Hiking Everest, Sans Legs

by Erik Olsen on

All I can say is wow, double wow.

You’d think that climbing Everest is hard enough with all your limbs, but the guy in this story, a Mr. Mark Inglis climbed the mountain with no legs at all. The New Zealand-born double amputee lost both legs years ago in another climbing accident, one where he got frostbite and had to have the limbs removed. But rather than have that be some kind of deterrent, some kind of message that climbing is dangerous, very dangerous and perhaps you might find another vocation, this ballsy dude went ahead and reached the top of the tallest mountain in the world, no legs be damned. Amazing.

One for the Road: Code Green

by Erik Olsen on

Travel, when done correctly, is all about discovery. You learn more about the world itself, its peoples and cultures, but also you learn about yourself. The committed vagabond throws himself into the world and seeks new experiences, tries to find fulfillment through travel. Of course, finding fulfillment can be tough. And so now the folks at Lonely Planet want to help. A new book called Code Green is out and is filled with excellent ideas to help you figure out what to do when you travel and how to help it enrich your life. Despite a cover that will scare the bejesus out of your parents, this seems like a very promising volume. The ideas are of a decidedly progressive bent, but all offer the opportunity to find greater fulfillment through travel. Here are a few of the suggestions:

  • Get up-close-and-personal with gorillas in Rwanda, lemurs in Madagascar and sea lions in the Galapagos.
  • Explore some of the world’s most magnificent wilderness, and see it through the eyes of the Dogon people of Mali, the Masai of Kenya or the Maori of New Zealand.
  • Tag turtles on the Great Barrier Reef, count macaws in Peru or learn to be a ranger in an Indian tiger sanctuary.

I’m bullish on this book and have added it to my personal travel library.

Prince William Sound Not Yet Recovered

by Erik Olsen on

Having paddled right near where the Exxon Valdez once went aground, I pretty much figured that the sound had largely recovered from that awful accident. I was wrong. Turns out that wildlife in Alaska’s Prince William Sound is still threatened by the oil spill from  when the tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in 1989.

According to a new study by the National Marine Fisheries Service, some 100 tons of oil still pollute the sound shoreline and potentially affect foraging sea otters and ducks. These populations have been slow to recover, despite the “good news” from an Exxon study that the sound “has recovered, it’s healthy and it’s thriving.” Exxon paid at least $900 million toward Valdez cleanup, but has refused to pay $4.5 billon in punitive damages related to the spill.

Oily Penguins

by Erik Olsen on

Some very sad news from Argentina where a bunch of penguins have been found washed up all covered in oil. This is awful news and tragic. Most of the birds have been found in the Cabo Virgenes nature reserve, about 1,350 miles (2,200 kilometers) southwest of Buenos Aires near the southernmost tip of Patagonia. No one s sure yet where the oil came from, but you can probably guess that the source won’t confess until confronted.

Forests Corked?

by Erik Olsen on

Did you know that Mediterranean cork-oak forests provide 15 billion corks a year to the wine industry? They say this is a sustainable enterprise, mostly because cork is harvested from live trees rather than dead ones. But oddly, while plastic and screw-top closures are growing in popularity, some say this drop in the cork market could lead to poor forest management or abandonment, putting forests at heightened risk of desertification and forest fires.

And so the World Wildlife Fund is is urging the wine companies to stick with cork, saying that the forests could be imperiled if management goes awry. What an odd thought. Let’s use more cork to save it.