Outdoor Sports Blog

Seven Summits –Seven Continents – Seven Months Swedish Adventurer Sets New Guinness World Record It’s unbelievable! It seems nowadays that each year sees a number of records and world records in the mountaineering and climbing scene. As you might suspect 2007 will be no exception with the latest feat of Swede Frederik Strang who climbed the Seven Summits in less than 7 months. From the hyped up challenge to the mountains itself, the history, the critique, Seven Summits draws much attention in the world of mountaineering and adventure. This article will explore some of the aspects of climbing the seven highest peaks on all seven continents. The Mission Fred had planned to climb the “Seven Summits” - the seven highest peaks on the world’s seven continents – in just seven months. He started his adventure in the spring climbing season of 2006 with Mt. Everest (8,848 m / 29,029 ft), it was his second time to summit the world’s highest mountain. Strang then raced from one continent an

No more glaciers in Glacier National Park? Park officials see global warming as the main reason why glaciers and snow caps are retreating in Glacier National Park. The park, located in Montana, was once home to some 150 glaciers. The past 150 years slowly but surely melted 124 (!) of them away, centimetre by centimetre, inch by inch. National Park officials estimate the last glacier in the park will have vanished in less than 25 years from now. Elsewhere in the world, it’s not much better. Temperatures in Antarctica have risen dramatic in the last 50 years! Not much better in the Canadian Arctic. Temperatures rose to 3 degrees Celsius above normal. And a gigantic 66 square kilometres (that’s 11,000 football fields!) chunk of ice, the Ayles ice shelf, broke off Ellesmere Island in the Canadian North. It was one of the last six ice shelves – floating ice connected to land – left in Canada. Government and state officials are beginning to see how serious the problem of global warmi

When I lived in Austria I had rented a small log cabin in the mountains. Even though not considered as a wilderness area, it was located on a pretty remote place in the eastern Alps. In my ‘best’ year I spent 120 (!) days on the cabin throughout the year and this while running my sales agency full time. The cabin measured only 6 x 4 meters and was equipped with a simple woodstove. There was no electricity; the water came from a small creek with the tendency to dry out during the summer. The only ‘luxury’ was a gas lantern since I read a lot and didn’t want to ruin my eyesight. The simple cabin-life has something very special and whenever I come across literature about that topic it draws my attention. One Man's Wilderness - An Alaskan Odyssey by Sam Keith and Richard Proeneke (1973) is such a book. In 1968 Richard ‘Dick’ Proeneke – 50 years old at that time – retired to live his dream. His dream was to live alone in the Alaskan wilderness. Dick took action. He went out in

Mt Everest times three 1) Fifty-four years ago, on May 29, 1953, New Zealand climber Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first to summit the world’s tallest mountain. Mt Everest is 8,850 meter (29,035 feet) high and located in the Central Himalaya on the border between Nepal and Tibet. 2) Katsusuke Yanagisawa, a mountain climber from Japan and 71 years old became the oldest climber to reach the top of Mt Everest. 3) Another Japanese climber, Ken Noguchi made Everest headlines as well. He and the members of his expedition team collected 500 kg (that’s 1,100 pounds) of garbage left behind by fellow climbers. Noguchi organized similar expeditions to collect garbage on Everest in the past.