When we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the web. Sometimes we’re a little too plugged in and browsing adventure reads can turn from minutes to hours. To nourish your own adventure fix, here are some of the best adventure links we’ve discovered this week.
The Real-Life Forrest Gump: Why Did Rob Pope Run Across The U.S. Five Times? Tom Hanks ran across America in the classic feel-good film Forrest Gump. For some reason, Rob Pope took that as inspiration and went a step further, dressing as his hero for the run of his life. The Guardian asks Pope why on earth he did it five times, and what he learned on the way.
Snowboarder Craig Kelly Set the Backcountry Stage: We all like to think that we’re on the leading edge of what is cool, new, and now. But just like fashion, our taste in sports is cyclical, too. Not many people can claim to be at the forefront of their sports’ transitions in style and substance. The names of the legendary few include Kelly Slater, Fausto Coppi, and Reinhold Messner. In snowboarding, one such great was Craig Kelly.
Craig Kelly. Photo: Adventure Journal
Why Everest anymore?
The Psychology of Summiting Everest: Being the first is important for many Everest wannabes. Over 5,000 people have topped out on Everest, so unless you come from South Sudan or can pogo stick with crampons on, it’s very hard to bag a first nowadays. So what’s left for aspirant record breakers?
Full of Energy A Last-minute Alpine Trip To Nepal: The first in a three-part series of articles from Tom Livingstone about his and Matt Glenn’s controversial first ascent of the North Pillar of Tengkangpoche (6,487m) in October. You can read the second article here, and the third will be out in due course.
Only Human: The romantic vision of steppes covered in virgin white, the steam from a flock of sheep closely packed for warmth…These pre-trip ideals had really drawn photographer and writer Ed Shoote in. But the reality of bikepacking in Kyrgyzstan in winter was far tougher than he had imagined.
Bikepacking in Kyrgyzstan. Photo: Ed Shoote
Polar classics
Going with the Floe? Despite the cheesy pun, this is a nice in-depth analysis of luck versus skill in the historic Fram and Endurance expeditions, led by the fabled Fridtjof Nansen and Ernest Shackleton. For the uninitiated, both expedition ships got stuck in the ice at opposite ends of the earth with vastly different results.
The Forgotten American Explorer Who Discovered Huge Parts of Antarctica: It’s been more than 180 years since Charles Wilkes charted 2,400km of the East Antarctic coastline in his flagship U.S.S. Vincennes.
The Cape Crozier Crew and protagonists of ‘The Worst Journey In the World‘. Photo: Herbert Ponting
The Daring Journey Across Antarctica That Became a Nightmare: Everyone knows about Captain Scott’s doomed race to the South Pole in 1911. But on that same Terra Nova expedition, three of his men made a harrowing winter journey to Cape Crozier on Ross Island. The 1922 account of this expedition, The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, is one of the all-time classics of adventure writing. Some, including writer Paul Theroux, went a step further and have called it the best travel book ever written.
