--A snowmobiler is believed to be dead after being trapped in a B.C. avalanche Sunday. RCMP say the man was buried in a slide as he snowmobiled with a group of people in a remote mountainous area south of Chetwynd, north of Prince George, just before 2:30 p.m. All other snowmobilers in the group have been accounted for. The B.C. Coroners Service, search and rescue and an avalanche technician were called to the scene. Due to the danger of further avalanches, no attempts to retrieve the victim were to be made until the avalanche technician deemed the area safe. To read more, click here.
--Two climbers who tumbled into a 75-foot crevasse on Mount Rainier Monday evening said they spent the night shoveling snow off their tent to keep from being buried alive by a blizzard that enveloped the mountain."I think that we were lucky that they found us," Geneviev Morand told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Chris Legeros. "We couldn't pass another night there."Morand and Simon Brunet were said they were hiking up to Camp Muir when they strayed off a snowfield. Morand fell into the crevasse and Brunet fell in after her. To read more, click here.
--Supertopo.com has a very cool thread where an individual scanned pages of the original 1965 Leavenworth guidebook by Fred Beckey and Eric Bjornstad. To see these pages, please click here.
--A woman was attacked Saturday on the Tiger Mountain Trail near Issaquah, and sheriff's deputies are searching for her attacker. The 24-year-old was able to fight off her attacker, who was armed with a stun-gun or Taser. She suffered only minor injuries. The victim, a Seattle resident, was on a work crew and is employed by the Department of Natural Resources and a member of their Washington Conservation Corp. She was alone at 10:40 a.m. when the attacked happened. "The victim was about 100 yards up the Tiger Mountain Trail when she was accosted by man in running attire," King County sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart said. "He engaged her in small talk, and when her back was turned he grabbed her, shocked her with an electrical device and pushed her to the ground. To read more, click here.
--Federal agents arrested four Canadian men on a Forest Service road near Glacier on suspicion of smuggling more than 133 pounds of marijuana into the U.S. from Canada through the North Cascades. A fifth man was later arrested at a hotel on East McLeod Road. All five men have admitted to smuggling marijuana and made their first appearance in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Tuesday, April 27, according to a complaint filed in that court. To read more, click here.
Sierra:
--The second edition of Bishop Bouldering will be available early in May of 2010. This long anticipated tome by Wills Young weighs in at 428 pages and will be the premier guide to the world class bouldering the Eastern Sierra. To read more, click here.Desert Southwest:
--The body of a male was found in the North Fork of the Virgin River near the Gateway to the Zion Narrows at approximately 9 a.m. on Monday, April 26, 2010. Park Rangers were immediately dispatched to the location. The identity of the man is not yet known. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office was notified and a medical examiner and investigator were dispatched to the scene. It is standard procedure that the Sheriff’s Office, in cooperation with the National Park Service, investigates all fatalities in the park. To read more, click here.
--Christmas Tree Pass, a beautiful but obscure climbing area in Southern Nevada, is under serious threat. It appears that the National Park Service may implement a draconian plan to remove all fixed anchors. To read more, click here.--In the aftermath of the devastating vote for developers and against Red Rock Canyon, Nevada locals are slowly coming together to vote the county commissioners out of office who supported this measure. To learn more about this movement, click here.
--The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announces its intent to write an environmental assessment to consider improvements of the camping area in the Sawtooth Limited Use area of Stoddard Valley about eight miles south of Barstow. This proposed project would enhance the existing recreation opportunities for rock climbers and remote campers with the addition of 12 camp sites, one new restroom, a new kiosk, a picnic area and a host site. Each camp site would have a shade ramada, picnic table, fire pit and grill, and a barbecue. To read more, click here.
--Those who have spent a lot of time driving between climbing areas like Red Rocks, Joshua Tree and Christmas Tree Pass might find this story interesting... The Supreme Court said Wednesday that a federal court went too far in ordering the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross from its longtime home in California. In ruling the cross could stay, the justices said federal judges in California did not take sufficient notice of the government's decision to transfer the land in a remote area of California to private ownership. The move was designed to eliminate any constitutional concern about a religious symbol on public land. To read more, click here.
Alaska:
--The seventh meeting of the Denali National Park Aircraft Overflights Advisory Council will be held on Thursday, May 6 at the Talkeetna Alaskan Lodge in Talkeetna, Alaska. The Denali National Park Aircraft Overflights Advisory Council advises the Superintendent, through the Secretary of the Interior, on mitigation efforts that should be made to reduce the impacts from aircraft overflights at Denali National Park and Preserve. To read more, click here.
--The American Alpine Institute Alaska and Denali season started this week. AAI Guide Mike Pond entered the range this morning with a climber for an Alaska Range Mountaineering and Denali Prep trip. This weekend, AAI Guide Forest McBrian will lead the first Denali trip for the season on the mountain.
Himalaya:
Oh Eun-sun on the summit of Annapurna--Spanish climber Edurne Pasaban on Tuesday reaffirmed her doubts over her South Korean rival's claim to have become the first woman to scale the world's 14 highest peaks. Contacted by satellite telephone at her camp on another mountain, Pasaban said she continues to doubt that Oh Eun-Sun reached the top of Mount Kanchenjunga on the Nepal-Tibet in May 2009 as claimed. "It is a doubt which we already had last year, because when she climbed Kanchenjunga we were already there and we climbed it after her. Our doubts emerged when she presented some photos, and other climbers shared them," she told public radio from the 8,027-meter Shisha Pangma in Tibet. To read more, click here. It is quite possible that these doubts are due to "sour grapes."
--One of the two climbers who went missing in the Himalayas has been found dead, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Tuesday. A Nepalese search team aboard a helicopter found the body and took a picture of it, a ministry official said. They cannot confirm who the dead person is at the moment as it will take a day at least to identify the body, the official said. Bad weather conditions made it difficult for them to conduct the mission, according to the ministry. The discovery of the body came a day after two South Korean climbers, Yoon Chi-won, 40 and Park Haeng-soo, 27, went missing, while descending from a Himalayan peak. To read more, click here.
--Air Zermatt, a helicopter service based in Switzerland, will join Nepal's Fishtail Air this season to provide a standby emergency helicopter. Thiswill be the first time this service has been offered in the Himalaya. To read more, click here.
Notes from All Over:
--On a remote wooded path in North Carolina on Friday, a 65-year-old woman took a solitary hike. Little did she know she'd meet President Barack Obama and the first lady along the way. The chance encounter happened when Westerville, Ohio, resident Karen Russell was hiking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, Asheville's Citizen-Times newspaper reported. "It was just a little nondescript trail that I was on," Russell told the Citizen-Times, "and I didn't expect to find anybody there really, let alone the president." The Obamas had landed in Asheville that same day to catch a weekend vacation. The presidential motorcade had driven the Blue Ridge Parkway for about 15 minutes when the first couple decided to get out and take an hourlong hike. To read more, click here.
