan 3, 2007 -
20 comments
Rescuers plan biggest search yet, using helicopters, a C-130 aircraft, infrared equipment, and scores of volunteers to search for 3 climbers trapped on Mt. Hood. But at what cost in dollars and lives? A 1998 rescue of two climbers on Mt. McKinley cost $221,818. And
Mt. Hood is no stranger to climbing accidents: in 2002, an Air Force helicopter
crashed [youtube] while trying to rescue nine climbers swept into a crevasse. Is it time to revisit the debate over who should pay for dangerous, high-profile mountain rescues?
[More inside]
posted by googly
on Dec 16, 2006 -
204 comments
Todd Skinner falls to his death Sport and free climbing pioneer/entrepreneur, Todd Skinner, died over the weekend in a 500-foot fall.
Sadly, it appears that his death was from a
"..very worn.." belay loop on his harness.
I met Todd about 10 years ago, and was struck by his warmth and enthusiasm. He spent almost three hours at a dingy Seattle climbing gym with about 10 neophyte femail climbers. He helped us all climb better and have more fun. He was generous with his praise, and offered truly helpful instruction - his ego did not get in the way (unlike many climbing instructors/"stars"). He'll be missed.
posted by dbmcd
on Oct 30, 2006 -
32 comments
Remember Aron Ralston, the guy that was trapped under a boulder for six days, and escaped only by amputating his own arm? In this month's Outside Magazine, he tells his story in
excruciating detail.
posted by monju_bosatsu
on Sep 5, 2004 -
16 comments
Palestinian-Israeli expedition scales Antarctic peak. The "Breaking The Ice" team of four Palestinians and four Israelis, having not shied away from picking the obvious metaphor for the title of their adventure, reached the summit of a previously unclimbed and unnamed mountain last friday, and named it "The Mountain of Israeli-Palestinian Friendship". Apparently, the mountain didn't collapse under the weight of all this symbolism. There was
blogging, too.
posted by liam
on Jan 20, 2004 -
13 comments
French Spiderman does it again! Alain Robert has just sucessfully made it two-thirds of the way up the 50 storey 1 Canada Sq in London's Canary Wharf before being arrested by police in a window-cleaning cart. It's like a war zone down there. As soon as any news links appear i'll post them here.
posted by andyHollister
on Oct 18, 2002 -
39 comments
A Sad Day. Sometimes it
seems like all the people I admire die before their time. It's a long list:
Dan
Eldon,
Ned Gillette,
Ciriello,
Galen
Rowell,
Alex
Lowe,
Dan
Osman, (plus many others), and now:
Goran
Kropp, died a few days ago. "The Crazy Swede" became famous for
riding a bicycle from Stockholm to Everest, climbing it solo and without oxygen,
and riding back. This story is told in
Ultimate
High:My Everest Odyssey.
posted by ig
on Oct 3, 2002 -
7 comments
