The ADVENTURE TOP 10: Summits in North America

Text by Steve Rollins, edited by Andrea Minarcek. See more Top 10 lists.

If you’ve been following coverage of this year’s Everest season—now in full swing—it’s probably put you in the mood to climb a challenging, brag-worthy peak of your own. Not everyone, we know, has the ability—or the time, or the cash—to bag the big guy, but thankfully there are plenty of worthy ascents in our own backyard.

We enlisted the help of climber Steve Rollins, of Portland Mountain Rescue, to put together a roster of the Top 10 Summits in North America. “I used my mountaineering experience to pick peaks and routes that I myself find challenging,” Rollins says. “So frankly, most of these climbs probably should be done with the help of a professional guide if you’re not very experienced.” With that in mind, then, here are our picks for the Top 10 Everests for the Everyman.

10. Mt. St. Helens, Monitor Ridge

Everest schmeverest. Try climbing an active volcano! Mount St. Helens—which last (catastrophically) erupted in 1980—is an excellent starter climb without significant rock or ice fall danger. Basic ice ax and crampon skills are appropriate for the snow sections, though during the summer you may be able to hike to the summit on bare ground. (“In the summer,” Rollins says, “it is one step up, three-quarters of a step down—very similar to climbing a sand dune.”) Upon reaching the summit rim, you’ll be treated to spectacular views down into crater and out into the blast zone.

Location: Washington
Altitude: 8,365 feet 
Elevation Gain: 4,600 feet
Required Time: 1 day
Difficulty: Walk up
Required Skills: Ice ax/self arrest, crampon technique, avalanche and navigation skills.

9. Mount Washington, South Gully, Huntington Ravine Route 

Home to some of the most extreme weather on the planet (231 miles-per-hour winds, anyone?) Mount Washington is the tallest peak in the Presidential Range. An ascent of the South Gulley requires ice ax, crampon, ice climbing, and rope/ protection skills. Most of the climb is on steep snow, though the gulley offers a short ice bulge crux. This route is definitely a step above the hiking routes to the summit, requiring genuine mountaineering skills.

Location: New Hampshire
Altitude: 6,288 feet
Elevation Gain: 4,300 feet (from trailhead to summit)
Time Required: 1-2 days
Difficulty: WI1+
Required Skills: Ice ax/self arrest, crampon technique, ice steep snow and ice climbing, roped climbing/ placing protection, avalanche and navigation skills.

8. Mt. Shasta, Hotlum-Bolam Ridge 

A fine line on an beautiful 14,000-footer, this is the second highest peak in Northern Cali’s Cascade Range.

Location: California
Altitude: 14,162 feet
Elevation Gain: 7,200 feet
Time Required: 1-2 days
Difficulty: Class 4
Required Skills: Ice ax/self arrest, crampon technique, avalanche and navigation skills. In late season roped climbing/placing protection may be required if the route is icy.

7. Dallas Peak, East Ridge Route 

Reported to be one of the most difficult 13,000-foot peaks in Colorado to climb. Mixed scrambling and easy technical climbing are required to make the summit, as well as two rappels involved with the descent.

Location: Colorado
Altitude: 13,809 feet
Elevation Gain: 4,500 feet
Time Required: 1 day
Difficulty: 5.3 (YDS)
Required Skills: Navigation, technical rock climbing

6. Mt. Rainier, Ingraham Glacier Direct Route 

 “Some Everest veterans have said the Ingraham Direct route on Rainier reminds them of the Khumbu Ice Fall on Everest, though not as long or with the extremely high altitude challenge,” Rollins says. Expect views of stunning seracs and numerous crevass-crossings. The guide services even construct ladders across some crevasses similar (but much smaller) than the ones you’d find on Everest.

Location: Washington
Altitude: 14,411 feet
Elevation Gain: 9,000 feet
Time Required: 2 days
Difficulty: Grade 2
Required Skills: Ice ax/self arrest, crampon technique, glacier travel, crevasse rescue, snow camping, avalanche and navigation skills.

5. Grand Teton, Owen Spalding (Original Route)

A classic American alpine climb. People travel from around the world to climb this mountain.

Location: Wyoming
Altitude: 13,770 feet
Elevation Gain: 7,000 feet
Time Required: 1-2 days
Difficulty: 5.4 (YDS), Grade III
Required Skills: Ice ax/self arrest, crampon technique, moderate technical rock climbing including placing anchors and rappelling, navigation.

4. Forbidden Peak, West Ridge 

The name is an irresistible challenge; who wouldn’t want to claim a Forbidden Peak? This excellent (and popular) climb offers a 1,500 vertical foot ridge of easy to moderate technical rock climbing.

Location: Washington
Altitude: 8,815 feet
Elevation Gain: 5,600 feet
Time Required: 1-2 days
Difficulty: Grade III / 5.4-5.6 (YDS)
Required Skills: ice axe/ self arrest, crampon technique, glacier travel, technical rock climbing, avalanche and navigation skills

3. Athabasca, North Face

One of the better known mountains in Canada, climbing Mount Athabasca’s North face involves several roped pitches of 45-50 ice and a crux rock climb near the top for good meaure. “This is not the easiest route up,” Rollins says, but “it would certainly be an entertaining and rewarding adventure.”

Location: Alberta, Canada
Altitude: 11,453 feet
Elevation Gain: 4,942 feet
Time Required: 1 day
Difficulty: AI3 M4/5, Grade III, 5.5 (YDS)
Required Skills: Navigation and avalanche skills, glacier travel, technical rock and alpine ice climbing skills

2. Mount Robson, Kain Face

This is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies and perhaps the best known. All routes to the summit are technical, and even the standard routes present objective hazards.

Location: British Columbia, Canada
Altitude: 12,972 feet
Elevation Gain: 10,000+
Time Required: +-4 days
Difficulty: Grade IV, some low 5th class climbing
Required Skills: Ice axe/ self arrest, crampon technique, ice climbing, avalanche and navigation skills, alpine camping.

1. Denali West, Buttress Route

Many Everest vets claim Denali is more difficult than Everest itself, due to the Alaskan peak’s severe weather and minimal support available. It’s certainly a noteworthy achievement: You’ll reach the highest point in the Northern Hemisphere—and get a leg into the “7 Summits” club.

Location: Alaska
Altitude: 20,320 feet 
Elevation Gain: 13,120 feet
Time Required: 15+ days (according to normal ascent schedules and depending on weather)
Difficulty: Grade II
Required Skills: Ice ax/self arrest, crampon technique, glacier travel/rescue, avalanche and navigation skills, winter mountaineer/camping, expedition experience, self-sufficiency!

Adventure in 60 Seconds: Swine Flu—What Travelers Need to Know

Read the updated version of this story >>

Text by Keith Rutowski

Update: The U.S. has now reported its first death due to swine flu. A 23-month-old child in Texas has died from the virus. Read the Reuters article >>

You'd just booked a steal of a trip to Cabo for some much-needed R+R—before the swine flu hysteria hit the news last weekend. Should you cancel your trip?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently recommending that travelers avoid nonessential trips to Mexico, the epicenter of the current swine influenza outbreak. Swine flu is a respiratory disease in pigs caused by type A influenza, which is regularly spread among pigs, and, less commonly, between humans. However, the current outbreak of the disease is thought to be responsible for as many as 2,000 infections and 140 deaths in Mexico alone. 

Decidedly less severe cases of infection are continuing to show up across the globe—including in Spain, Scotland and Canada—and much of Southeast Asia is utilizing thermal scanners to check for fever at airports. And while the U.S. steps up its own border patrol, Russia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan all said they would quarantine travelers displaying symptoms of the virus.

Humans cannot contract swine influenza by consuming properly cooked pork; rather, the disease is transmitted by exposure to infected animals and through human-to-human contact such as sneezing and coughing. Therefore, experts advise individuals who need to travel to Mexico to obey strict rules of hygiene and to seek immediate medical attention if one should display flu-like symptoms (i.e. fever, lethargy, lack of appetite). While there is no vaccine to prevent swine flu, experts recommend that individuals needing to travel to Mexico bring along oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and zanamivir (Relenza) to combat the virus. 

For more information, check out these links:

http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/ 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090427/ap_on_he_me/med_swine_flu

The ADVENTURE Top 10: American Adventures (in Video!)

Text by Andrea Minarcek, see more Top 10 lists
Rankings by Robert Earle Howells, Jim Gorman, and the editors

For our 10th anniversary issue (April/May 2009, on newsstands now) we drew on a decade of experience to find the 50 best adventure trips—in our own spectacular backyard. Heli-skiing, surfing, climbing, pedaling, and paddling excursions across the country made the list, but these ten epic trips took top honors. Check out the videos—and start planning now for a summer staycation in the states!

10. Our Freshwater Ocean: Wreck-diving Lake Superior, Minnesota

The waters off of Grand Portage, Minnesota, near Isle Royale National Park, are packed with epic shipwrecks on par with anything you’d find out by Fiji. And they’re in far better shape: Saltwater sites are far more eroded, usually with coral and sponges littering their surface, while fresh-water wrecks stay pristine.

Need more inspiration? Experience a Lake Superior wreck-dive firsthand with this footage of a 2008 scuba trip to the Madeira site:

A Superior Dive (The Madeira "Wreckumentary") from Mark Parolini on Vimeo.

Read more about this trip here >>

See the next video >>

Travel Tech: Will e-Readers Transform Travel?

Text by Keith Rutowski; Photography courtesy of Amazon

You're preparing for a grueling, 14-hour flight to India for a tiger safari. A shrewd traveler, you know it's going to take more than an iPod to get you through this one. And besides, you've been avoiding that bedside stack of literary classics for too long. There's only one problem: Your carry-on bag is nearly filled to capacity. Moments before you abandon your hopes of plowing through The Brothers Karamazov, you suddenly remember your new Kindle 2, the latest e-reader available to consumers. The clouds part and for a moment all is right in the world. Slipping the e-reader in where it fits in, you're on your way with not one, but several of your 300-plus-page favorites in tow.

Yes, what was once another sci-fi fantasy is now a market reality, and it may just be the future of books. E-readers have come a long way since they emerged a decade ago, but the obvious benefits remain the same. Most now incorporate e-Ink, which produces crisp images mimicking the experience of reading type set on paper. However, the difference maker is still the fact that, where carrying an entire personal library on vacation might have been a bit of a struggle, e-readers have made it possible to tote more than 1,000 books with you. If you run out, there's technology available to wirelessly download more from wherever you are—imagine downloading several guidebooks en route during your trip of a lifetime?

Continue reading this story >>

Video: Kiteboarder Photographs Whale Encounter

Photoshoppers step aside: These images were created with old-fashioned ingenuity—and luck. While kiteboarding in New South Wales, high school photography teacher David Sheridan mounted a camera, set to shoot ten frames a second, to his kite and recorded this incredible encounter.

Headliners: Adventure in 60 Seconds

A roundup of the latest adventure news, by Mindy Zacharjasz

If you fall off that horse… keep on trying to row across the Pacific. At least that's the strategy for Dutchman Ralph Tuijn, whose cross-Pacific Zeeman Ocean Challenge came to an end last week after two aborted attempts (which cost him his solo, non-stop goal) when he docked in Papua New Guinea. But don't worry, he says he'll be back to try again.

Finish lines abound on the Greenland icecap and food seems to be on the mind. The three Norwegian "Girls in Gale" and the young British duo headed home after their cross-Greenland treks and found themselves excited (and nervous) to eat anything but the now-familiar freeze-dried grub. The Petes celebrated their 85-day kite, ski, and walk with another delicacy: real coffee. 

Want 100 mpg? Last week's Plug-In 2008 conference presented near-future hybrid electric vehicles that could do just that.  Air travel hopes green up as well, which should be welcomed news now that jet fuel costs pushed one airline to end flights to 11 cities.

A few more green goodies for the day: Catch a carbon neutral concert, check the carbon footprint of your cheeseburger (it's a lot), or whip up dinner on a future $17 solar cooker. Need a recipe? Search for a green one on your future fuel-cell laptop.

News: Russia's Kamchatka Opens Up

Claim a first ascent on an inactive volcano with new regular flights to the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Text by Kirkpatrick Reardon

It just got easier to explore it on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, the most volcanic region on Earth with 29 active volcanoes (several of them over 10,000 feet tall), rivers rushing with 30-inch rainbow trout, and a record-setting population of brown bears.

Last Monday, Vladivostok Air added regular transpacific flights linking Anchorage to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, the regional capital ($1,890 roundtrip). This marks the first time an air carrier has offered regular commercial flights to the remote region in seven years.

Little development has occurred in the region, which was closed to both Russian and foreign tourists until 1992 to protect the Cold War secrets of military bases peppering the peninsula. Ash from erupting volcanoes occasionally threatens air travel safety over the Pacific, ensuring that only the truly adventurous will make the journey.

Outfitters operating trips in Kamchatka show off the region’s extremes. Many of the peninsula’s 160 dormant volcanoes have not been climbed, and Travel Kamchatka specializes in finding and leading first ascents. Kamchatka Tracks offers an eight-day skydiving tour where participants parachute to the base of an active volcano. The six species of salmon on the peninsula run in rivers that are only accessible by helicopter. Best of Kamchatka has American guides lead anglers on excursions from its fly-out lodge on Two Yurt Lake at the northern edge of the peninsula.

Despite the region’s draws, plenty of seats remain empty. Vladivostok Air is preparing to lose money on the venture this year. “People are suspicious of Russian airlines,” said Vladivostok Air representative Kenji Hanoka, referring to a recent spree of Russian airlines that backed out of plans to offer flights from Anchorage over the past couple of years. “We have to show them we mean business.” The airline will continue running the flight until September 15th in the hopes of proving that outdoor enthusiasts can rely on having adventures on the ground, and not in the air.

Expedition News: Exploring Gabon's Subterranean Caves

This summer, National Geographic Young Explorer grantee Trevor Frost will lead a six-week expedition to Gabon in search of undocumented caves, archaeological discoveries, amazing photographs, and underground kayaking. In addition to finding clues about life in the cradle of humankind, their efforts could help Gabon’s unexplored subterranean caves receive UNESCO World Heritage Site status. Follow the expedition here and at blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/gabon-caves.

Text and photograph by Trevor Frost

Seven years after National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Mike Fay walked across Gabon on the Megatransect, this small tropical country still has many secrets. Some of those secrets are locked in an area with hundreds of caves that few people have visited or even know about. Over the past 20 years, the Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement's Dr. Richard Oslisly and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Dr. Lee White (Mike Fay’s partner in establishing Gabon’s National Park System) have been exploring the caves and have made some incredible discoveries.

In 1994, while deep inside one of the caves, Paouen 1, they found stone tools, stone arrows, and charcoal. Carbon dating placed the tools and arrows to roughly 7,000 BP. In analyzing the charcoal, Dr. Oslisly and Dr. White also found that two of the plant species harbor deadly toxins used to poison arrows, while the third plant species was used for intoxication. They concluded in a 1994 Nature article that these caves held elaborate weapon-making rituals. This discovery, and a host of others, has placed the caves under consideration for Gabon's second UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Today, there are still many caves and archaeological sites to be found and explored. Our team will be trekking through dense rain forest, navigating 30-foot waterfalls, and documenting the secrets inside these mysterious caves. Stay tuned for updates.

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Belkin Phone, SkypeOut Keep Money In

Text and photo by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro

Twenty years ago, my photographer friend Larry Pierce called his wife from his hotel room on a remote island in Tahiti, talked for 15 minutes, and unknowingly racked up a $400 bill. Ouch. Last week in New Zealand, I chatted with my family until even the cat was tired of me and it didn’t cost us a dime. Well, barely a dime.

Like 300 million other people, I used Skype, the voice over internet phone system. But this wasn’t computer to computer—I was calling our home line on Belkin’s Skype handset and talking just as I would on a cell phone.

Continue reading this story>>>

The Adventure Life with Steve Casimiro Another Roadside Attraction: Montezuma Valley, California

Photo by West Coast Editor Steve Casimiro