The latest Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue put Kate Upton in a bikini in Antarctica. Now, I’d thought that it would take a long time for Sports Illustrated to reach Siberia, but it seems many of the women there are emulating her moves, snowboarding in swimwear during -40C (-40F) temperatures. It’s a Daily Mail article, so [ more... ]

Russia has taken the necessary steps to designate the remote Far Eastern Chukotka as a National Park making what will be the first U.S.-Russian nature reserve. This is the place Sarah Palin was talking about when she made a fool of herself. The park will span the Bering Strait, a remote patch of sea and [ more... ]

It would seem that in some ways the federal government in Russia is more permissible than that in the U.S. For example, they let a BMX rider into the National Spacecraft Control and Testing Centre so he could ride around in satellite dishes suspended hundreds of feet above the ground. In the U.S., this would be a hard stunt to get government backing. Perhaps my second grade teacher slightly exaggerated all those years ago when she told me that people in the USSR were routinely shot on the streets for expressing the desire to be ‘free.’

Salomon’s latest Freeski film is brilliant: they ride at the Arkhyz Gosdacha, a hideout for leaders of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It sits in a remote river valley on the north side of Russia’s Caucasus Mountains. Plenty of untracked powder and lavish digs, just don’t touch the red phones.

Your workout at the gym doesn’t have enough consequence if you collapse on your last pull-up? A couple Russians climbed a massive crane to do some chin-ups and pushups on a windy day and get in a stomach-churning workout. Russians love this stuff, though I wonder if the meme is sustainable.

While the wildfires in Russia have reduced by half in the last 24 hours and the nuclear facilities are now less threatened by impeding fires, things are still burning like mad in the wilderness. There are at least 56 big fires in the country, and more than 550 foreigners have been brought in to help [ more... ]