Destination on the edge: SEAL training

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Navy SEALS seem to have a phrase that functions as both “hello” and “goodbye”: kick ass! But, it’s not reserved solely for these purposes. This expression also works as a motivator, squeezing every last ounce of effort out of the recipient. And, at Extreme SEAL Experience, you’ll need it. Spend close to four weeks pushing your mind and body past every limit you’ve ever imagined, and you’ll finally understand the full definition of “kick ass!”

Extreme SEAL Experience is one of many military-themed vacation spots at which you can get an inside look at elite military training. This one is different, though. When the instructors at Extreme SEAL Experience send a letter of recommendation to the official Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) school, it makes a difference. Of course, it helps that the program’s teachers have combined special warfare experience of around a century. They can spot talent, and the U.S. Navy knows it.

Extreme SEAL Experience offers four programs, running from the sheer agony of the first day (a prerequisite for the other courses) to SEAL Advanced Operator Training, which includes fastroping, night operations and a frighteningly real field exercise. Each minute of each program is carefully scripted to inflict the most pressure possible … and push you to new levels of, um, “self-discovery.”

The first night, “Hell Night,” is mislabeled. It actually lasts more than 24 hours. For the vast majority of this effort, you will not be happy. There’s no other way to put it. Misery tops (and pervades) the agenda. But, you come out the other side with more confidence and a greater sense of what you can accomplish. Unlike the official version of BUD/S, Hell Night is not designed to hit an 80 percent attrition rate, but you won’t graduate without some pain.

Participants in Extreme SEAL Experience programs understand the intensity of the program (or think they do) before registration. Thus, most are in great shape and have the necessary “Type A” personalities. Youth is abundant, with most guests in their late teens or early twenties. In almost every course, there are a handful of people whose names are stenciled in red. This means they are using Extreme SEAL Experience as a way to test the waters before enlisting and applying for BUD/S. They receive the benefit of some extra attention along the way.

Prospective SEAL candidates are not the only attendees singled out, however. Anything that makes you different will catch an instructor’s eye. If you are the youngest or oldest in your class, you will not escape detection. Those with a bit of gray hair can expect to have the stress of leadership added to an already strenuous program. The “old folks” usually do well, motivating younger team members and adding a touch of maturity to the mix. Age is not a barrier at Extreme SEAL Experience, and it can be an advantage. The oldest graduate was 58, and he was hardcore.

The advanced courses delve into the tools of the special warfare trade. You’ll still push your body and sacrifice some sleep, but you’ll get to have some fun at the same time. Hand-to-hand combat, small unit operations (mostly at night) and live-fire weapons shooting add to your portfolio of skills as an elite recreational special warrior. If you complete all four courses, you will leave with a pretty good sense of what it takes to be a Navy SEAL.

I know what you’re thinking: there’s no way Extreme SEAL Experience can be as tough as the real thing. Duh. There’s no way it could be. The instructors would have to keep an ambulance on site 24 hours a day. Nonetheless, the team goes as far as it reasonably can, which you’ll see is pretty rough. If you can finish the Extreme SEAL Experience, you have a decent chance of surviving BUD/S, but there are no guarantees.

Some people do have a tough time with the program. In fact, it has led a few aspiring SEAL sot reconsider their plans before heading to see their local recruiters. Even if you change your life plans after only one night, the instructors will continue to motivate you. Usually, a decision to quit a session at the camp is averted by a pep talk from the cadre. The participant may not go on to BUD/S, but he can still call his time at Extreme SEAL Experience a success.

If you’re looking to punish your body with aggressive military-style training, you have choices. Shoot for the nastiest experience imaginable, and graduation will be most fulfilling. Extreme SEAL Experience will punish you – which is what you’re looking for. Spend a 27-hour night or a few weeks with these misfits, and you’ll know you’ve accomplished something.

[Photos thanks to Extreme SEAL Experience]

Gadling Take FIVE: Week of January 24-30

by Jamie Rhein on

When it comes to finding places to stay, this week has turned up several options from national parks to a person’s backyard.

  • For the budget conscious traveler, Alison offers a new idea in her post Out: couch. In: tent. Instead of looking for a couch for a sleeping arrangement, there’s another network where travelers can find a place to pitch a tent–like a person’s backyard. If staying in a stranger’s house seems unnerving, staying outside a person’s house may feel more comfortable.
  • Brenda has given us the dibs on the Hostel Trail in Latin America. After telling about her personal experience at a guest house in Popayán, Colombia, she presents tips about how you can find the same kind of deal–the type that leaves a person beaming, just like she’s beaming in the photo.
  • In Kraig’s post The World’s Best National Parks, follow the link to National Parks Traveler. Along with descriptions about the top 10 parks, you’ll find links to the parks themselves and places to stay if you go. For example, here’s the link to places to stay in Fiordland, New Zealand, number one on the list.
  • In Budget Travel: Detroit, an installment of our series on budget destinations, David Landsel, editor of the New York Post’s Travel section offers many suggestions for where to stay in Detroit. The Inn on Ferry Street sounds the most unique and interesting.
  • If you want to avoid the dirtiest hotels, one place to look is Trip Advisor’s 2009 Travelers’ Choice Awards.

And one more. If it’s late and you have no where to go, Annie suggests that you try 2itch.com, a site that will find places near you that are open.

Planning a trip to a National Park? Book campsites and rooms now.

by Jamie Rhein on

Although taking that summer road trip may be far from your mind, if you’re thinking of a stay at a national park, make reservations now. Lodges, cabins and campsites fill up fast, but can be booked up to six months in advance.

A few years ago, we stayed in a Rough Rider cabin near the Roosevelt Lodge at Yellowstone National Park in June and booked it in January. The advantage to planning ahead is that knowing where you need to be, at least part of the summer, helps organize the rest of it. From Yellowstone, we headed to Pocatello, Idaho through Utah, on to California and back to Ohio through New Mexico visiting friends and family along the way.

If you want to hook a vacation around Yellowstone, there are several lodging options in and around the park. This link lists many of them.

If you’re interested in camping–or renting a cabin, head to recreation.gov where there is a drop down menu that lists campground and cabin options. RV camp sites are included. You can book online by using the date function.

If you’re thinking of a Rough Rider cabin, know that they don’t come with a bathroom. There is a communal facility with toilets and showers.For us, it was a perfect stay and the price was right. We ate breakfast in the Roosevelt Lodge’s dining room. There are other more expensive cabins located elsewhere that do have a bathroom if that’s your preference. The photo is of the inside of a Rough Rider cabin.

To book one of these rooms or lodge rooms or cabins at some of the other national and state parks, go to Xanterra Parks & Resorts. There are availabilities, but some lodges have filled up.

Out: couch. In: tent

by Alison Brick on

If you thought couchsurfing was an ingeniously simple concept, try Single Spot Camping. The website matches travelers with any place that can fit a tent–be it a deck, field, or ‘even your garage entrance’ as the website suggests.

What’s in it for the traveler: more options, in theory. Locals might be more willing to offer up space outside their home than inside. It’s definitely an usual travel experience. And if you’ve got a horse in tow (doesn’t everybody?), you might luck out with a place for her, too.

For the host, there’s a little more privacy compared to couchsurfing. And you get a little income (roughly 10-20 euros) directly from each traveler. You do have to pay a 40 euro registration fee, but if you register before February 28, you only have to pay 20 euros.

The website just started up last year, so the list of camping spots is sparse. So far, the listings are in backyards, farms, and vacant lots in Sweden, Norway, Australia, US, and Canada.

The information available to the traveler is pretty descriptive, though–everything from number of spots, what they’re able to accommodate (tent, caravan, motorhome), facilities (electricity, toilet, shower, kitchen, playground, shops nearby), price, directions, GPS coordinates, months open, and contact info. Once you find a listing that you like, you’d just contact the landowner directly.

[Thanks, Springwise.com]

Bowermaster’s Antarctica — Sharp Peak

by Jon Bowermaster on

Standing at the foot of Sharp Peak, a 4,000-foot-tall snow-covered granite peak rising straight up from the sea, beneath a 360-degree indigo sky, today just might be the most beautiful I have ever seen in Antarctica. Though even as I write that, I knowingly admit it’s impossible to compare days, especially here, since I’ve witnessed so many beautiful ones here over the past twenty years.

But this one was a beauty with a Capital B. Sitting off Prospect Point I am surrounded by THE most spectacular wilderness on the planet. Running about in a Zodiac on a glass-calm black sea, snowcapped mountain ranges circle me marked every few miles by substantial towering glacier tongues. Thick new snow is piled up on the hills and six-foot-thick fast ice (frozen sea) extends from the continent. Dozens of penguins and seals swim and fish, then slide up onto the ice for a rest. Flat-topped tabular icebergs bigger than small apartment buildings – crystal blue and surreal white – sit grounded in the bay or frozen into the fast ice. The sun is high and air temperatures reach to nearly forty … (earlier in the day I heard it was -10 F in Minneapolis!). Aaaaah, Antarctica!

Last year we tried climbing Sharp Peak, but were forced to quit before we started due to too-soft snow and crevasses masked by flat, grey skies. On that day the bay was chock full of floating ice of all sizes; this year most of the winter ice has already been blown out. Though we wouldn’t have had much luck climbing it peak today either, due not to slushy snow, just way too much of it.
It is particularly hard on a day like this, surrounded by ice that is hundreds of years old and mountains covered by new-fallen snow, that one day much of this whiteness lining the Antarctic Peninsula could be gone. Though the air temperatures along the Peninsula have risen during the past fifty years by nine degrees Fahrenheit, the biggest increase on the planet, it is still easy for critics of climate change and its impacts to use this exact vista to suggest that no amount of warming, no matter who or what is responsible, will ever make a difference to this place.

But despite appearances, evidence is all around: All along the Peninsula average temperatures of air and surface water are way up. Eighty-seven percent of all of the continent’s glaciers are flowing faster then ever and have receded. Each year the frozen continent is losing enough ice mass to cause the world’s oceans to rise about .05 inches, adding about 40 trillion gallons of fresh water to the world’s ocean, equivalent to the amount of water used by all U.S. residents every three months. Estimates for sea level rise are on the order of eighteen to twenty feet over the next couple millennium, but we’re not sure if it all may arrive in the same one hundred years. Ice shelves the sizes of small states along the Peninsula are fracturing at alarming rates.

The best analogy I can make for what is happening down south will be familiar to anyone who lives in a cold weather, ice-and-snow climate. Serious scientists in Antarctica talk about a “critical point,” when the combination of warm temperatures, precipitation and loss of ice cover will encourage Antarctica to melt very, very quickly. Think of your own backyard on a warm day at the end of a long winter; your yard, your stoop has been covered in snow and ice for several months and then on early spring day, after a momentous day of rain and warm temperatures, the last remnants of winter disappear … just like that.

The very same could happen here, which is the worry. Though I will admit to understanding why, on a day like today surrounded on all sides by miles and miles of ice and snow, there are still some out there who doubt the globe is warming precipitously. I am not one of them.

Click HERE for more dispatches from Antarctica!