Backcountry.com Athlete Renan Ozturk turned in another dispatch from Free Range Turkey. In this one their crew is doing some deep-water soloing off the coast of Olympus. The clip is flawless, like everything Renan shoots, but this is one that actually made my palms sweat a bit while watching. Some pretty insane footage.

The iPhone App guide to Red River Gorge is nearly here. Right now they have a Lite version available if you want to test it out. It’s extremely well featured, and could definitely represent the next level in GPS-enabled climbing guides. You can search for climbs based on difficulty and find routes based on your location. The design looks seamless, but sadly they sell it for more than $.99. The Red River Gorge guide app will be about $30, but at least it includes free updates for two years. Compared to a guidebook, it’s a great deal. Of course, cell phones are more temporal than books, but they’re also more portable and user friendly for this type of application, so it’s a choice you’ll have to make. Excited to see what other areas they’ll put in App form. Check out Climbing Narc for more screenshots and info on the App.

Bears keep getting their heads stuck in things, and outdoor writers keep comparing those bears to the Jellystone Gang - Yogi and Boo Boo. At first it’s a little funny to see a video of a bear with a bucket stuck on its head, but then you realize that it hasn’t eaten or drank water in days. This reminds me of how people used to get upset about seagulls dying because they got 6-pack rings stuck around their necks and landfills. No one really worries about the sea gulls anymore, do they? Hopefully the bears hold our attention span a bit longer.

I honestly thought the name of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano was a joke I didn’t get. Apparently I have a narrow worldview. Now that (most) people have made their way back onto jets and gotten home, we can appreciate some of the stunning images from its eruption. These come to us from John Beatty and Jon Magnusson, who camped out by the volcano to get some great images. You know that rule about not putting your tent up in a dry creek bed? This is kind of like that but with lava. Check out their shots at Outdoors Magic.

Backcountry.com Athlete Kim Havell teamed up with four other skiers to lay down some first descents in Morocco. She sent along some photos and posted some on her blog. Here’s part of her dispatch:

It was an enchanting adventure that involved many unknowns but that resulted in great success in all our climbing and skiing endeavors. Highlights from the journey included a ski descent from the 2nd highest peak in Northern Africa at over 4,000m, Jbel M’Goun, as well as five additional summit ski descents and some reconnaissance missions. Along the way we skied some new routes/first descents, which added to the pioneering sensation of our travels.

Hawaii stretches across three degrees of latitude, and two SUPers decided they’d paddle their way across them this month. Jenny Kalmback and Morgan Hoesterey are on their way, and you can check-in with them on Facebook. On an unrelated note, Backcountry.com is now selling Stand-Up Paddleboard goods. Yes, this is the sport once referred to as “Rollerblading of the ocean.” That said, Stand-Up Paddleboarding is actually pretty fun. Though I guess Rollerblading was for awhile there, too.

Thanks Elias

The market of people wanting old chairlift seats is inexhaustible. Arapahoe Basin is selling off chairs from their 70s-era fixed lift for $450 each. You need to show up at the hill with a truck to carry it home, and I’m not sure if they’ll help you load it, so you better bring a friend. Every year a ski resort sells off their old chairs, and every year people line-up to take them home for ridiculous prices. I have never seen one outside of a ski shop, so I’m not sure what people are doing with these things. Out There found one guy who turned his into a lakeside chair so he could yell at water skiers when they crash. Still, it’s just not the same.

Just a few of the people our donation is saving.

I had to find out from a site called SportsOneSource.com that Backcountry.com is the chief underwriter for the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative. Underwriter is a fancy word that means we’re giving them money. The cash is used to perform trail maintenance on five of Colorado’s more remote peaks: Mount Evans, Capitol Peak, Mount of the Holy Cross, Huron Peak and Uncompahgre Peak. So if you’re one of the dozen people who email me each month saying you will never shop at Backcountry.com again because you were offended by my rant about Southerners/Vail skiers, you should feel ashamed of yourself. Especially if you live in Colorado (since that state’s not technically in the ‘Dirty South’). What’s odd is that no one bothered telling me we were giving the Fourteeners cash. How about a head’s up next time guys?

Adam Bradley set the record last year for completing the 2,655-mile Pacific Crest Trail in 65 days. So it seems almost pedestrian that he’s going to cover 501 miles in 15 days on a hike from Idaho to Las Vegas. What’s bizarre about his new trip is why he’s taking it. He’s going to walk along the Southwest Interie Project, which is a place power companies are thinking about routing a line that could harvest green energy. They admit that it’s going to mess up some animal habitat, but they say they’re trying to find the path of least resistance. I’m not sure how much time Bradley’s going to have to help plan the power line if he’s covering 33 miles per day. Sounds more like PR stunt, though I suppose I do consume electricity, and this initiative is trying to find the greenest way to get it around. Not only that, the entire project is based on transmitting energy culled from wind, geothermal and solar energy, so PR stunt or not, these seem to be the good guys.