ExWeb’s Adventure Links of the Week

Here at ExWeb, when we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the wider interweb. Sometimes we’re a little too plugged in, and browsing interesting stories turn from minutes into hours. To nourish your own adventure fix, here are some of the best adventure links we’ve discovered this week.

Their Thai Cave Rescue Film Was Done. Then 87 Hours of Footage Arrived: For their heart-pounding documentary, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin faced a thorny tangle of rights, permissions, and personalities.

New Seven-Day Route in China’s Tien Shan: Interview with Dmitry Golovchenko: At the end of August, three Russian alpinists established a bold high-altitude route in China’s Tien Shan Mountains.

The People Who Claim to Hear The Northern Lights: Some people say that the aurora borealis make discernible crackling, whooshing, or whizzing sounds. Are they highly perceptive, or are the sounds a trick of the mind?

Pandemic Hits Rescue Teams Hard

 

Photo: keswickmrt.org.uk

 

You Got Lost and Had to Be Rescued. Should You Pay? The coronavirus pandemic sent a surge of inexperienced hikers into the wilderness. Many ran into trouble. Now states are looking to bill them for costly search and rescue operations.

Pandemic Wilderness Explorers Are Straining Search and Rescue: More on this theme, rescuer Kenna Tanner can list the cases from memory: There was the woman who got tired and did not feel like finishing her hike; the campers, in shorts during a blizzard; the base jumper, misjudging his leap from a treacherous granite cliff face; the ill-equipped snowmobiler, buried up to his neck in an avalanche. [Editor: If you’ve reached your limit of free NYT articles, try clearing your browser history.]

The Paddler’s Greatest Debates: Few topics get paddlers more fired up than debating the ethics of burning garbage on a trip or how best to bear-proof your camp. Mention canoeing and firearms in the same breath, and some paddlers are apt to go ballistic.

Archaeologists Extract 1,300-Year-Old Wooden Ski From Norwegian Ice: Seven years after finding the first half of the pair, researchers have finally reunited the ski with its mate.

The Long History of the Quest to Find a Peak Taller Than Everest: The idea of a summit taller than any known peak has long held a special allure for mountaineers. Early surveyors had mistakenly designated various Himalayan peaks as the highest in the world, including Nanda Devi, Kangchenjunga, and K2. But some mountaineers still hoped that an even bigger peak existed in a remote corner of the world.