Happy day off, friends. This video comes from The Cleanest Line. Some lucky dude and his ladyfriend riding empty sets in Chile for 45 minutes. He shot it with a GoPro HD. Hopefully you’re doing something equally rad this Memorial Day. Me? Sitting in traffic.
Here’s the official trailer for the upcoming film 180 South. This is Chris Malloy’s film of Jeff Johnson retracing the 1968 journey of Yvon Chouinardand Doug Tomkins to Patagonia. Wend Magazine has a great write-up on the premier, and it looks to be a stellar movie.
You give some people a little power and they go nuts. A Minnesota congressman inserted language into a Fish and Wildlife bill that sought to improve walleye fishing on a lake where he owns a cabin. It gets better - the guy was also trying to get a cable TV show running, and he approached Arctic Cat as a sponsor of the show while he was working on legislation that could be of major benefit to the snowmobile makers. And then Arctic Cat then sold him a snowmobile at a discount. Hilarious stuff, the Minnesota legislature. It’s so sad to see people sellout for too low a price. Hopefully he gets some nice walleye after losing the next election.
Sherpas on a mission to clean Mount Everest have so far uncovered five bodies on their search. One of them belonged to American Scott Fisher, who died in the 1996 disaster on the mountain. His body was left where it lay as his family wished, but the Sherpas have removed two other bodies with consent from the families. The Sherpas belong to a 17-person team clearing the entire mountain of garbage. It’s the third such expedition, the last two brought in a combined 7 tons of trash.
Ueli Steck and Alex Honnold are going after the speed record on the Nose at El Capitan. The current record stands at around 2 hours and 37 minutes. I’m not sure I could cover 2900 feet on flat ground in less than two hours, let alone running straight up the side of the earth. The first assent took 47 days in 1958, so if we stay on track, we should break the 30 second mark in the next 20 years on this assent. The above video is one of Steck and Honnold’s training climbs.
It’s coming up on the 100 year anniversary of the day that Hiram Bingham, a history lecturer from Yale, climbed the mountain and spotted the ruins of Machu Picchu. Today it’s a heavily trodden tourist destination, but 100 years ago Hiram must have felt like he’d stumbled onto a lost city made of gold. In fact, he did hope it was made of gold, and it must have been terribly disappointing when it wasn’t. We’re lucky it’s on a mountain top or he might have hauled the bricks off and sold them for pennies.
National Geographic Adventure has an interview with the writer of the upcoming Bingham bio, which is heavy on the references to Indiana Jones.
A brother and sister duo was robbed at gunpoint in broad daylight while hiking in Garden of the Gods park. Police are investigating their claim that the robbers grabbed a wallet, handbag, and camera before peeling out in a white van.
“We’re here because we wanted to see Garden of the Gods and we’ll never forget it,” said Joan Kunkler.
Besides vehicle break-ins, there historically hasn’t been a lot of crime at this ultra-popular tourist destination.
Meet Teva’s new director of stoke.
I watched the video and found myself at a bit of a loss until I found this website. Seems like it might be the best/lowest-paying job in the world, and I understand that everyone who meets Teva’s Lifestyle Coach likes him pretty well. He’s going to tear through that $10k in a couple weeks buying beers for everyone.
Thanks Jonny
A motorist who did nothing but follow the directions on her vehicle’s GPS ended up stranded on a backcountry road in the snow. They were about 15 minutes from their campground when the dashboard robot instructed them to drive off-road and take a shortcut. They would later use the GPS to give rescuers their coordinates to facility speedy recovery. If they’re following these kinds of directions in a car, it’s probably a good thing they didn’t make it to the campground where they would have had a chance to really get lost.
