Outdoor Sports Blog

George Spearing never hiked before. He left his job as a firefighter in Auckland, New Zealand and hiked 4,300 km all the way up from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail. His new book “ Dances With Marmots - A Pacific Crest Trail Adventure ” follows the adventure from its start on an Auckland, New Zealand Fire Station, to its culmination in British Columbia, Canada. Traversing 40 Wilderness areas, 24 National Forests, 7 National Parks, 3 State Parks, 19 major canyons and climbing 57 mountain passes, the epic journey takes the reader from near sea level at the Mexican border to 13,200 ft at Forester Pass in the snowbound High Sierra. An entertaining and inspiring read for anyone contemplating hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, or for anyone who just enjoys a good adventure story. Dances With Marmots - A Pacific Crest Trail Adventure

Learning New Skills in 2006 Trails Training For Every Educational Need by AmericanTrails.org Redding, CA - Caring for our trails is a constant learning process, with new challenges around every curve. A wide variety of training is available during 2006 for volunteers and professionals working to develop trails of all kinds. The National Trails Training Partnership is working with the agencies and organizations across America to help make trail-related training more accessible. Some courses are sponsored by ongoing training programs and are held several times during the year and in different parts of the country. The following examples are only a selection of what is available-- see details on the NTTP Online Calendar at www.NTTP.net. To read full article, click here .

Take a hike! This time let's go to the US again, to Georga to be exact. The Northwest of Georga provides lots of hiking opportunities with scenic trails. The following article by Christy Cervantes will reveal more about hiking in Georgia. Click here now to read the full article . Other resources: http://georgiastateparks.org/ Hiking in Georgia

Today I provide a link to a story by Brian E. Clark, who went to Switzerland for a guided ski mountaineering adventue that ended with a near-tragic way. The 'Haute Route' is a real classic in the Alps of Switzerland and France in the area of the famous Matterhorn. Click here to read the article .

Laurie Skreslet back on Mt. Everest The first Canadian to climb Mount Everest is back on the peak, this time with a British army expedition trying to scale the world's highest mountain. Laurie Skreslet, 56, of Calgary, is settling in for 80 days of climbing on Everest, acting as a safety advisor for the high-altitude cameraman attempting to document the British expedition. He'll also film the climbers as they push up the 8,848-metre mountain. Read full article by David Pugliese (CanWest News Service).

According to an news article by J.J. Stambaugh of Knoxnews.com the bear attack in Cherokee National Forest was probably predatory. The brain of the blackbear did not show any signs of rabies. Read more here .

Tom Brown's Field Guide to the Forgotten Wilderness is an exceptional book about the non-rural wilderness. It provides a glimpse into a world that we often choose not to look at. We imagine that we're not connected to the wild country until we leave cities and villages. But we don't have to go on an epic adventure to find wilderness. Often wilderness is right there, in our backyards, parks, abandoned lawns. Tom Brown describes where and how to find these places, its wildlife and plants. Enjoy this book written by a man who enjoys living very close to nature and learn how to observe and recognize the world around you. Tom Brown's Field Guide to the Forgotten Wilderness

No more skiing in the Rockies by 2050? According to the 2006 Colorado College State of the Rockies Report Card, released this week the outlook for winter sports enthusiasts is worrying. It looks like that there's no more skiing by 2050. Read more here .

Scottish climber to complete worlds hardest ascent One of Scotland's leading climbers has completed the hardest ascent ever seen in the world, on an unassuming piece of rock on the outskirts of Dumbarton. Dave MacLeod, 27, scaled a new route up the 200ft blank, overhanging cliff face of Dumbarton Rock, below the walls of the town's castle. Despite thousands of apparently death-defying ascents by climbers in the world's great mountain ranges, the crag above the Clyde has provided the hardest-ever completed "traditional" route. Click here to read the full article by Richard Gray. More rock climbing resources here.

Environment Canada , who started keeping national temperature records in 1948, just reported that last winter was the warmest in modern Canadian history. The average temperature of this unusual warm winter was 3.9° C above normal. In the corner where the Northwest Territories , Alberta and Saskatchewan meet, the temperatures were even 8° C (!) above normal. Reason for this abnormal warm weather was – so Environment Canada – an unusual shift in the weather system that circulates cold Arctic air. This weather system is normally centered in the area of Hudson Bay , but this year the center was at the North Pole from where cold air could not spread across the country. For more information visit http://www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca .

A paralysed woman is making history by trekking across Greenland in a converted wheelchair. Karen Darke, 34, from Grantown-on-Spey, who has been paralysed since a climbing accident in 1993, will make the 600km crossing of the Greenland ice cap in temperatures of -30C and below. Click here to read the full story by Helen Archer.

Last December I posted about the then new movie "Wolf Creek". ( Click here to read that posting ) Three friends take a backpacking trip in Australia's outback to explore a crater. They get stuck and get help from a stranger that - unfortunately - turns out to be anything else than a friend... The unrated widescreen edition of the movie Wolf Creek is now available at Amazon. Click here now to learn more about the Wolf Creek DVD .

This brand new book, published only a few days ago, is a must for all outdoor enthusiasts and wilderness lovers, especially if you enjoyed Jon Krakauers 'Into the Wild' and 'Into Thin Air'. The story is about a ranger in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, James Randall Morgenson. He spent numberous seasons there and knew the mountains better than most other people. But there was a mysterious aura around him that many couldn't understand, not even his wife. The author, Eric Blehm, took 9 years to research the life of ranger Morgenson. At one point he was even part of a rescue mission that searched for Morgenson after his disappearance. Nobody knows what happened to Morgenson after he went out on patrol in the mountains one day and never came back. The author does a great job in describing the life of Morgenson, based on his journals and interviews with other rangers. You will definitely love this book! Grab a copy of The Last Season now at Amazon!

Reported by the County Courier The Green Mountain Club advises backcountry trail users that the Long Trail and its side trails in Vermont are closed from April 3 to May 29, during the annual mud season. In northern Vermont, this includes trails from Camel's Hump north to the Canadian border on Mount Mansfield, Smugglers' Notch, Belvidere, Tillotson & Haystack Mountains, Hazen's Notch and Jay State Forest. More information >> Click here to see additional resources for Vermont hiking.

Disabled Nawang plans to scale Mt. Cho-oyu By Our Correspondent KATHMANDU, Apr. 4: The Everest Summiteers Association (ESA) held a programme Tuesday to bid farewell to Nawang Sherpa who has announced his plan to scale the 8,200 meter high Mt Cho-oyu. To encourage and support Sherpa, all the ESA members, State Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Yankila Sherpa, his family and friends were present at the function. Sherpa has already made his mark in mountaineering by setting foot atop Mt.Everest for the first time in 2004 despite his disability. After he met with an accident, an American named Steve Seredo provided him with an artificial leg, which further encouraged him to climb mountains.... click here for full article .

As we get into the 2006 Everest pre monsoon season, spare a thought for Tenzing Norgay, the man who first climbed Everest in 1953 with Edmund Hillary. By the age of 39 when he summited the peak in 1953, Norgay had already established himself as one of the finest of the pioneering Himalayan climbers. Even before his historic climb with Hillary, he was already known as the ‘Man of Everest’, having been on the peak, and several other Himalayan giants on a number of occasions. Click here to read the full book review "Tenzing Norgay - Man of Everest". Click here to see a list of books about Tenzing Norgay at Amazon.

Todays post is short and sweet: Trekking Poles. There's some good information on that topic on Wikipedia, the free enciclopedia. Here's the link . Another great resource for Trekking Poles is my web site OutdoorSportsAdviser.com. Check it out if you're looking for new Treking Poles.

The park, encompassing 415 square miles, showcases the majestic Rockies, with elevations from 8,000 feet in the grassy valleys to 14,259 feet at Longs Peak. Sixty peaks rise above 12,000 feet. The following article provides useful tips. Click here to read more . And here are some additional resources for Rocky Mountain National Park.

Finding Mallory; exploring the explorer By Rome Jorge “Because it is there,” said George Mallory famously, on why climbers climb, before he vanished at the age of 35 while attempting to be the first man to climb Mount Everest, the world’s highest peak, in 1924. Conrad Anker, highly esteemed mountaineer, North Face sponsored athlete, and co-author of The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mount Everest ice climbing in Nepal “With the sole exception of Amelia Earheart, no lost explorer in the twentieth century has provoked a more intense outpouring of romantic speculation than George Mallory,” summarizes David Roberts. Did he and his partner Andrew Irvine, despite their primitive equipment and the horrific weather, and perhaps their own hubris, make it to the top before dying? Click here to read the full review of "The Lost Explorer - Finding Mallory". Click here to purchase "The Lost Explorer - Finding Mallory" at Amazon.com.