Our list is out: Each of these ten best adventure destinations for 2012 has new access, be it new parks, trails, hotels, crazy weather patterns, or cosmic events. Combined, it's enough to make a well-traveled world feel full of new frontiers again.
And the best adventure destinations are...
Skiing + Snowboarding Mammoth Mountain, California Rafting the Bruneau and Jarbidge Rivers, Idaho Mountain Biking Bosnia and Herzegovina Snorkeling the Ningaloo Coast, Australia Surfing Todos Santos, Baja, Mexico Exploring Maya Culture, Belize Climbing Mustagata, China Hiking Newfoundland, Canada Canoeing the Susquehanna River Water Trail, Allegheny Mountains, Pennsylvania Kayak Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island
"Jeremy Jones is an alien. He's just inhumanly good at snowboarding." So lives the legend of this pioneering big-mountain rider. We heard this comment this week from an Alaska-based ski/snowboarding operator, but the sentiment is one that rings throughout the snowboarding world.
Once a pro rider hitting a different big-mountain location every week, Jones's ethos have evolved over the years. Instead of heli-assisted first descents, he now prefers to go the old-fashioned way—on foot or splitboard. "The reality with going on foot is that it can take days to go do one run. It’s definitely a quality over quantity deal," he says. His film trilogy Deeper is aimed to show that you can do world-class freeriding without a helicopter. Further, part two due out September 2012, shows some of the best riders exploring the backcountry the slow way, which makes for a more a richer, more personal snowboarding film.
This falls right in line with Protect Our Winters (POW), a foundation Jones started in 2007 to unite the snow-sports industry and fans to fight climate change. With 30,000 members and some of our favorite athletes as ambassadors, Protect Our Winters is taking their message to the classroom and to Congress.
To kick off skiing and snowboarding season, we caught up with Jones to find out the latest on POW, what it's like to talk to Congress about climate change, and his favorite places to ride. —Mary Anne Potts
Become a Protect Our Winters Member: This year, Alamos Wines is spreading the love by gifting 1,000 people with yearlong POW memberships. The winery is getting involved because it relies heavily on the snowmelt from the Andes to irrigate its vineyards. Simply register on protectourwinters.org. Your fee will be waived by entering the codeword ALAMOS.
Adventure: What’s going on with Protect Our Winters right now? Jeremy Jones: The foundation continues to strengthen and grow. We're becoming more educated in doing our job better and making sure that each dollar raised goes as far as possible.
This fall we have been busy with a Hot Planet, Cool Athlete tour, where we take professional athletes into high schools with a scientist. We have this really hip, upbeat presentation on the state of the planet and climate change. We break it down for them and explain ways that they can help. The in-school stuff is the most rewarding, uplifting thing we do at Protect Our Winters because it gives us a level of hope to see the next generation really rise to the challenge of climate change. They really want to make a difference—and they are not accepting defeat like some of the older generations.
A: What's it like to talk to Congress about climate change? Are there any skiers or snowboarders among our elected officials? Jeremy: Well, there aren’t any snowboarders in Congress. But I have met some die-hard skiers...and general mountain climbers and outdoor enthusiasts. When we go to Congress, sometimes we meet with full champions on climate change who are really excited that we are there. They realize that they need our help, really. Although I would say the discussion on climate has gone the wrong way on Capitol Hill over the last couple years. But there’s hope on Capitol Hill that the ship will be righted and we can start feeling positively.
Last night we bumped into David Holbrooke, mastermind behind Mountainfilm, the world-class film festival that explores adventure, exploration, the environment, and world issues each Memorial Day Weekend in Telluride, Colorado. He gave us the skinny on what to do this weekend in New York City: Check out the incredible films and adventurers who have arrived in Gotham for the very first Mountainfilm in New York.
Here's our short list of film picks:
Kadoma - A tribute to Hendri Coetzee and a must see. The legendary expedition kayaker was killed by a 15-foot croc in the Congo last year. A film by Ben Stookesberry, kayaker and former Adventurer of the Year—who will be there in person.
Spoil - A new film by NG explorers Trip Jennings and Andy Maser about the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, home to the spirit bear and teeming with wildlife. Also potentially the site of new oil pipeline....
Cold - Photographer/mountaineer Cory Richards shows what's it's like to climb an 8,000-meter peak in winter. And get caught in an avalanche.
Alone on the Wall - Our favorite free soloist Alex Honnold on climbing without ropes. A true adventure classic. Alex was also an Adventurer of the Year.
Towers of Ennedi - The North Face climbing team—Renan, Alex, James, Jimmy—takes on the sandstone wonderland of Chad. We first covered this expedition in our Extreme Photo of the Week.
The trail to summit of Noshaq now open to mountaineers as the Wildlife Conservation Society and others anticipate return of tourism to the mountain. Photograph by Anthony Simms/WCS Afghanistan Program
Closed off from the outside world for decades due to regional insecurity, Afghanistan’s highest mountain, Mount Noshaq, is once again accessible to the mountaineering community, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society, Australian Geographic Outdoor, and other groups.
Located in the Hindu Kush Mountains of the Wakhan Corridor, an isolated panhandle of land connecting Afghanistan with China, Mount Noshaq stands at 7,492 meters (24,580 feet) in height. The region is home to many species of wildlife, including Marco Polo sheep, urial, ibex, and snow leopards.
The reopening of Mount Noshaq was commemorated by a recent mountain climbing expedition involving Anthony Simms, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Afghanistan Program Technical Advisor, and supported by The North Face/AG Outdoor Adventure Grant for 2011. Launched on July 25th, the expedition reached the summit of Noshaq on August 4th. The other members included: Tim Wood, who became the first Australian ever to reach the summit; Aziz Beg, who became only the third Afghan national to reach the summit; Abdul Hakim, a local ranger trained by WCS; and Malang Daria.
Two years ago, a then-27-year-old economics student at the University of Utah named Tim DeChristopher spoiled an auction of pristine Western wilderness—intended as a parting gift from the soon-departing Bush administration to some of its oil and gas buddies—by spontaneously bidding nearly $2 million for drilling rights to 22,500 acres. When it (immediately) turned out that DeChristopher didn’t have the cash, nor serious interest in anything but protesting the sale, he was arrested and charged with two felony counts for interfering and making false representations. After lengthy court proceedings he was found guilty this past March—never being allowed to testify as to his motivations. When he arrived in a Salt Lake City courtroom this past week he faced up to ten years in prison and a fine of $1.5 million.
Derogatorily labeled a “prankster” who was “lionized by environmentalists,” DeChristopher has been championed by climate change heroes, including James Hansen and Bill McKibben. Since his arrest the Telluride-based husband/wife filmmaking team of Beth and George Gage have been documenting the struggle. I’ve seen various trailers for their Bidder 70 (the number on the auction paddle used by DeChristopher), and the powerful, soon-to-be-completed film will go a long way to expanding upon his trials and humanize what may for many seem like a distant and solitary act of protest.
He was sentenced to two years, fined $10,000, handcuffed, and transferred to Davis County Jail; his time will be spent in federal prison. Twenty-six protestors outside the court were arrested.
The auctions he interrupted in 2008? Declared “incorrectly administered” in 2009 by the Interior Department, which yanked the land off the auction block.
Exploring Fiji is pretty high up on our must-see wish list—the stunning islands, the surf breaks, the marine life, the beach culture. Here's some good news from the Wildlife Conservation Society just in time for World Oceans Day (learn more about the world's seas on our National Geographic Oceans site).
The Wildlife Conservation Society, Pacific Blue Foundation, Wetlands International, and the Waitt Institute announced today that the people of Fiji’s Totoya Island have declared part of their coral reefs sacred in honor of World Oceans Day.
WCS Fiji Director, Dr. Stacy Jupiter and a coalition of partners spent the last eight days exploring Totoya Island. Accompanied by the island’s high chief, Roko Sau, the research team discovered not only a healthy coral reef system teeming with fish species, many of which are not found in other nearby areas, but a rich culture, tradition, and livelihoods generated from these important resources. Dr. Jupiter has been chronicling her expedition online at National Geographic News Watch.
By Gregg Treinish, founder of ASC and former Adventurer of the Year
As ambassadors of the outdoors—the people who are living in, moving through, and sharing the value of the wilderness with the rest of the world—we have a responsibility to do all that is in our power to protect what we love so much.
Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (ASC) works to create partnerships between adventure athletes and scientists who need them to collect scientific data. ASC is an organization that gives athletes the knowledge, tools, and skills to make expeditions have a tangible and lasting impact on conservation. Some of our supporters include Conrad Anker, Roz Savage, Jon Bowermaster, Captain Joel Fogel, Trip Jennings, Lance Craighead, Celine Cousteau, and
To find more information you can visit www.adventureandscience.org. Or you can visit us on Facebook: Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation.
We were recovering at our Obenge base camp when we heard the strange screams. “Pardon Papa! Pardon Papa!” over and over again, with a sound like bamboo being chopped down prompting each yell. Effrin, a local guide, pointed to the corner of camp and explained in half French, half English that Major Guy was whipping a 16-year-old boy for raping an 11-year-old girl earlier that day in the village. It was a wakeup call, just in case we needed one—we were still in Congo, where you should always expect anything.
By Trip Jennings and Kyle Dickman; Photographs by Terese Hart and the Bonobo in Congo Project
There was a shootout. Andy and I weren’t there, but we learned through satellite text messages that Colonel Gui and his soldiers from the Congolese army ran into the bandits somewhere between Kisangani and Obenge—likely the brothers of Colonel Toms, a convicted war criminal and poacher. A gunfight ensued. One poacher was injured and two others were apprehended. Colonel Gui, with his prisoners in tow, is still coming to Obenge to root out poachers in the region. We should see them tomorrow. I got the news during a four-day sampling hike through TL2 with Andy and the scientist John Hart.
But let me back up. After Kisangani, which is from where I last blogged, we flew to Kindu, a town on the border of the 25,000 square mile jungle known as TL2. It's the region Elephant Ivory Project leader Samuel Wasser wants elephant dung samples from most (read the previous posts to understand why). From Kindu, the three of us spent two days on the back of motorbikes, riding dirt paths notched into the jungle and savannah. These paths are arteries out of the bush. We saw locals pushing bicycles loaded with everything from pineapples to bush meat in the form of monkeys and okapi, a striped cousin of the giraffe. At the Lomami River, we loaded into motorized pirogues for a supposed two-day trip north to Obenge, the Hart’s research camp in the northern part of the proposed Lomami National Park. John stopped at every riverside village—about a dozen—to explain what the national park meant for the locals.
By Trip Jennings and Kyle Dickman; Photographs courtesy Kyle Dickman, Skip Brown, and Terese Hart
We just arrived this morning and I already want to leave Kisangani, a city of 700,000 in the center of Congo’s jungle. A cholera outbreak started in the city last week and left 27 dead—200 more cases have been reported. Andy and I are with Terese and John Hart, conservationists who have been working in the DRC for 30 years. They’ve agreed to help us plan our mission. But the question of where to start sampling elephant dung isn’t simple. The region Dr. Wasser wants us to sample most, the proposed Lomami National Park in the 25,000 square mile jungle known as TL2, has become even more dangerous.
The Harts, who have been a driving force behind the creation of Lomani National Park, had just received a letter from the one of their TL2-based supporters. It warned them of a man who is calling himself Moses and planting burning crosses—death threats—in the front yards of people who support the creation of Lomami National Park. President Kabila is expected to approve the park this year. That declaration could crack down on poachers operating in the region, which is why Moses opposes any additional protections to TL2.
"There’s so much conflict in the country that we don't know how many elephants are left in some of DRC’s biggest protected areas," says Dr. Samuel Wasser, the director of the Center for Conservation Biology. “One thing we do know is African elephant numbers are dropping, and a lot of ivory is coming from the Congo.” Samples from TL2 will help Wasser locate and stop poachers operating around the country.
So we’re going in. The expedition is far and away the most complicated of my life. I’ve never needed a military escort.
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