At 13 years old I was mostly stoked on how well my new neon Batman cycling cap matched my Batman T-shirt. I was in no way prepared to sail solo around the world. But they say girls develop faster than boys, so I’m sure this 13-year-old girl who has been taken into protective Dutch custody is ready for the trip. The girl is ready to shove off from the Netherlands and become the new youngest person to sail around the world, but Dutch authorities are stopping her. When kids in the U.S. fly from Cleveland to Detroit they need to have an appointed steward ensuring they safely walk from gate to gate; the Dutch raise kids a bit differently. The 13-year-old’s parents fully support her goal to circumnavigate the globe. They say she was born on a boat and spent the first four months of her life on a sailing trip around the world. That seems like pretty good practice; I’m sure she’ll be fine.

via Outside

Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice Magazine, is shooting some wilderness survival videos for Teva. I learned a lot about Forest Myths in the first installment. It’s odd to see McInnes shilling for Teva in this video since he reportedly split with Vice in 2007 because of the magazine’s decision to work with Viacom. He went on to create Street Carnage (NSFW), and now he’s making outdoor videos for a sandal company. Odd, but funny.

via National Geographic Adventure

A 19-year-old seasonal worker came up from Chicago looking forward to some adventure in Alaska when he took a job just outside Denali National Park. Last week Don Carroll struck off with a friend to find Chris McCandless’s ‘Magic Bus’ from the book Into the Wild. The two stashed their food and water before a river crossing and planned to pick it up on their way back. Well, they found the bus but got lost before they could reclaim the food and water bag. They survived by drinking river water and eating berries until a helicopter plucked them from the Alaskan wilds. But it gets better. In June this same kid headed into the front country around Mount Healy in Denali National Park by himself wearing jeans and a hoody. He got lost, soaked in the rain, and then (of course) text messaged rangers clues to his whereabouts. They found him and sent a high-altitude rescue chopper

“If police see me (hiking) in the woods, they’re going to arrest me,” a rueful Carroll said during a cell phone interview Tuesday.

“The chief ranger said he’s not going to come looking for me anymore,” Carroll said.

Though Carroll has done plenty of hiking that didn’t end in rescue, his employer has suggested that he wind down his Alaskan adventures and do a bit of community service.

via Backpacker

Burton rolled out their Private Stock Collection for the 2010 winter with graphics from iconic and bizarre cartoonist R. Crumb. If you haven’t seen the documentary Crumb, check it out; the guy’s had such a fascinating and brutal life. The graphic for the 2010 Burton Private Stock Board features Fritz the Cat. Fritz starred in the first animated feature film in the U.S. to receive an X rating. It’s also still the highest grossing X-rated animated feature film of all time, but I suspect that Fritz the Cat falls into a pretty small category for theater releases.

Burton couldn’t have made a better choice for their oversexed boards. Every year they draw fire for their Playboy model boards, but this year they reached into the twisted. It’s easier to argue that board graphics are ‘art’ when you’re looking at groping cats rather than naked women.

The rescue operation for a 28-year-old American doctoral student from Chicago is still running through Costa Rica. David Gimelfarb walked into the jungle at 10am on Tuesday, August 11^th after signing a guestbook at Rincon National Park. His searchers have posted a list of hikers who also signed in on that day in the hope that they can track down the people who entered the jungle about the same time as him. They’re trying to narrow the search grid, so if you have any friend who were in Costa Rica, take a quick look at the guest list on Facebook and see if they’re on it.

Vail made the move to put all of their employees in helmets, but so far no American resorts have required that every child on their hill ski with a helmet. It’s easier to get away with mandates like this in Europe where the country can pass a law and then individual resorts don’t need to worry about losing customers because of different helmet-use rules. This winter everyone under the age of 15 in Italy and Austria will be required to wear helmets while skiing. Adults are still allowed to wear only headbands that won’t mess up their hair. As goes Europe so goes America? Probably not; we still don’t even require motorcycle helmets.

Terry Mercer flew with the Navy for 20 years before joining the Utah Department of Public Safety where he now flies the rescue chopper. He was called in to rescue a 49-year-old biology teacher who’d fallen down a slot canyon and dialed 911 from his cell phone. He parked his 37-foot-long helicopter on a narrow pinnacle of rock jutting out from the mountain 11 times while shuttling rescue workers back and forth from the site. CBS has a video of the rescue and the helicopter parked on top of the rock. Looks like a nice picnic spot.

The 19-year-old who stumbled out of the woods after spending 12 nights in the Australian outback has returned to Britain with his winnings. After signing a book/movie deal that reportedly paid him $200k, he pledged to make donations to the people who lead the search for his frozen corpse and the hospital that treated him. Then he went back to the UK and apparently had a change of heart on where he should spend all that cash.

His dad sounds like a pretty expressive guy:

“I feel I have been robbed by my own son,” Mr Cass recently told Britain’s Mail on Sunday. “It’s gone from being such a feel-good thing to being murderously nasty.”

Ouch. Might have to use some of that cash to get your own place. While it’s tough to make people pay for their own rescue, high profile cases that bring in book deals are a reasonable exception.

Around noon on August 18^th people started spilling out of the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite complaining of respiratory problems and a mysterious odor. Firefighters arrived and treated 12 people for nausea and throat irritation before calling in a hazmat team. The hazmat team stormed through but couldn’t find the source, and the hotel was reopened about seven hours later. The investigation continues, and the NPS has revealed that the irritant was bear spray. Someone on the second floor of the hotel was probably trying to spice up their bland chili with a shot of bear spray, and now they’re going to have to foot the bill for a hazmat team and a hotel evac if they get caught. How are you supposed to know that your bear spray will work when a 900lb grizzly is charging if you don’t first test fire it in your hotel room?

via Backpacker