Mom'eur

Just as the teams on Everest are on the move today to take advantage of the shifting weather patterns across the Himalaya, the climbers on other mountains in the region are hoping to make their summit bids as well. Many of them have been dealing with high winds for the past few weeks too and now that that those winds are dissipating at last, the climbers are eager to begin their ascents.

On Lhotse, most of the teams are following the same pattern as their friends on Everest. You may recall that the the two mountains share the same camps from BC up to C3. From there the routes diverge with those heading to the top of Lhotse taking a sharp right as they proceed up to their own Camp 4. High winds have kept that summit out of reach for now, but this weekend it should become accessible. Expect several teams to top out in the next few days.

On Dhaulagiri, Polish climber Pawel Michalski has begun his summit push. After being confined to BC  by bad weather, he was certainly eager to get going. He launched his bid on Wednesday, saying that his health and spirits were good. He now expects to summit on either Sunday or Monday (May 20-21) depending on the weather.

On Makalu the teams are still in BC waiting for the shift in weather to turn in their favor. News of the passing of Alexey Bolotov has reached that mountain as well, where Don Bowie has written a few brief words about his friend. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, Alexey was a very well known and highly respected climber and his death has had an impact on this Himalayan season and will likely to continue to do so for seasons to come.

Spaniard Carlos Soria has launched his summit bid on Kangchenjunga. He set out from Base Camp earlier today and will now spend the next few days getting into position to top out. If all goes according to plan, he should summit sometime early next week. If successful, it will be the 72-year old’s 12th 8000-meter peak.

The Italian team that includes Annalisa Fioretti will set out for the summit of Kangchenjunga today as well. Their forecasts indicate improving weather all around and they are now eyeing a summit attempt on the 20th, provided things continue to improve. The entire team will be attempting their climb without the use of supplemental oxygen.

News of Alexey’s death has arrived on this mountain as well, as Oscar Cadiach learned of his fate prior to the launch of his own summit bid. It seems he’ll be following a similar path as the others and will look to top out early next week.

There have been no updates from Kenton Cool since he launched his attempt at the Himalayan Triple Header earlier this week. In his last dispatch, Kenton was heading up to Camp 2 on Everest, where he was going to decide which of the summits he would go for first. You may recall that he hopes to bag Nuptse, Lhotse and Everest all in one push. The weather was expected to be the deciding factor on whether or not that was possible. We’ll just have to wait until he is back in communications range to find out how many – if any – of those summits he actually managed to reach.

Speaking of Nuptse, it seems that the route to the top of that mountain was finally set in place earlier this week and since it sits so close to Everest we can expect summit attempts there this weekend as well. That includes the all-women’s team with Bili Bierling that is climbing under the Himex permit.

Finally, ExWeb is reporting that during a summit bid on Shishapangma last week a climber passed away due to HAPE (High Altitude Pulmonary Edema). Apparently the team, which was being led by Thomas Laemmle, were all turned back from the Central Summit due to bad weather. A German member of the group took ill and Thomas elected to stay with him while the others moved down. But after an extended stay at altitude, the team leader began to take ill as well, so they two slowly descended. Thomas showed signs of HAPE too, but fortunately he received medication and treatment in time. The other climber, who is unnamed in the report, passed away shortly there after. Sad news indeed. Again, condolences to friends and family of the fallen.

More updates from across the Himalaya next week.

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Amateur pilot, outdoor enthusiast and blogger Ney Grant has created a wonderful little film that combines his love for flying with his passion for the outdoors. Ney, who writes about his experiences at WestCostFlyingAdventures.com, uses his Cessna T210 to shuttle he and his family to some fantastic places to hike, mountain bike and climb.

Be warned. The video, which you’ll find below, will probably leave you a little envious. After all, we can’t all have a personal plane at our disposal to help facilitate our own escapes. By the time you’re done watching however, you’ll probably be trying to figure out how you can afford one. Just the things that Ney and his family have seen from the cockpit alone would make it worthwhile.

One of the premiere adventure races in North America has announced its dates and locations for 2014, giving teams a full year to prepare for the event. A few days ago, race organizers for the Untamed New England Expedition Adventure Race announced that the 4+ day race will take place from June 17-22 and will be held in the 100-Mile Wilderness in Maine. This is one of the most remote and beautiful places in the eastern U.S. and a perfect place to hold a race. It is surrounded by dense forests, features miles of trail and has some of the most wild terrain imaginable.

The race will feature teams of 2, 3 and 4 competitors with the coed teams of 4 being the predominant category. They’ll be trekking, mountain biking, paddling, white water rafting,  orienteering and climbing their way across a course that should be amongst the best ever offered by this popular and well known race. The top prize for the event has gotten more impressive as well. The winning team will take home $10,000 in prize money, double what the winners in 2012 won. Better yet, the race is part of the AR World Series and serves as a qualifier for the AR World Championships, which will be held in Ecuador next year.

Registration for Untamed New England 2014 will open on June 1.

Yesterday, the National Geographic Society announced its 2013 class of Emerging Explorers, once again turning the spotlight on some of the brightest young minds who are working in a wide variety of fields today. In fact, this year’s recipients are helping to redefine exactly what the term “explorer” means in the 21st century as the group includes a roboticist, an entrepreneur and a couple of artists, along with the more traditional biologists, geologists and conservationists. It safe to say that the world of exploration has opened up in some new and very interesting ways.

In all, there are 17 individuals who have been named to the Emerging Explorers Program this year. Each of them is recognized for having accomplished important things in their particular area of expertise during the early part of their career and their work shows significant promise for future breakthroughs as well. To aid them in their research, Nat Geo awards each Emerging Explorer $10,000 as well.

Amongst this year’s class of Emerging Explorers are Bethany Ehlmann who is a planetary geologist on NASA’s Rover Curiosity team. She is focused on exploring our solar system to see how planets formed over time. She is joined by Sandesh Kadur, a wildlife photographer and filmmaker who focuses on creating documentaries about endangered species and threatened habitats. Conservation Biologist Andrea Marshall earned a place amongst the Emerging Explorers for her research with threatened marine megafauna such as the stingray while adventurer Gregg Treinish is recognized for his efforts in founding the non-profit Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation.

This is just a sampling of the amazing men and women make up this year’s class of Emerging Explorers. Each of them is a fascinating personality in their own right and they are all doing interesting work in an incredibly diverse number of fields. You can take a look at the entire class by clicking here.

Congratulations to the entire 2013 class. This honor is well deserved all around.

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It’s Wednesday, which means we are all treated to a new episode of The Rest of Everest. This week we continue our trek towards Broad Peak and K2 with climber Brian Block and his team arriving in Concordia, an amazing place that straddles two massive glaciers while providing views of four 8000 meter peaks. As you can imagine, the scenery is spectacular and worth the price of admission by itself.

Remember, this season of the Rest of Everest is focused on climbing BP and K2 and so far it has been a fantastic look at an expedition to those two peaks.

Earlier this week SPOT, the makers of the popular SPOT Satellite Messenger, took the wraps off their first new product in a couple of years. The company unveiled the SPOT Global Phone, a new entry into the satellite phone service market. SPOT says that their device provides a clearer and more reliable connect than other options currently available, and it does so in a smaller package.

The Global Phone comes equipped with a battery that reportedly offers 4 hours of talk time and 36 hours of standby. The phone itself weighs just 7.1 ounces (201 grams) and measures 5.3 inches (13.5 cm) in length. It has a memory capacity of 99 internally stored numbers, features an LCD screen with 4 lines with 12 character per line and with an optional data kit it can serve as satellite connection for a laptop as well. It is rated to operate in temperatures ranging from -20ºC/-4ºF to +55ºC/+131ºF.

According to their coverage maps, Global Phone users will get good service throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Northern Africa and the Middle East are also nicely covered, but most of sub-Saharan Africa and India are left out of the coverage zones. Expanded coverage is coming later this year, but there doesn’t appear to be any plans to address these dead zones at the moment.

SPOT is offering a number of service plans on both a monthly and annual basis. Those plans start as low as $24.99 per month and include a bucket of pre-paid minutes, voice mails, text messages and more. Frequent users will appreciate the $150/month plans that offer unlimited calls, while those with more meager needs will find plenty of choices as well.

The phone itself is scheduled to go on sale in the next few weeks and will carry a cost of $499.

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Have you always wanted to create your own amazing timelapse videos like the ones that I share here regularly? Well a company called Brinno is now making it easier then ever to do just that. Their new TLC200 Pro is built from the ground up for timelapse photography and it makes it incredibly easy for you to capture stunning scenes even after dark.

The camera features 1.3 megapixel sensor, which isn’t exactly state-of-the-art these days but should be more than adequate to pump out quality videos from the hundreds of photos it will take. The TLC200 Pro also incorporates a 1/3″ HDR sensor which helps to capture plenty of light, even after the sun has gone down. Shooting modes include settings for for shooting in daylight, twilight, darkness and by the light of the moon. The device is capable of capturing burst of 3-5 photos per second and the time interval can be set between 1 second up to 24 hours. That means no matter what you’re shooting, you should be able to capture it nicely. This model even offers the ability to change out the lenses and Brinno offers a variety of them for use with this tech toy.

The unit runs on 4 AA batteries, which is good for 240,000 frames shot at a 2 second time interval. The entire camera weighs just 4.2 ounces and can fit nicely into a backpack for taking with you on a trip.

Best of all, the TLC200 Pro automatically stitches all of the images it takes together to create a timelapse video for you. There is no need to collect all of the images independently of one another only to try to assemble them in a separate piece of software. This camera is literally plug-and-play. Just point it at the scene you want to capture and let it go.

The video below shows what the camera is capable of. No word yet on pricing.

Over the past couple of years we’ve become accustomed to paddlers making some daring white water runs and dropping over some extremely big waterfalls. But recently three paddlers pushed the limits even further by going over five successive waterfalls in Mexico that combined to make one very big descent.

The team, which consisted of Rafa Ortiz, Evan Garcia, and Rush Sturges, ran a stretch of water along the Rio Santo Domingo that included waterfalls that are 80-, 90-, 60-, 20-, and 40-feet in height, all in rapid succession. That’s a total of 290 feet (88.3 meters) in one quick go, with very little time for recovery between each drop.

There isn’t any video on this paddling expedition yet, but considering that it was sponsored by Red Bull, you know that it has to be coming soon. I for one can’t wait to see what this looks like when you catch it all in motion. Hopefully from a helmet cam that shows each of the successive drops. But for now, we’ll just have to settle for some the amazing still photos that are posted on the Red Bull website.

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Before he became the face of adventure travel on the television show Adventures with Purpose, Richard Bangs was a world-class paddler and river guide who made first descents on numerous rivers across the planet including the Indus, Zambezi, Yangtze, Euphrates and many more. One of his early expeditions took him to the Baro River in Ethiopia, which hadn’t been fully navigated at the time either.

In a recent post to his website, Richard shares some harrowing tales of his adventures along the Baro, which runs for approximately 306 km (190 miles) before it feeds into the Sobat River and eventually the White Nile. His stories include encounters with man-eating crocodiles, incredible white water and unexpected tumbles over waterfalls. The title of the article is “What’s Worse? Death by Drowning or Crocodile” which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this expedition. The article is a reminder of just how wild and untamed parts of our planet remain and how dangerous these expeditions can be. Definitely an excellent read for a variety of reason, as it touches on why we pursue dangerous adventures in the first place.

The video below serves as a bit of teaser for the story, but be warned, the footage is not for the faint of heart. There are some graphic images shown that some could find disturbing. If you’d rather avoid those images as best you can, I’d suggesting simply reading the article instead, although it also has a photo or two that aren’t for the squeamish.

Peru is one of those countries that ever adventure traveler should visit at least once in their lifetime. Travel blogger Dan Moore recently discovered this for himself when he allowed the Facebook followers of Covermore travel insurance to dictate his entire trip, starting with the destination. Dan chronicled his travels using a GoPro camera and along the way he visited classic sites like Machu Picchu, the Nazca Lines and Lake Titicaca. The essence of his trip is captured in the video below, which is likely to inspire you to want to visit Peru too. Looks like he had a great time.