Snowboarder Jeremy Jones on Protect Our Winters

"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.

Video: Watch the Amazing JP Auclair Street Skiing Scene From All.I.Can.

JP Auclair Street Segment (from All.I.Can.) from Sherpas Cinema on Vimeo.

This scene from the award-winning Sherpas Cinema ski film All.I.Can. may have been our favorite at the Banff Mountain Film Festival. Set to LCD Soundsystem's "Dance Yourself Clean," it features freeskier JP Auclair jibbing his way through three towns in British Columbia, Canada. "We asked people if we could 'play' in their front yards before we'd start jumping over their cars, etc.," says Auclair, who seems to effortlessly ski across snowless roads (causing sparks), down staircases, and flipping through intersections. "We had spotters at each intersection to make sure there were no cars coming ... usually our spotters were kids walking back from school and people living in the neighborhood." Amid all the fun of this scene is a serious message: "Showing skiing where most might not have expected it, making turns beyond the ski resort, beyond the snow was a simple way to illustrate human's capability for imagination and creativity—which are just a few of the qualities we need to solve crisis like global warming," says Auclair, who answered some of our questions about the scene below. —Mary Anne Potts

Adventure: All.I.Can. has a strong environmental message. How does this scene play into that? 

JP Auclair: Global warming is a serious issue. People have to act. We believe we need to go beyond the traditional "consume less, travel less, live less" mentality. We believe a shift in the approach to a sustainable world is also needed. The parallel drawn with the piece is basically to show we can think outside the box. Showing skiing where most might have not expected it, making turns beyond the ski resort, beyond the snow was a simple way to illustrate human's capability for imagination and creativity—which are just a few of the qualities we need to solve crisis like global warming.

A: Is it legal to ski like this? Did you have to ask people to stay out of the way? 
JP: This was shot in Trail, Nelson, and Rossland—all in B.C., Canada. Not sure if this was entirely legal to ski like that. I can say, however, that you're less likely to run into trouble in whatever you are doing if you respect the wellbeing of others around you. We asked people if we could "play" in their front yard before we'd start jumping over their cars, etc. We had spotters at each intersections to make sure there were no cars coming ... usually our spotters were kids walking back from school and people living in the neighborhood. Lots of "standbyers" participated!

Born to Explore: Richard Wiese on Cultural Exploration and His Hardest Expedition Yet--Fatherhood

Photograph courtesy Born to Explore/ABC

Some people seem to have exploration hard coded into their DNA. This is true for Richard Wiese, whose globetrotting parents took him to some of the world's most far flung places starting at an early age—including climbing Kilimanjaro at age 11. We spoke to Wiese, former president of the Explorers Club and a lifelong adventurer and field scientist, about his new TV show, Born to Explore (Saturdays on ABC, check local listings). Once admittedly fueled by testosterone, Wiese is now a family man, and it shows. Here he explains his shift away from adrenaline to a slower, more deliberate approach to experiencing the Earth's amazing places, cultures, and creatures. Tune in this week to see Australia's rugged Northern Territory (see a preview below).

Adventure: By the time we publish this interview you’ll be Iceland. What’s going on there?
Richard Wiese: We're shooting episodes of Born to Explore about volcanoes and looking into Viking ancestry. Iceland is very interesting because the Mid-Atlantic Ridge goes right through Iceland, so y ou have the North American plates and the European plates colliding or spreading apart from there. So everything in Iceland is predicated on volcanoes. In fact, the term "geyser" comes from Icelandic.

A: You’re kind of a volcano hunter, aren’t you?
RW: I actually studied geology at Brown; I've done quite a few projects with volcanoes—and quite a few active ones: Cotopaxi in Mexico when it was erupting; Etna in Sicily, Italy; Soufriere Hills in Montserrat; Kilauea in Hawaii. Volcanoes seem to chase me around ... or the other way around.



A: Which volcano would you recommend for a first-time lava trek?
RW: Kilauea in Hawaii is probably the most active and the safest one to go up to. But Etna is interesting, too, because you are in Sicily. There are more complex volcanoes out there, but they are beyond the Volcano 101 trip.

News Update: "Prankster" Environmental Advocate Tim DeChristopher Jailed

By Jon Bowermaster

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.

For more, visit takepart.com.

Elephant Ivory Project: Young Explorers Face Poachers, Bush Meat, and No Sign of Elephants

Riding a motorbike through the savannah

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.

World Water Day: How Long Can You Last Without Water?

National Geographic Explorer David de Rothschild pictured aboard the Plastiki, a boat made of post-consumer plastic bottles which embarked on a voyage from San Francisco to Sydney one year ago yesterday. The expedition made de Rothschild one of our 2010 Adventurers of the Year.

Op-ed by David de Rothschild; Photograph courtesy of Adventure Ecology 

If you type the phrase "how long can you last without" into Google, given the thousands of preemptive suggestions to fire back to complete the phrase, it might surprise you that "water" is the first word to bubble up and claim top spot. Scan the first few pages of the 159,000,000 search results and you’re presented with a collection of near identical survival websites focused on tips needed to keep your personal water tank from dipping dipping into the red.

But amid all the reams of cut-and-paste references, one particular tip caught my eye. It was a sentence that could easily win the award for most obvious statement of 2011: "The best method to survive without water is not to be placed in that situation in the first place."

Gear Review: The North Face's Eco-Friendly Backpack

By National Geographic Adventure Contributing Editor Steve Casimiro, editor of The Adventure Life

I long for the day when environmentally conscious products like The North Face Tree Hugger 32 backpack ($149) are the exception and not the rule, when instead of saying, “Oh my gosh, it’s made of wool,” we say something like, “Ew, can you believe they’re still using petroleum to make their packs?” For now, though, I’ll take comfort that the capability exists and that a brand as big as TNF is getting behind it.

And the Tree Hugger is nothing if not capable. Once you get over the novelty of its material, the pack feels, acts, and behaves like any other 32-liter backpack. You stuff your kit into the top, smush it down to the bottom, make sure it’s well-balanced behind the plastic frame sheet, and away you go. The load carries nicely for a minimalist pack—the hipbelt and straps are both lightly padded with vented mesh and foam—though if you fill all 32 liters with, say, full water bottles vs. pingpong balls, you’re going to wish for a more robust suspension. Stick to extended day trip use and you’ll be happy.

The wool itself is ripstop and treated with a durable water resistant coating that makes liquids bead and roll off like pearls. It feels softer and more natural than a typical nylon pack, but no less abrasion proof. The synthetics on it—webbing, mesh, foam, buckles—are 100 percent recycled, too. Time will tell if the Tree Hugger leads the way to more innovation in the use of natural materials or simply becomes a one-note feel good; from my experience filling it and carrying it, I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be the former.

Sea Kayaking British Columbia: Islands at the Edge of the World

By Julia DeWitt, reporting from a National Geographic Young Explorers-funded expedition to sea kayak and explore the unique cultural heritage of British Columbia's Haida Gwaii archipelago.

Haida Gwaii, formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, is an archipelago of roughly 150 islands that lies 75 miles west of the remote coastal town of Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Nicknamed the “Galapagos of the North” for their remarkable ecological diversity, Haida Gwaii translates to mean “Islands of the People.” The Haida are the people that these islands belong to, and it is their rich history of conservation and cultural preservation paired with the landscape itself that has inspired us to first paddle its rough and pristine coastal waters. Our water expedition will be followed by time in the backcountry, with a stint in Skidegate learning more about the rich history of conservation activism and the concomitant cultural preservation movement that has developed there.

Pangaea Himalayan Expedition: Exploring the Heights With Mike Horn (Video)

Follow South African explorer Mike Horn and his expedition team as they trek through Pakistan's Karakoram Valley high in the Himalayas.

The Pangaea Project (PAN Global Adventure for Environmental Action) is a four-year exploration spanning the globe initiated by South African explorer Mike Horn in 2008. The project was devised by Horn as a way to engage international youth in exploring the world around them, learning about human impacts on the environment, and actively participating in clean-up and community projects.

Having engaged in beach and island clean-up projects in Borneo and India earlier this year, Horn and his expedition team now find themselves in the majestic heights of the Himalayas, guiding a group of eight young explorers on a month-long trek over Pakistan's Karakoram Valley to witness firsthand the amazing views of Nanga Parbat, Broad Peak, the Gasherbrum peaks, the Baltoro Massif, and the mighty K2.

Adventure in 60 Seconds: This Week in Exploration

Text by Tetsuhiko Endo

At the NG Adventure Blog, our reporting often focuses on adventurers of leisure--people who test themselves against Mother Nature in dogged adherence to the George Mallory school of philosophy: "Because it's there." Risk and reward for these modern thrill-seekers is high, but measured on a mostly personal scale. However, there is another class of adventurer for whom the stakes are often higher, the odds longer, and the prestige much less. These are the vocational adventurers, people who tempt fate every time they punch the clock.

Among this intrepid, yet under appreciated crew are crab fishermen, war correspondents, emergency aid workers, and most pertinently, the people who are currently trying to fix what could turn out to be the worst ecological disaster of our time, the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. A few days ago, BP engineers lowered a cap onto the underwater oil leak that is designed to divert the flow of some of the crude to tankers sitting on the surface, roughly a mile overhead, reports the BBC.