Parkour, The Art of Movement: Why Just Walk from Place to Place?

by Jamie Rhein on

On a few occassions in my life, I have had bouts of walking around on top of buildings. The first time I was three. My mother couldn’t find me until she looked up. There I was on top of our apartment house. There was a ladder or something. When I was 12, I figured out how to get on top of the school where I attended 6th grade and had a blast figuring out how to get from one place to another. Once in high school, I climbed out a second floor window to the roof just for a bit of air. I didn’t know that I was ahead of the trend called parkour.

Started in France by David Belle 10 years ago, the aim of parkour is to use your body and movement to travel from point to point in creative and interesting ways as quickly as possible. The trend has even hit Columbus at Ohio State University and is sanctioned by the school (see article). Here’s a video of David Belle demonstrating his methods. There’s no way my son is seeing this though. I have a hard enough time keeping him on the ground. I think he must come by this naturally.

Adventure Travel in Luxury in the Canadian Rockies

by Jamie Rhein on

Usually I equate adventure travel with roughing it. Getting dropped off by helicopter into the wildnerness where there are no paved roads also sounds a bit risky. On the contrary on both accounts. Although heli-hiking vacations do involve helicopters and donning hiking boots for some rigorous activity, there’s no reason to forgo the niceties of pampering if you’re spending the night in the wild.

That’s what I found out when I read Joe Nocera’s first person account of his trip to Canada in the New York Times travel section. He went on a Canadian Mountain Holidays vacation that involved being dropped off on top of a mountain in the morning so he could hike all day with the rest of his group in stunning, hard to reach places before the helicopter came back for them to return them to the lodge. According to him, this experience allows for roughing it travel that is mixed with luxurious slumber in a lodge that also offers massages, wine and hors d’oeuvres. That does sound good BUT. . .

One of the things he mentioned was seeing markings left by grizzly bears, something that might be hard to see if you just hike somewhere. Harumph! The first time I hiked in Glacier National Park in Montana with my husband the spring before we got married, he pointed out two grizzly bears across a field from where we were heading to a lake he thought I should see. I wondered about the fruit in his pack. He said I ought to be more concerned about the salami in mine and all he had to worry about was out-running me. The bears were so far away they looked like small dogs and according to this personal tour guide of mine who spent the summers in college doing laundry at Many Glacier Hotel in East Glacier, we weren’t in any danger. We made it to the lake several miles from the parking lot. I still remember the mountains still capped with snow and the brilliant blue of the water. And at the end of the day, I had the satisfaction of knowing that I got there and back by using my legs to carry me. We didn’t see one person along the way. If a helicopter had shown up, though, I probably wouldn’t have turned down the ride.

One company I found that offers a smaller scale version of Nocera’s experience is Heli-Canada Adventures. You can do a heli-hike for a day if you want to picnic on top of a mountain, for example, and you just don’t want to walk there.

Hanging Off A Rope In the New Zealand Rainforest

by Brett Atkinson on

I’m pretty happy I live in Auckland. Just over a million people with an increasing cultural diversity, loads of good restaurants, and a surprising number of international concerts (although that means for every visit from Interpol and Ryan Adams we get, we also have to host Tommy Lee’s woeful Supernova).

Across recent weeks I’ve been exploring Auckland’s wilder side in a series of articles on “Urban Adventures” I’m writing for a local magazine. An earlier post was on Bungy Jumping off the Auckland Harbour Bridge , and I’ve just returned from canyoning in the Waitakere Ranges to the west of Auckland with my nephew Matthew.

Togged up in wetsuits and safety helmets, we’ve just spent three hours working our way down the Blue Canyon‘s cavalcade of eighteen different waterfalls. Each of the cascades has required a slightly different technique. On some a spectacular and energetic leap has worked best. On others we’ve been forced to slide on our backsides down mossy natural water slides. Throw in a couple of watery abseils for good measure.

All the while we’ve been surrounded by native birdsong in a stunning chasm that’s only a few metres across at its widest point.

It’s been a great day. Not bad for somewhere that’s only 45 minutes from downtown Auckland .

See Canyonz for more information

Is This The World’s Most Southern Igloo?

by Brett Atkinson on

Normally igloos are meant to be surrounded by polar bears and Inuit fishermen drilling holes in pack ice, but that hasn’t stopped a few wacky Kiwis from building one half way up an active volcano. Mt Ruapehu in New Zealand’s North Island last erupted in 1996 and earlier this year sent a lahar of mud, rocks and water careening down its slopes. Despite the occasional natural interruption, Ruapahu features two popular skifields, and visitors for the upcoming season now have the opportunity to sleep in an authentic igloo.

Visitors will need to be quick because the icy structure will only last until spring kicks in from October. There are already two dining rooms for up to 20 mountain-side diners, and new sleeping quarters are now being added that will house up to nine people.

There’s no reviews on Trip Advisor yet, but it’s probably just a matter of time.

Story and pic via the New Zealand Herald.

Pack It Out…All Out on Mt. Whitney

by Erik Olsen on

Here’s something interesting:

When hiking Mt. Whitney, you must carry out your own feces. Isn’t that just the thing you wanted to know on this quiet, lovely Sunday?

You see, I know this unpleasant-sounding fact, because I am, literally, headed there now. If luck, weather and good health are with me, I will have summited the lower 48’s tallest peak by Tuesday afternoon.

It’s an exciting prospect, a bit daunting, but I just can’t get it out of my mind that I am going to have to carry around my own, well, waste. This is a new mandatory policy at Whitney, one started earlier this year after they removed the last of the miles-high outhouses at the two big camps on the mountain.

According to various posts over at the Whitney site, these outhouses never worked well anyway and they stunk to, ahem, high-heaven. But rather than build fancy new, high-tech outhouses that say, zap your feces with Higgs Bosons and convert them into recycled cups or something, the Forest Service went decidedly low-tech. They said, from now on, people will have to pack it out. Pack it ALL out. And so now at Whitney (like at various other mountains in CA…ie.e Mt. Shasta) you will now have to get your hands on what is called a WAG bag, and inside, dear friends, is where you will collect and store and carry your previous evening’s fully digested meal. Isn’t nature lovely!?

By the way, if anyone has any advice on doing Whitney, or interesting WAG bag experiences, do share!