The National Park Service has a mystery on their hands and it is proving to be a difficult one to solve.
Twenty-one-year-old Kaitlin Kenney was part of a month-long private rafting party in the Grand Canyon when she mysteriously went missing last week. Kenney was last seen on Friday, January 11, in a camp near Tapeats Creek along the northern bank of the Colorado River. What happened to her after that is still open for speculation, as no trace of the young woman has been found since.
Other members of the rafting group used a satellite phone to contact the Park Service over the weekend and the NPS scrambled search parties to go looking for Kenney. Searching from both the air and on the ground, teams have combed the area where she was last seen and so far have come up empty. The Park Service says that they spent two days checking every accessible trail, beach, drainage and backcountry area in the vicinity to no avail. The search is ongoing, although efforts have been scaled back.
What might have happened to the missing rafter is open to debate. Other members of her party say that she would never have tried to climb out of the canyon on her own and speculation is that she may have accidentally fallen into the water sometime in the night. At this time of year the Grand Canyon can be a cold place and the waters of the Colorado are frigid, making hypothermia a real danger. SAR teams have combed the river looking for Kenney, however, and still haven’t found any clues.
It’s a long trip from Alaska to Austin, Texas, but my childhood friend had finally arrived. She had taken a ferry to Seattle and from there, she had purchased a car for a few hundred dollars and embarked on a swift summer swoop to the south. She and two friends she picked up along the way, one of which was a mutual hometown friend, pulled up beside my house one steamy August afternoon wearing only swimsuits, soaked in sweat and desperate for a shower. The car she purchased in Seattle didn’t have air conditioning. Austin saw over 70 consecutive days of 100+ degree weather and she happened to arrive during that scorching window.My house in Austin had been built in 1910 and without any insulation beneath the old floors we could see the sunbeams showering the crawlspace through the cracks in the wood flooring. The walls let the ants in, the closed windows let the breeze in, and nothing could keep the heat out. We kept the air conditioner on full-blast at all times as a desperate combative measure, but the house never cooled below 82 degrees. I welcomed them and we walked through the gravel driveway leading to my home, as I offered apologetic warnings all the way. It was reprieve they were seeking and I knew they would find it in my home, but only moderately so. I chided them for visiting Austin in August. Once the guests had showered and returned to a relatively more natural body temperature, we embarked on a night of showing them around Austin.
After dining at the food trucks on east 6th street and weaving in and out of a few bars, we shared a collective desire to shift gears for the night. My friend expressed interest in seeing the stars in Austin; she wanted to go to where we could see them the best, somewhere out in the country. You can see the stars from Austin’s city limits of course – the city isn’t yet too illuminated for that. But when you drive beyond Austin and into the barren Texan rural landscape, the night sky opens wide; it becomes the mouth of the universe, baring its starry teeth and mysterious surrounding dark matter. It’s the kind of mesmerizing scenery you can get lost in. It’s the kind of escape from which you don’t always feel a need to return. It’s dangerous like that.
We drove east down Martin Luther King boulevard without a specific destination in mind. All semblance of civilization grew distant behind us and the road was nearly invisible ahead, swallowed by the tar-thick blackness. We drove for over an hour, listening to Schubert’s Sonata in B flat major. It was already well after midnight when we spontaneously turned left and followed a dirt road around its curve, which led us to an unknown paved road. We parked the car on the side of the road and got out.
When we turned off the music, the silence had a robust presence, thoroughly pronounced in each rest I’d normally expect to be occupied by sound. My friend lay down in the middle of the street, writhing on the hot pavement in gratitude beneath the vision above. I sprawled out on the roof of my van. We stared up toward a heavy sky that seemed ready to collapse. The dark further illuminated the light specs and we were dizzy under the hypnosis of it all until the silence broke. Coyote howls cracked and screeched in what seemed like a furious brawl, an early morning rampage. They sounded close. I envisioned them finding us all out there, lying on the street and the car like carcasses awaiting consumption. We conceded to the anxiety and retreated to the car, eventually finding our way back to the dirt road and then the main drag back into Austin, where we were so far from those stars; so far from Alaska.
In July 2012, People to People Ambassador Group sent students to Japan for the first time since the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit in 2011. Partnering with MTV, People to People also ran an Act for Japan contest to give away one full tuition travel scholarship. Now the organization is partnering with actress Holly Robinson Peete to award five students with travel scholarships to participate on a People to People adventure.
Holly’s Global Giveaway will send the winners to a destination of their choice including a journey to Australia, England, France, Italy, India, China or even Antarctica.
This contest is still open, but not for long, as three out of five students have already been chosen. Submit your entry to tell People to People why you should join Holly’s Global Trekkers and see the world as a student ambassador by January 31, 2013.Peete, also a mother of four, experienced first-hand the positive impact global travel and study abroad can have on a student, and plans to send two of her own children on a People to People trip this summer.
“I had the opportunity to study abroad at a young age and I believe it is a critical component to ensuring our kids can compete in a globalized world,” said Holly Robinson Peete in a Marketwatch report. “I look forward to allowing my children the same life experience and working with People to People to send five deserving students on the trip of a lifetime.”
That’s why she’s partnered with People to People Student Ambassador Programs to give two lucky students an all-expenses paid international travel experience they’ll never forget.
Three of the five scholarships have already been awarded during Holly’s recent appearance on “The Wendy Williams Show.” These students were affected by Hurricane Sandy. Since Williams is from New Jersey, People to People wanted to help lift the spirits of these kids around the holidays.
On the trail, adventure travelers know the importance of basic first-aid skills when thousands of feet up on a climb, camped miles from nowhere or hiking off the beaten path where a call to 911 brings help. When an emergency happens, knowing what to do can mean the difference between life and death.
New research done at the University of Michigan, Harvard University and the City University of New York indicate that brain stimulation releases an opiate-like pain killer. Using electricity on certain regions in the brain of a patient with severe pain, scientists were able to release one of the body’s most powerful painkillers.
Hikers, campers, climbers and others commonly off the grid when traveling, might find this ability useful when an accident happens. Waiting for first-responders to arrive with help can be a very long time when in severe pain.
A natural substance produced by the brain that alters pain perception, called mu-opioid receptors (MOR’s), is the hero here.
“This is arguably the main resource in the brain to reduce pain,” said Alexandre DaSilva, assistant professor of biologic and materials sciences at the U-M School of Dentistry and director of the school’s Headache & Orofacial Pain Effort Lab in Laboratory Equipment.”We’re stimulating the release of our [body’s] own resources to provide analgesia,” adds DaSilva. “Instead of giving more pharmaceutical opiates, we are directly targeting and activating the same areas in the brain on which they work. [Therefore], we can increase the power of this pain-killing effect and even decrease the use of opiates in general, and consequently avoid their side effects, including addiction.”
Looking for other natural painkillers may not require waiting for science to arrive at our favorite gear store though. In this video, Kate Armstrong, The Urban Forager, shares how to find a natural pain killer from nature.
It’s nine degrees below zero Fahrenheit and I’m the only soul out for a walk in downtown Durango on a Friday night. Everyone else in this idyllic town of about 16,000 in the southwest corner of Colorado is sensibly rushing into and out of businesses and some leave their cars running outside while they pop into shops or restaurants. It’s my first night in a town that I’ve imagined as a kind of adventure playground utopia and I have no intention of sitting in my warm hotel room watching TV.
Durango is a town that shows up on all kinds of best places lists. Outside magazine appears to crown Durango as the best something or other almost every year – in 2012 it was named one of their best new adventure hubs and one of America’s best river towns, and on at least two prior occasions, it was on their list of best towns. In recent years, my wife and I have been fantasizing about moving to a smaller, more laid back community and I’ve long been convinced that Durango would be a great place to live despite never having stepped foot in the place.
If you like to ski, snowboard, mountain bike and hike, you’re spoiled on choices within a short drive of Durango and a little further afield you have five national parks in Southern Utah plus the otherworldly Monument Valley and the Grand Staircase. There are a lot of places that people relocate to for jobs, but Durango is just the opposite – it’s mostly a refuge for outdoorsy people who are fleeing the big city rat race.
Before I landed in town, I met three people who loved the place so much that they found a way to live there, two in the airport and one on my flight in. Durango native Gregory Martin overheard me talking on the phone in the Denver airport about trying to find a medicine man on the Navajo Reservation and asked if I was “into sweat lodges” and things of that nature.
We got to talking and Martin told me he was a wilderness therapist at a place called Open Sky Wilderness, which helps heal troubled youths by bringing them out to live in a rustic, natural setting in the wilderness for two to three months. After talking to Gregory, I met a young man from Virginia who is studying music at Fort Lewis College in Durango. He visited the place and fell in love with it and his parents were sold when they found out that he could get free tuition because he’s ¼ Comanche Indian (the college provides free tuition to Native Americans).
“How did you prove you were Native American?” I asked, curious to know how a kid who looked very white could make the cut as a Native American.
“When I was born my dad got a card for me on the reservation, it’s kind of like a social security card – it proves I have Native American roots,” he explained.
And on the flight into Durango, a pilot who convinced NetJets, his employer, to allow him to base there about six years ago, sold me on the place.
“It would be a great place to grow up,” he said, and all I had to do was look over his shoulder at the dramatic, snow-capped mountains out the window to see what he meant.
Even after all the hype, I liked Durango immediately. The Animas River flows right behind Main Street, which is anchored at one end by a vintage train station where you can take the Durango-Silverton narrow gauge train, which has been in continuous operation for more than 130 years. I was bundled up and ready for the biting cold and the frigid night air felt oddly invigorating. Heat saps my energy and turns me into a sloth, but the cold puts a spring in my step, especially when there’s no wind.
On this bitter evening, the stars were out in force, the town was eerily quiet and the squeaky sounds of my shoes making impressions in the snow seemed oddly melodic.
I walked almost every block of Durango’s walkable, Wild West meets hip ski town center and felt like the place had pretty much everything I needed: two good bookstores, two brewpubs right downtown and two more nearby (four breweries in a city of 16,000!?), a nice collection of independent restaurants and shops, and a pleasant lost-in-time vibe.
I passed two old hotels, the Strater and the General Palmer, places advertising “Old West Photos” and Cowgirl apparel, a Tibetan Shop, a music store advertising “compact discs and tapes,” a Nepali, Indian and Tibetan restaurant and a shop selling a T-shirt, which read: OMG WTF is happening to the English language?
I had a glass of Colorado Kolsch at Steamworks Brewing and noticed that guys with ponytails shared baskets of peanuts with guys in cowboy hats and middle-aged ski bunnies in fluffy boots. When I asked a couple what the worst thing about Durango was they laughed.
“That’s a tough one,” the guy said. “We love it here.”