--AAI Guide Forest McBrian is a star! He was recently featured in Tru TVs Ski Patrol. In a recent episode we watched as he harassed a bunch of snow boarders who wanted to build a jump at Crystal Mountain Ski Resort. Now we know the truth. Forest is the man and he is keeping the snowboarders down! There are a few fan sites for this show and for some reason Forest has fans. Here's a video from the show:
--A Kennewick man severely damaged a natural habitat and popular hiking trail in Eastern Washington after going off-roading in his 1985 Chevy truck at a county park. The man claimed not to know that he was in a park or that there were trails in the area. Our favorite line from this man's defense was the statement, "I was unaware that it was illegal to go up there or anything like that. I was unaware there were trails on the hill. Why would anybody walk up a hill?" To read more, click here.
--A climber was rescued from Snoqualmie Pass near Roosevelt Peak on Monday morning. Details of the accident remain sketchy. To read more, click here.
--Keep an eye out for hunters in the high country and wear bright colors. The vast majority of hunters are normal, respectable and safe people to be around, but every now and then something happens in the backcountry between a hunter and another backcountry user which seriously scares the person who doesn't have a gun. Earlier this summer a woman was killed by a young hunter who thought she was a bear. And then this week, this incident was posted on nwhikers.net. So once again, keep an eye out and wear bright colors.
Sierra:
The Getty Museum in Los Angeles--Local public lands conservation group the Friends of the Inyo is in the running for a grant to help fix up the Mt. Whitney Trail. 20 non-profits are in the running for the $5,000 grant from the National Trails Fund. If the Friends of the Inyo get the grant, the plan is to use the money to maintain and repair the 99 switchbacks on the steep upper portion of the Mt. Whitney trail. To read more, click here.
Alps:
--Infamous speed climber Thomas Huber recently climbed three summits in Italy's Dolomites, the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, and BASE jumped off two of them in a single day. To read more, click here. To see Huber BASE jump, click on the following video:
Himalaya:
--Japanese climbers returning from a Dhulgari IV in western Nepal said on Tuesday they had found footprints they think belonged to the abominable snowman or Yeti. "We saw three footprints which looked like that of human beings," Kuniaki Yagihara, a member of the Yeti Project Japan, said in Kathmandu, after returning from the mountain with photographs of the footprints. The climbers, equipped with long-lens cameras, video cameras and telescopes, said, however that they did not see or take any photographs of the creature. To read more, click here.
--Former AAI Guide Steve House, Vince Anderson and Marco Prezelj worked their way up the previously unclimbed West Face of Makalu II last week. Prezelj and Anderson summited on October 17 while House was forced to remain at Camp 2 due to a threatening high-altitude cough. To read more, click here.
Notes From All Over:
--It appears increasingly likely that when Congress returns to session after the election that they will consider a bill which will elevate nearly two million acres of public land to a protected status. Areas that will be protected under this act will include wild lands in eight states — including 517,000 acres in Idaho’s Canyonlands, 470,000 acres in California’s Eastern Sierra and San Gabriel Mountains, and 11,700 acres of Lake Superior shoreline in northern Michigan. To read an editorial in the New York Times about this, click here. The American Alpine Institute was one of 35 representative outdoor related businesses members involved in the Conservation Alliance which recently sent a letter of support to Congress about this bill. To see the Conservation Alliance letter, please click here.--James Martin Welton, of Durango, Colorado was climbing "Touchstone" in Zion National Park on Friday when he fell to the ground and was killed. The fall was reported just after 7 p.m. by other climbers who stopped a Zion shuttle bus. A team of 11 rescue workers recovered Welton's body. To read more, click here.
--Longtime adventure writer Dougald Macdonald recently wrote an excellent analysis of Alpinist Magazine's demise. Macdonald has been writing about climbing for years and understands the markets better than most. And though his analysis is harsh, it is incredibly apt. To read his blog about the loss of this excellent resource, click here.--Speaking of Alpinist, people really think they're going to get some cash out of this. Individuals on nearly every climbing website are trying to sell their complete sets. It appears that a complete set of Alpinists (#0-25 -- they skipped #13) is currently worth between $400 and $600.
--www.supertopo.com currently has a great thread running on area photos of different climbing destinations. The thread definitely makes for great eye candy! To see it, click here.
--People who spend a lot of time in bear country often hear that one can actually shoot a bear and that the animal will respond as if it were stung by a bee. The reality is that while these animals are tough, they are still made of flesh and blood and bullets will kill them. So when a hunter was charged by a bear near Glacier National Park and was forced to shoot it multiple times, he was sure he'd killed it. The next day Fish and Game employees were subsequently unable to find the animal's corpse. So the animal may have just got up and walked away. To read more, click here.
--An Antarctic mountain range that rivals the Alps in elevation will be probed this month by an expedition of scientists using airborne radar and other Information Age tools to virtually "peel away" more than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of ice covering the peaks. One of the mysteries of the mountain range is that current evidence suggests that it "shouldn't be there" at all. To read more, click here.
--Renowned climber Jeff Lowe was recently invited to be inducted into the Utah Sports Hall of Fame. The Utah Sports Hall of Fame Foundation recently announced that Lowe will be the first mountaineering inductee in the 175 member Hall of Fame. Organized in 1970, the Utah Sports Hall of Fame Foundation's goal is to celebrate the state of Utah's sports heritage. To read more, click here.
Could a Bigfoot bird monster be haunting theSonora Pass climbing area? He doesn't
say anything about it in his autobiography.
