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If you watched the 2000 "climbing" movie Vertical Limit and wondered — like me, and every other viewer with at least a basic understanding of climbing, physics, or common sense —why the characters kept doing inane things (like climbing K2 with nitroglycerin or that crazy chasm leap by Chris O'Donnell) then this video is for you.

via American Alpine Institute - Climbing Blog

A vintage McKinlay's bottle of the same era. Shackleton's may a bit worse for wear.

Shackleton buffs take note. Two crates of McKinlay's “Rare Old Whiskey” have been buried in the Antarctic ice for a century, 97 miles shy of the South Pole. Adding to the aptly-named Scotch 's prestige is the fact that it was left behind by legendary explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton when he was forced to abandon his South Pole expedition in 1909.

The crates originally were found in January 2006, encased in ice under the floorboards of the Nimrod Expedition hut Shackleton built, but were not moved at the time, due to being deeply embedded. Whyte & Mackay, owners of McKinlay and Co, have asked a team of New Zealand explorers heading out on a January 2010 expedition to return a bottle or sample of the whiskey this time around.

New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drilling tools to retrieve a sample of the vintage Scotch, which they'll turn over to Whyte & Mackay's master blender. The rest must remain where it is, according to Antarctic conservation guidelines. Word is the distillers will try to recreate the original whiskey from 100 years ago.

Al Fastier of the Antarctic Heritage Trust said he would not be tempted to sample the Scotch, preferring to allow the spirits to retain their mystique. “It would be terrible to sample it and find that it was off,” he told Radio New Zealand. “I personally think they must have been left there by mistake, because it's hard to believe two crates would have been left under the hut without drinking them.”

FYI, the expedition's main purpose is to carry out restoration work on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova hut, not to drill for whiskey.

via NPR

For more info: BBC, Telegraph, The Associated Press, Daily Mail Online (original 2006 find)

Get ready to practice your skootchline blunt and frontside and backside skootches this winter for cross-country snowboarding, or as the insiders say, cross boarding. Adam and Dave, a Toronto comedy duo, have a whole series of Unreel Sports promo films made for Fuel TV. Crawbling is pretty funny too.

“That’s the great thing about cross-country snowboarding. It’s impossible for it to sell out.”

www.adamanddave.com

My grade-school-age son is very interested in stories of science, adventure, and survival. His favorite bedtime book is Allen & Mike’s Really Cool Backcountry Ski Book (we reviewed hypothermia the other night), followed by ones with people exploring mountain summits, volcanoes, outer space, and the depths of the ocean. The last means we have a number of books on the Titanic.

One day he asked me, “what if they did the Titanic trip again?”

“No,” I said. “They wouldn’t do that. The Titanic was a terrible tragedy. No one would want to go on another Titanic trip. It would be creepy and wrong and…” Oh wait. You can now book your berth for the Titanic Memorial Cruise, a “unique cruise that will commemorate the Titanic’s tragic voyage.” It sets sail April 8, 2012, from Southampton.

Shows what I know. (I also thought Dancing with the Stars had to be a spoof the first time I saw an ad.) I wonder how many commemorating Titanic travelers will bring along their own life rafts, jackets, survival gear…

How you spend your day is how you spend your life.

I read that on the sign outside my local bike shop. Then I skipped out, along with a small child, and went for a fall hike.

Get the popcorn ready. Ken Burns's much anticipated The National Parks: America's Best Idea premieres tonight — Sunday, September 27 — at 8 p.m. (ET/PT) on PBS. The 12-hour, six-episode series will run nightly through Friday, October 2.

Directed by Burns and written and co-produced by Dayton Duncan, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, was filmed over the course of more than six years at some of the most spectacular locales — from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska to Mount Rainier (above). It's not only a story of nature, but also of people, rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved.

If you can't watch episodes during PBS's nightly 8-10 p.m. time slot, don't worry. Full episodes of The National Parks: America's Best Idea will be available online beginning September 28, and will remain available online through October 9.

PBS site: The National Parks: America’s Best Idea

Watch the Star Trek V: The Final Frontier opener with Captain Kirk free soloing El Capitan and William Shatner’s full explanation of why Kirk climbs the mountain at the American Alpine Institute’s blog.

Now that I know why Captain Kirk climbed mountains I’m giving Star Trek a second look.

Thanks to wickedoutdoorsy for this excellent find.

Photo: Nina Hale

Want to celebrate your love of backpacking and backpacking food (two of my favorite things)? Then don't miss these two holidays.

Sunday, August 30,
National Marshmallow Toasting Day

Monday, August 31,
National Trail Mix Day

One has to wonder whether such holidays really exist, except on the internet and at the offices of the powerful marshmallow and GORP lobby groups.

Either way it's easy to celebrate these holidays, and they give you an excuse to get outdoors and eat sticky smores and big handfuls of chocolate, fruit, and granola.

Attacked by a mountain lion while mountain biking. Ejected from a fighter jet at supersonic speed. Falling off a cruise ship 50 miles from shore, without anyone knowing, and staying afloat for 17 hours.

Many of us enjoy reading a good survivor story. But, have you ever wondered about who survives these situations and why they specifically survived? Beyond the newscast sound bite, what really makes someone a member of the survivors club? Is it the will to live? Physical conditioning? A positive mental attitude? Luck?

If you want a deeper investigation into these questions read The Survivors Club (subtitle: the secrets and science that could save your life) by Ben Sherwood. For this book, journalist Sherwood interviewed legions of survivors, and not just the kinds you read about in adventure magazines, as well as doctors, psychologists, and scientists. He subjected himself to the navy’s Aviation Survival Training Center, where sailors learn to survive “mishaps” over open water, and the air force’s survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training.

The fascinating book is filled with big picture questions. Does the will to live make any difference? Are some people actually luckier than others? It also has many interesting facts. I was heartened to read (while flying in turbulence) that 95.7% of people survive airplane crashes (so don’t buy into the myth of hopelessness, pay attention and take action). And, if you must suffer a heart attack, do so in Las Vegas casino. They’ll have a defibrillator on you in minutes, faster even than in a hospital.

Naturally, all of these questions about survival lead to this one: would I survive?

Sherwood says everyone is a survivor, but it helps to know your survivor personality. When you buy a copy of The Survivors Club you get a special code to take a survivor profile test on Sherwood’s website, www.thesurvivorsclub.org. You’ll find your survivor personality out of five types — Connector (28%), Realist (24%), Thinker (21%), Fighter (15%), Believer (12%)— as well as your top three strengths (aka your survival tool kit) out of 12 traits.

The summary results of a Survivor Profile.

According to the test, I am a Fighter (beforehand I would have bet on Thinker or Realist). According to the Fighter profile, I attack adversity head on with purpose and determination. Against any odds, I’m driven to succeed and won’t stop till I achieve my goals. That sounds pretty good.

Since research shows you can increase your chances of surviving and thriving by leading with your strengths, the test also identifies those traits, also called your tool kit. Mine were identified as: flow, resilience, and purpose.

The test also identifies your bottom ranking tools, traits you may still have, just not as strongly. Mine were: faith, empathy, and ingenuity. Ouch, apparently I’m not overly empathetic, at least not in a survival situation. It also would be nice to see a complete ranking of all your traits.

I had one issue with the book, which covers a range of individual survival stories and scientific research. In a later section Sherwood focuses on the power of religion and faith, even miracles, to save you. The subject is interesting and worthy, but I didn’t agree with Sherwod’s statement that “faith is the most universal survival tool, if not the most powerful” (page 157).

While I understand that faith can be a very empowering survival tool, I questioned its first place status, which seemed granted without scientific reason. Indeed, when I took the online test, Sherwood’s tool kit ranked faith in 9th place (tied with purpose, see sidebar at right) among all test takers’ number 1 rankings of the 12 traits. First place was a tie between love and intelligence (14.89% each). To be fair, I’ll note that faith was one of my weakest traits.

Despite this issue, I still recommend The Survivors Club. It won’t give you all the answers to survive any situation, but it gets you thinking about what you can do to up your chances. After reading this book I’ve found I’m more mindful and situationally aware, positive about the inevitable struggles we all face, and ready to take control of those struggles. I’m ready to reread Laurence Gonzales's Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why (referenced repeatedly in The Survivors Club) to see how Sherwood's book stacks up against that classic.

Visit www.thesurvivorsclub.org for more information on the book, and profiles and videos of survivors. The site also has some short, free survival tests.

If you’re still drinking out of your old #7 polycarbonate water bottle, read the results of a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health before your next fill-up. The study is the first to directly show that drinking from polycarbonate bottles raises BPA levels in urine.

Participants (77 Harvard students) first spent a week drinking only cold beverages from stainless steel bottles, which are BPA-free, as part of a “washout” phase to minimize BPA exposure. They used 27-ounce Kleen Kanteens by the way.

The following week, participants drank only cold beverages from new polycarbonate bottles (32-ounce Lexan Nalgenes). After one week of polycarbonate use, the concentration of BPA in participants' urine increased 69 percent.

According to the Harvard press release, exposure to BPA has been shown to interfere with reproductive development in animals and has been linked with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in humans.

It’s important to note that participants didn’t drink hot beverages from their bottles, wash them in dishwashers, or use old ones. BPA levels could have been "considerably higher" if the bottles had been heated.

"This study is coming at an important time because many states are deciding whether to ban the use of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups" said researcher Jenny Carwile. "While previous studies have demonstrated that BPA is linked to adverse health effects, this study fills in a missing piece of the puzzle—whether or not polycarbonate plastic bottles are an important contributor to the amount of BPA in the body."

Read the full study on the website of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives (pdf).

via Treehugger

The body of a second, missing Boulder climber has been found on Mount Edgar (6,818 meters/22,368 feet) on the Minya Konka massif, Western Sichuan Province, China.  Jonathan “Jonny” Copp, Micah Dash, and Wade Johnson embarked from base camp on May 20 and were reported overdue when they missed their June 3rd flight from Chengdu, China.

Copp’s body was found by Chinese searchers in avalanche debris at 4,000 meters on the mountain and positively identified yesterday. A second body was reported found today and is believed to be Johnson, a photographer with Sender Films, who was accompanying Dash and Copp.

In 2008, Copp and Dash received the Mugs Stump Award grant for this climb from the American Alpine Club but had to delay travel until now, due to political unrest in the region.

We extend our condolences to the families and friends of all three climbers.

For more info or to donate toward the search fund visit www.adventurefilm.org/blogs/adventure_blog.aspx

Back in October we reported that Alpinist—the magazine, website, film fest, and more—had shut down. Last winter it was bought by the publishers of Backcountry Magazine, and now the quarterly print magazine dedicated to world alpinism and adventure climbing is back, with Issue 26.

www.alpinist.com

Via Wild Snow

The long weekend has come and gone, and I hope you took advantage of it by doing something you enjoy.

If not, if you felt guilty about taking time for yourself, had the compulsion to stay virtually connected to work, or if you always feel like you can’t really get away, then read Michael Hodgson’s recent SNEWS blog, “Whatever Happened to Valuing Time Away From Work?”

As Hodgson writes so well:

If your days are so full that you feel you cannot carve out time to listen to birds, watch a sunset, revel in the sound of a bubbling stream or the laughter of little ones, walk with a loved one, or simply sit and let your mind wander creatively, then your days are too full of things that don’t really matter in the long run. ...

Another weekend approaches, and with it another chance to spend our limited time wisely.

Hike. Backpack. Climb. Bike. Build a sand castle. Sleep in a hammock. Make cookies. But do that thing, with the ones who matter, without trying to do ten other things at the same time.

The SNEWS View: http://snewsview.blogspot.com/2009/05/whatever-happened-to-valuing-time-away.html

Getting outside is #1!

It's Memorial Day Weekend. For many of us this means a three-day weekend, and the chance to get outside and hike, backpack, climb, paddle, or camp.

I admit that sometimes I think of Memorial Day Weekend as the unofficial start to the summer camping and hiking season. I'll wager that come Tuesday morning, when I return to my computer, there will be numerous e-mails asking how to set up/seam seal/fix a leaky/broken/confounding tent. (Here's my advance tip: Go to a specialty outdoor store and buy a decent tent. Then seam seal it.)

However, Memorial Day has a meaning far beyond tents, outdoor recreation, and barbeques. It's a day to remember the men and women who have died while serving our country.

Getting outside with the family and friends is a worthy activity, and one I encourage you to take. You can even bring along some new recruits, of any age, and introduce them to the outdoors. Sleep in a tent in the backyard. Hike to the top of a mountain. Paddle to a picnic spot. Run some new trails.

But, while you're enjoying the beauty of our country—its woods, mountains, and waters—don't forget those who have served and who can no longer enjoy its natural treasures. When put in that perspective, the view may be even more beautiful.

Tents: They're not just for nerdy families anymore!

Fellow campers and backpackers (aka “nerdy families, nature geeks and Boy Scouts” according to a recent CNN.com article) will be pleased to note that sleeping outside in a tent has become “chic” in this economic downturn.

Well, thank goodness for that. We can all breathe a collective sigh of relief now that we're considered frugal trendsetters and not unhygienic dorks.

In all seriousness, I hope more people, especially kids, discover the benefits of outdoor recreation and an appreciation and respect for nature. Maybe for some, a family's budget-minded campground vacation or afternoon hike will lead to a respectful outdoor lifestyle. One can hope.

via CNN.com's "In a slump, camping comes into vogue"