Biologist Brad Josephs set up a GoPro to capture some footage of a grizzly bear in Alaska. It went better than planned. Watching it, you get a good idea of what it’d look like if a bear ever decided to casually eat you. Notice the blood on its snout. Brad says that amazingly his GoPro survived with no damage. Just how’d he get this footage? Maybe he rubbed it with a steak before planting it.

Air-quality readings in November in Fairbanks were twice as bad as Beijing’s, all because too many residents use backyard wood furnaces. Add regular winter inversions and that smoke gets trapped at ground level, creating a constant fog (flashback: Outdoor Retailer, Salt Lake City, last month). You’d think some sort of regulation would be in order, [ more... ]

So much great terrain in Alaska, but it’s still fun to hit the features you see every day. This guy skis through an abandoned 5-story building in a video that looks like it took a very long time to setup. Still, very cool. It’s the first episode of Ghost Hunters I’ve seen that I actually liked.

Twenty-one-year-old Alaska fishing guide Matthew Terry kept his required logbook tracking his catch while guiding on the Kenai Peninsula’s Kasilof River this summer, but state troopers found themselves doubting the validity of his claims. Specifically that he took a Tuna, Jack Beluga, Blue Whale, and Chupacabra on sport tackle. Expert anglers have confirmed the troopers’ [ more... ]

And also happy day after Thanksgiving since I have no intention of working on Friday. Now enjoy a bit of Ralph Backstrom’s This is Valdez, a short video he shot on his GoPro while working with Teton Gravity Research on their film Dream Factory last year. Good? Good. Now go eat more turkey then pass out on the couch before all your friends leave.

Team Dubsatch heads to Alaska for some steep, sustained pitches and deep snow. Basically, everything you’ve ever wanted out of skiing. The teaser is for their upcoming AK Our Way video, which seems to have come together at a moment’s notice when they found out they had seats on a copter in Haines but had to dash up north in less than 24 hours. There are worse ways to make movies, like “Hollow Man” for example.

I love this video, mostly for the guys wearing board shorts while you can still see snow in the surrounding mountains. I also appreciate that they stole a live version of the song Jane Says as performed by Jane’s Addiction, and that the guy with the GoPro mounted on his paddle had the commonsense to [ more... ]

At the start of this video I thought the sound was a heavy-smoking man yelling “Bear! Bear! Bear!” over and over. A trio of fishermen on the Kenai River in Alaska came upon this cub drowning in a whirlpool. After 15 minutes they managed to push it out of the pool so it could swim to shore where it was reunited with its mom. Great story, but pal, turn your phone sideways next time…no more of this vertical video garbage.

via Moldy Chum

Photo by Azov

Good news, you don’t have to go broke buying bear bells to see Katmai National Park anymore. Only about 10,000 people visit the park each year, home to about 2,200 bears. The park is 275 miles from Anchorage and getting there involves several pricey flights and an extraordinary amount of planning (don’t forget to book a plane to come pick you up!). The National Park has setup a few high-def cameras and you can see a live stream of bears going nuts on the salmon spawn. It’s very active (or was when I wrote this).

Venture to a place in America so remote that a Slovenian documentary group had to go make a movie about it. The Revelations see a few teams of climbers only every decade or so since they’re so remote. Landlocked on all sides with the nearest town 120 miles away, your SPOT beacon isn’t going to do much good. Check out the trailer for the film (in English) and the website (in Slovenian).