Here at ExWeb, when we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the wider interweb. Sometimes we’re a little too plugged in, and browsing interesting stories turn from minutes into hours. To nourish your own adventure fix, here are some of the best links we’ve discovered this week.
Beyond Help: Stranded high on Nanga Parbat after an extremely rare winter ascent, Elisabeth Revol and Tomek Mackiewicz were beyond help. Even if a rescue team could be found, time would almost certainly run out before they could reach the stranded climbers. And if the rescuers did get there in time, how would they get two incapacitated climbers off an 8,000m peak in winter?
Nanga Parbat. Photo: Farad Ahmed/Shutterstock
A Standup Paddleboard Trip Down Montana’s Blackfoot River: On a paddleboard journey down the once spoiled Blackfoot River, adventure writer Aaron Teasdale finds hope in the growing movement to restore and rewild the natural world.
Devils Tower: Why We Don’t Climb in June: Devils Tower is famous for its presence in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But beyond its cinematic history, the mountain holds far greater importance for several groups.
Dirtbag Snowboarders Rescue Our Climate: Another from writer Aaron Teasdale in which he argues that the current generation of scrappy young snow athletes wants to save snow…and the planet.
Balancing risk in the alpine
Mount Huntington. The provoker of serious questions on life and death for climbing writer Mike Levy. Photo: Mike Levy
Risk and Huntington: What is it about alpinism — something so indiscriminately dangerous that mothers and fathers who know what it entails explicitly hope that their children never discover it — that draws some to it? Through the lens of his own climbing and the words of others, writer Mike Levy tackles that age-old conundrum.
The Alpinist: Marc-André Leclerc climbed alone, far from the limelight. On remote alpine faces, the free-spirited 23-year-old Canadian made some of the boldest solo ascents in history. Veteran filmmaker Peter Mortimer sets out to make a film about Leclerc but struggles to keep up with his elusive subject. This is the film’s trailer, with the full feature available later this autumn.
Never Say Never — Mistakes in the Mountains: What do you do when you’re a qualified, established climbing instructor and you make an error of judgment in the mountains that could have easily cost you your life?
The Mountain of Mountains: “Schoening leaned into his ax and braced himself for the impact. The rope thinned, then drew taut as a steel wire. For the next five minutes, he kept six men from falling off the face of the mountain.” One of the great modern essays on K2, and that famous belay.
