With the help of a reliable car, plenty of gas money, and some chemical stimulants, 62-year-old Henry Dorfman became the first person to paddle all five Great Lakes in just five days. He went from Superior through Michigan, then Lake Huron and on into Canada to Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. The feat took him on a 2,000-mile road trip, and earns him the distinction of being the first person ever to make the trip. Anyone out there have a helicopter? I bet we could do all five in one day.

What, you thought you could pay $92 a day for lift tickets and someone would clean up after you? Employees at Breckenridge are asking skiers and cyclists to come out to the mountain on June 30 to pick up trash and give the mountain a general spring cleaning. A couple lift ticket vouchers would be nice for the work, but that’s not part of the plan. Remember to bring your own sunscreen, water, hiking boots, and pickaxe. Snacks will be provided.

Mountaineering must be the only sport in the world where you’ll occasionally run across the frozen body of an old friend and no one considers it all that weird. About 200 people have died on Everest and their remains have stayed on the mountainside, some of them like ‘Green Boots’ familiar markers to climbers on their way up or down. This season one climber found the body of his 28-year-old friend from Scotland who’d died on the way down a couple months earlier. The deceased climber’s family had requested that the friend retrieve the camera if he could, but the body proved too far out of reach.  Upstanding UK newspaper the Mirror has all the details.

See the video here.

Backcountry.com Athlete Cedar Wright shot this short profile on alpinist Pete Athans while he was in Nepal over the winter. Pete’s been in Nepal for ages, and now he’s there giving back through his education initiatives. Inspired? Nice, now you owe him cash for that motivational speech.

Parasailing looks like about the lamest ‘sport’ in the world. A couple guys hanging in a tandem seat getting dragged around by a boat. Sure, there’s this funny video of a lady getting dragged on the beach, but that can’t happen too often. But then I came across this post on Jalopnik about off-road parasailing, and I got to thinking. I bet that half the kiteboarders I know have the hardware lying around to run an extraordinarily dangerous version of this kind of nonsense. In any case, I thought I’d pass it along in case anyone was crazy enough to try.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Gore-Tex engaged in unlawful activities in its effort to hold onto about 70% of the waterproof-breathable market share. Columbia raised the issues last year with their acquisition of OutDry, a Gore competitor that makes a waterproof-breathable material that can bond directly to material without requiring the sandwich-style layer of Gore. Wall Street Journal has the complete story.

According to the Utah Division of Water Resources, cloud seeding in the state accounts for a 14 to 20% increase in winter precipitation each year. If you visit their Power-Mac-designed website from 1997, you’ll see a charming animation that shows how silver iodine is used to park the storm-loaded clouds on the Salt Lake side of the mountains so they dump their snow before making it up to Park City. I have no idea if any of this is true, but I have to say that their ancient website and bizarre sound effects don’t do much to inspire confidence.

Thanks Austin

On Monday Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the U.S. would extend the ban on mining around the Grand Canyon. For 6 months. Why 6 months? Well, maybe we’ll all forget about it between now and then, and then they can go ahead and start blasting the uranium out. The original ban was declared in 2009 for two years, and the feds say this extension will allow them to complete surveys of the area to determine the affects new mines would be to the area. You want to know the affects? They’re pissing me off.

It’s my lifelong dream to stand at a cocktail party in Manhattan wearing a full-blown khaki safari outfit and hear myself say, “They’d never seen white people before.” Maybe I’ll do it this weekend and use this newly discovered, uncontacted tribe in the remote Brazilian Amazon as my excuse. Flyovers in the region spotted four huts, and now experts estimate that about 200 people living there and havenot come into contact with outsiders. I bet the villagers all still use Hotmail and wear Bugle Boys. The Brazilian government’s policy is to not contact these tribes (of which there are now 14) and to work to protect their land.

via Adventure Blog