On The Road Again!

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I'm off on another escape, this time heading to the Atacama Desert in Chile. As I write this, I'm at the airport in Dallas, waiting for a connecting flight to Miami and an overnighter to Santiago. After that, it is another flight to Calama, and then an hour drive to my eventual destination of San Pedro de Atacama tomorrow morning. 

I'm told that there is Internet access at my hotel, so I hope to post some updates while I'm on the go, as I would hate to miss all the action that is about to unfold on Everest and other Himalayan peaks. If the connection is good (read, not like most Internet connections in remote areas, I hope to post some photos and updates on what I'm doing over the course of the next few days. I'm hoping to do some mountain biking, hiking, and volcano climbing, but we'll see. 

This is a quick trip, I'm back home on Monday, when you know I'll be back to regular posts. Hope everyone has their own adventures planned for the days ahead! Back soon!

Off To South Africa

Just a very quick, and short note, to let everyone know that I'm off to South Africa for a few days. I'll be back in the States on the 9th and probably back to posting on the 10th. I had intended to write all kinds of updates today, as I wasn't suppose to leave town until this evening. Due to the impending Snowpocolypse here in the States though, my flights are being juggled all over the place just so I can get out of the country.

I'll of course post stories, updates, and photos upon my return. Meanwhile, there is A LOT going on in the adventure world that I simply don't have time to cover before I go. Back soon with plenty of things to share though!

The First Adventure of 2011!

I'm off on my first adventure of 2011 starting tomorrow when I'll be heading to Montana to experience Big Sky and Yellowstone during the winter. The agenda includes skiing, both alpine and cross country, snow shoeing, sledding, wildlife viewing, and a whole lot more. I love the wild and beautiful country there, and can't wait to check it out under a blanket of snow.

Never fear though. I'm taking my trusty new MacBook Air along and hope to make some posts when I have Internet access, which may or may not be all that often. When I was out that way back in September, we often didn't even have cell phone service, let alone Internet. Either way, I hope to continue to do at least a little writing while I'm on the road, and may even be able to share some photo and thoughts on the trip as it unfolds.

In the meantime, I hope your 2011 is off to just as an adventurous start. No sense in waiting, just jump right in.

Happy New Year and Another Big Thanks!

I know that as I write this, parts of the world are already welcoming the first hours of 2011, but I still wanted to take the opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year. 2010 has been one fantastic adventure after another, and while I'm sad to see it come to an end, I'm looking forward to a new year and new opportunities. I'll be starting it out with a couple of adventures of my own early on and I hope that you are planning some too.

I also wanted to thank the readers of the Adventure Blog once again, because despite few updates this past week, and a relatively quiet last month of the year, December set a new record for the number of visitors to the site. It also capped the best year of traffic as well, which has been extremely gratifying for me personally. This little project of mine has grown much larger than I ever imagined, and opened a number of doors unforeseen, and it is all thanks to you. I appreciate every one of you.

So, with 2011 upon us, lets reflect a bit on all the wonderful things that went down in the last 12 months and start planning for new adventures in the months ahead. I'll be sharing mine very soon, and as usual, I enjoy hearing about yours as well.

Happy Holidays From The Adventure Blog

On this Christmas Eve, I wanted to send a message to all the readers of my blog wishing you all a fantastic holiday season and a wonderful New Year. I hope that your 2011 is filled with adventures both great and small.

Posts will likely be a bit sporadic over the next week or so as I enjoy some time with friends. But I'll post when I get the chance. There are still plenty of great adventures taking place around the world, despite the holiday season. More updates soon!

Sporadic Posting This Week

Just wanted to let my regular readers know that I'll be making sporadic, and most likely light, postings this week as I'm out of town for an annual convention with my day job. Hopefully I'll still find some time to add a few stories, but if not, bear with me and I'll be back to the regular schedule and frequency next week.

For your troubles, here's a photo of Ama Dablam to enjoy in the meantime! ;)

Outer Edge Magazine Article: Are Modern Adventurers Too Soft?

As many of you know I have been contributing a regular column to the Australian outdoor adventure magazine Outer Edge, and the latest issue went to print recently with a host of great stories. The issue is focused on survival and features everyone's favorite wild man, Bear Grylls, on the cover.

For my piece I expanded a bit on something I've written about here before and that is the impact of technology on modern expeditions and how it has changed the game in so many ways. Sure, it has made things a lot safer for the adventurers heading out into the field, and it is difficult to argue that that is a bad thing. But those built in safety nets have also taken away some of the inherent danger that comes along with adventures in the wild and remote places on the planet, and explorers heading out to those places now know that they can call for help with a push of a button, and a rescue operation will be underway within hours. That certainly wasn't the case for guys like Amundsen, Scott, or Shackleton.

But it isn't just that consideration. Modern communications has also changed the impact of a solo expedition as well. Gone are the days of a lone explorer spending weeks or months in the field alone, with no way to chat with friends and family back home. Instead, at the end of a long day, they fire up the sat phone and modem, so they can chat with their mom while they check the performance of their portfolio on their laptop. Those kinds of journeys are hardly the lonely, isolated affairs that they once were.

Of course, I also realize that the modern explorer had to balance keeping the sponsors happy while also getting their expedition funded. Modern gear helps to make that possible with daily dispatches, Tweets on progress, and YouTube videos capturing the events as the happen. It is the nature of the modern adventure game, but that doesn't mean we can't lament an earlier time.

For any Aussie readers out there I'd love for you to pick up the magazine and tell me what you think. Feedback and thoughts on the topic are always appreciated.

A Big Thank You To The Adventure Blog Readers

This weekend I'll be heading off to Montana for what is shaping up to be a great time in the mountains that will involve kayaks, bikes, horses, and trails. But before I go, I wanted to pass along a big thank you for all the readers of this blog. August has already been the best month in terms of traffic that I have ever had on The Adventure Blog, and there are still several days to go. I just wanted to let everyone know that I appreciate you stopping by, sharing your comments, and sending me thoughts and perspectives on the adventure community. This is indeed a labor of love, and I'm glad that I can share it with all of you.

While in Montana, I'll be having some fun adventures of my own, and I'm looking forward to visiting Yellowstone and taking in some of the spectacular scenery out there. That means I won't be posting any updates next week, but will probably have some things to share starting on the 4th of September or so. I'll take lots of pictures and you know I'll be writing about the trip, as I haven't been to Montana since I was there in 2008 for Primal Quest.

Everyone have a great weekend. Get out on trail somewhere and enjoy the final weeks of summer. Autumn isn't as far away as we'd like to believe at this point. I'll be back soon!

Podcast Interview on Contribuventure Radio

Late last week I had the distinct pleasure of being interviewed on Contribuventure Radio, a podcast over at Contribuventure.com, and the episode is now available for your listening pleasure. In the interview we talk about a host of subjects, including the rise of adventure travel, summit attempts on K2, Laura Dekker sailing the world, and adventure racing, amongst other things.

The episode is the first of their "Ask an Expert" series, and the second guest on the show is Isa Cohen of Tula Adventure Sports in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Isa is an expert on water sports and loves doing just about anything out on the water, including kite boarding, water skiing, surfing, and now stand-up paddling. During her interview, Isa talks about what drew her to these activities and why she loves them so much. She also discusses the fitness aspects of water sports and how people can benefit from stand-up paddling, as well as the different approaches to this type of sport, which includes racing, recreational paddling, surfing, and so on. She also offers up really great advice for beginners who are just getting started in the sport as well.

Contribuventure is an organization that is focused on getting us off the couch and out on an adventure, no matter what the term "adventure" means to you. It's all about challenging ourselves and pushing our own boundaries, but the message is to also do those things in effort to help others. Contribuventure encourages us to put adventure back into our lives while raising funds and awareness for charities and giving something back at the same time. It's a really great message, and I'm happy that the organization's founders, and radio hosts, Jake Allen and Phil Dwyer invited me to be a part of the show.

I hope you enjoy the podcast and tune in for future episodes as well. And while you're there, join the Contribuventure community. Thanks guys!

Off On An Adventure

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I won't be updating the site for the next few days. I'm off to the Florida Keys and the Everglades for a writing assignment, and will most likely be out of touch. It's a short trip though, and updates will resume on Monday as usual.

Yes, the trip will be a bit of work, but it's the best kind of work. Visiting one of the greatest natural environments on the planet in the Everglades, snorkeling the Keys, sea kayaking, and staying at an amazing resort. It's going to be brutal! ;)  Have a great weekend everyone, and I'll be back before you know it. In the meantime, here's a glimpse of the views I'll be dealing with over the next few days.

Outer Edge Magazine Article

I'm extremely happy and excited to report that I have begun contributing to the wonderful Australian outdoor/adventure magazine Outer Edge. It is a top notch publication that focuses on all the things that regular readers of the Adventure Blog love, including climbing, adventure racing, kayaking, and much more.

My first regular column appeared in the latest issue of the magazine, with me weighing in on my thoughts about the young adventurers who have been so prominent lately. Young men and women like Jessica Watson, who sailed around the world solo at the age of 16 and 13-year old Jordan Romero who summitted Everest this past spring. 

Regular readers here already know where I stand on the issues, but as I wrote that article, a real life drama was unfolding in the Indian Ocean, where Abby Sunderland was waiting to be rescued. In fact, as I put the finishing touches on the story, it was unclear what her status was, and I had to edit some of it as the situation resolved itself. Thankfully, the outcome of that particular rescue operation had a happy ending, but it didn't impact my thoughts too much. I still think that many of these young men and women are not prepared to undertake some of these journeys, and eventually it's going to end badly. 

But that's not the point of this post, and I've shared those thoughts a number of times already. I do want to thank the fine folks at Outer Edge for asking me to contribute and I look forward to being part of the team moving forward. I'm already working on my next article and I hope all my friends down in Oz enjoy my contributions to an already great magazine. Now, I just need to head back to Australia on a regular basis to stay in touch with my audience. Because I need excuses to head back to Australia. Love it there!

SteriPEN's Picks For The Top 20 Outdoor Twitterers

SteriPEN, the manufacturers of great water purification devices, launched a new blog a few weeks back, and today that blog they posted their picks for the Top 20 Outdoor Twitter Accounts to follow. I was surprised and honored to see that I made their list! :)

The blog writers had some very kind things to say about my humble little blog and Twitter feed, but mostly I was excited about the wonderful company I'm in on that list. Amongst the really great Twitter feeds that they recommend are Backcountry.com, The Adventure Life, The Gear Junkie, The Hiking Lady, National Geographic Society, and more.

If you're a Twitter user, and you're not following this group, I'm sure you'll find a few new additions to your feeds. There are some amazing people on this list, and some great sources of information about the outdoor/adventure world. While you're at it, sign up for the SteriPEN feed, which can be found by clicking here.

Brooks-Range Map Tool Giveaway Winners

Just a quick note to congratulate the winners of the Brooks-Range map tools give away that I announced a week or so back, in which all you had to do to win was head over to the Brooks-Range Facebook page, become a fan, and tell them I sent you. Simple as that.

The winners of the map tools are:
Kerry Scott
Jim Muller
Stacy Mantooth

Congrats you three, the BR people should be touch with you on Facebook to get your new tool shipped out to you. I hope it comes in handy on your next backpacking trip or adventure race. They're great tools and definitely very helpful for backcountry navigation.

Thanks to the Brooks-Range folks for putting this promotion together. I appreciate their efforts and I'm glad we had a chance to work together. Hopefully we can do more together in the future as well.

Interview at Adayak

I'm not sure why anyone finds chatting with me to be remotely interesting, but I recently sat down for a discussion with David over at Adayak.com in which we talked about my recent trip to the Himalaya, how this blog got started, and a host of other adventure related topics. That conversation led to this interview which is now posted over at the Adayak blog, which is a good source for more outdoor and adventurer related news.

For those who aren't familiar with Adayak, they have some great outdoor related t-shirts featuring cool prints related to all of our favorite outdoor activities, including climbing, hiking, paddling and more. Better yet, the shirts are made with 100% organic fabrics, which means their good for the environment as well. Very cool stuff, and you'll probably want to add one or two of the shirts to your closet. :)

Thanks to David for some great questions. I had fun answering them, and I hope everyone enjoys the interview as well.

Welcome To Steripen

I just wanted to post a quick note this morning to welcome Steripen as an advertiser to my blog. For those that aren't aware of what they do, Steripen makes a number of products designed to purify your water while backpacking, camping, or traveling. But while many companies make iodine tablets and similar items that you can drop in your water, Steripen makes filters, and more importantly, high tech devices that use ultraviolet light to kill 99.99% of all the bacteria and other bad stuff that can be potentially lurking inside the water you drink.

From personal experience, I recently took my Steripen Journey LCD with me to Nepal, and I have to say that it worked flawlessly. While others on the trip had to drop their purification tablets into the water, and then wait anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours before they took effect, I simply activated by Journey, dropped it into my water bottle, and stirred the water for 90 seconds. When finished, the water was ready to drink immediately, and I suffered no ill effects from that water while hiking to Everest Base Camp.

It should also be noted that I owned the Journey long before the folks at Steripen contacted me about advertising on the site, so I was well aware of, and fully endorsed, their product ahead of time. It is a great addition to any pack, whether you're headed out for a long weekend of backpacking or traveling halfway around the world. If you haven't used one before, or don't know much about Steripen, I encourage you to click on over to their website and see what they have to offer. When it comes to clean drinking water, I can't imagine a better solution to have with you on your adventures.

Back From Nepal, Updates Resume Soon!

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to post a quick update that I got back from Nepal yesterday, after 30 hours of travel time home, and while I'm still getting my feet back under me, I'll begin posting updates soon, including thoughts on my trip and photos as well. The trek to Everest Base Camp was a good one, although it is challenging, and I would recommend that anyone considering making the trek be physically prepared. You'll save yourself a lot of pain and misery. Fortunately, I was up to the task, and had few problems myself, although others in the group suffered mightily at times. If you do make the trip though, the views are spectacular and breathtaking for more reasons than the thin air.

A lot has gone on since I was away, and I'll try to post updates as soon as I can. I know that that the Spring Season in the Himalaya is in full swing, with Everest climbers going as high as Camp 2 as they continue their acclimatization process. Up North, explorers have begun reaching the Pole as well, and I'll get an update on their status as soon as I can too. I'm sure there is plenty of other things to delve into as well, so expect a flurry of updates once I get the over the jet lag and exhaustion, and dig out from under the pile of work waiting for me.

Stay tuned, things will be back to normal around here before you know it! :)

Blog On Hiatus, Off To Nepal!

If you're a frequent reader of the Outpost, the official blog of Outdoorzy.com, you may have caught the interview that I did with Outpost editor Jason Heflin yesterday. If you did read it, then it'll come as no surprise to you that I'm leaving for Nepal later today, and will be mostly off the grid for the next couple of weeks. But never fear, I'll be back before you know, and getting back to posting the latest news from the adventure community. I'm scheduled to return to the States on April 26th, and I'm sure I'll have plenty of photos and stories to share.

While in Nepal, I'm going to be making the trek to Everest Base Camp, a place that I've always wanted to visit. Considering the topics that I write about around here, you can probably understand why. I'm going to be taking some excellent gear along with me to test out on the trek, so long for a host of reviews on a wide variety of things when I get back. I'd like to thank Outdoor Research, GoLite, Mountain Hardwear, The North Face, Sierra Designs, Osprey Packs, Origo, and everyone else for helping outfit the trip. I'm looking forward to sharing my thoughts on the gear when I get back.

In the meantime, there is going to be a lot to keep track of in the adventure world. Ripley left for Mongolia today, Roz is preparing for the third leg of her Pacific Row, and of course, those arctic explorers are still making their way to 90ºN. While I'm away, the Himalayan season will really ramp up, so when I get back, there will be plenty to update everyone on, both in what's happening around the globe, and what I saw while in the Khumbu. I'm looking forward to the break, and visiting a new place, and I'll be looking forward to getting back home and sharing it all with you too.

Have fun, be safe, and I'll be back soon.

April Fools and Social Commentary

As many of you know, I'm a regular contributor over at the great travel site Gadling.com. It is tradition over there to write April Fool's Day posts that bag on the travel industry, tourism, and so on. Today being April 1st, most of the items going up on the site are fun and playful, but not all that serious. I have to confess that I'm not a huge fan of April Fool's Day on the internet. I'm not a fan of everyone trying to pull a prank on their readers and for the most part, the stuff is fairly lame. That said, I was required to write just such a post over at Gadling today, so I took the opportunity to mix in a little thinly veiled social commentary while I was at it.

My story, which is entitled "Pregnant woman to climb Everest, fetus to be youngest ever on the summit" was obviously written with tongue firmly planted in cheek. But, with all of the recent stories about young kids going off on dangerous adventures to become the youngest to accomplish something, I felt that it was a perfect place to poke a little fun at the adventure community that seems to go overboard sometimes with these dubious records.

I've made my views on the subject of these "youngest records" well known for some time. Clearly there are some people who are pushing the floor further down, whether it is climbing a mountain or sailing the world, and I can't help but wonder where it'll all end. How young is too young? I fear we have yet to find out, but lets just hope it isn't thanks to some awful tragedy that we do.

That said, I hope you enjoy the little piece of April Foolery that I put together and take it for what it is. I had a little fun writing it. ;)

The Rest of Everest DVD Giveaway: Week 4

Okay, now that we've had some time to check out the latest episode of The Rest of Everest, it's time for this week's trivia question. As usual, you can e-mail me your answer at KungFuJedi@gmail.com and I'll collect all of the responses and randomly pick a winner out of everyone who gets it right. The winner gets a copy of the Everest {the other side} DVD, which is the very cool movie that inspired the podcast to begin with.

So without further ado, here's this week's question:

Name one of the famous Everest legends whose memorial the team visited in this week's episode?

(Hint: One was immortalized in Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air and the other is one of the most famous Sherpas ever.)

Good luck to everyone! :)

My Adventure Travel Radio Interview

I recently had the opportunity to go on the KPAM Travel Show on KPAM Radio in Portland to talk about adventure travel options. We discussed my Top 10 (+2) Adventure Travel Destinations for 2010, which I wrote for Gadling awhile back, but due to a shortage of time, we constrained it to the top five on the list, and mainly discussed options for trekking at the various locations, which include Peru, Nepal, etc.

The fine folks who produce the Travel Show, which airs on Saturday mornings at 8 AM local time by the way, were nice enough to pass along the segment as an .mp3 file, and I thought some of you might be interested in hearing it. Especially if you're still considering your travel plans for the year, and are looking for some suggestions.

To listen to the audio click here. I hope you enjoy! :)

I want to thank Rod McLaughlin and Pat Boyle for inviting me on the show. I had a great time and hope to do it again in the future.