The Interior Department announced yesterday that all active duty military personnel and their families will receive free admission to National Parks, Wildlife Refuges, and other public lands that charge admission fees.
This Saturday - Armed Forces Day - will mark the beginning of the program, which will present the America the Beautiful National Parks and Federal Recreation Lands Annual Pass to the families for free. While vets and retirees won't be able to get a pass, activated members of the National Guard and Reserves will be.
The effort is part of the Joining Forces initiative, a program spearheaded by Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, which supports military families. Mrs. Biden (wife of Vice President, Joe Biden, for all you non politicos) summed it up well,
Our nation owes a debt of gratitude to our servicemen and women who make great sacrifices to protect our country and preserve our freedom. In recognition of their service, we are so pleased to be putting out a welcome mat for our military families at America's most beautiful and storied sites.
The pass costs the rest of us $80, which, once you think about other
things you spend $80 on, isn't really that much. Still, it's a great way
to recognize the sacrifice and valor of the folks who protect our right
to pay to access our public lands.
After college, I moved to Alaska where I ended up working at an adaptive ski school. We taught mentally and physically disabled people how to ski. It was pretty powerful and, more so than any other job, made me proud and contented. Of course we were based at the resort and used the lifts to ferry skiers and the heavy adaptive equipment they needed up to the top of the run.
Well, paraplegic skier Jeremy McGhee is planning to rip a big, hardcore backcountry couloir without all that lift served fuss. He's gonna shred Bloody Couloir form the top, without the help of his pals.
McGhee was hit by a car riding his motorcycle in 2001 and lost the use of his legs. He has since worked to live his life to its fullest, surfing, skiing, and generally being a badass.
Frustrated by the difficulty he experienced getting across the sand from his car to the ocean where he surfs, he invented a lightweight motorized unit that easily attaches to his wheel chair - the Surf Checker. Now he can surf without the assistance of his friends whenever he wants to.
He intends to apply the same engineering savvy, tenacity and drive to figuring out a way to get to the top of Bloody Couloir in the Sierras, and "…eat a pb+j sandwich at the top." Why not just enlist his buddies to help him get there?
"I don't want them [my friends] to feel like they need to get me there. You see, I've got arms. I can get anywhere. It might take a while, but physically, I can get there." Holy shit. Imagine how many fewer obese people there'd be in this country if we all had the same attitude towards our legs this guy has towards his arms.
For some more inspiration, check out "Drop In" the first segment of McGhee's Bloody Couloir series.
Before you watch this video, a few words. Especially if you're a rather new reader, which we sometimes attract. If you're easily offended just don't watch it. In fact, if you're easily offended, you'd best not even read this blog. Granted, we're rarely as offensive now as we were say 5 years ago. But, well, we still sometimes have our moments. Anyway, back to this video. It's hilarious. It's got fixies, it's got ninjas, it's got anime girls come to life, it's got ninjas on fixies chasing anime girls come to life. There's a upskirt cam, which is really most offensive part. And it's f'ing hilarious. Great way to waste 5 minutes on a Friday morning. Tx to Bike Hugger for introducing it to us.
A cool new nonprofit, Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation, is launching a nationwide effort to get cyclists to note and report roadkill they see as they're rolling down the road. Cyclists can snap a photo, make a mental note, or jot down location and species on a note pad and then enter the information in an online database.
“The tens of thousands of people that are outside every day can now be
mobilized to do more with their time, to be citizen scientists,” said
Gregg Treinish, who founded and directs the non-profit group.
Similar programs in California and Maine have already proved valuable to wildlife scientists. In California, 708 riders have logged more than 17,000 observations into the database. Researchers are hoping that both bike commuters, who can provide long term data and help identify trends, and expedition cyclists, whose data can help identify large-scale patterns, participate in the program.
Of course, you don't have to be a cyclist to record road kill, but to quote the University of California, Davis ecologist, Fraser Schiling, who started the project in California, “I think that cyclists and the pedestrian world have this weird
connection to roadkill because of the risk we’re always facing,” said
Shilling. Yep, that's pretty true.
All you cyclists out there who wish you had a big old horn to honk when some a-hole in a car nearly runs you over - now is your chance for extreme retribution.
For a cool 8,000 bucks or so, you can buy the one-of-a-kind "Hornster" bike, which comes mounted with an Airchime KHA triple air horn. I don't know much about horns, but apparently this one needs a modified scuba tank of air to toot and turned all the way up to 11 emits a 178 decibel sound. That's as loud as a the take off of an F-14, or the landing of a Condorde Jet. I think that sound might make your ears bleed, but I'm not sure.
The bike was designed by Yannick Read for Britain's Environmental Transport Association as a gag to draw attention to car bike collisions caused by the fact that most drivers seem utterly incapable of realizing that yes people ride bikes on the road and yes they have a right to be there and yes you need look out for them.
Whatever the reason it was made, if you do buy it and actually ride it around, you'd better damn well hope no one runs into you. If the valves and controls for the horn get knocked off, or the scuba tank ruptures with all that pressurized air in it, I'm thinking it could get messy.
When I was a little grommet, growing up in a small town in Maine, mountain culture was more Maine woods than Rocky Mountain. Sure we wore hand-me-down L.L. Bean shirts, pants, boots, and pretty much everything else, but we also ate lobsters once a week. At $3.00 a pound you could feed a family pretty cheap in July or August.
Why am I telling you this? Well, although we had tons of lobsters, what we lacked was screenings of cool mountain films. If you too, live in a small burg that doesn't host the latest Telluride or Banff film tour every year, the good folks over at Outside Magazine will play a Mountainfilm documentary every Thursday through May.
On the 10th Outside will show Undercity - a documentary about urban caver Steve Duncan's quest to piece together the dark history of New York City by exploring its tunnels and sewers.
To watch, simply access the film here anytime between 6-9 Mountain Time (ha Mountain Time, take that East Coast!). You can join a discussion with the filmmaker Andrew Wonder and Steve Duncan for a Q&A through the website, starting at 7 pm.
On the 17th, catch Felt Soul Productions award-winning environmental documentary about salmon in Alaska, Red Gold.
Finally, on May 24, Outside will play Samsara, the story of Jimmy Chin, Conrad Anker, and Renan Oztruk's first attempt to climb India's 20,702-foot Meru.
Very cool new technology, the Heatstick lets you heat water without an open flame and under extreme adverse condition e.g. subzero, wind, nagging tripmates etc. The Heatsick site rather sucks, it's hard to figure out exactly what you need, how it works, or what the technology is, but after a bit of clicking this is what our little brains came up with:
The Heatstick uses a flameless exothermal process for heating the water
The complete system includes
Fuelstick - essentially a customized propane canister which provides the fuel to power the Heatstick. Seem to cost about $8 a unit, but you have to buy 10. The extreme Fuelstick (there are 2 other types) weighs 93 g, will heat 6-9 liters of water, and will work in temperatures ranging from -30C - 0C
Heatstick - this is the actual technology that heats the water, lets call it a "stove" though it doesn't use a flame to heat the water, rather works on an exothermal process. Probably like those bhutane hand warmers. It's not cheap, looks like it costs about $400 and weighs 380 grams for the 1L version. Not the lightest for sure.
Water bottle - the heatstick screws into the bottle and is submerged in the water. Not sure if other generic bottles like Nalgenes work, seems like it should have been designed to work with Nalgenes and other wide-mouth water bottles.
Batteries - used to "ignite" the full source and start the exothermal process
Cool technology, obviously useful for SAR, adventure racing, polar expeditions, and other extreme activities where bad conditions make gear that requires little setup/takedown a godsend. Heavy though, so maybe not so good for adventure racing. If you watch the video, you see the backpacker turn the unit on and keep hiking, with the unit stored in the side pocket heating the water as he walks.
I always wondered how insect repellent clothing worked. Now I'm not so sure I want to know.
Columbia Sportswear will pay a $22,880 fine for violating pesticide labeling rules in Insect Blocker line of clothing. The clothing claims to be infused with a magical compound that repels biting insects. I've got a shirt and some socks made by Ex-Officio that claim the same. I'm not sure the stuff works, but I spent like $20 on the socks, so I'm not admitting that they may not.
Regardless, Columbia imported 155 garments that were missing the proper labeling - lacking an ingredient list, pesticide registration numbers, disposal info, and my personal favorite, the following text, "It is a violation of Federal Law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with it's labeling." So, if you happened to buy a mis-labled shirt, do not eat it, wear it as pants, or burn it - a Federal agent will track you down and arrest you.
Ooops. A new article by the Sacramento Bee's Tom Knudson illustrates a dirty little secret of the United States Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services Department. Since 2000, our tax dollars have supported the killing of lots and lots of coyotes and wolves and, here's the oops, more than 50,000 other wildlife species.
In their effort to protect agriculture, ie ranching, the Department has used wire traps, cyanide, and other unsavory techniques to kill wolves and coyotes, but has also killed a whopping 50,000 other species, like golden eagles and bald eagles, domestic dogs, armadillos, antelopes, and those especially rascally great blue herons.
According to the article,
In all, more than 150 species have been killed by mistake by Wildlife Services traps, snares and cyanide poison since 2000, records show. A list could fill a field guide. Here are some examples:
Armadillos, badgers, great-horned owls, hog-nosed skunks, javelina, pronghorn antelope, porcupines, great blue herons, ruddy ducks, snapping turtles, turkey vultures, long-tailed weasels, marmots, mourning doves, red-tailed hawks, sandhill cranes and ringtails.
Ouch! At least there's some good news: the Wildlife Services spends millions employing lots of rural rednecks, ever-ready to risk life and limb by hanging out of the door of a helicopter to shoot a wolf, coyote, or armadillo threatening a cow ranging on lands owned by all of us. In this Great Recession any jobs are good jobs, right...
A cool new nonprofit, 
When I was a little grommet, growing up in a small town in Maine, mountain culture was more Maine woods than Rocky Mountain. Sure we wore hand-me-down L.L. Bean shirts, pants, boots, and pretty much everything else, but we also ate lobsters once a week. At $3.00 a pound you could feed a family pretty cheap in July or August. 
Very cool new technology, the 
I always wondered how insect repellent clothing worked. Now I'm not so sure I want to know. 
Ooops. A 
