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.
Fire and Ice: Debra Gwartney, the wife of the late nature writer Barry Lopez, recalls the final few months of Lopez’s life, during which wildfires forced the couple from the place that Lopez has called home for the past half-century. A moving piece.
Love and Loss in The Mountains: Continuing the slightly morbid theme, this piece covers the ups and downs of one man’s grief after losing his wife in an avalanche in the Canadian Rockies. “You always think you’ll save the ones you love when the moment comes. But he didn’t save her.”
Did the Pandemic Finally End the Modern-Day Ski Bum? In the United States, ski town restaurants are in dire need of workers, but ongoing housing crises are making it impossible for staff to live where they work. This mirrors a trend across Europe where high-earning city slickers are flocking to the countryside to work remotely.
Broken Dreams on Everest
Looking up to Everest. Photo: Jon Griffith
The Real Story of Sandy Hill Pittman, Everest’s Socialite Climber: Vanity Fair revisits Jennet Conant’s 1996 feature on Sandy Hill. The socialite nearly died in the storm that killed eight fellow climbers on Everest. Hill, then-wife of MTV creator Bob Pittman, used her energy, glamour, and instinct for the media spotlight to scale some of the world’s highest peaks. But did she take it too far?
Everest a Year Later: False Summit: After a lifetime of wanting, in 1996 Jon Krakauer made it to the world’s highest point. What he and the other survivors would discover in the months to come, however, is that it’s even more difficult to get back down.
Gaucho: Rebels of The Estancias: The gaucho has been an iconic figure for centuries, emblematic of South America’s untamed landscapes. Yet a shift in farming culture combined with new economic demands means that extinction threatens the lifestyle of these cowboys of the Southern Hemisphere.
The 61-Year-Old Shepherd Who Shuffled His Way to an Unlikely Ultra Win: In 1983, 61-year-old Cliff Young showed up at the 1983 Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultra Marathon. He wore his first-ever pair of running shoes and windbreaker pants with hand-cut holes for ventilation. The outcome went down in Australian running folklore.
Fishing Camels of The Aral Sea: Under the Soviet Union, a disastrous irrigation program turned the Aral Sea into a toxic desert. Photographer Laurent Weyl visited the fishermen of Tastubek to document their story.
