Olympic Champion Sets World Record in 15K
The 24-year-old runner Tirunesh Dibaba, from Ethiopia, has set a new 15-kilometer world record of 46:28 in a road race in the Netherlands, the IAAF reports. Despite not having run a road race since 2005, she broke Kayoko Fukushi's 2006 record of 46:55. Dibaba is the current Olympic champion of the 5,000 and 10,000 meters.
Outside magazine has its own resident runner, associate editor Justin Nyberg, who just ran a 2:35:28 at the New York City Marathon. You can check out his blog, The Running Man, for details.
--Aileen Torres
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Yangshuo Climbing Festival: Day Two
Fire and rain bracketed my second day at the 2009 Yangshuo Climbing Festival. The former began in the common room of my rustic hotel, a 4-kilometer bike ride from downtown. Someone had stored a pile of scrap two-by-fours too close to the wood stove. When I looked up from my coffee, a mini blaze was threatening to creep up the walls. Fortunately a cook doused the flames with water.
After breakfast, I went biking with Tom, a friendly climber from Australia. Tom and I were looking for a famous local crag called "White Mountain." But we couldn't figure out how to hold our trusty Yangshuo map.
Yangshuo, as it turns out, is a great place to get lost. A two-hour cycle-jaunt whizzed us past livestock, farmland, smiling kids, orchards (those "peaches," on reflection, taste more like apricots) and majestic karst pillars. The landscape here looks like a land version of Vietnam's karst-tastic Ha Long Bay.
Thanks to Tom's Mandarin phrasebook and a friendly local villager, we found White Mountain by mid afternoon. This is where festival organizers have funded construction of a permanent toilet for Yangshuo climbers. Ryan Gellert, managing director for Black Diamond Equipment Asia, says this and other projects
White Mountain was crawling with climbers from Shenzhen, a large Chinese city near Guangzhou and Hong Kong. A few of them graciously allowed us to climb their top rope. The view from route's end showed karst, farmland and trees stretching out toward the horizon. And storm clouds.
Continue reading "Yangshuo Climbing Festival: Day Two" »
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November 14, 2009
Women Ski Jumpers Lose Court Case
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Yangshuo Climbing Festival: Day One
Ni Hao, Outside Readers,
Mike Ives here -- a freelance writer based in Hanoi, Vietnam. For the next few days, I'll be filing dispatches from the second-annual Yangshuo Climbing Festival in Yangshuo, China. If my aching fingers will cooperate.
A little background info on Yangshuo: This touristy town in Guangxi Province (which borders Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin) is an overnight bus ride from mega-cities Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The late American climber Todd Skinner set some of the first Yangshuo routes in the early 1990s. Last year's inaugural fest drew more than 350 climbers from 15 countries.
And a word about me: I've been living in Asia since May. Before that, I was a staff reporter at Seven Days, the alt weekly in Burlington, Vermont. I'm not a particularly committed climber -- my favorite part about top-roping at the "Gunks," near New Paltz, New York, is the post-session souvlaki. But I understand words like "beta," "crimp" and "jug," and I know good climbers when I see 'em.
Many are in Yangshuo this weekend. It's easy to see why: Yangshuo's urban core of dumpling shops, touristy boutiques and internet cafes is flanked by postcard-perfect karst cliffs. Fifteen-minute bike rides past farms, mud-brick houses and peach orchards land you at the base of more than 300 primo sport routes. Indeed, says Ryan Gellert, managing director for Black Diamond Equipment Asia, Yangshuo has lately become "ground zero" for climbing in China.
Continue reading "Yangshuo Climbing Festival: Day One" »
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Alpinist Tomaz Humar Confirmed Dead
Veteran climber Tomaz Humar was found dead today after being stranded for days on Langtang Lirung in the Himalayas, according to the AP. Earlier today, the flight operations manager for Swiss Air Zermatt confirmed Humar's body was retrieved by a three-man rescue team.
Humar, who has some 1,500 ascents to his name and has been the recipient of several mountaineering awards, apparently used a satellite phone to call a friend to say that he was injured on Tuesday. Though fellow climbers searched for Humar during the last several days, heavy snow and bad weather hampered efforts. He was found in a different location than expected.
"He was lower than expected, at 5,600 meters not 6,300 meters," Gerald Bin of Swiss Air Zermatt told the AP.
Humar leaves behind a wife and two children.
Read more about Humar's initial call and stranding and more about his career in the stories below.
Cold Call: Tomaz Humar, Outside Magazine, February 2008
Climbing Lessons from the School of Tomaz Humar, Outside Magazine, June 2006
Tomaz Humar Photo Gallery, Outside Magazine, June 2006
--Joe Spring
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November 13, 2009
New Snail Named After Steve Irwin
Dr. john Stanisic, a Queensland Museum scientist, has named a newly discovered species of rare Australian tree snail in honor of the famous conservationist and T.V. personality, Steve Irwin, says the Environmental News Network. The snail, Crikey steveirwini (seriously), can be found in the mountainous regions of north Queensland's Wet Tropics near Cairns.
"It was the khaki colour that immediately drew the connection to the late Crocodile Hunter," Dr. Stanisic told ENN.
--Dave Costello
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Cool Video: Playboating
freestyle 2009 from pion stephane on Vimeo.
Here is a cool video documenting some playboaters absolutely ripping it, courtesy of Kayak Session. These guys can throw down. You can see the film by Pion Stephane above.
--Dave Costello
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Lab Rat Workout: The Perfect Pull Up
Outside's Lab Rat, Nick Heil, shows you how to do the perfect pull up, with an overhand grip.
--Aileen Torres
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Alpinist Tomaz Humar Stranded on Langtang Lirung
Slovenian Tomaz Humar, one of the most accomplished and audacious high-altitude solo climbers in the world, has been stranded since Monday on Langtang Lirung, a 23,710-foot peak in the Langtang Himal of Nepal. Humar, who has some 1,500 ascents to his name and been the recipient of several mountaineering awards, apparently used a satellite phone to call a friend to say that he was injured. There is some confusion as to how injured Humar is—he likely has a broken leg and ribs, but may have back injuries as well—and where, exactly, on the mountain he is, although he is believed to be stuck at an altitude of about 20,670 feet somewhere on the southern face of the peak. Humar has not been heard from since Tuesday, when he placed a call to basecamp and sounded "very weak."
Rescue attempts are underway, but have been progressing slowly due to bad weather. On Tuesday, a helicopter dropped off four Nepalese climbing Sherpas at basecamp, who were able to look for him above Camp 1 on Wednesday before being forced back to basecamp due to a snowstorm. And earlier today, three rescue climbers from Switzerland, along with some of Humar’s relatives, have reportedly arrived to aid in the search, but haven’t been able to ascend the peak due to bad weather.
This is not the first time that the 40-year-old Humar, who is married and has two children, has needed to be rescued. In 2005, a Pakistani military helicopter plucked Humar from Nanga Parbat. You can read more about the controversy surrounding that rescue, and his subsequent solo ascent of the 26,040-foot east summit of Annapurna here. Peter Maas wrote a feature story about Humar for us in 2002, which you can read here. You can also check out our online gallery of images that accompanied Maas's story, and a highlight tour of some photos from his memoir, No Impossible Ways.
More details about the current rescue can be found here, and we’ll update you as soon as we have more info. —Sam Moulton
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Missing Hunter Found After 2 Weeks
Travis McMahan was found alive after getting lost and spending 14-days alone in the Big Horn Mountains, according to the Billings Gazette. After losing his way in a snowstorm near his campsite at the Buffalo Creek Campground area, McMahan, who had been out scouting for elk, estimates that he was within 30 yards of the campsite when he encountered a mountain lion. He promptly turned around, planning on circling around to the other side of the camp, but came across Buffalo Creek, and followed it the wrong way. He broke into a cabin a couple days later and found two dehydrated meals that he survived on the rest of his time in the mountains. After two weeks, hallucinations set in and he decided that no one would arrive before he starved to death. He followed the creek upstream, and ran into his Dad, who had gone out with a search party to look for him one last time before another snowstorm was forecast to hit.
Read the full story at The Billings Gazette.
--Dave Costello
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