Climbing Mt. Everest is a dream of every adventurer. Over 1,500 people have reached the summit since 1953 and about 170 have lost their lives. Many have made it to the top of it. It is even more surprising that the people who are disabled have also proved themselves.
We can take the example of Mark Inglis, a 47-year-old New Zealander who lost both legs 25 years ago and became the first double amputee Mount Everest climber on 15th May, 2006.
Inglis was stuck in an ice cave in an intense blizzard for 14 days on Mount Cook in New Zealand in 1982 and lost both legs below the knee to frostbite.
However, his disability did not hinder him from winning a cycling silver medal in the 200 Sydney Paralympic Games and from scaling the 8,201m Cho Oyu on his 45th birthday.
He had a strong will to stand atop the summit of Mount Everest and here also his disability did not hinder him and he broke the record by becoming the first double amputee Mount Everest climber.
Inglis faced many problems while he was on his expedition to Mt. Everest. Ten days before the summit day, he broke his artificial legs and had to rebuild them on the mountain. His oxygen mask broke on the last day and he got only 20 percent oxygen. But iron-willed mountaineer did not give up and finally proved himself.
He raised US$40,000 for the Cambodia Trust through his Everest climb. His Everest expedition was filmed for the Discovery series Everest: Beyond the Limit.
Many people have set the records by climbing the highest point on Earth. Even though there are health risks, Everest climbers face in their quest for that one breathtaking moment atop the mountain, but nothing is able to stop them. The disabled climbers such as Mark Inglis and many more have proved that nothing is impossible in this world; the only thing needed is the strong determination.
Pohnpei, Micronesia has some of the best waves in the world. Here, you can expect warm, crystal clear water with perfect powerful waves. Waves break far from the beach just like Tahiti or Fiji. To check the surf from the shore is not possible so the best possible way to get to the waves is by boat.
Most of the swells that reach Pohnpei are generated by North Pacific winter storms and from typhoons in the Western Pacific.
Pohnpei surf season goes from early October thru early May. Up to four feet, the waves on Pohnpei are user-friendly.
The most surfed area of Pohnpei is Palikir Pass (P-Pass), on the northwest side of the island. This is a full barrel, down-the-line wave. Main Pass is the second most surfed wave on the northwest side of Pohnpei.
The east side of Pohnpei has some beautiful waves as well and to score some good waves, you will need all the knowledge of surf guides.
If you like challenging yourself and surfing big waves, go for surfing in Pohnpei. But remember Pohnpei’s reefs are always shallow on the inside; it is safe to use booties that can be very helpful at times. Surf smart and safe!
A 32-year-old adventurer, Bear Grylls has succeeded in becoming the first person to fly a parajet higher than Mt Everest. He reached the amazing height of 29,500 feet. His achievement is 10,000ft higher than the previous powered paraglide record.
Gilo Cardozo was Grylls’s co-pilot. They took off at 11,600ft from their base camp in eastern Nepal under a parachute propelled by a four-stroke, unleaded petrol engine that was strapped to his back.
With 120lb of survival kit and oxygen on their backs and 18 months of training behind them, they soared into the freezing atmosphere at speeds of 75mph (120km/h).
At 28,000ft, Mr. Cardozo’s engine stopped and he was forced down but Mr. Grylls climbed a further 1,500ft.
Grylls said:
It was the hairiest, most frightening thing I have ever undertaken in my life.
Moreover, he promises to never do anything as dangerous again.
Grylls is the son of the late Sir Michael Grylls, the former Tory MP. He was serving with the SAS in southern Africa when he broke his back in a parachuting accident. Three years later he scaled Everest and became the youngest Briton to scale Everest.
This expedition of Grylls was sponsored by GKN Mission Everest and raised $1 million (£500,000) for Global Angels, a charity which helps children in Africa.
The 2007 Adventure Racing World Championship will take place in Fort William and Lochaber in the Scottish Highlands from May 26 until June 2 2007. It is the culmination of the Adventure Racing World Series, the most extreme series of sporting challenges on earth.
Up to 60 international teams of four competitors will battle it out over a seven-day period to become the Adventure Racing World Champions.
The teams from all corners of the globe will race unsupported over a ‘top secret’ 500km course, with over 25,000m of ascent through the spectacular and rugged landscape of the Western Highlands of Scotland.
Competitors will be guaranteed an epic adventure with a mix of uncompromising challenges involving navigation, mountain biking, mountain running, kayaking, climbing, abseiling, mountaineering, river crossing, canyoning and open water swimming, with the terrain and unpredictable weather throwing up more than a few surprises.
The Adventure Racing World Championship is a major event in the Highland 2007 program (Scotland’s year long celebration of Highland culture).
Dedicated teamwork, meticulous planning and cunning strategy coupled with awesome mental and physical stamina are the key requirements. The winning team will take home a purse of $50,000.
Deep-cave diving is as extreme as it gets. Total darkness surrounds you beyond the glow of your light in an eerie calm, which makes you feel as if you are in a distant, unknown place. Water currents push and pull to keep you within the caves, branching passages hope to get you lost and remember, in deep depths even oxygen becomes toxic and nitrogen stupefying.
It is a dangerous sport and requires extensive training and a wide variety of specialized techniques. If you choose to dive at any of these sites, you must take full responsibility for all consequences...remember it’s your life!
10. Cenote Esqueleto /Temple of Doom
Location: Off of Coba Road outside of Tulum, Mexico
Depth: 60 feet
Advantage: A swim around the hat’s brim at 60
feet is a tour of a multilevel maze of cave formations, boulders and stalactites dripping from the blanched white limestone.
Risks involved : Entry point is uncomfortable.
A cave dive here means going into Half-fresh water and half-salt water. If you also take a cavern dive, you will be able to spot many fossils in the clear water.
Risks involved: Solo diving is prohibited here! It has a lot of silt; the silt settles on the walls and makes the cave very dark. The Peacock III system is a siphon so unlike the other systems in the area, the water flows in instead of out. This means that it is more work to exit the cave and the visibility tends to be diminished.
The Peacock III system is a siphon so unlike the other systems in the area, the water flows in instead of out. This means that it is more work to exit the cave and the visibility tends to be diminished.
8. Challenge sink
Location: Located across the street from the Peacock Springs park entrance, it is part of the cave system at Peacock Springs.
Advantage: Upstream Challenge leads to Orange Grove while Downstream Challenge leads to Olsen.
Risks involved: Caution is necessary when climbing in or out of Challenge which has small, winding tunnels. Part of the swim is against a light flow.
7. Orange Grove
Cave Passage in Orange Grove Sink, Image credit: Steve Block
Location: It is part of Peacock Springs Park, north of the Suwannee River east of Luraville, Florida.
Advantage: Beautiful honeycombed passageways
Risks involved: At times, the water becomes infested with algae and it turns the spring solid green, with no visibility. With no visibility in the spring, it is difficult to access the cave. Another passage leads downward to ‘Lower Orange Grove,’ a very advanced cave with lots of silt and depths to 180 feet.
Orange Grove is actually an offset sinkhole, whose passageway has minimal flow until it intersects with the Distance Tunnel, over 800 feet downstream.
6. Devil’s Eye/Ear
Bob Cave Diving in the Devil’s Cave system at Ginnie Springs in Northern Florida, Image credit
Location: Santa Fe river, Ginnie Springs resort complex
Advantage: 30,000 feet of mapped passageways, here is a map of the system.
Risks involved: A breakdown restriction about 200ft from the entrance to the Devil System called ‘the lips’. The currents blow strong.
The caves of Florida are the result of underground water working upon soluble limestone. This type of topography, called Karst, characterizes most of the principal cave systems in the world.
Devil’s Eye is a circular spring with depths to 15 feet at the bottom of the spring. A cave entrance begins at the bottom of the spring and extends through several thousand feet of cave passage way. Great for the experienced cave diver.
Location: An offset sink from the Withlacoochee River in north central Florida situated on a private property.
Depth: 460 feet
Thunder Hole Well: The Well is around 500ft penetration.The depth at the top of the well is about 65ft and the bottom depth is 120ft.
Risks involved: Poor visibility, tight corners
Thunder Hole is on private property and is an offset sink from the Withlacoochee River in north central Florida. Special permission from the owner of the property has to be obtained to dive this site. Several of his requirements include having an Abe Davis and no scootering.
Advantage: When you dive in the caves, at a depth of about 25 to 30 feet, you can see the fresh / alt water interface, or “halocline,” as a distinct line separating the liquids, and if you watch a diver passing through the halocline, their image is shortly blurred and distorted by the mixing of the fresh and salt water.
Risks involved: The ocean blue holes will “blow” and “suck” making it necessary to dive them at certain times. The “blow” usually pumps out cold subterranean water which may be milky with hydrogen sulfide and algae or, during the “suck,” the water will be gin clear as it sucks in the surrounding sea water. Too little light penetrates the depths for this drowned crater.
Location: In Sand Hill Boy Scout Camp on Hwy 50 between Brooksville and Weeki Wachee Springs.
Depth: 300 and 360 feet
Risks involved: The visibility in the pond and shaft was crystal clear. Proceeding further the visibility drops further to 60 to 80 ft. Diepolder II is the deepest cave in the continental US.
Diepolder are two separated caves, measureless in dimensions, deep and just impressive. Only guided tours are allowed.
Eagle’s Nest is considered one of the most breathtaking underwater cave systems in the world. Its intricacies have alternately been described as challenging and dangerous.
It begins in an ordinary pond, about 200 feet wide, in the woods. At the bottom of the pond is a kind of chimney that descends hundreds of feet into a cavern large called “the Main Ballroom” beyond which are longer tunnels and crannies that descend even deeper. How far do they go? Nobody knows.
The black hole is a vertical cave system, and has a more recent origin than any of the blue holes. It was here that the scientist, Stephanie Schwable discovered a new species of bacteria and the research is now being used by NASA.
This site is a total NO! and is only pursued for SCIENTIFIC PURPOSES
CHEKA (Care, Health and Education for Kids in Africa) is a charity set up by Bonnie Argo who is a former Cardiff Psychology student. To raise thousands of pounds for charity, Cardiff University Mountaineering Club, one of the most active sports clubs put on a subsidized abseil down the north side of the 55-meter tall psychology building last Friday.
Dressed in fancy dress costumes 23 club members abseiled down the building one after the other between 10am and 4pm.
To participate, each abseiler was given the task of raising £100, so the expected total for the event will be between £2300 and £2500.
Mountaineering Club Vice-President Joe Hobson said:
The event will be good publicity for the club and hopefully stir up some excitement for possible members next academic year.
It’s good to show that the University clubs can use their skills and resources to raise money and awareness for important causes both home and abroad. And if that has to be done in a prostitute costume, then so be it.
It is anticipated that the event could become a yearly fixture in the Mountaineering Club’s calendar, using a different building each year.
Cave diving is one of the most challenging and potentially dangerous of sports that takes you to the depth of water-flooded caves. No amount of open water experience can prepare you for the cave environment. Even certified cave divers have drowned in underwater caves.
Cenote Cave Diving in the Yucatan , Image credit: Chris E
The caves in Mexico are a rarity because of speleothems, which form only in a dry cave, but in Mexico, they exist underwater. That is because these caves were all dry during the last ice age. Carbon dating of artifacts found in some area caves shows them to have been visited by humans over 9,000 years ago.
About 2 500 natural wells form entrances to the system that once provided the entire Maya people of Yucatan with water. There are no rivers above ground. Even big Maya cities like Chichen Itza were dependent on the wells.
Pure waters with shades of blue and green , Image credit: Sanibeljac
The three largest underwater cave systems in the world: Sistema Ox Bel Ha, Sistema Nohoch Nah Chich, and Sistema Dos Ojos, all exist within twenty miles of each other. Combined, they account for 55% of explored passageway. Two of them, Ox Bel Ha, and Nohoch Nah Chich, flow directly into the Caribbean Sea.
The North Floridian Aquifer expels groundwater through numerous first-magnitude springs, each providing an entrance to the aquifer’s labyrinthine cave system. These high-flow springs have resulted in Florida cave divers developing special techniques for exploring them, since some have such strong currents that it is impossible to swim against them. The sites are there for you to pick: Peacock State Park, Orange Grove, Cows Spring, Telford Spring, Little Rivers Spring, Troy springs and Ginni Spring.
The Wakulla system in Florida springs is the largest single-source freshwater spring in the world, which is explored exclusively by a very successful and pioneering project called the WKPP.
Sir Robin Knox-Johnston has completed his second solo circumnavigation of the globe aboard Saga Insurance. Participating in the VELUX 5 Oceans yacht race, he concluded the 30,000-mile epic race 37 years after his pioneering solo voyage in 1969.
At the age of sixty-eight and now a grandfather of five, Sir Robin has halved the time it took him to complete the journey when he was just thirty years old. This voyage has taken 159 days compared to 313 days in 1969, when he made history by becoming the first person to sail single-handed and non-stop around the world in his boat Suhaili.
Sir Robin has completed the race on board a sixty-foot carbon fibre racing yacht Saga Insurance, which is capable of a top speed of over 30 knots and equipped with the latest computer technology.
Saga Insurance is a very physical boat to sail and in between carrying out the many tasks on board such as navigating, weather routing, steering and boat maintenance, Sir Robin has survived on freeze-dried food, desalinated water and short bursts of sleep.
Sir Robin faced many problems during the voyage. He kept his spirits up by eating his 100-year-old Aunt Aileen’s fruit cake and sipping the odd whisky. He is likely to be ranked fourth overall.
Kimberley Barreda, a Whitefish woman with no legs is the one who leads an action packed life. Presently the associate editor of Active Living, she is a former actress and model. Barreda loves to ski at snow covered slopes at Big Mountains. Her favorite runs at Big Mountain include Ptarmigan Bowl and Hellfire.
She has been an athlete for nearly two decades. She qualified for the Paralympic Games in 1984 but she missed the plane because of the measles. She swam the 100, 200, 400 and 800 meter backstroke and freestyle. She also ran the 100 and 400 in track and threw the discus and javelin.
Barreda also keeps strong by practicing the martial art taebo at home and keeping busy all year recreating outdoors, she plays the links at John’s Golf Course, in Eureka,
Barreda went for skiing on the Big Mountain and her plan was to ride her mono-ski for 50 days and accumulate 750,000 vertical feet, that’s like skiing from the summit to the village 360 times. She started skiing with DREAM, the local adapted skiing program.
Barreda has offered to give the Big Mountain Commercial Association a 14-seat van that is fully equipped for wheelchairs to transport disabled skiers but they declined.
She’s moved on past her acting and modeling career. She now works with returning veterans through the Wounded Warrior Project and Soldier Ride, a fundraising event for athletes.
She plans to kayak Lake Koocanusa from end to end over five days this summer.
Come on up for the absolute last weekend of the 2006/07 skiing and riding season at Wildcat Mountain.It’ll be open for skiing and riding on Saturday and Sunday May 5th and 6th.
Wildcat operates 4-person scenic gondola sky-rides in the summer and fall seasons. This year these rides are scheduled to open on Memorial Day Weekend, beginning May 26th.
A new 2,100 foot ZipRider cable zip-line ride is anticipated to open in the month of June. It is intended to operate on a year-round basis.
Wildcat is renowned for a long spring skiing and riding season and it’ll celebrate its 50th year of continuous operations in 2007/08.
Wildcat has received six feet of fresh snow this April. You can get up to date on information on snow conditions and operations information at www.skiwildcat.com. Lift tickets are only $29 per person.
