The bus that Chris McCandless made his home in 1992 before he starved to death in the Alaskan wilds has become a popular destination for backcountry hikers. After several near catastrophes, a 29-year-old Swiss woman died while crossing a river en route to her bus.

Nierenberg, who owns a lodge four miles from the end of Stampede Road, said it was just a matter of time before someone drowned trying to cross the river to reach the old Fairbanks city bus made famous in the movie “Into the Wild.”

The Stampede Trail may have become well worn with boot soles pounding the 18 miles out to McCandless’s bus, but the swollen river can still be a perilous route. A month ago, two teens got lost in the area, and a few weeks before that a duo of hikers called from a satellite phone to report the river had swelled too much for them to safely cross. Earlier this year someone installed a rope across the river, but it seems to inspire more reckless attempts at crossing the river than it does offer safety.

A cyclist riding the wrong way down a one-way street clobbers an old guy trying to cross the street. Instead of punching the hell out of each other, going to jail, and then making a couple lawyers rich by settling it in litigation, they simply agree that they’re both kind of jerks and move on. I hope this signals a new direction for America.

The New York Times is a little late to this party, but at least we can thank them for ridiculing a handful of the hikers who treat GPS emergency beacons like room service telephones. They especially honed in on the trio of hikers who hit their SPOT GPS three times during a hike in the Grand Canyon, the first two times because they were running low on water and the last time because the water tasted salty. Really, you have to give a little bit of the blame to the helicopter crew who went in for the first two rescues - they probably should have mentioned something to the hikers about not acting like complete morons.

Rock climbing films are tough. The most difficult climbing moves often don’t translate well to film, making them a bit less exciting for non-climbers than, say, a snowboarding film. Psyche II promises, at least, that this is going to be an odd follow-up to a film that was extremely popular in the UK. I had a hard time understanding what they were saying, and an even harder time understanding why they don’t wear pants under their harnesses - maybe because no one in the UK wears shorts?

Police raiding a marijuana farm in British Columbia freaked out when they saw the farm’s defense system - primates toting guns! Or, my mistake, just bears. Docile bears that were lured to the pot grounds with dog food. Police aren’t actually sure if the bears were getting high on their own supply, but before doing anything else they posed for a few photos with the animals. That photo op could have taken a hard left turn, but it appears everyone’s okay…well, unless you count the bears.

via Wend

It appears Leave No Trace is launching a video campaign to gain supporters for their cause. The theme seems to be ‘We make stewardship fun,’ so they shot this video of kids shooting a smoldering campfire with water guns. If they’re trying to get people involved and make it fun, they should have shown a group of guys peeing out the fires after drinking a couple refillable growlers of organic beer. Even if their ads are more family friendly than they ought to be, Leave No Trace has their hearts in the right place.

Backcountry athlete Greg Hill is more than 1.2 million ski touring vert feet into his attempt to log 2 million this year. Just the thought of what he’s doing conjures images of a skinny sweaty guy hiking up steep grades and swooshing down mountains leaving perfect S tracks in the pristine powder. Awe-inspiring. But what’s really cool is that he’s doing all this while still keeping his family, his wife Tracey and his kids Charley (4.7) and Aiden (2.5), his priority. And who would have thought that at least one image of family life would be just as awesome as any of the man in action? On a recent forced-because-of-weather rest day, Tracey caught this one.

Greg touched base with us today and shared a little about his family:

Life is about balance and I try as hard as I can to ensure I am around for my family. I try and go early so I can be back early, or at least be home 3 afternoons and a full day every week. And somehow I have the energy, I can go , tour 9000 feet by 1pm, come home and go for a 7 km hike with the family. There was even 500ft of gain on that hike, sadly it doesn’t go into my total for the year…

[My kids] give me reason to go faster, dig deeper so I can get home and enjoy their company. I also understand that they are what I will be most proud of. That this goal will fade in time but they will always make me proud.

Leave your bacon deodorant at home when hiking Yellowstone this fall - the grizzly bears are extra hungry this year. A shortage of one of their major food sources, nuts from whitebark pine cones is scarce, meaning they’re on the lookout for other sources of protein.

Full-grown Yellowstone bears can stand 6 feet tall and top 600 pounds. They have been known to peel off a man’s face with a single swipe of their massive, clawed paws.

This is, of course, way worse news for bears than it is for humans in Yellowstone. Not only do they have to starve, but bear-human encounters are actually much more fatal for bears than they are humans. While it’s rare for humans to get killed or injured, so far 22 bears have been killed or removed from Yellowstone this year.

A man in the Amazon is thought to be the last surviving member of his tribe. With development and forest clearing moving in on his location, the Brazilian government has established a no-contact buffer zone of about 31sq miles around him so that he can peacefully live out his life. It wasn’t always that way.

A few Brazilians first heard of the lone Indian in 1996, when loggers in the western state of Rondônia began spreading a rumor: A wild man was in the forest, and he seemed to be alone. Government field agents specializing in isolated tribes soon found one of his huts-a tiny shelter of palm thatch, with a mysterious hole dug in the center of the floor. As they continued to search for whoever had built that hut, they discovered that the man was on the run, moving from shelter to shelter, abandoning each hut as soon as loggers-or the agents-got close. No other tribes in the region were known to live like he did, digging holes inside of huts-more than five feet deep, rectangular, serving no apparent purpose. He didn’t seem to be a stray castaway from a documented tribe.

When those agents finally caught up with him, they discovered that a peaceful encounter was impossible after he shot one of them in the chest with an arrow. They’ve since backed off, letting the man in his late 40s stick to himself. Check out Slate for the full story.

via Get Outdoors [Slate]