Protect yourself from frostbite

by Erik McLaughlin on

On your trip to the slopes for some much needed excitement and adventure, you awake to find fresh powder. Lots of it, too. You begin to head for the runs and realize that in your excitement, you’ve forgotten your gloves. No matter, you think, I have to get out there! A few hours later, your hands begin to blister and get numb. What do you do?

This is a common situation and one that I have seen happen all too much. The condition is frostbite and it can not only slow down your trip, but can cost you your extremities!

This is a condition where the tissues of the body, generally the fingers and toes, begin to actually freeze. This can cause massive damage to the tissue and sever cases, beside being very painful, can require amputation of necrotic (dead) tissue.

There are two conditions to know, frost nip and frostbite. Frostbite is the worst and most severe form, characterized by destroyed tissue and numbness. Blister formation and muscles damage are also common. Frost nip is less severe and does not destroy the tissues.

Treatment for all forms, both frostbite and nip, center around re-warming the effected areas. Remember to treat the person for hypothermia, as well as frost bite. Protect them from the cold environment, remove wet or constricting clothing and keep them warm. Try not to re-warm the extremity with a campfire or tailpipe exhaust, as this may cause burns to the already damaged area. Warm water, 40 C/104 F is the ticket. Immerse the area into the water and have the person try to gently move their fingers or toes. Keep them well hydrated and avoid tobacco and alcohol, which inhibits good circulation. Resist the temptation to break the blisters and do not massage the area, both can damage the already injured skin. Ibuprofen may work well, initially, for pain control, but stronger stuff may be needed. Padding the areas between fingers and toes, with cotton, also helps.

Nobody sets out with a goal to get frostbite. To prevent this, keep your body core and your extremities warm. Stay well hydrated and avoid tight or constricting clothing. Mittens work better than gloves, for cold weather hand protection. Also, on longer trips, avoid over-washing the hands and feet, as this removes the skin’ naturally protective oils.

Keeping your body warm and healthy is the secret to having a good cold weather trip. Remember, bring spares of gloves and warm socks, and try not to get so excited about your trip that your forget them in the hotel.

Biking the world’s most dangerous road

by Jerry Guo on

A backpacker in Peru I met has been spending the last half year or so bumming through South America. He told many thrilling tales, but the one that really stood out being his biking trip down the world’s most dangerous road, right outside La Paz, Bolivia.

In the Youtube video below, you’ll see what appears to be a not-too-wide bike trail. In fact, buses and trucks routinely drive–and pass each other–on this so-called road. And you can share in the experience, though I highly recommend against riding in through on a bus.

Biking trips are routinely offered on the road, but be prepared to face rain, sleet, snow, mudslides, landslides, Yeti attacks, and oh death.

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My year of (good? bad? you decide) luck

by Catherine Bodry on

I’ve been trying to justify this post as travel-related, and I’ve finally decided that it is simply because I still view being in Alaska as an adventure I’m on. Even though I live here now, I came here as a traveler, and I haven’t lost those first feelings of awe about being here. So, what I’m wondering is whether I’m a super lucky person, or if my life is like the movie “Final Destination” and I need to watch my back.

In 2006, I got hit by a car, lost a front tooth, had to be evacuated from a flood in the bucket of a front-end loader, and wrecked my car.Here’s some background info: I tend to be a bit of a train wreck. I lose stuff, I trip over my feet, I get weird driving tickets, I hit “reply to all” when I don’t mean to, blah blah blah. I certainly can’t live without health insurance. But in the past few years, I’m beginning to wonder if my normally small “disasters” aren’t somehow becoming a lot larger — or if I’m just really lucky. I freak out when I think how close I was to missing the tsunami in Thailand (a mere day or two), or the bombings where I stayed in Paharganj, Delhi (a month or so). So missing those was lucky, for me. But the last part of 2006 sort of shook me up. Here’s how it went:

On July 5, one month exactly before my wedding, I was riding my bike to work when I was hit by a car. The 86-year-old driver didn’t see me (or hit the brakes) until I was on his windshield. Surprisingly, I suffered only a clean break on my right ankle. The bummers: I was a food server, so making money the rest of the summer was out, I got a ticket (!) even though I was on bike path, and my fiancé was working on a boat in Bristol Bay, so my friends had to scrape me off the pavement, shuttle me to doctors’ appointments, and keep me company while I popped Vicodin and watched DVDs for the remainder of the summer. And of course, there was the whole getting-married-in-a-cast thing.

Two weeks after our wedding, my husband moved to Canada to go to school for a year, and I left Anchorage for Seward to start a new job. On our last day together I visited the dentist for a routine checkup on a root canal I’d had done the week before.Long story short, the front and center bottom tooth was pulled and I returned home bloody, gap-toothed and lisping. This is how I said good-bye to Lael and started my new job.

Eventually, the cast came off and I got a bridge over my gap. I lived in a tiny log cabin up Exit Glacier Road, where the Resurrection River rushes down from the glacier and the mountains. I didn’t think much of all our steady rain in October until my boss called one morning to let me know they were closing the bridge to town due to flooding. I decided to head to town, and puttered around getting things ready for the day. All of a sudden there was a banging on the side of my cabin. I figured it was a moose, but it kept on knocking. I opened my door to find muddy river rushing under my cabin, which was on pilings. There was no getting out by car, so I did what any level-headed adult would do — I called Mom (in Seattle). Between her and a friend, I managed to get a rescue orchestrated: I was picked up and carried out in the bucket of a front-end loader.

The next day I waded across 100 meters of thigh-deep glacial river, complete with chunks of glacier floating by. The foundation under my cabin was being eaten away by the current, and the building had a sharp tilt. I threw some clothes in a backpack, stowed my computer and files in an unaffected neighboring cabin, and waded back out. It was several days before I could return, and then I had to move so the foundation could be replaced. At least it never collapsed or flooded inside, so I didn’t lose anything. Check out the photo below: that’s after the water subsided, but it dug a huge channel. Look closely and you’ll see my neighbor’s car nose down.

And that’s not it: I took the driver of the car that hit me to court earlier in the summer, got the charges reversed, and won a very small settlement. On the very same day that money was deposited into my account, I drove the 126 miles from Seward to Anchorage on the windy, icy highway. 30 miles from Anchorage, my car slid out of control and careened through incoming traffic to slam into a guard rail. I was lucky not to have a head-on collision — two other people were killed a few miles from there that same day. I did lose a few seconds and had a huge knot on my head — and my car was totaled. That settlement went right into a new vehicle.

At least that was in December, and thankfully a new year started.

So, here are some numbers:
Number of crises — 3
Number of frantic messages left on my husband’s phones at school and on the boat — at least 5
Number of times death was averted: 2

Am I really lucky? Or just normal?

Photo of the Day (1-16-08)

by Jamie Rhein on

This shot by un rosarino in Vietnam captures so perfectly one of the sights that astounded me most when I first traveled in Asia. Children perched on bicycles, trusting, not falling off and so much a part of the day to day happenings no matter where they were. Look how confident the father (?) is that his charge won’t fall off. Also, the soft pinks of the scarves and the child’s shorts in contrast to the sepia tones of the rest of the photograph are alluring.

This shot was taken in Cambodia. If you have your own alluring shot to show off, post it at Gadling’s photo pool on Flickr and it could be picked for Photo of the Day.

First human powered circumnavigation of the globe

by Neil Woodburn on

What is it about crazy Brits and their desire to circumnavigate the globe on their own power?

Over the last few years, we’ve been sharing with you the adventures of Karl Bushby who is attempting to walk around the world. But for whatever reason, we’ve just learned about a fellow countryman of Bushby’s who has spent the last 13 years circling the globe using a combination of bicycles and peddle boats. Wow.

Jason Lewis started his journey at the Prime Meridian in Greenwich in 1994 after realizing that his greatest fear in life was “of mediocrity and of a slow, unremarkable acquiescence to society.” This epiphany led him on a 46,405 mile journey that is believed to the first “human powered circumnavigation of the globe.”

He traveled by bicycle and foot through 37 countries and across all major continents except Antarctica, as well as spending 111 days in a paddle boat crossing the Atlantic Ocean.

I’m not sure this is the best way to spend one’s 30s, but you have to admit, Lewis certainly hasn’t acquiesced to society in the traditional manner. Now that he’s home and probably looking for a job, however, we can welcome him back to a life of mediocrity.