The LA Sheriff’s Department created a few new YouTube stars when they released this three-minute video of a rescue of some stranded hikers. The group was stuck clinging to a cliff while the helicopter lowered someone to grab them. I wonder what the rescuer yelled to the woman when he got to her, “HEY. YOU GOT CASH OR DO WE HAVE TO BILL YOU LATER FOR THIS?” For a minute I thought the helicopter was just going to blow them all off the cliff to save the trouble of collecting them.

via Wend

A group of artists rappelled down the defunct Matilija Dam near Ojai in Southern California to paint a message to anyone who passed by: Get rid of this stupid thing. So far the city has left it there, and the LA Times has written a thoughtful piece about how the dam really ought to come down. I love it. In most other places the government would spend $200k to hire an OSHA-approved contractor to come in and clean the dam using toxic chemicals.

via Moldy Chum

The super slow-mo of Experience Zero Gravity makes the sport of BASE jumping look somehow peaceful and safe, like floating in a calm blue ocean or swimming in a waterfall pool. The film was shot by Infinity List, a group that seems to make a lot of short sports videos for cycling, skating, etc. I’m just glad there’s no bloopers crash reel at the end of this film like some of their other videos.

via The Adventure Blog

The tour for Breaking Trail, Utah-based Powderwhore’s annual offering is kicking off next week. If you’re having trouble deciding how to spend your hard earned dollars on the latest crop of ski and snowboard films, you’re not alone. The Ski Channel sat down for an interview with Powderwhore co-founder and Backcountry.com Athlete Noah Howell on what it’s like to live his life, traveling the world, skiing and making videos with his friends. It will make you feel better about giving him your ski-movie money (or maybe it’ll make you hate his guts for getting so much great snow).

Ever wonder why the Northern Lights light up? It has something to do with ions and the earth’s magnetic field. If you want the long version, watch this 5-minute video by animator and sound artist Per Byhring. One thing I learned from the video? There’s such a job as ‘sound artist.’

A pair hunting along the Idaho-Montana border shot what they thought was a black bear. The bear ran into thick cover and the pair waited until they thought it was dead before they began tracking it. It turned out not be dead and also not a black bear, it was a more aggressive grizzly. The bear started towards the younger hunter when the other yelled at it. The bear changed direction and charged the man who was yelling, killing him. The other got off enough shots to finally kill the animal. They called for rescue but by the time it arrived the one hunter died from his wounds.

Killing a grizzly bear is illegal in the lower 48 as it’s a federally protected animal. Both hunters had all the necessary paperwork for hunting black bears in Idaho and Montana, and they’d also had training on how to tell black bears and grizzly bears apart.

Design, art and style all go well with sports like climbing and cycling. There’s a reason you see better tattoos at the climbing gym than at the neighborhood dive bar. People who enjoy outdoor sports, especially climbing, are better suited to thinking about movement in space, elegance and, therefore, they’re often much better at design. So it makes sense that there would be a National Parks art show. One guy is collecting entries for a traveling exhibition that will begin in 2013. “America’s Parks Through The Beauty of Art,” will take submissions through October of next year. Plenty of time to make a sculpture out of soda cans scavenged from bear dens and send it in.

Photo by Rebecca Richardson

A pack of coyotes takes up residence in a burnt out suburban Los Angeles home. True story or the latest sitcom on ABC? In this case, true story, but someone get this on paper and send it over to the folks making decisions for upcoming fall TV shows. The group of five coyotes moved into the home after a fire in November. Some folks want them out of the neighborhood, but those same people are the ones too intimidated to go knock on their door and have a talk about what’s going on with the lawn. Really it’s bringing down everyone’s property values. Someone should do something.

Last night I attended Al Gore’s latest presentation and the culmination of his latest event, 24 Hours of Reality. It began a day earlier, and a presentation was held hourly in every time zone around the world and streamed live to anyone who cared to watch.

The goal of the talk is to rally the masses to acknowledge reality — that climate change exists. He focused on the extreme weather that’s becoming the new normal: the floods in Pakistan that displaced millions, the extreme drought in Texas that led to massive fires, the tropical storm that destroyed homes in Vermont a couple weeks back. Yes, a tropical storm in Vermont, not Puerto Rico. He labored on the point that the academies of science in every single nation in the world and 97% of climate researchers agree that climate change is caused by humans. It’s not a matter of whether you believe but whether you’re willing to accept widely held beliefs by everyone in the science community. He spoke eloquently, comparing the climate change naysayers to those in big tobacco who declared nicotine non-addictive even as they struggled to find new customers while theirs died of lung disease.

And I’d say the room was maybe two-thirds full. The broadcast beamed around the world was watched by 8 million people. That’s a million less than the parody of that popular wedding dance video (which originally saw 69 million views) that was on YouTube.

So what does this mean? Well, hardly anyone is listening. And even fewer people are doing anything.

His suggestion was simple. Not unplug-your-cell-phone-charger-when-you’re-not-using-it simple, but still simple. He said: I’ve had some experience in politics. Here’s what you do. You call your representative and you say, “This is important to me. I’m watching what you do. And if you do what’s right, I’ll support you to get reelected. And if don’t, I’ll do everything in my power to ensure your defeat.”

I can do that. And honestly, it’ll feel nice to tell a politician just that.