ExWeb’s Links of The Week

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.

Neal Moore’s Two-Year Canoe Journey Across America and Into the Light: Fourteen months ago Neal Moore shoved off from Astoria, Oregon in his five-metre Old Town canoe, bound for the Statue of Liberty, some two years and 12,000km ahead.

Kora: A three-week pilgrimage from rural Yunnan province, onward to Lhasa, then across the Roof of the World to Everest Base Camp.

Can the world’s first hybrid cruise ship make Antarctic voyaging greener? In an industry often criticized for its environmental footprint, is the arrival of the world’s first hybrid cruise ship a legitimate step to more responsible tourism? Kristen Pope clambers aboard for the maiden voyage.

My Son Fell While Skiing. Then His Mind Went Blank: Tracy Ross’s phone rang one day and it was her 18-year-old son Hatcher, who apparently took a hard spill while ripping laps on Eldora Mountain. Or so she thought. He’s okay now, but he still has no idea what really happened.

The Climb: A VR Game turning Non-Climbers onto Climbing: The virtual reality game, The Climb, has generated some lockdown hype among non-climbers ahead of the launch of its sequel this week. What’s all the fuss about, and does its appeal extend to actual climbers? Could it even be a physical and mental training aid during lockdown?

Everest Dispute: An old story that ExplorersWeb covered at the time, but not widely known outside Canada. Byron Smith and a disputed summit of Everest at the turn of the millennium.

Reflections On A Man in His Wilderness: In 1968, Richard Proenneke — a 52-year-old Iowan who’d fallen in love with the Alaska outback — headed to a remote spot in the southwestern part of the state to test himself. Using simple handheld tools, many of which he’d fashioned himself, he constructed a log cabin and went on to live in his expertly crafted home, alone, for the next 30 years.

Down in Havana, Searching for the Ghost of Hemingway: Of all the dead white male writers, Ernest Hemingway is the deadest and the whitest and the malest. Esquire profiles the author and sportsman who used to write for them.

The Haunting Beauty of a Hut-to-Hut Hike in the Dolomites: With their colossal limestone walls and gloriously green valleys, Italy’s Dolomites are home to some of the world’s best scenery — and mountain huts called rifugios make it all the more accessible.

Climber Bolts Over 1,000-Year-Old Petroglyphs: When Darrin Reay found three sport lines had been bolted over ancient rock art in Moab last weekend, he promptly removed the bolts. Climbing magazine reached out to chat with Reay about the incident.