When we launched the concept of Operation Denali, summiting the mountain was intended to be the culmination of our journey of recovery. Instead, it has opened doors everywhere and reached an audience far greater than we ever expected. The recognition given by National Geographic Adventure and those of you who love the spirit of adventure have had a hand in that. The combined effect of this broad community of interest and support has spread the word and brought inspiration and motivation to many of our Wounded Warriors, which was the main goal of the climb. For that you have my thanks!
For me, it’s about being part of a team that is the Adventurers of the Year. A whole group of people made a huge effort toward this project—people from University of California, San Diego, local Mongolians, the Mongolian Academy of Science. This project has made me realize that anything in the world is possible, as long as you have the support of your friends. That makes all the difference in the world. And that’s taken to a larger scale now that the readers of National Geographic Adventure have offered their support. They definitely nominated everyone who has been involved, not just me.
Turning my education in engineering into one of the greatest adventures of my life has been a huge journey. The idea to search for the tomb of Genghis Khan occurred to me while backpacking with friends in Mongolia. I came back dreaming of doing something outrageous, something that everyone thought was impossible. But to continue to work on it. To have your friends believe in it. To have your family believe in it. And to have your colleagues believe in it. It really makes me believe anyone can do anything.
Our long-term goal is to set up some protection mechanism to preserve the cultural heritage of Mongolia, which has had a huge impact on the rest of the world. The Mongols basically created a lot of what we know of as our modern history. Genghis Khan was one man with a dream. He was the rejected son of a nomadic family who was left to die in the woods. He rose to power, uniting all his people, and then turned outward and basically built an empire larger than Napoleon and Alexander the Great combined. And that story really hasn’t been told completely. It’s been looked at from different perspectives, but the greatness of his achievements, in a lot of ways, is underestimated. That is a major goal of this project: To share the true history of the foundation of our own cultural past. It will be a long process, but we are hoping, with the support of the public and people of Mongolia, we can to help preserve their cultural heritage.
Last November we introduced you to the 2009 Adventurers of the Year, recognized for their extraordinary achievements in exploration, conservation, actions sports, and humanitarian work.
Their accomplishments ranged from the longest BASE jump ever to educating 10,000 women and girls in war-torn Afghanistan to rocketing 350 miles above the Earth to save a telescope. Then, for our first ever Readers’ Choice Adventurer of the Year Award, we asked you to vote for the person you felt best embodied the spirit of adventure. (See the entire Best of Adventure feature here.)
Today,
with nearly 20,000 votes cast, we are thrilled to announce a tie. Both
winners are equally impressive, but in entirely different ways.
Explorer-engineer Albert Yu-Min Lin organized a high-risk
expedition into Mongolia’s “Forbidden Zone” to search for the lost
tomb of Genghis Khan using state-of-the-art mapping technology. Wounded Iraq
war veteran Marc Hoffmeister led a team of soldiers,
many missing limbs, up the dangerous West Buttress route on Denali.
When we delivered the news to each winner, both assured us of one
thing: They could not have done it alone—and their adventures continue.
A 33-mile bike ride up 2,675 feet on a cold, wet island in Puget Sound in February may sound brutal. But tell that to the 4,000 cyclists who sign up each year for the Chilly Hilly on Bainbridge Island. “You can get an eyeful of the Seattle skyline, ogle a bald eagle, and soak in dreamy harbor vistas,” says habitual entrant Gordon Black. “If only all suburbs looked so good.” Bakeries are as abundant as conifers along the route, and the epic post-ride chili feed is a near-instant restorative. Mark your calendar for February 28 (entrance fee is $35). If a warmer weather version is more your speed, you can download the route map and DIY ride it anytime at squeakywheels.org.
After staging an impromptu kiteboarding race with Google founder Larry Page off the
coast of his private island, Sir Richard Branson decided to host a full-on competition. The mogul throws open the gates to his $47,000-a-night Necker is March 1 to 5 for the inaugural British Virgin Islands Kite Jam. Expect high antics and high winds.
Feast your eyes upon Australia's Fraser Island, a World Heritage site and the largest sand island in the world. This photo by Chris Poetzel of Indian Head Point, the headland on the island's 75-mile eastern coastline, was the overall winner in our Wild Angle Photo Contest, sponsored by the Adventures in Travel Expo. See all the winners, from kayaking Antarctica to kitesurfing the Dominican Republic, in a our photo gallery.
Yesterday American skier Bode Miller won gold in the super combined, giving him three Olympic medals in Vancouver and five in his career. Not bad for the New Hampshire native and new dad. (Read more in the New York Times.)
We dug up some skiing training tips from a few years back, so you, too, can get into the best shape of your life. These are taken from our November 2005 (read the full article), when Miller was working with coach John McBride. "Bode likes to do old-school, Rocky-type
training, like pushing wheelbarrows full of friends up steep hills,"
said McBride for the article. "And he's able to apply the strength and athleticism from
these skills to skiing more effectively than most." They might be a little dated, but they made him, at least in part, the Olympian he is today. 1. Balance: Slacklining Find two trees 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters) apart and tightly string a one-inch-wide (2.54 centimeter) piece of webbing two feet (.5 meters) off the ground between them. Keep your eyes focused on one spot in front of you and slowly walk the length of the rope. Use ski poles for balance at first, but as your skills improve, move the webbing higher, nix the poles, and do a single-leg squat on each step. "Slack-lining is great for learning how to move dynamically and for challenging your balance," says McBride.
We have been huge fans of snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler for a while now—so much so that we made her one of our Adventurers of the Year in 2008 for her decision to take a year to snowboard in the backcountry (watch a video of her in action). During yesterday's Olympic halfpipe competition, Bleiler nailed her signature trick, the Cripler 720, but then crashed. While expected to add another medal to the Silver she won in Torino, Bleiler finished in 11th place. But she took it in stride: "It's crazy, the Olympics. It's two runs of finals. And you work so hard for it," said Bleiler, who won silver in the halfpipe at the 2006 Winter Games. "But sometimes it just isn't your turn." (Read more in this Denver Post article.)
Last summer, Bleiler stopped by our office to talk about her new Oakley ski and snowboarding apparel line, her upcoming wedding in Costa Rica, and her hopes for the Games. Read the interview here.
This afternoon American skier Lindsey Vonn took home downhill gold in Vancouver, despite a shin injury that nearly kept her from competing. A few months back, writer Greg Melville examined the unlikely qualities that make Vonn perhaps the best American downhiller ever. Here's a look at what he discovered.
Lindsey Vonn can’t remember her first time on skis. If she could, she wouldn’t be the overwhelming favorite to win gold in the downhill in Vancouver. Nearly all downhill skiing champions learned the sport between ages two and four. She’s also not British, Australian, Japanese, or Swedish, which is a plus. There’s an amazing pattern to the lives of top skiers like Vonn, from geography to upbringing, that gives them a huge advantage on the slopes. But it’s the way Vonn breaks this mold that makes her the greatest American downhiller—and can teach us all how to raise our game, regardless of sport or skill level.
Why else did Bill Gore invent waterproof-breathable fabric? It was, of course, for hikers to don while exploring Olympic National Park’s fecund, ferny Quinault Valley in the winter, when most of its sopping 12 annual feet of rain falls. You get to slog the valley’s temperate rain forest—one of the world’s rarest ecosystems—in its most natural (read: wet) state, at a time of year when you’ll see more elk than people. The Quinault area is a hall of fame of world-record trees, including red cedar, Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, and hemlock, plus monstrous moss-draped maples, all accessible via short trails out of Lake Quinault. Our picks are the half-mile Maple Glade Trail, the 0.2-mile Quinault Big Cedar Trail, and the 1.3-mile Kestner Homestead Trail (nps.gov/olym). Lake Quinault Lodge provides peaceful refuge from the dampness (doubles from $129).—Text by Robert Earle Howells See more weekend trip ideas >>
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