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.
Riding the World’s Biggest Waves, Without a Surfboard: Bodysurfing used to be the slightly embarrassing trick your Dad or grandfather tried during a beach holiday. But now Kalani Lattanzi has taken bodysurfing to the next level, paddling into 15m waves with little more than the fins on his feet.
The Legend of Baltimore Jack: When Baltimore Jack died near Franklin, North Carolina, the news shook the Appalachian Trail community. Jack had left behind the real world to live on the AT, thru-hiking it seven times and helping countless others to reach their goals. To some, his choice to live off the grid was irresponsible. Others celebrated that he’d managed to break the shackles of convention. A look back on the life of an AT anti-hero.
Ueli Steck. Photo: Jon Griffith.
The Ueli Steck controversy
Mountaineering Expert Rodolphe Popier: ‘I Think Ueli Steck Lied’: As with politics or sport, mountain journalists prod and probe at the facts to try and establish what is authentic and what is not. Here, the late Ueli Steck is no longer with us to rebut the claims of a French researcher that the Swiss climber’s ascents of Shishapangma and Annapurna are not all they seem.
Himalaya: The Human Story: Spanning five countries, the Himalaya is home to people who have adapted to some of the harshest conditions on the planet. Journalist and broadcaster Ed Douglas has been visiting these remote communities for 30 years. Now they are opening up to him about the challenges of life on the roof of the world. In a new BBC radio series, Douglas will reveal the cultures and achievements of the Himalaya’s many different ethnic groups. He will explore how climate change might dry up Asia’s water towers, and examine how the region has become a fault line in a dispute that threatens to destabilize the countries it encompasses.
The Alpinist Film is Nominated for A Sports Emmy: When an increasing number of rich tourists are paying big sums to “smash” or “crush” the summit of an 8,000’er, how mountain culture is represented to the wider world becomes more important. I was very pleased therefore to see the excellent film The Alpinist. It depicts the self-facing and remarkable exploits of the late Marc-André Leclerc. Now the film has been nominated for a mainstream media gong.
Chilled arctic relations
Photo: Jonathan Nackstrand
Ukraine War Casts a Chill in Norwegian Arctic Town: War may be far away but tensions from the Ukraine conflict are causing an unprecedented chill in a remote arctic town. Here, Russian and Ukrainian coal miners have worked side by side for decades.
Reinhold Messner: The Man Who Left His Life On The Mountain: Harried by the brother he lost in the Himalaya and forsworn by the ‘fascist’ former climbing partners who, in turn, abandoned him, Reinhold Messner nevertheless remains the face of mountaineering’s bitter history. In this archive piece from 2016, GQ speaks to the boundary-breaking adventurer. The voluble Messner holds forth about Nazi benefactors and the Everest ‘kindergarten’. He also reveals how three nights at the edge of death gave him a perspective he’d never had before… even from the top of the world.
