Mount Everest, the granddaddy of all mountains continues to claim victims. According to recent news, it looks like three climbers have died recently (this being the beginning of the big climbing season up there). Oddly, they died while descending..OK, that’s not THAT odd, but it sure seems rather tragic that they’d make it to the summit and then die on the way down. But it’s been a busy season so far. Last week, officials said 42 climbers took advantage of improved weather to reach the summit from its Nepalese side.
Telluride’s Mountainfilm Festival
Next weekend is Memorial Day Weekend here in the states and that means it’s time to head off to Telluride for the annual Mountainfilm Festival.
Mountainfilm celebrates, “the uniqueness of wild spaces” and, despite its name, “accepts and screens films on a broad range of subjects that include but are not limited to mountains and mountain sports.”
This year, the impressive schedule will include 80 films, 50 speakers, and a variety of galleries, symposiums, and social events that celebrate the great outdoors–which includes, but is not limited to mountain and mountain sports.
Events kick off Friday, May 26th with an all day symposium celebrating the 800th anniversary of the founding of Mongolia. For all you Mongoliaphiles out there, this is the day you’ve been waiting for your whole life!
Outward Bound Video
Some city slickers spend an awful lot of time in their offices and apartments wondering what the outdoor life is like. How can HEY challenge themselves like the folks they read about in Outside Magazine or National Geographic Adventure? Well, as you probably know, where are lots of outdoor schools that you can enroll yourself in to get away, to thrust yourself into Mother natures gnashing maw and learn a bit about yourself in the process (such as: do you have an allergic reaction to poison ivy?). But maybe you want to get a slightly better, even visual idea of what these schools entail? How your limits will be tested, how your heart will explode in your chest, how you’ll cry like a baby when confronted by a bear.
Well bearing (ha!) all this in mind, I think you will find this nicely produced video from Outward Bound a satisfying way to learn some things about doing the outdoor school thing. Sure, its promotional. No weeping wooses here. But its also punchy and entertaining.
Plague Closes Campground
That darn plague. It shows up in the darndest places. There you are having a great time with friends in a Utah National Park, and some little critters go and get all plaguey on you. Next thing you know, you get bit and run around frothing at the mouth before falling down dead. I hate it when that happens.
OK, this aren’t quite that bad, but according to this Yahoo news report it seems that there is a plague problem in Utah. In fact, officials have temporarily closed a campground at National Bridges National Monument in Utah when they found that some field mice and chipmunks tested positive for the bubonic plague. The Black Death in Utah? Say it isn’t so. That’s almost as ad as 3.2 beer.
But worry not, dear Gadling readers. Scientists say that the plague rarely if ever jumps from rodent to human. Not in, oh, several hundred years or so. And how did that turn out? I forget.
Oldest Guy Summits Everest?
So there we were hailing the recent achievement of Mark Inglis, who climbed Everest with no legs, and not soon after we have some guy doing the same thing at the ripe old age of 70. Well, we’re not totally sure about this, but it seems probable. Or a least a mountaineering company claims that it happened, that they sent up a 70-year-old Japanese guy named Takao Arayama, who, if he summitted, thus bested Yuichiro Miura, also of Japan, who reached the summit a wee bit younger on May 22, 2003.
What’s up with Everest thsee days? Is this like a walk in the park or what?