This is a 1974 film of Johnny Cunningham soloing some routes on Ben Nevis in Scotland. It was shot by Charles Grosbeck and produced by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard. Cunningham died four years later in a tragic accident when a wave swept him into the sea below the cliffs of Anglesey. I love the stocking hat instead of a helmet and all the leather straps. The guy goes fast and light from his motorcycle to the summit.
A dead tree knocked over a power line in rural Northwestern Montana. No one complained about losing power so the company didn’t know about it for several months. When they finally arrived on the scene, more than a dozen animals had been electrocuted and cooked by the power line. The first were likely a couple deer that tried to wander through the power line, and then their cooked carcasses attracted predators. The power company found five whitetail deer, four black bears, two wolves, one coyote, and a turkey vulture. Lunch! They said the coyote was still warm. Mmm.
Another floating human foot was found along British Columbia’s coast by two men walking on the beach this week. If you haven’t heard about this twisted phenomenon, there’s either someone with access to a morgue and a twisted sense of humor, or there are a lot of runners losing feet and not calling authorizes about the matter. A few of the found feet have been matched up with other floating feet, and even more confusing is that coroners say the feet are somehow naturally separating from the bodies. Is this a case of lightweight shoes floating in feet from people lost at sea, or some crazy person?
Congress approved a new budget for the NPS that leaves them with $130 million more than they had last year. The money was added specifically to help them address climate change issues. Hopefully we’ll see a lot of those solar cars that MIT students race around replacing the old NPS 4×4s. The bill snuck through without getting a public elk hunt at Theodore Roosevelt National Park added, though a provision possibly allowing an oyster farm to continue operating in Point Reyes National Seashore is in there. That money should be just enough to hire back all the Rangers replaced with volunteers during the Bush administration.
