To Hatch a Crow

Female first ascentionists...and other rare creatures!

2012-02-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

Dorothy Pilley

I can't recall exactly how it happened, but it dawned on me when I was climbing with my fiancée, Heather, recently.

During the brief down time in our average climbing day, she does sensible things like stretch while I'm sniffing around every corner for unclimbed rock that could potentially yield a new climb. Why doesn't she obsess over first ascents like I do?

Then another light bulb flickered over my head. Why don't women obsess over first ascents like men do?

The truth is, the progression of women in climbing is consistent with men's progression in every single way except for one: first ascents.

To begin with, few climbers -- male or female -- do new routes. And of those who do, men do most of them because they significantly outnumber female climbers. Agreed. But the gender ratio doesn't even come close to explaining the infinitesimal percentage of climbs that have been established by women.

So where are the women?

First, let's back up and address the most glaring exception: Lynn Hill's first free ascent of The Nose on Yosemite's El Capitan. Despite attempts by some of the best climbers of the day, Hill succeeded in 1993 where everyone else failed. "It goes, boys!" said Hill famously, after her climb.

Moreover, she returned in 1994 to free climb The Nose again, this time in under 24 hours. Hers was unquestionably one of the greatest climbing achievements of all time. Obviously, women are as capable as men of climbing things first. So why do they rarely do it?

Amanda Fox is associate editor at Boulder-based Climbing Magazine. For two years she's reported worldwide first ascents online at climbing.com. I asked her why more women aren't pioneering new climbs, and she seemed as baffled as I am. "It doesn't make sense," she said. "Hopefully that'll change soon."

Fox speculates that elite women may not be motivated to establish new climbs because they're focusing more on "catching up" to the world's best male climbers.

If true, this would help explain why top female climbers rarely establish new routes. But the majority of first ascensionists are far from elite. They're average dudes who explore and develop new climbs that are within reach of the masses.

There has to be something else.

Boulder's Jenn Flemming is one local woman who has established new routes. In addition to her first ascents in Bolivia, Iran and Tajikistan, Flemming established a dangerous trad route in Boulder Canyon last April called Israel (5.12+ R). One reason why Flemming thinks more women aren't pioneering new climbs is that there's a lack of female mentors doing first ascents. Another reason, she explained, "is the tremendously labor-intensive element. I think that can deter a lot of female climbers."

Indeed, Adrian Hogel, of Boulder, is put off by the "dirty work" of new routes. She said, "For me, the glory of doing a first ascent doesn't outweigh the difficult work it takes to accomplish it."

A great point. After all, there are so many existing routes -- why bother doing new ones?

I asked local climber and prolific first-ascensionist Matt Samet what drives him to climb things first. He said that at 17 years old, after climbing a beautiful new boulder problem in New Mexico, he realized, "The best climbs might be the ones not yet ascended." But like Flemming and Hogel, he thinks that elbow grease discourages women. "So much of what you're doing is brute, ugly, filthy caveman labor that it must, on some primal level, click more with men," said Samet.

Makes sense. But is that all?

I wondered what Lynn Hill -- nearly 20 years after she first free climbed The Nose -- would say about the conspicuous absence of estrogen associated with new routes. She said, "Society has told women they should be the supporting role. The biology is that women are more practical and reasonable in terms of taking unnecessary risks. We are not motivated to be the heroes."

Then Hill offered a more light-hearted perspective. She compared the overwhelming percentage of male first ascensionists to dogs who pee on trees. "They're just marking territory," she said with a laugh.

Chris Weidner :DailyCamera

US offshore wind turbines face hurricane wipe out!

2012-02-15T02:22:00.000-08:00

Hurricanes could destroy the offshore wind farms the US is planning to build in the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

The US Department of Energy set a goal for the country to generate 20 per cent of its electricity from wind by 2030. One-sixth is to come from shallow offshore turbines that sit in the path of hurricanes.

Stephen Rose and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, modelled the risk hurricanes might pose to turbines at four proposed wind farm sites. They found that nearly half of the planned turbines are likely to be destroyed over the 20-year life of the farms. Turbines shut down in high winds, but hurricane-force winds can topple them.

In 2007, Texas granted a multimillion-dollar lease for a wind farm site near Galveston, Texas. Rose found it was "the riskiest location to build a wind farm of the four locations examined".

Each wind farm may cost $175 million. "We want these risks to be known now before we start putting these wind turbines offshore," says team member Paulina Jaramillo. "We don't want any backlash when the first one goes down and it costs a lot to replace."

Tributes to popular veteran climber killed in north Wales

2012-02-14T01:10:00.002-08:00

Tributes have been paid to a popular north Wales climber who was killed in a head on crash near Flint in north Wales. Alan Mort from Kinmel Bay had just retired as a paramedic and was enjoying one of his favourite activities-road biking-when he was in collision with a Range Rover on the A548.

A Welsh Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We are shocked and saddened by the tragic death of Alan and our thoughts are with his family at this sad time. “Alan was greatly respected not just by his former colleagues in Flintshire, but by staff across North Wales. “He was a kind and gentle man who brought great compassion and care to the patients he treated during his time in the ambulance service.
“He was a role model to many of our current staff and will be sadly missed by all.”

Writing on the UKClimbing forum, close friend and climbing partner Peter Owens made a moving tribute to his lost compadre.Peter explained "we both started climbing in the late 60,s until we partnered up in the early 70's. His main stomping grounds were north Wales limestone outcrops although a fiercely competitive climber he never, ever sought any recognition for the first ascents he bagged. It was with some humour that we used to read the 'new' guide books with lists of new routes which Alan and I had climbed in the early seventies'.

In one humorous anecdote Peter recalled them climbing the classic Tryfan mountaineering route, Grooved Arete, with Alan carrying his faithful dog in his rucksack.

"we overtook some slower climbers and as Alan passed the slower lead climber the dog barked in the ear of the stranger, who promptly screamed and fell off ( he was unhurt). We couldn't stop laughing for hours after the event although we did speed up our ascent and descent before yet another fight broke !'

Another friend, Andy Polakowski outlined Alan's great enthusiasm and success in the Cyclists' Touring Club (CTC) Touring Competition.

Movingly, Alan's son Chris described how they had enjoyed 20 years of cragging together. Describing how his father was a 'capable and 'game' climbing partner.

" Though he perhaps understood that age was beginning to prohibit his ability to push his grade, he would be delighted to hold a rope for me in all manner of grizzly weather while I pushed mine, tackling any falls with his cracking sense of humour. Failing this we would quite happy sit atop the crags with a flask and put the world to rights. During such times my dad would always bring forth the trademark phrase.... "Its alright this climbing thing innit ?" '

Apart from his enthusiasm for rock climbing and cycling,Alan was a keen paddler and dinghy sailor.

North Wales Police reported that a 44-year-old driver of a 4x4 car has been arrested and released on bail pending further enquiries.

Himalayan glacial ice loss stats confounds the doomsayers

2012-02-11T00:32:00.000-08:00

THE world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the past decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed about 50 billion tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

The study is the first to survey all the world's ice caps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps, in Greenland and Antarctica, is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice-loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.

The melting of Himalayan glaciers caused controversy in 2009 when a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change mistakenly stated the glaciers would disappear by 2035, instead of 2350.

However, the scientist who led the new work maintains that the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern. ''Our results and those of everyone else show we are losing a huge amount of water into the oceans every year,'' said Professor John Wahr, of the University of Colorado.

His team's study is published in the journal Nature.

The scientists point out that lower-altitude glaciers in the Asian mountain ranges are definitely melting.

Satellite images and reports confirm this.

But over the study period, from 2003 to 2010, enough ice was added to the peaks to compensate.

Black outdoor instructor targeted by Cornish racists

2012-02-07T09:09:00.000-08:00

The lack of black activists within UK mountain activities is a notable and much debated issue within the climbing world. For one young black man from Liverpool 8- better known to the outside world as Toxteth- escape from these mean streets came via a self funded outdoor instructors course in N Wales.

Using his skills and experience as an instructor, Samuel Farmer eventually moved with his family to St Agnes in Cornwall to set up an outdoor charity project to enable young people, particularly young black people from the inner cities, to experience activities such as rock climbing,kayaking and horse riding.

Despite enjoying great success with his mission, Samuel and his family began to suffer sustained racial abuse from neanderthal elements within the local community which culminated with a horrific arson attack. The following is an interview Samuel gave with The Voice journal. At the time of writing no one has ever been arrested or charged.

WHEN YOUTH project manager Samuel Farmer moved to a small village in Cornwall, he was filled with high hopes of starting a life in the country. He never could have imagined what happened next. Here, he tells David Woode how his countryside dream turned into a nightmare.

“…After enduring years of racial abuse in the quiet Cornwall village where I run a youth project, the barn where I store equipment and personal belongings was razed to the ground in a racially aggravated arson attack (on January 8).

“In a matter of minutes, flames had charred canoes, surfboards, musical instruments and my partner’s artwork.

“That night, £70,000 was senselessly destroyed.

“It’s not the first time we’ve been targeted by arsonists; the barn was set alight 18 months ago but this time the damage was devastating.

“The fire had started in the early hours of the morning, but the police didn’t notify us until just after 11am.
“We raced over to the scene and saw all of our possessions smouldering.

“I’ve had people scream ‘go back to the jungle you black bastard’ at me. The words ‘Emmets Go Home’ (Emmets is a Cornish term meaning ‘outsiders’) has been scrawled on sign posts at the end of my lane. What am I supposed to think?

“In 2007, I moved to Cornwall with Carla, my partner of 22 years. She’s an art teacher, and together we wanted to create something that offered inner-city kids a holistic approach to education and recreation. Why is it that we don’t see black kids windsurfing? Rock climbing? Riding horses? We wanted to address that.

“We bought a plot of land in the small village of St Agnes, which is 10 miles from Truro, and established The Hope Project.

“Over the last two years, we’ve welcomed 300 youngsters from inner-city areas in Cornwall and Liverpool and encouraged them to take part in outdoor pursuits.

“We knew there was a possibility this would upset some of the villagers, but we never imagined it would reach this climax. And while it’s not the first time we’ve been targeted by arsonists, the police have done nothing to protect us in the past.

“Since moving here, rocks have been hurled at me and my five-year-old daughter, and as a family we’ve endured a torrent of racial abuse. We also went to the police after a brutal attack on one of our horses, which lost an eye as a result.

“A lot of people don’t like the fact that I’m bringing inner city youths to the village. They think I’m importing crime into the area.

“But The Hope Project isn’t just for inner city kids from Liverpool or London. I started this project in Cornwall and, believe it or not, there are a lot of urban kids here who have never been to the beach or engaged in outdoor pursuits, and I wanted to address that.

“It’s quite unusual for a black family to up sticks from the hustle of urban city life and set up in rural countryside, but we are trying to be pioneers.

“I was born in Toxteth, Liverpool, in 1965 to an English mother and an African-American father, and I grew up on one of the worst streets in the area.

“The influx of West Indian migrants to the city had created divisions within the community and racism weaved its way into the area’s consciousness.

During the 1970s, the National Front were rampaging the city, and if you were young and black you seldom strayed from your area for fear of being chased by ex-mods wielding Stanley knives.

“The police were famously unbearable, and as a youngster I couldn’t walk down the street without being pulled aside by a policeman. But it all came to a head with the Toxteth Riots in July 1981. The disturbances were a mix of simmering racial tension, poverty and hostility towards the police.

“I lived in a house with my mother and 15 siblings, and from a young age I tried to provide for her. But there were times when I’d watch her cry over a bowl of rice and I would think, ‘what more can I do?’

“The pressures of inner-city life made me leave home at 14. With my belongings in a shopping trolley, I lived with a group of bikers for a couple of years.

“The late 1980s acid scene heavily influenced them, but never me. My only drug of choice was the great outdoors. It might have something to do with coming from a large family. I craved breathing in fresh air and witnessing calming yet spectacular views.

“When I was 26, I saw an advert for a mountaineering course in Bryn Du, which is in Llanberis, North Wales.

The course cost £6,000, it took three years to qualify and I taught it for 15 years. I had always harboured the intention of escaping city life, and starting The Hope Project was the realisation of that dream. But why should we be forced to run away from people calling us ‘n***ers and destroying our livelihood?

“While not everyone in Cornwall is horrible and racist, you have to wait for people to say hello to you. There’s nothing worse than being snubbed.

The fire has been a huge setback for us. My partner has suffered panic attacks and is unable to visit the site.
“It’s unlikely that we’ll be able to run the project this summer but we are determined to get back on track.

I’ve worked hard to provide deprived youngsters with recreational and aspirational activities.

“It’s a revelation when you have a youngster who’s at the end of a rope abseiling down a windy cliff and the force of nature is upon them. They’ll put their trust in you because you’re showing them something different.

“We’re living under a cloud where race is on the political agenda, and it’s important for me to continue to stand up for what I believe in.”

When contacted by The Voice, detectives investigating the fire said they would act vigorously if evidence of racism was found.

A spokesman for Devon and Cornwall police told The Voice that officers are currently investigating the January 8 fire at Farmer’s barn near Truro, Cornwall as arson.

However, investigating officer detective constable Chris Panther said this could change with new evidence.
Panther said: “Mr Farmer believes he has been targeted because of his skin colour, and if we find this is the case it will be treated seriously and investigated thoroughly. It will also give the court, if anyone is charged, greater sentencing powers.”

The Voice

Piolets d'Or announces 'noteworthy' ascents long list

2012-02-04T14:17:00.000-08:00

Judging Panel head honcho-Michael Kennedy:Photo Alpinist magazine

The 20th Piolets d'Or, a celebration of noteworthy mountaineering ascents during 2011, will take place in Chamonix and Courmayeur from 21st -24th March.

Currently, a small steering panel has selected more than 80 ascents from last year that for a variety of reasons are deemed to have made a significant contribution to mountaineering.

This is shortly to be reduced to a collection of 20-25 that perhaps best upholds the spirit of the Piolets d'Or, as outlined in its charter.

This shorter list will be presented to the 2012 six-member jury, who will nominate up to half a dozen ascents for this year's awards.

The jury is presided over by well-known American mountaineer and magazine editor Michael Kennedy. Amongst his many notable first ascents are the Infinite Spur on Foraker, Wall of Shadows on Hunter's North Buttress and the North East Face of Ama Dablam during the Nepalese winter. Long time editor of Climbing Magazine, Kennedy is now chief editor of Alpinist.

Joining him on the panel are: the noted Russian alpinist, now living in Canada, Valery Babanov, whose resume includes the first ascent (solo) of Meru Central and the North West Pillar of Jannu; German Ines Papert, well known for her success in world ice climbing competitions and recent hard ascents in the Greater Ranges; Alberto Inurrategi, a legendary Spanish Basque, who has climbed impressive new routes around the globe, as well as all 14 8,000m peaks without oxygen; Liu Yong (a.k.a. Daliu), a Chinese mountaineering guide from Chengdu who recently made the first ascent of Yangmolong and is one of the new breed of Chinese climbers making technical ascents in alpine style; and Alessandro Filippini from Italy, who works for the major magazines, Tuttosport and Gazzetta dello Sport.

Since 2009 the Piolets d'Or has presented a career or lifetime achievement award. The first, Walter Bonatti, was followed in 2010 by Reinhold Messner and in 2011 Doug Scott.

This year the award is being presented to one of the great icons of French alpinism, Robert Paragot. Born in 1927, Paragot's greatest achievements are probably: the first ascent of the south face of Aconcagua, one of the first really major, technically difficult, high-altitude walls to be climbed; the first ascent of Jannu; first ascent of the north face of Huascaran; and leading the expedition to Makalu that broke new boundary's in technically difficult climbing at the highest altitudes with its first ascent of the elegant west ridge.

Many of Paragot's ascents took place with the late Lucien Berardini, and this famous partnership paralleled that of Joe Brown and Don Whillians at the time.

The Piolets d'Or has evolved considerably in the 20 years since its creation, though the spirit of today's nominees generally remains the same. In 1992 the first climbers to receive an award were Marko Prezelj and Andrej Stremfelj for their alpine-style ascent of a long, hard and bold new route up the south ridge of Kangchenjunga South.

The "long list" of 2011 ascents is still being updated, but is available to view at www.pioletsdor.com.

The Cerro Torre controversy revisited

2012-02-01T12:33:00.000-08:00

Gregory Crouch on the final headwall of the Compressor Route of Cerro Torre in 1996. This was one of 13 failed attempts to climb Cerro Torre that year -- he succeeded on his 14th attempt. (Photo: Gregory Crouch collection)  

In mid January 2012, Hayden Kennedy and I completed the defining climb of our collective careers. But, the mountain and our route have been betrayed by the unfortunate controversy that enshrouds it like the clouds."

-- Jason Kruk

Cerro Torre (10,262 feet) is an ice-coated, granite spire in Argentine Patagonia that many consider the most beautiful mountain in the world.

Ever since 1959, when Italian Cesare Maestri claimed to have made Cerro Torre's first ascent, this forbidding yet alluring peak has been plagued by contention. Cerro Torre's latest -- and perhaps most inflammatory -- worldwide scuffle began just over two weeks ago, when Hayden Kennedy, 21 of Colorado, and Jason Kruk, 24, of British Columbia, began their descent from its elusive summit.

In a matter of hours while on rappel, Kennedy and Kruk removed about 125 bolts from the southeast face of the peak, essentially erasing the most popular route on the mountain.

This unprecedented act -- applauded by some of the world's greatest climbers, yet harshly criticized by others -- has become the most controversial event in recent climbing history. This extraordinary situation has implications that may influence existing bolts on mountains and cliffs across the globe.

In order to understand why, consider this bizarre sliver of Cerro Torre's history:

In early 1970, the international climbing community cast serious doubts on Maestri's 1959 route up the north side of Cerro Torre. Many called him a liar, which angered Maestri to no end. He vengefully returned to Cerro Torre later that year with five companions and a gas-powered compressor drill. He forced a new route up the southeast ridge by drilling roughly 400 bolts up blank rock -- a tactic so blasphemous that his so-called Compressor Route was promptly condemned the world over. Some outspoken climbers even called Maestri's bolting campaign a "rape" and a "murder" of Cerro Torre.

Yet the Compressor Route remained, and despite its jaded history became the "normal" route up Cerro Torre. In fact, it was so much easier than any other route that more than 90 percent of the mountain's ascents were via the Compressor Route.

But talk of removing Maestri's bolts had become louder in the last six years. One of Patagonia's latest, greatest challenges was to climb the southeast ridge without the bolts. A handful of brave alpinists had tried it, including American Colin Haley. In an interview with Haley last winter I asked whether he planned to remove the bolts himself. He said, "I don't know if I yet have the courage to act on it. Not because I don't feel it would be justified, but because I would be worried about the repercussions."

On Jan. 15, Kennedy and Kruk impressed the climbing world by succeeding on the southeast ridge without using Maestri's bolts. But when word spread of their destruction of the Compressor Route, their revolutionary ascent was instantly overshadowed.

The backlash was so strong and immediate that it seemed to surprise the climbers. After the climb, police in nearby El Chaltén detained them and confiscated 102 bolts.

In an official statement Jan. 26 they wrote in their defense, "Maestri's actions were a complete atrocity. His use of bolts and heavy machinery was outrageous, even for the time. He stole that climb from the future." They also posed this question, "Who committed the act of violence against Cerro Torre? Maestri, by installing the bolts, or us, by removing them?"

American author and alpinist Gregory Crouch is a Patagonian authority. On his popular blog, gregcrouch.com, Crouch admits that the style and ethics employed in the first ascent of the Compressor Route were deplorable. But he said, "I fear we've just added another chapter to the 'infinite folly of man' story that was writ there by Maestri." He adds, "In my mind, a great piece of history has been taken from us, and we are the poorer for its loss."

Many climbers are thrilled that someone finally had the skill to ignore Maestri's bolts and the nerve to chop them. Others decry their act as a selfish, ego-driven desecration of a classic route.

No matter how they're viewed -- as heroes or villains -- Kennedy and Kruk's bold statement echoes well beyond the windswept Torres of Patagonia.

Chris Weidner: DailyCamera

Remembering Colorado 'hard man' Jack Roberts

2012-01-31T01:24:00.000-08:00

As a climber, Jack Roberts was “sort of an ultimate hardman,” said his friend Dougald MacDonald, Climbing magazine editor.But the “ultimate hardman” was a laid-back guy...who dressed to match.

“For years and years, he always had a Hawaiian shirt on and this little English cap,” MacDonald said with a chuckle. “He was just completely relaxed, just really easy to hang out with,” he said. “So we became really frequent partners for all sorts of different things, from big mountain routes to just sport climbing.”

Tuesday morning, though, MacDonald's job at the helm of Climbing magazine was a heart-wrenching one.The magazine posted a tribute, penned by MacDonald for his friend, who died of cardiac arrest following a 60-foot fall on Bridal Veil Falls, near Telluride.

“It's a cliche, but it's really true that nobody would've expected this to happen to Jack,” MacDonald said. “He's so solid, so experienced -- you just can't imagine it. But really, it can happen to anybody, bottom line.” Roberts, of Boulder, was 59.

Roberts was a climber for more than four decades. MacDonald said that in the 1970s, Roberts, a California native, completed many notable second ascents on big walls in Yosemite and pioneered alpine routes in Alaska. He moved to Boulder in 1984 and met his wife, Pam,

Though Roberts was a mountain guide for many years, MacDonald said his guiding business, Jack Roberts Climbing Adventures, kept him busiest over the past 10 years or so. “I think his reputation was starting to really build,” he said.

Fred Knapp, founder of Boulder's Sharp End Publishing, said that when he moved to Boulder in 1987, he got a job at Neptune Mountaineering with Pam Roberts (both Jack and Pam worked at the climbing store over the years, said Gary Neptune) and moved into a room in their house when they needed a roommate. Jack Roberts climbed with him on rock around Boulder and took him on his first ice climb, at Officer's Gulch, on the east side of Vail Pass; he became one of Knapp's biggest climbing mentors.

“He was a wonderful, caring, funny guy who was probably well-suited for teaching climbing, because I think he was impassioned to do that," Knapp said, "whether it was to take a young guy out like me when I moved here, or to take clients out professionally now, he was gifted in that realm.” Bob D'Antonio, who now lives in Taos, N.M., said he first met Roberts in the late 1980s, when he was living in Boulder, and they've been friends ever since, climbing and cycling together.

Roberts was “the real deal,” he said.“He did some amazing stuff back in the '70s,” D'Antonio said. “He was an all-around great climber, but he was also a really wonderful human being.” D'Antonio said Roberts was always thoughtful.
“I think everyone probably felt like they were his best friend,” he mused. He characterized Roberts as a solid, experienced climber.

“I climbed with Jack a lot,” he said. “He was very competent, very even-keeled. Even in bad situations, he could always keep an even head.”MacDonald said that though he's still not sure what happened up there, Bridal Veil Falls was a route that Roberts was very familiar with. “He has done that route I don't know how many times,” he said.

In the tribute he wrote, MacDonald told stories about his climbs with Roberts. Once, he hiked out to a rock climb, in sandals, that was further away than expected -- he actually had four pairs of shoes in his pack that day, he said, because he didn't know what to expect. Another time, they woke at 2 a.m. to ski to an ice climb. When they arrived and found it wasn't in, Roberts offered about a dozen alternatives to going home even though MacDonald was ready to go back to bed.

“I sort of marvel at how he maintained his enthusiasm,” MacDonald said. “He was a great climber, but more importantly, he was a great person,” D'Antonio said. “Climbing, it's just a skill people have. But Jack was a good person.”

ColoradoDaily

Escalation in Irish red kite deaths through poisoning

2012-01-30T01:28:00.000-08:00

National park rangers in Ireland have expressed concern at the escalation in deliberate killings of protected red kites through poisoning after a ninth red kite was found dead .

The breeding female bird, which had been nesting on a farm near Redcross, Co Wicklow, was found near Brittas Bay . It is the latest red kite killed by poison in the county while there have been similar deaths in Kildare and a suspected poisoning in Limerick since the re-introduction project began in 2007.

Dr Marc Ruddock, red kite project manager, said it was a demoralising loss. "These birds are specialist scavengers, that's why they are finding these food sources which are sadly poisoned. They are designed to clean up the countryside," he said.

"These illegal actions jeopardise local biodiversity and the economically important and deserved reputation and profile natural Wicklow cherishes."

The bird, known as Blue Purple G, was one of the first young kites brought from Wales and released in July 2007. She had found a mate and was known to have successfully bred and raised three young at Redcross.

Dr Ruddock called for anyone with information on poisonings to contact local National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers and gardai to help identify and confront individuals repeatedly and illegally poisoning wildlife. Penalties for illegally poisoning birds of prey can be up to 5,000 euro or 12 years in prison.

Park rangers said a search of land and door-to-door inquiries in Redcross and Brittas failed to find any other birds, animals or bait items. The kite was the third poisoned with alphachloralose in the last five months, a chemical which can only legally be used in controlled dosages to kill mice.

Jimmy Deenihan, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, said: "I would appeal to people to act responsibly when it comes to implementing pest control measures, and they should never be at the cost of causing death to birds of prey and other wildlife."

Veteran French Alpinist wins lifetime achievement award

2012-01-27T09:22:00.000-08:00

French climber Robert Paragot will be the fourth recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award presented at the annual Piolets d'Or festivities in Chamonix, France, and Courmayeur, Italy, in March.

Paragot rose to prominence in the early 1950s in the Alps and then began a remarkable series of ascents in the greater ranges. In 1954, his team climbed the enormous south face of Aconcagua (22,949 feet), climbing alpine-style for the final 6,500 feet of the route, with four bivouacs. He joined a small team in 1956 that made the second ascent of Mustagh Tower in Pakistan, five days after the first ascent, and by a new route. Six years later, he summited Jannu (25,295 feet) in Nepal for the first ascent, and in 1966 he did the first ascent of the north face of Huascarán (22,204 feet) in Peru. In 1971 he led an expedition that successfully climbed the west pillar of Makalu (27,825 feet) in Nepal, one of the most technical routes on an 8,000-meter peak to that point.

Paragot, a past president of the French GHM (High Mountain Group) and the FFME (French Mountaineering Federation), still climbs with his old partners.

This year's Piolets d'Or awards, for climbs that took place in 2011, will be selected by a jury chaired by Michael Kennedy, and will be presented during the festival that takes place March 21-24, 2012. See pioletsdor.org for more information.

Rescuers give up search for missing Cairngorms hiker.

2012-01-25T01:59:00.000-08:00

Hopes are fading that a walker missing in the Cairngorms for three days will be found alive. Around 180 rescuers have been involved in the three-day search for walker Grant Cunliffe. Up to 70 personnel resumed the rescue operation at first light on Tuesday. The third day of searching proved fruitless and was stood down at around 4pm.

Mr Cunliffe's family have been told the search will not be resumed for a fourth day. The walker, from North Yorkshire, is believed to have walked into Corrour Bothy in the Larig Ghru pass on Wednesday, January 18, with the intention to go hillwalking for another two days before returning home. He was reported overdue on Saturday.

Four mountain rescue teams - Cairngorm, Braemar, RAF Kinloss & Leuchars - have been involved in the search along with officers from Northern Constabulary, Grampian Police and an RAF rescue helicopter and specially-trained search dogs. Teams spent Tuesday concentrating on the hills around Corrour Bothy, Angel's Peak, Devil's Point and Cairn Toul and the corries around these.

Mr Cunliffe is described as 5ft 10ins, slim build, balding, wearing a blue waterproof jacket and black waterproof trousers, carrying a large black rucksack.

Anyone who thinks they may have seen him in the Cairngorms since Wednesday is urged to phone Aviemore police on 01479 810222 or call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

RSPB condemned in wind farm row in 'Hockney Country'

2012-01-24T11:23:00.000-08:00

An increasingly bitter struggle over wind turbines in the quiet countryside newly-christened David Hockney Country has led to a tit-for-tat attack on plans for a Lottery-funded bird conservation centre at one of the UK's best-known seabird reserves.

Local campaigners, frustrated at failing to get the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds to condemn three turbines proposed for a pig farm at Bempton Cliffs, near Bridlington in east Yorkshire, have asked the Heritage Lottery Fund to reconsider its support for the centre.

The cliffs are the biggest seabird breeding colony on the English coast, with hundreds of thousands of puffins, gannets, guillemots and kittiwakes thronging every ledge and crevice in the summer breeding season. The Bempton Residents Against Turbines group says that three windmills, including a 150ftBem tower within half-a-mile of the reserve would pose a serious threat to the birds. An estimated 100,000 migratory species such as whooper swans and pink-footed geese which use the area as a stopping-place.

David Hinde of the residents' campaign said: "The RSPB doesn't deserve to have the P in its title if it fails to help the campaign. Bird lovers will just be amazed. The 150ft tower would be the largest commercial wind turbine in the Wolds — it would open the floodgates to more of its type. The RSPB is supposed to be a protective partner in looking after our Flamborough Heritage Coast, as well as a tourism partner. What will all those people who proudly display an RSPB members' badge on their car or house window think about this?"

The group has registered a formal objection with the Heritage Lottery Fund against any further funding of the RSPB's proposed new centre at the cliffs, which has been given £33,000 to draw up initial plans. In a letter sent after a village meeting attended by 120 residents, Hinde asks the quango to consider evidence alleging major birdkill at turbine sites on migratory routes in Spain and other European countries.

The RSPB said that it could only oppose developments on conservation grounds and there was no evidence that the planned turbines would do any harm at Bempton. The charity's spokesman Nick Shelton said: "The seabirds keep to the sea and the cliffs.

The Guardian

Snowdon 4x4 driver faces Crown Court trial.

2012-01-24T01:30:00.000-08:00

The hills are alive-with the sound of broken exhausts!

Craig Williams,the 39 year old 4x4 enthusiast who twice took his Vauxhall Frontera up Yr Wyddfa, (Snowdon),late last year,will face trail at a Crown court in April a judge ruled yesterday. Williams an unemployed vehicle technician, of Bridgend Road, Cheltenham, was appearing at at Caernarfon Crown Court in North Wales.

He denies two charges of dangerous driving on the Llanberis footpath and on the Snowdon Mountain railway on September 3 and between September 27 and 30 last year. During the 15 minute he spoke only to confirm his name and address and enter his pleas. Judge Peter Heywood freed him on bail until the trial after being told Williams was arrested and taken into custody after he twice failed to appear at Caernarfon Magistrates Court for an earlier hearing. The judge heard Williams had no money to pay the rail fare from Gloucestershire.

After the initial foray in his Frontera,the vehicle was recovered by National Park staff and taken down the mountain on a modified platform on the tourist mountain railway. An apparently remorseful Mr Williams then advertised the vehicle on eBay and promised the funds would go to the Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team. However,the Frontera was suddenly withdrawn from the auction after attracting national publicity and a day or two later re-appeared in the lee of the summit cafe.

Into the Wild: English 'McCandless' dies in Scottish wilderness

2012-01-21T05:42:00.000-08:00

Christopher McCandless

A 29 year old man from Derby in the English Midlands has been found dead in a remote Scottish hut. Apparently he had died some weeks previously before his remains were discovered by a railway worker. The incident carries striking overtones to the death in similar circumstances of Christopher McCandlass in the Alaskan wilderness. A tragedy described in detail in by mountaineering writer Jon Krakuer in his best selling book- 'Into the Wild'- which was later made into a well regarded feature film. Praised for its sympathtic re-creation of Chris McCandless's troubled life and times.

David Austin, 29, from Derby, was found dead a mile south of one of Scotland’s most remote stations, Rannoch in the Highlands on Hogmanay. A post-mortem examination found there were no suspicious circumstances behind his death.

Mr Austin is thought to have told family in November that he was heading to the Highlands to live out his dream of surviving in the wilderness. He planned to live rough on a year-long adventure, using techniques like those used by adventurer and TV presenter Bear Grylls, despite being urged to reconsider by family and friends.

He is understood to have attended several courses in outdoor survival and bushcraft skills over the past couple of years with a view to realising a long-held dream of living alone in the wild.Mr Austin is thought to not even have taken a mobile phone with him. A number of personal possessions including a knife and a daily journal were found next to his body. It is believed he may have died of hypothermia.

After leaving Derby, Mr Austin is thought to have travelled to Glasgow and then on to Corrour – which is the UK’s highest mainline station – on the West Highland line. He is then believed to have spent his 29th birthday on 3 December alone outdoors, in the first heavy snowfall of the season.

A hostel employee at the Loch Ossian SYHA hostel on Rannoch Moor, said: “He didn’t stay here. He told me he’d been camping in the woods on the north side of the loch that weekend, then he just mosied over to have a look at the hostel.” Mary McArthur, one of only four permanent residents in the Rannoch station area, said: “The story we heard was that he had taken a year out from work and was going to live off the land.

“And he was supposed to have walked down the line towards Rannoch station so perhaps he decided to take shelter in the bothy.

“But what happened after that, who knows? We heard he was well equipped and knew what he was doing.“We heard there were no suspicious circumstances but weren’t sure if it was hypothermia, or a health complaint. “At the end of the day, it’s someone’s son and a sad way to go in the middle of nowhere all alone.”

His body was found in a remote bothy used by track inspection workers. A British Transport Police spokesman confirmed the man had been identified as a 29-year-old man from the east Midlands, and that there appeared to be no suspicious circumstances. A Crown Office spokesman confirmed the procurator fiscal in Perth had recently received a report from BTP but was unable to provide any further details.

Rannoch is an isolated north-west section of Perthshire between the A9 to the east and the A82 to the west, featuring the famous West Highland Railway line that crosses more than 23 miles of moorland. Survival school instructor Ian Moran, who teaches extreme survival and bushcraft skills, said that it was extremely unlikely anybody could survive a Highland winter outdoors by living off the land.He said: “It would be a tall order for even the most professional person who calls himself a survivalist.

“Maybe centuries ago, when Scotland was covered in woodland and teeming with wildlife, but not now.”

Additional reporting The Scotsman

Death of an American climbing hero

2012-01-18T11:03:00.000-08:00

Jack Roberts

Two nights ago, I was just finishing this week's column when I got a text message from a friend. Her news suddenly made my training article seem so pointless that I scrapped it and started over.She told me that Jack Roberts, an icon of American alpinism, had died in an ice climbing accident near Telluride.I occasionally bumped into Jack over the last 15 years -- in Alaska, Ouray and here in Boulder -- but I barely knew him.

What I do know is that the Boulder-based, 59-year-old climbing guide had an insatiable passion for rock, ice, big walls and mountains since he was a teenager. Some of his first ascents in Alaska, like the 6,000-foot mega route "A Pair of Jacks" on Mount Kennedy (climbed with Jack Tackle in 1996), ignited my own youthful alpine dreams and subsequent trips to the Alaska Range, where I first met him.

But much more important than his impressive climbing resumé is his legacy of laughter, life and love. Jack defied the stereotypical dark, withdrawn alpinist with a broad smile that could thaw the iciest pretense. Every time I heard his name come up in climber conversation -- as it often did -- it was with an air of awe and respect.

A death in the climbing community, especially of a well-known, well-loved partner like Jack, reminds us climbers of the horrific consequences that accompany our sport. After all, they're easy to forget when years of climbing are rewarded with safe passage -- when our worst injuries are torn skin or bruises on our knuckles.

But the risk in climbing is real. It's a risk we accept as soon as our hands grab rock and our tools pierce ice. The late American climber Todd Skinner, author of some of the hardest big-wall free routes in the world, was once asked whether climbing is worth dying for. "Absolutely not," he replied. Skinner paused, then added, "But climbing is worth risking dying for."

Difficult and dangerous mountain climbs -- the kind that Jack pioneered -- used to inspire me like nothing else could. They also terrified me. In May 1998, I was with three friends attempting to climb Alaska's Mount Huntington.

Unroped, four of us kicked steps up the 50-degree snow apron that led toward the meat of the west face -- a 1,200-foot, near-vertical couloir of pure ice. We roped up at the top of the apron, just before the ice and 800 feet above the glacier. At our tiny, exposed stance I slid some webbing around my waist and clipped into an old, three-piton anchor while I dug my harness out of my pack, just in case.

As I struggled to slide into the harness's leg loops, one foot slipped on ice and I reeled backward. The tremendous static force of my body against the anchor ripped one piton out -- and then another -- as easily as plugs from a socket. I hung pathetically from the sling that caught me at my armpits, attached only to the third, rusty piton.

I felt, in a sense, two-thirds dead.Despite our close calls, we climbers tend to have an overwhelming desire to live. We tend to agree with Skinner that climbing is worth risking dying for......But why?

Michael Kennedy, a climber, editor and Jack's contemporary, writes, "Western culture encourages in us all, climbers or not, a certain superficiality, an aversion to engaging fully and passionately with the world, with each other, and with our inmost selves." Kennedy argues that climbing maintains our meaningful connection to reality.

I can't help but think that Jack Roberts -- with his trademark earring, tilted beret and charming smile, would agree with this wholeheartedly.

Chris Weidner: DailyCamera

Bolivia set to enshrine historic 'Law of Mother Earth'.

2012-01-17T01:24:00.000-08:00

With the cooperation of politicians and grassroots organizations, Bolivia is set to pass the Law of Mother Earth which will grant nature the same rights and protections as humans. The piece of legislation, called la Ley de Derechos de la Madre Tierra, is intended to encourage a radical shift in conservation attitudes and actions, to enforce new control measures on industry, and to reduce environmental destruction.

The law redefines natural resources as blessings and confers the same rights to nature as to human beings, including: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered. Perhaps the most controversial point is the right "to not be affected by mega-infrastructure and development projects that affect the balance of ecosystems and the local inhabitant communities".

In late 2005 Bolivia elected its first indigenous president, Evo Morales. Morales is an outspoken champion for environmental protection, petitioning for substantive change within his country and at the United Nations. Bolivia, one of South America's poorest countries, has long had to contend with the consequences of destructive industrial practices and climate change, but despite the best efforts of Morales and members of his administration, their concerns have largely been ignored at the UN.

Just last year, in 2010, Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca expressed his distress "about the inadequacy of the greenhouse gas reduction commitments made by developed countries in the Copenhagen Accord." His remarks were punctuated by the claim that some experts forecasted a temperature increase "as high as four degrees above pre-industrial levels." "The situation is serious," Choquehuanca asserted. "An increase of temperature of more than one degree above pre-industrial levels would result in the disappearance of our glaciers in the Andes, and the flooding of various islands and coastal zones."

In 2009, directly following the resolution of the General Assembly to designate April 22 "International Mother Earth Day", Morales addressed the press, stating “If we want to safeguard mankind, then we need to safeguard the planet. That is the next major task of the United Nations”. A change to Bolivia's constitution in the same year resulted in an overhaul of the legal system - a shift from which this new law has sprung.

The Law of Mother Earth has as its foundation several of the tenets of indigenous belief, including that human are equal to all other entities. "Our grandparents taught us that we belong to a big family of plants and animals. We believe that everything in the planet forms part of a big family," Choquehuanca said. "We indigenous people can contribute to solving the energy, climate, food and financial crises with our values." The legislation will give the government new legal powers to monitor and control industry in the country.

"Existing laws are not strong enough," said Undarico Pinto, leader of the 3.5m-strong Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (a group that helped draft the law). "It will make industry more transparent. It will allow people to regulate industry at national, regional and local levels."

Bolivia will be establishing a Ministry of Mother Earth, but beyond that there are few details about how the legislation will be implemented. What is clear is that Bolivia will have to balance these environmental imperatives against industries - like mining - that contribute to the country's GDP.

Bolivia's successes or failures with implementation may well inform the policies of countries around the world. "It's going to have huge resonance around the world," said Canadian activist Maude Barlow. "It's going to start first with these southern countries trying to protect their land and their people from exploitation, but I think it will be grabbed onto by communities in our countries, for example, fighting the tarsands in Alberta."

Ecuador has enshrined similar aims in its Constitution, and is among the countries that have already shown support for the Bolivian initiative. Other include Nicaragua, Venezuela, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda.

National opposition to the law is not anticipated, as Morales' party - the Movement Towards Socialism - holds a majority in both houses of parliament. On April 20, two days before this year's "International Mother Earth Day", Morales will table a draft treaty with the UN, kicking off the debate with the international community.

PV Pulse

They shoot horses don't they?:

2012-01-15T02:08:00.000-08:00

The London stage production of War Horse. Thousands of horses in the UK are now suffering from cruelty, neglect and premature death in the current economic climate.

In the week that Steven Speilberg's film adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's children's novel,War Horse is premiered in the UK. British equine charities have announced that horses and ponies are being abandoned in their thousands and left to suffer the consequences as the global economic downturn continues to bite.

Thousands of horses are being abandoned or tied up and left to starve, many by desperate owners unable to afford the costs of keeping them. A national crisis has seen Britain's biggest horse charities under unprecedented pressure from the sheer number of animals needing their help.

Redwings – Britain's biggest charity for abandoned horses – says the situation has reached breaking point. It has seen the number of cases soar from 160 horses in 2009 to 450 last year. So far this month it has taken in up to 10 a day. The charity, which can house 1,200 animals, is now full.

Hundreds of other horses around the country are not so fortunate. Left to fend for themselves, they are savaged by dogs or fall victim to drivers on Britain's roads. The national situation is hard to quantify, but the RSPCA is aware that at least 3,500 horses are left chained or tied up without shelter at any one time. The charity estimates it received more than 7,000 calls in 2011 reporting horses and ponies that had been left tied up – up 21 per cent on the previous year.

Britain is seen as a nation of animal lovers and thousands are expected to flock to cinemas to see Steven Spielberg's War Horse. But, as the recession bites, owners are increasingly desperate, an IoS investigation timed to coincide with the film's release shows. The Blue Cross animal charity estimates the average cost of keeping a horse has almost doubled in the past five years, from £3,600 per year to £6,000.

Nicola Markwell, Redwings' communications manager, said yesterday: "Our latest rescues have involved 19 horses dumped on Bodmin Moor and another left in a colliery in Wakefield. We can't take any more. But some people have taken down our fences and put their horses inside, hoping we won't notice."

Many animals do not get that far: increasingly, new-born foals are being killed, particularly mares which are unlikely to raise any money. Many more horses are being sold for meat. Zoos are among those that benefit: a single tiger can get through 15kg of meat a day. Government figures reveal that almost 8,000 horses were slaughtered for meat in 2010 – a 50 per cent increase on previous years.

A combination of rising costs of essentials like hay and straw, along with a drop in the value of the animals, has created a vicious circle in which horses suffer, according to campaigners. Even charities such as the Blue Cross, which get discounts for bulk buying, have seen a massive jump in costs in the past year – the price of a bale of hay has risen from £2.50 to £4 in some areas.

The falling value of horses means they can change hands for as little as £5. Many are killed before they reach six months, by which age owners are required by law to register them.

Andrew Elliott, an auctioneer at Brightwells in Leominster, Herefordshire, one of the largest horse dealers in Europe, said: "For the very best horses, the cream of the crop, prices have pretty much held up, but in the middle and lower ranks prices have collapsed.

"There was a huge demand for horses, and some of the breeding was pretty indiscriminate, trading was becoming relentless and then, in the autumn of 2008, the bubble burst. I don't like to use the word 'cleanse', but the horse industry is a huge business – it was over-producing and it has to be adjusted."

Increasingly, owners are leaving horses tied up and uncared for or abandoning them altogether, a practice condemned as "extremely dangerous" by Sally Learoyd, the RSPCA's equine rehoming officer.

"We have seen ponies strangled to death by their own tethers and with permanent neck, leg and hoof injuries, all as a result of the animals being tethered," she said.

In Bradford last year, inspectors found a Shetland pony, Susie, with a chain embedded so deeply in her neck that tissue had begun growing through the links. Fortunately, they managed to save her and the pony has since been rehomed.

The upsurge in problems with horses is part of a bigger picture of abuse: the RSPCA gets hundreds of calls each year about horses, ponies and donkeys that have been cast aside.

"Most of the horses brought in by inspectors have been starved and neglected, and many aren't used to human contact because they have never been handled properly or been treated with kindness," Ms Learoyd said.

As well as cruel neglect, some horses face deliberate sadism.A stallion in Stithians, near Falmouth in Cornwall, was mutilated and killed last week. The attacker cut off the animal's genitals, cut out one of its eyes and pulled out its teeth. Just days earlier, a pony had been similarly attacked and killed in a field in Whitland, near Tenby in west Wales.

Many animals are simply turned loose by owners unable, or unwilling, to pay the hundreds of pounds it costs to have them destroyed by a vet.

But the plight of horses in Britain today is part of a wider picture of animal neglect. The credit crunch has proved a tipping point as many households struggle to cover the costs of keeping pets.

Record numbers of people are reporting animals that have been discarded – there were more than 28,000 calls about dumped pets in 2011, according to new figures released by the RSPCA last week. This is the highest number in five years and up a third on the 21,481 in 2007.

Cases of stray and abandoned animals dealt with by the Blue Cross have risen 28 per cent in the past year – from 1,553 in 2010 to 1,991 in 2011.

And the number of people giving up pets because they cannot afford to keep them has doubled, according to Battersea Dogs and Cats Home.

Vicki Alford, equine manager of the Blue Cross animal rehoming centre in Burford, Oxfordshire, said: "We have seen some shocking cases of neglect in recent years, as well as people making the heartbreaking decision to give up their horse because they just cannot cope any more."

Market forces: 'Animals change hands for a fiver'

The fact is that we have got far more horses and ponies in this country nowadays than we can legitimately deal with. There are more horses than there are homes to care for them and there are literally hundreds of horses out there suffering.

The problem is that people have thought for far too long that breeding horses is an easy way to make money. But the reality is it isn't that easy. There's a small market for the top-end horses and too many people have ill-advisedly produced what are essentially poor-quality animals.

I could easily take you to a horse sale at the lower end of the market where they are changing hands for a fiver. They get treated like something that's worth £5, to be honest They get bought by people who think they'll be able to make a few quid on them, which they won't and, because they are essentially worthless, they get treated like they are worthless – and that's the sad reality.

Abandonment has been a massive problem over the past few years, probably due to the general economic climate, but the level has gone up hugely in the last couple of years. We would estimate it's gone up by about 50 per cent in the last couple of years, which is quite significant... it's in the high hundreds annually.

The thing that the film War Horse brought home is the bravery and the suffering horses went through in the First World War. It's easy to think that today we've moved on and that we treat animals more favourably; the reality is that the role of horses has changed massively over the last century or so. They've gone from being very much work animals to leisure animals.

Unfortunately, that hasn't necessarily meant their lot has improved on the whole, and the big problem that we face today is the over-production of horses.

Lee Hackett, head of welfare at the British Horse Society

The Independent online

Sea Shepherd renews fight against whalers in southern ocean

2012-01-12T10:13:00.000-08:00

Anti-whaling activists and ships of the Japanese fleet have skirmished as the conflict stretches across a wide swathe of the Southern Ocean.

Activists from Sea Shepherd are said to have renewed attempts to disable a pursuing harpoon ship, which replaced the security ship, Shonan Maru No.2, on the tail of the group's flagship, Steve Irwin.

The activists last night deployed two ropes under the bow of the Yushin Maru No.2 in an attempt to entangle the ship's rudder and propeller, the Institute of Cetacean Research said.

The Institute of Cetacean Research, a Japanese body representing whalers, has released footage of anti-whaling activists apparently deploying rope in a bid to entangle the Yushin Maru's rudder and propeller.

Activists from Sea Shepherd are said to have renewed attempts to disable a pursuing harpoon ship, which replaced the security ship, Shonan Maru No.2, on the tail of the group's flagship, Steve Irwin.

"In addition, the activists threw more than 20 glass bottles containing butyric acid and paint," the ICR said in a statement. "Seven of these projectile bottles reached the deck of the Yushin Maru No.2.

"There were no injuries to the Japanese crew. Up to the present, damage to the Yushin Maru No.2 from the activists' attack has not been confirmed."

It said that earlier the activists had attacked the Shonan Maru No.2, attempting to fix hooks and wires to the Japanese ship's rails.

Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson said it was assumed the Shonan Maru No.2 left the pursuit of the Steve Irwin to rendezvous with the Australian Customs ship Ocean Protector, and hand over the three Western Australian activists who boarded the Japanese ship last Sunday.

The change of guard by Japanese ships on the Steve Irwin meant the whalers would be able to keep track of his ship. But Mr Watson said this also left the fleet with only one active harpoon ship to kill whales in the Antarctic.

Meanwhile off Macquarie Island, south of Hobart, the Sea Shepherd's long range ship Bob Barker was today said to be making a break away from the pursuing harpoon ship Yushin Maru No.3.

Sea Shepherd said that, before it lost radar contact with the Yushin Maru No.3, the Japanese ship was respecting the Australian 12-nautical mile territorial limit around the island, apart from a brief incursion late last night.

The Yushin Maru No.3 had stayed inside the territorial limit for hours after Prime Minister Julia Gillard said it was leaving, and more than a day after the Australian embassy complained to the Japanese government.

The Japanese consul-general in Melbourne, Hidenobu Sobashima, said he could not comment on communications between the governments, or, for safety reasons, on the movements of the whaling fleet.

"However we understand that no ships related to whaling are at this moment in Australian waters," Mr Sobashima said.

Can you help me find the owner of my Grandfather's cottage?

2012-01-11T02:44:00.000-08:00

Grandad's cottage in the mid 1980's.Already looking a bit worse for wear!

Firstly...apologies for interrupting the flow of environmental and climbing news and reviews on the site. However, I could do with briefly using THAC as a platform for information. I am seeking the owner of a cottage in the South West corner of Ynys Mon (Angelsey) in North Wales which was owned by my maternal Grandfather in the 1960's.

The current owner is one Andre Hobro who was last heard of living in Coventry in the English Midlands although it is believed he could now reside in Birmingham. Apparently, the owner has not visited the property in over ten years and it has fallen into a serious state of dereliction. The cottage is virtually hidden now behind a ferocious tangle of blackthorn,dog rose,bramble and hawthorn. The structure itself is in poor state with the roof falling in and the attendant internal problems which of course follow in train once a property's roof is compromised.

If by any chance anyone can give me an address,email or phone number for Mr Hobro or if Mr Hobro himself reads this then I would be most grateful if you could get in touch.This message is in no way an admonishment of the current owner but is delivered in the hope that we could some how find a way to save the property before it becomes totally beyond repair.

Any information can be e-mailed to planedglas-@- yahoo.co.uk or mynyddgoch-@-yahoo.com. Obviously without the hyphens(inserted to thwart spammers)included in the address.

Environmental scientist calls for re-forestation of grouse moors

2012-01-10T03:14:00.000-08:00

LANDOWNERS should rip out Scotland’s heather moorland and replace them with forests, according to an English scientist.

Sir David Read, an emeritus professor of plant sciences at the University of Sheffield, claims the move would be better for the environment.

He says the moorland used for grouse shooting currently “make no realistic contribution” to the economy and replacing them with trees would “mop up” carbon.

He said much of the Scottish Highlands were now a “deforested desert” and that around 46% of the country was suitable for reforestation.

He said: “You think of Scotland as the land of bonnie purple heather.

That heather, apart from a few grouse, is pretty uneconomic, whereas if you can grow trees on it, [you] hugely increase the productivity of the land and get this valuable economic return in due course.

“Grouse shooting makes no realistic contribution to the UKeconomy. It’s a preferred benefit for a rather select few individuals who happen to be the owners of large tracts of unproductive land.

“Planting trees in an economic and biological context, that context being carbon dioxide sequestration, it is a far more preferable enterprise.”

He added that in Scotland trees are cut down faster than they are replaced and that urgent action was needed.

He claims that in 1976 59,000 acres a year was being planted but that this had fallen to 12,000 hectares by 2009.

However outraged landowners have called Read’s claims that grouse shooting is unprofitable “wildly inaccurate”.

They said that they support the expansion of forestry enterprises, but that grouse shooting raised millions for the economy.

They said that the recent season was one of the most successful in years and that a 2010 report by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust found that £23million is raise annually by the sport. Additionally 1,072 full-time jobs are created by grouse shooting.

Robbie Douglas-Miller, who is chairman of Wildlife Estates Scotland and owner of the 3000-acre Horseupcleugh estate, near Duns in the Scottish Borders, said: “To say grouse shooting in not economically productive is wildly inaccurate. Many people come to Scotland to look at heather-clad hills, they do not want to see blanket forestry.

“I agree there’s plenty of scope to plant trees in Scotland but the blanket planting of sitka spruce on moorland, which was popular in the 1960s and 1970s, is not the way forward. It created vast tracts of woodlands which are effectively environmental deserts that destroy biodiversity.”

While Scotland has a lower proportion of forested land than other European countries, the area given over to forests has increased in the last century.

In 1900 5% of land in Scotland was forested, but by 2007 this had increased to 17%.

And Scottish ministers plan to cover a quarter of the country in trees by the 2050 by planting 37,000 acres of woodland every year.

It has been suggested that landowners could be offered grants to plant more trees, or that the government could provide subsidies if areas of land were handed over to private investors for forestry purposes.

Deadline

Climate change leading to rapid changes in mountain ecosystems

2012-01-09T03:07:00.000-08:00

With the publication of "Continent-wide response of mountain vegetation to climate change," scheduled for Advance Online Publication (AOP) in Nature Climate Change on 8 January, researchers from 13 countries report clear and statistically significant evidence of a continent-wide warming effect on mountain plant communities.

The findings are "clearly significant," says Ottar Michelsen, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and one of the article's co-authors. "You can find studies that have shown an effect locally, and where researchers try to say something more globally, but in this case, when you have so many mountains in so many regions and can show an effect, that's a big thing."

The article describes the results of a comprehensive effort to measure plant community changes in the mountains over the whole of Europe, with nearly a decade of time between the sampling efforts. Researchers looked at 60 summit sites and 867 vegetation samples from 17 mountain areas across Europe in 2001 and then revisited the mountain sample sites in 2008. In Norway, researchers studied mountain plots in the Dovre region of central Norway.

By comparing the vegetation found in the sample plots in 2001 and 2008, the researchers were able to see a clear shift in the species in the plots towards species that preferred warmer temperatures.

All 32 authors involved in the study used the same sampling procedures enabling pan-continental comparisons to be made for the first time, here at the Austrian Hochschwab mountains.More specifically, the researchers assigned what they called an altitudinal rank to all 764 plant species included in the study. The rank reflects the temperature at which each species has its optimum performance. And because altitude and temperature are directly correlated in each mountain area (the higher your altitude in the mountains, in general, the colder it will be) the location on the mountain where a plant is found reflects its response to the actual temperature at that location.

By summing the altitudinal ranks for the species in the plots, the researchers then used a mathematical formula to give each plot a "thermic vegetation indicator". The indicator was calculated for each plot for 2001 and 2008, and the change in the indicator over the 7 years between sample periods showed researchers whether the mix of plants in each plot had stayed the same or shifted on average to plant types that preferred either colder or warmer temperatures. They then combined the data for the 17 mountain areas for the two time periods to get a continental-scale view of what kind of change, if any, might be underway.

"The transformation of plant communities on a continental scale within less than a decade can be considered a rapid ecosystem response to ongoing climate warming," the researchers wrote. "Although the signal is not statistically significant for single mountain regions, it is clearly significant when data throughout Europe are pooled."

The finding is significant both because the shift in plant communities could be clearly detected over time, but also because it suggests that plants adapted to colder temperatures that are now found in alpine plant communities will be subject to more competition, which "may lead to declines or even local disappearance of alpine plant species," the researchers note. "In fact, declines of extreme high-altitude species at their lower range margins have recently been observed in the Alps.

Isle of Lewis wind farm threatens Golden Eagles claim RSPB

2012-01-07T04:22:00.000-08:00

Despite often being the brunt of criticism from conservationists for its support for the wind energy industry; the RSPB has come down against a controversial development on the Isle of Lewis which,it is claimed,will seriously threaten native Golden Eagles.

The society is concerned about the impact a recently consented scheme by Scottish Ministers to extend a wind farm will have on the iconic raptor. The scheme, to develop six new wind turbines, would be built in addition to the already consented 33-turbine Muaitheabhal Windfarm on the Eisgein Estate on the Isle of Lewis. Each new wind turbine would measure 150m to the tip of the blade and have a blade diameter of up to 120m making them some of the largest onshore turbines in the UK.

The conservation charity is particularly concerned that not enough attention is being paid to the cumulative effect of consented and proposed schemes.

Martin Scott, RSPB conservation officer for the Western Isles, said: “The area where the turbines will be built supports one of the highest densities of golden eagles in the world and it is increasingly important for white-tailed eagles. We need renewable energy developments, including wind farms, to tackle climate change but any developer would be hard pushed to find a worse place in Britain to develop a scheme of this sort. We are very disappointed that our recommendations seem to have been ignored and that the development has been driven through without robust data being collected.”

Mr Scott explained: “This area supports around a dozen breeding pairs of golden eagles and we believe that chicks fledged here effectively prop up the Scottish population. This is why we treat any threat to them so seriously.

“The area also forms the nucleus of the recent expansion of white-tailed eagles in the Western Isles, following similar increases on Mull and Skye; and satellite-tagged white-tailed eagles from other Scottish sites have been shown to be drawn into the area to forage over prolonged periods.

“We believe that the gradual, incremental, development of windfarms in these areas risk a serious long-term impact on the populations of our largest and most magnificent birds of prey. It is very important that the cumulative impact is taken account of when these schemes are being proposed.

“Whilst we are obviously very disappointed that this scheme has been given the go-ahead, it is vital that a detailed and robust monitoring programme is put in place to ensure that we can improve our knowledge of the way in which eagles react to wind farms.”

North Wales Zip Wire planning application seeks lift off!

2012-01-04T05:38:00.000-08:00

Penrhyn Quarry in North Wales

Following the much publicized Honister Zip Wire controversy in the English Lake District.An outdoor activities centre in North Wales has submitted a similar application to construct two zip wire courses with the Penrhyn Slate Quarry at Bethesda. Literally on the edge of the Snowdonia National Park.

The application in the name of Sean Taylor, director of Treetops Adventures- an activity centre on the edge of Betws y Coed-seeks planning permission for two zip wires; one shorter run at 1400'-and a 'more advanced' run at almost 5000' in total length.

Car parking for 100 vehicles and other facilities including a temporary administration block are also included in the application to Gwynedd County Council. The company advises that up to nine permanent jobs will be created if the application is successful.

The site is similar to the Lake District site in that Zip wire courses will be situated within a site which has been degraded by industrial development. However,unlike the controversial Honister wire, the proposed development is just outside the national park boundary and contained within the quarry itself.

At this early stage no comments have been received from outside organisations such as conservation bodies who will undoubtably have an interest in the application, although given the controversial nature of zip wires in mountain areas,no doubt this will change in the coming days and weeks....Watch this space!

The Fontainebleau of Indonesia

2012-01-04T02:43:00.000-08:00

Among beaches and caves, volcanoes and rivers and many other wonders of nature in the province, the boulders in Nglanggeran village below Mount Api Purba stand out as a fast fix for even an afternoon’s excitement.

Only about 45 minutes by car or motorcycle from the bustling city center, hundreds of climbable boulders lay strewn about in and between rice fields and in the shade of lush forest and gardens.

Over the past two to three years, the overhangs and rock faces of Nglanggeran boulders have become recognized by local climbers as well as by visitors as the “Fontainebleau of Indonesia”, so much that most days year round you will risk encountering climbers there.

Bouldering is a rather new sport in Indonesia. It can be defined as simply “climbing short routes on low-lying rocks without protective gear”. In Europe, the sport has been recognized since the late 1800s, and the first competition on record was arranged by a Brit in the 1880s.

But there is no “bouldering culture” in Indonesia like you find in Europe and particularly in Fontainebleau outside Paris or Stanage and the Peak District in the UK. Outdoor bouldering in Indonesia, as well as in the rest of Southeast Asia, is still in a phase of exploration, while in Japan and the US it is counted among the fastest growing sports.

Veteran climber Agung Setyobudi, or “Cetul”, is one of the local climbers you are most likely to meet in Nglanggeran. “Bouldering on artificial walls started back in 1998 in Yogyakarta, but bouldering on real rock didn’t really take off until around 2005, and for real when I found the best spot – Nglanggeran.”

Fellow veteran climber and pioneer Andi Saputro adds, “Back in the 1990s when I started climbing, I saw local climbers doing ‘bouldering’ on the bottom of Babarsari Bridge’s pillars. They were traversing because they did not have equipment such as ropes or protection gear.”

Andi is one of the strongest and best performing climbers in Indonesia today at the age of 38. He lives and works in Bali but never misses a chance to visit Nglanggeran if coming home to see friends and family.

“Yup, I miss those moments; the place where I grew up, memories from when I started climbing, and also my Apache Climbing Team. Even now while living in Bali, spending time and climbing in Yogya is special, a place where old climber friends always support and give me the opportunity to express myself, which is what climbing is all about.”

Andi adds, “The first national bouldering competition was in Jakarta in 1999, before that we were just concerned with lead climbing and speed climbing. At that time we started to realize that bouldering is a better way to practice new techniques of climbing.”

Bouldering is for anyone who loves nature and being outdoors. No particular skills and not much equipment are needed. It is basically rock climbing where strength, flexibility and technique are the winning factors.

As opposed to free climbing with a rope, where endurance is more important, bouldering is done without a rope and often over a sports mattress (crashpad) to cushion falls and avoid sprained ankles and worse. It is a very social sport where climbers come together around a boulder and a route for finding technical solutions and for friendly competition.

Ideally it is practiced on natural boulders and for practice and competitions on artificial bouldering walls in gyms and outdoor urban sports areas as you commonly find all over Indonesia. A good way to learn about bouldering is to visit any of the many, normally free, outdoor climbing gyms during the week in the evenings for practice, and then practice your skills on natural rock during the weekends.

Since bouldering is first and foremost about finding routes straight up to the top of a boulder, it can be enjoyed at many levels of climbing; there is always a route that suits your strengths and commitment. While the novice can scale the larger holds on slabs and vertical walls, the trained climbers can look for overhanging walls with small holds.

In the words of Andi Saputro, “Bouldering has evolved into its own style, to push body and mind to do a series of extreme moves and see a dramatic improvement in your power and strength; it’s something of an art in itself!”

The western and northern parts of Gunung Sewu, including Nglanggeran, are in a geological area where the rock indicates the influence of a volcano, thus the name “Gunung Api Purba” or literally “ancient volcano”. Nglanggeran and the Sewu mountain range have many qualities that could make it a central spot for bouldering in Asia. The sheer number of boulders and the astonishing surroundings are among a few. The Gunung Api Purba area is furthermore dedicated as an ecotourism zone (Kawasan Ekowisata Gunung Api Purba) and suggested as a UNESCO geopark area.

Andi is more than enthusiastic about the ideal geography of Nglanggeran and its potential. “Nglanggeran is a perfect place for bouldering. Why? Because there are more than a hundred climbable boulders with a thousand different routes that you can climb. Until now we have not discovered all the possibilities. It is close to the city, the boulders are awesome, rarely go higher than between 3 to 8 meters above the ground, and they are spread out evenly and close in beautiful surroundings. Nglanggeran is a perfect place for bouldering. I’ve been bouldering in many places in Indonesia; all I can say is that Nglanggeran is the best spot.”

Jakarta Post

Red revolution:Grey cull sees a red squirrel comeback in N Wales

2012-01-02T03:01:00.000-08:00

Damn Yankees.They come over here and take over our trees and mate with our does!

A CULLING programme of grey squirrels has started in Gwynedd as the march of the reds goes on. Twelve years ago the red squirrel faced decimation in its last bastion on Anglesey as numbers dwindled to 40 and the colonies left were inbred.

But action to remove the rival greys and the introduction of new bloodlines has seen numbers surge to 400 and the native reds take over the island.The past 18 months has seen them venture over the Menai Strait bridges to establish small colonies around Bangor.

Now a squirrel charity has announced plans to support this incursion by removing greys, which have traditionally destroyed red colonies by spreading disease and dominating habitats. Dr Craig Shuttleworth, from Friends of the Anglesey Red Squirrels, said: “We're now starting a new program of clearing grey squirrels from Bangor through to Felinheli, up into the Ogwen Valley, and Tregarth, Pentir areas.

“There is a triangle of forest area that is discreet and there are only certain pinch points for access. If we can control these by setting traps then we can create a protected area for reds to flourish.

“When we started out on Anglesey more than 10 years ago I never expected we would be at this stage where they had spread to the mainland. “But since our first sighting near Bangor back in 2009 we have had numerous sightings from Bangor, Felinheli, and even up to Bethesda. Now is the time to support this.

“While the project is funded on Anglesey we are reliant on landowners and the public in Gwynedd to both report sightings and also assist with removing greys. “For landowners though the damage that grey squirrels do to trees means that it is normally in their interest to take action.”The group is also encouraging woodland owners to plant sweet chestnut, hazel nut and walnut trees to help red squirrel on Anglesey and in Gwynedd.

Report a red squirrel sighting on redsquirrels.info website or call 07966150847.

The Red Squirrel Survival Trust

DailyPostWales

Scottish hydro plan could impact on renowned waterfalls

2011-12-30T02:40:00.000-08:00

THE Reekie Linn – “the smoking pool” – is, by any measure, one of the most spectacular waterfalls in Scotland.Sited on the edge of the Angus glens, two falls – one of six metres followed by another of 18 metres – unite, when the River Isla is in spate, to form an awe-inspiring single cascade of water that sends an eerie, smoke-like plume billowing into the sky.

But there are now mounting fears that controversial hydro power plans by Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) to build a “run of the river” water abstraction scheme in the area will rob the dramatic falls of any spectacle.Concerns are also being raised by the local fishery board about the potential impact of the scheme on vital spawning grounds for the Tay, one of Scotland’s main salmon rivers, and angling on a popular beat on the River Isla.

SSE has gone out to public consultation on its plans to use a six-mile stretch of the Isla – including the site of the Reekie Linn and a second waterfall known as the “Big Slug” at Auchrannie – for a hydroelectric scheme that would involve water being fed through an underground pipeline system to a generating station before being returned to the river six miles downstream, just above the village of Alyth.

The run of the river scheme would be capable of generating up to ten megawatts of electricity at any one time and up to 30 gigawatt-hours in an average year, enough to supply the domestic needs of more than 6,500 households.The energy giant is expected to submit its proposals for the scheme to Angus Council later this year. The battle lines, however, are already being drawn and both the Tay District Salmon Fisheries Board and the Kirriemuir Angling Club plan to object to the scheme.

Dr David Summers, fisheries director of the Tay Salmon Fisheries Board, said the board had “significant concerns” about the potential impact of the abstraction project. He said: “Reducing the flow may impact on salmon spawning in that neck of the woods.

“The other issue which they have not, as far as I can see, taken account of from the start is that the same area is also an important fishery for local people. And the sort of flows when the abstraction rate would be maximised would be in a dropping spate, which is normally the time that people would want to go fishing.

“The Reekie Linn, a dramatic waterfall in the area, is also a popular tourist spot, and there will be lot of people who will have significant concerns about how this scheme is going to affect the falls. For a significant part of the year, the flow would, in effect, be reduced to a summer level.” Derek Strachan, the chairman of Kirriemuir Angling Club, said the beat on the Isla where the extraction scheme would be sited accounted for about a third of the annual fishing by members of the club.

He, too, voiced concern about the impact on salmon spawning stocks – and the spectacular falls. “The Reekie Linn is a famous waterfall and there is another waterfall in the area called the Big Slug,” he said.“They would be an apology of what they are if this scheme goes ahead.”A spokeswoman for SSE rejected the claims. “We will only abstract water when there is enough water in the river for us to use,” she said. “If it drops below a certain level, as rivers do as part of their cycle, there could be weeks on end when we would not take anything out of the river.”

She said mitigation measures to protect salmon stocks would be included in an environmental statement due to be published in the spring.

Big Cats on the prowl in Central Snowdonia ?

2011-12-28T02:36:00.000-08:00

PUMAS, jungle cats and wolverines could have been responsible for slaughtering badgers and sheep in Snowdonia, it’s claimed. Farmers Dafydd and Pam Parry claim to have seen the wild animals in the hills around their home near Beddgelert, Gwynedd. They have taken plaster casts of pawprints left by the animals and graphic photographs of dead sheep and badgers.

Last year Pam, 67, said she saw “a big black Puma” with “golden eyes and a long tail, curved up” sitting on rocks watching her feeding her horses. Pam used to work in a restaurant and regularly took duck carcasses home to leave outside for the wildlife to eat. One night she was later than usual coming home with the carcasses.

Pam said: “I heard a humming noise. It sounded like a generator. Then I saw the puma behind a tree in the garden and it turned into a growl. She was waiting for me. I thought, damn and I banged on the door!” Luckily the puma didn’t attack her. Last December Pam was collecting holly with her 18-year-old grandson.

“We were in a hollow. I was picking up the berries and he said: “Nain, she’s behind you. I looked up and saw just her head, eyes and ears and I said: ‘Whatever you do, don’t look away.’ She came down past us to the river, took a drink and disappeared. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.” A few years ago the couple saw a sheep lying dead in a field.

Pam said: “It’s face had been eaten, chest opened in the front, the heart, lungs and liver all things with blood in had gone and the neck broken in three places. That’s when we thought the puma had kittens to feed.” Dafydd said at least five sheep have been killed by the puma. Recently Pam and Dafydd spotted a wolverine.

Pam said: “It looks like a woman with a bad hairdo. It has orange, yellow, brown and black streaky hair with a short tail. It looks like a small bear. “Dafydd saw a dead badger. He turned it over and it was like a surgeon had cut it. All the guts had gone. The hide had been cleaned as if for tanning. All that was left were the joints, spine and ribs.”

Dafydd said: “Since then we have seen seven or eight badger carcasses.” Then, about 18 years ago the Parry's saw a large cat as big as an Alsatian. Pam said: “It was a light-tan colour with thin, slim legs, a long tail and a lioness’ face and brown spots down its tack and tail.

“It walked across the road, jumped over a fence and disappeared. “It was during lambing and a lot of farmers were losing lambs. I told people there was a big cat around. Then we sighted her regularly on our farm and in our woods.”

Pam believes the animal was a jungle cat. The couple believe that the wild animals have been let loose in Snowdonia by their former owners and that the present policies of allowing wild habitats take over from farmland provides them with the perfect habitat to survive.

North Wales Police wildlife officer Rob Taylor said: “There have been claims of sightings over the last four years. One sheep was taken for post mortem but it had died of natural causes. If there is anything out there, there would be photographic evidence.”

DailyPostWales

Sea Shepherd drones target Japanese whaling fleet

2011-12-27T02:38:00.000-08:00

One of Sea Shepherd's latest state of the art vessels.

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said it located the Japanese factory ship Nisshin Maru off Australia's western coast Saturday using the drones, the first time this season it has made contact with the whalers.

However, other Japanese ships shielded the vessel "to allow it to escape," Sea Shepherd said in a statement.

"We caught them due west of Perth," founder Paul Watson told Reuters by satellite phone from the ship Steve Irwin. "For the next few days we will be chasing them. We are heading south."

The two drones are equipped with cameras and detection equipment and allow Sea Shepherd to monitor the whaling fleet from a distance, he said.

Watson said Sea Shepherd's three ships were well outside Antarctic waters when the Japanese vessel was seen. The Sea Shepherd waited for the Nisshin Maru after hearing from fishermen it had sailed through the Lombok Strait in Indonesia on its voyage to Antarctic waters.

The Sea Shepherd society's annual attempts to stop the Japanese whale hunt by "direct action" have been widely criticised by other environmentalists and governments, particularly Japan. However, it also has influential supporters.

Watson said sympathisers in New Jersey in the United States contributed to the cost of the two drones.

An international moratorium on whaling has been in place since 1986, but Japan exploits a loophole allowing whaling for scientific purposes to justify its annual hunt.

California teen becomes world's youngest ultimate peak bagger

2011-12-25T03:21:00.000-08:00

A Southern California teenager became the youngest person to successfully climb to the summit of the seven tallest mountains on Earth's seven continents, according to his website.Jordan Romero, 15, called his mother Leigh Ann Drake on Saturday to confirm that he'd achieved his goal of reaching the top of Mt. Vinson Massif in Antarctica.

The Big Bear, Calif. native beat the record previously held by British climber George Atkinson, who completed the ascents at age 16 in May.

Romero's team began the climb Wednesday. Romero's Facebook page, "Find Your Everest," marked reaching the summit, but the climb is hardly over.

"It's in the books. The kid and team summit with all fingers and toes. Descent still to come then we celebrate," a post to the Facebook page read.

Romero completes the climbs with his father and stepmother.

"It's my dream we are following to the highest points on every continent," Jordan says on his blog. "I know it's a big goal and lucky for me my family is supporting me every step of the way."

At age 10, Romero climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, and at age 13 he climbed the world's highest mountain, at 29,035 feet, Mt. Everest in Asia.

Drake declined further comment, saying the family is not seeking attention for the boy's achievement.

Outdoor retailer Blacks faces bleak Christmas

2011-12-23T05:50:00.000-08:00

Blacks Leisure, the struggling outdoor goods retailer that put itself up for sale earlier this month, said the deals it was working on would leave its shares worthless. The bleak update from the company just two days before Christmas Day saw its shares plunge 36 percent.

That gave the firm, saddled with 36 million pounds of debt, a nominal market value of just 0.94 million pounds. The firm sells products such as walking boots, camping equipment and ski jackets from 306 Blacks Outdoor and Millets stores, employing about 3,500 staff.

It said several parties had submitted indicative offers to buy the whole or substantially all of its trade, assets and brands."Blacks Leisure continues to hold discussions with a number of selected parties with a view to concluding the sale process in January 2012," it said. "Based on the level of indicative offers received, it is most unlikely that any value will be attributable to the ordinary shares."

Blacks added that it continues to be in talks with its lender, Bank of Scotland. Sports Direct, the UK's No. 1 sporting goods retailer and Blacks' largest shareholder with an 22.5 percent stake, said last week it would not make an offer for the firm, which has issued a raft of profit warnings.

However, analysts reckon Sports Direct remains interested in parts of the group. They also see the privately owned Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Mountain Warehouse, Go Outdoors and Cotswold Outdoor as possible suitors. Analysts said a pre-packaged administration of Blacks early in the new year is most likely. That would allow a buyer to close unprofitable stores and reduce overheads.

Reintroduced Scottish beavers thrive in their new environment

2011-12-23T02:59:00.000-08:00

A scheme to reintroduce wild beavers to Scotland has had little negative impact on the country's rivers and streams. Despite fears the animals would damage trees and divert rivers by building dams, a report has found little evidence they have had an adverse affect on the landscape.

However, the study warned the animals' impact may increase as they expand their habitat beyond the lochs they were released into.

The animals were set free at Knapdale forest near Lochgilphead in May 2009, as part of the Scottish Beaver Trial. In autumn 2010, Stirling University researchers surveyed 12 rivers and streams in the area to assess the effect of the beavers. They have just published their report, which found that small dams had been built in a few places but these were limited in number and scale. It appeared the animals had mainly been using the loch area in the trial release zone.

The study was commissioned by Scottish National Heritage (SNH), which is co-ordinating the independent scientific monitoring. Angus Tree, who manages the river habitat monitoring for SNH, said: "It's notable the beavers are having little effect on the streams in the area. This is because they have been concentrating nearly all of their activity around the lochs where they were originally released and have now settled.

"However, it's probable they will begin to use rivers and streams more in future, as their numbers increase and they spread further afield. This survey didn't cover lochs, such as Dubh Loch, where more changes are being seen, but that will be covered in a separate report to be published next year."

Questions had been raised over the viability of the scheme by farmers and local landowners who feared the semi-aquatic rodents would uproot trees to collect material for their dens, and would also flood land by damming rivers.

But the researchers looked at a range of features – including bankside vegetation, size and shape of the stream channel, the stability of the banks and the amount of woody debris in the stream – and found little change.

David Gilvear, Professor of River Science at Stirling University, said: "It is widely known that beavers modify streams by damming, felling and caching food. These modifications are undertaken for their own benefit but at the same time create new aquatic features that provide habitat for a range of other plant and animal species.

"To date, at Knapdale, such changes have not been apparent due to the beavers spending most of their time on the lochs. If the beavers do decide to live on the streams full-time, the monitoring will pick up any impacts on the river margins and stream bed."

Sixteen beavers brought from Norway were originally released in stages between 2009 and 2010. Since then four have been born in the wild; three have died; and five are missing presumed dead.The five-year Scottish Beaver Trial is run by the Scottish Wildlife Trust and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, hosted by Forestry Commission Scotland.

The Scottish Government has asked SNH to co-ordinate the scientific monitoring of the trial.

Scottish Beaver Trial home

HeraldScotland

Y Garn victim was local solo walker

2011-12-21T01:43:00.000-08:00

A MAN who died from head injuries after he fell 500 ft down Banana Gully on Y Garn, triggering an avananche in the process,has been named. Martin Richard Coleman, aged 36 from Bodfari in the neighbouring county of Denbighshire, fell when a cornice he was standing on with two female students collapsed and caused both Mr Martin and one of the students to fall in the weekend incident.

Chris Lloyd of the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue team said the solo walker, who was well equipped, had stopped to discuss the best way off the mountain with two female student walkers.

"The trio were starting to head down from the mountain when they stood on overhanging snow which gave way and triggered an avalanche.The man and one of the students were swept away, leaving the other female student to raise the alarm.There was a fair amount of snow and low cloud,” said Mr Lloyd.

“We did not know how many people were buried in the avalanche at first but as information came through we knew we were only looking for one person.It is just a really tragic accident, especially at this time of year.”

Emergency crews were alerted at 2pm on Saturday and the 22 Squadron helicopter from RAF Valley took teams of mountain rescuers up to the scene of the accident. A passing mountain guide was able to rescue the fallen female student but the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

EPA report highlights multiple threats to biodiversity in Ireland

2011-12-20T07:45:00.000-08:00

Pollution, over-exploitation and the spread of non-native species are causing a decline in Ireland's biodiversity comparable to the major extinctions in history, according to a new study.

The Biochange report, published today by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of the changing environment on ecosystems in this country.

It identifies four main drivers of biodiversity loss caused by human activity – habitat destruction and fragmentation, the spread of non-native invasive species, pollution and over-exploitation of natural resources. Ireland has a wealth of biodiversity from peatlands to woodlands, hedgerows, sand dunes and seas; it also includes the animals and plants that depend on these habitats for survival.

The report said the financial implications of biodiversity loss are significant. In 2008, the European Commission estimated the value of annual loss in ecosystem services resulting from the cumulative loss of biodiversity will be €14 trillion globally by 2050. At a national level, a recent study valued ecosystem services in Ireland at €2.6 billion per annum.

The agriculture industry, for example, would not thrive without essential ecosystem services such as pollination by insects and soil conditioning by earthworms. Lead researcher on the report, Dr Steve Waldren, said relatively small actions can bring big benefits in terms of boosting species and their functions.

“By ensuring that small fragments of habitat are protected in developed areas and by conserving hedgerows in agricultural lands we can take some immediate positive steps towards halting biodiversity loss,” he said. The report said that much still remains to be done to create an awareness of the importance of biodiversity and that its conservation makes good economic sense.

Easy-to-access information was identified as being crucial to halting biodiversity loss. As part of the BioChange project, a database of Irish living organisms was created which currently documents some 16,000 Irish species. It can be accessed at www.species.ie.EPA director general Laura Burke said the report would be of benefit to policymakers in a range of areas such as agriculture, planning and environment management.

“This research underlines the importance and value of protecting our ecosystems and highlights the requirement to mainstream biodiversity considerations into planning and governance at national and local levels,” she said. Non-native invaders causing problems

Zebra mussel

A native of South East Russia, this freshwater mussel accidentally arrived into Ireland in 1994 attached to the hulls of boats bought in from either Britain or the Netherlands where it had already become widely established. It was first discovered in Lough Derg and has since spread by both deliberate and accidental introductions to other areas.

These mussels are filter feeders and so increase water clarity, which is thought to be the reason they are deliberately introduced into lakes by anglers. However, they have a negative impact on fish populations because they alter the natural ecosystem which are the food source for juvenile fish. They also cause an increase of plant growth around lake margins. They have caused a decline in our native freshwater mussel by attaching to their shells and “smothering” them. They are also responsible for causing blockages to freshwater intake pipes and boat engines.

Grey Squirrel

Not native to Ireland, the grey squirrel was deliberately introduced in 1911 in Co Longford and has now spread to about 20 counties. It is larger and more adaptable to the available food source then the native red squirrel and the decline in the red squirrel can be directly correlated to the decline of the red squirrel.

Irish Times

Walker dies on Y Garn after plunging down Banana Gully

2011-12-18T12:44:00.000-08:00

The East Face of Y Garn: Banana Gully is the obvious curved line on the right.

A man in his thirties died today on Y Garn in Snowdonia after a cornice above the popular winter route,Banana Gully, collapsed and he fell 500' to the cwm below. He was with two female walkers,one of whom also plunged down the gully before coming to rest in avalanched snow before being rescued by a mountain instructor who was in the area at the time.

Teams from Ogwen Valley and RAF Leeming were flown to the site where the helicopter from RAF Valley on Anglesey was able to land. The rescue mission lasted several hours.
Chris Lloyd of Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Team said North Wales Police received an emergency call from a mountaineering guide who saw the man fall.
"The man was well equipped with all the right kit. He had met up with two female students to discuss the best walk off the mountain in the cloud," "They were walking over the snow towards the north east ridge, but suddenly about 50m of snow overhanging the ridge collapsed casting one of the girls and the man down the gully. "They didn't realise there was no rock underneath. The guide went down and rescued the girl. "He then went down again, found the man very seriously injured and made the 999 call.".
Despite freezing temperatures over the weekend in the mountains of North Wales,conditions have remained poor with snow cover thin and high. What lies on the peaks remains unconsolidated and offers little scope for sport.

In too deep: Farmed Salmon disease becomes a global epidemic.

2011-12-17T02:25:00.000-08:00

Discovery of the deadly salmon virus Infectious Salmon Anaemia in Canada is just latest likely example of disease spreading to wild fish stocks from the world's mega fish farms

The rise of the farmed fish industry in recent years has been accompanied by the emergence of many infectious diseases of fish. One of the most recent and serious diseases is the marine viral disease, Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA).

First detected in Atlantic salmon farmed along the southwest coast of Norway in 1984, it has since spread throughout the world.

As the name suggests, ISA shows itself by a severe anaemia, with fish displaying pale gills, and often swimming close to the surface of the water, gulping for air. More insidiously, however, many fish show no signs at all until they suddenly die.

An outbreak of the ISA was detected in wild Pacific salmon last October, in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Outbreaks of this virus have previously been detected in fish farms in Chile and Scotland, and although not dangerous to human health, have had serious impacts on the industry and the communities who depend upon it.

Effective management of the diseases of aquatic animals can be problematic. Often, too little is known about the infection itself, and infections can spread via flowing water and populations of wild fish sharing the same waters as farmed fish.

British Columbia’s ISA outbreak in wild salmon was discovered by researchers from Simon Fraser University, led by Professor Richard Routledge. Samples were taken in May and June last year as part of a ten year study into the importance of the Rivers Inlet area to migrating juvenile sockeye salmon.

'It was not until toward the end of the migration season, when we realised how few juvenile sockeye salmon we were going to be able to catch, that we began to consider possible causes of the low catch rate. ISAv was just one of several potential causes that we eventually considered,' said Professor Routledge.

Samples from 48 wild salmon were sent to the reference laboratory at the University of Prince Edward Island, the global centre for tests to detect the virus. They confirmed the presence of ISA in two of the fish. Subsequently, three out of ten fish collected from a tributary of Fraser River, the biggest wild salmon river in the world, also tested positive for the ISA virus. The three fish were all different species: coho, chinook, and chum salmon, and all three died before they had spawned, although the cause of death has not yet been determined.

These results have not surprised many scientists, who see infection in the wild population as inevitable and point the finger of blame at nearby fish farms. Rivers Inlet, where the positive samples were taken, is just 60 miles from the nearest salmon farm, and although there is no definitive evidence, the fact that it was the European strain of the virus which was detected, seems to suggest that this is a distinct possibility.

The aquaculture industry in British Columbia has imported millions of Atlantic salmon eggs from Norway and other countries in Europe for the past 25 years. Previously ISA had been found in ocean-going salmon, but was not deadly until it morphed into a virulent strain in Norway’s fish-farming pens. Poor aquaculture practices are thought to have contributed to the mutation, with unhealthy fish being fed antibiotics and living in densely packed pens. A diseased fish comes into close contact with many other fish, spreading ISA via urine, blood and other bodily fluids. As the fish farm has an open net, disease can be easily transferred to the outside world.

Professor Routledge believes that the fish farms are 'an important potential pathway for ISAv to be spread to wild Pacific salmon.'

Many have been campaigning for years against open net fish farming. The Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform (CAAR), comprising of groups working to promote safe salmon farming in British Columbia, has led efforts to develop a safe salmon farming industry. Will Soltau who works for the Living Oceans Society, one of the member groups, says that CAAR has 'worked for the last decade to stop the expansion of open net-cage salmon farming in BC and advocate for transitioning the open net-cage farms into closed containment technology. That transition would separate the farmed fish from the wild fish and thereby eliminate a lot of the negative effect from the industry to the marine environment.'
Unfortunately, the Canadian Government has not acted on advice and the industry has resisted change. 'We are now faced with the possibility of this disease being introduced to the North Pacific Ocean for the first time and spreading in wild salmon stocks,' adds Mr Soltau.

Campaigners are right to be worried. In 2007, an outbreak of ISA in Chile decimated their lucrative farmed salmon industry. More than 100 fish farms were affected, with over a million fish being killed and 50 per cent of workers losing their jobs. The cost of ISA over the last 4 years is estimated to be around US$2 billion, and the industry is yet to recover from the impacts of the disease.

Scotland too has had to tackle its own outbreaks. In 1998/99, ISA was confirmed at 11 sites, and suspected at 34 additional sites, scattered across virtually the entire salmon farming region. The cost to the industry was estimated to have amounted to £30 million. Ten years later ISA returned, although this time on a much smaller scale. Six infected sites in Shetland were confirmed and depopulated of fish, and only after 2 years of monitoring and testing were they declared ISA free.

In British Columbia, salmon farming and the wild commercial salmon sector combined provides over 3,000 full-time equivalent jobs, and contributes hundreds of millions of dollars to the provincial GDP. Salmon sport fishing is also important to the economy, and is a significant employer.

The news of ISA in British Columbia has surprised those in the industry. The British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association stated that their fish health departments regularly test farmed fish for ISA but have never found a positive result. In addition, the Canadian Government has conducted tests on the original wild samples.

They were sent to a laboratory at the University of Bergen in Norway, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced that the lab found no evidence of ISA.

However, this statement is misleading according to Professor Routledge. 'The Norwegian lab was able to generate one positive test result on a sample from one of the two fish that had previously tested positive, but the result was not repeatable. One explanation for the discrepancy that seems highly credible to me is that the samples were by then degraded.' The samples were of too poor a quality for the results to be replicated so the CFIA announced, somewhat controversially, that the results were negative.

Alexandra Morton, the marine scientist and outspoken wild salmon activist who collected the Fraser River samples, cannot understand the government’s response. 'Why would government jump out and deny evidence of ISA virus in BC? If the samples were poor wouldn't it make sense to go back to the places where the positive tested fish came from and take their own samples? How can we take any confidence when government says everything is fine because the virus was found in poor quality samples?' She continues: 'ISA virus is the most deadly salmon virus known, it plagues salmon farms worldwide but Canada is going to ignore the results from two of the top ISA virus labs in the world, because the samples were of poor quality?'

While the Canadian Government is playing down the fears of ISA, the United States Government has taken the opposite stance. In a statement released by senators from Washington State and Alaska, fears were expressed that the Canadian government may be too close to the multi-billion dollar industry. They called upon the United States to conduct their own tests, as 'we should not rely on another government – particularly one that may have a motive to misrepresent its finding – to determine how we assess the risk ISA may pose to American fishery jobs. We have to get a coordinated game plan in place to protect our salmon and stop the spread of this deadly virus.'

As ‘Salmongate’ (as the North American press have dubbed this debate) continues, it is clear that more tests are needed to confirm the initial findings. 'I believe that top priority needs to be given to collecting, preserving, and analysing new samples under tight protocols to obtain more definitive evidence regarding the presence, geographic range, origin, etc., of the virus in the North Pacific,' says Professor Routledge.

The stakes are high, especially with so many people dependent on salmon-related industries in the Pacific Northwest. Campaigners are viewing the ISA outbreak as one reason why changes to aquaculture procedures are essential, but scientists admit that they are on a steep learning curve. Swift action is necessary, but no country has ever managed to completely eradicate ISA, and reverberations of this outbreak may be felt far and wide for many years to come.

The Ecologist

Boulderers find fire on the mountain

2011-12-14T01:47:00.000-08:00

A young Pat Ament on Flagstaff's Smith Overhang (V8). Ament made the second ascent immediately following Richard Smith.   

Flagstaff Mountain, just a five-minute drive from downtown Boulder, is littered with sandstone that, at first glance, seems like nothing special. After all, the rocks are diminutive -- up to about 25 feet tall -- compared to the grand walls and sweeping slabs of neighboring crags such as the Flatirons, and Eldorado and Boulder canyons.

Yet climbers flock to "Flag," a perfect playground for bouldering, where climbers can safely climb unroped, relatively low to the ground. But Flagstaff is more than just a convenient outlet for today's crashpad-crazed, chalk-toting rock jocks. It's a stage upon which an influential sliver of American climbing history played out, as well as an arena of contemporary challenges.

Climbers first set foot on Flagstaff stone in the 1940s and 1950s, when bouldering was considered nothing more than training for longer routes and mountain climbs. But it didn't take long before a handful of forward-thinking climbers such as John Gill and Pat Ament honed their skills at Flag and, as early as the 1960s, raised rock climbing standards vis--vis bouldering.

In John Sherman's hilarious vade mecum "Stone Crusade: A Historical Guide to Bouldering in America," Ament is quoted, "I was tired of the community looking at bouldering as some kind of sideshow to climbing. I really felt ... that it was something true and real and valid in its own right."

Ament's view on bouldering was greatly respected, in no small part due to his mastery of the craft at Flagtaff. Long before sticky rubber shoes and the safety of bouldering pads, Ament established many of the mountain's cutting edge problems of his day, such as King Conquer (V3, 1962), Right Side of the Red Wall (V5, 1967), Direct South Face of the Amphitheater (V4, 1967) and First Overhang (V5, 1968) -- all of which remain challenging today.

In "Stone Crusade," Sherman writes, "(Ament's) one-arm mantel problem Right Hand Mantel ... has embarrassed generations of boulderers who felt they climbed beyond 1960s standards." Over the years, Flagstaff's rough stone has torn the skin of talented climbers too numerous to mention. But one local standout was the tall, steel-fingered Jim Holloway who, in 1975, climbed a 12-foot problem on the right side of Flag's Cloudshadow Wall.

Trice (V12) was likely the hardest boulder problem in the world at the time, but the humble Holloway made no such claim. As a result, Trice remained an obscure mystery until 2007 when it finally saw its second and third ascents (on the same day) by Boulder strongmen Carlo Traversi and Jamie Emerson.

Perhaps today's most committed Flagstaff climber is local professor, artist, and author Peter Beal. In addition to repeating many of Flag's testpieces, Beal -- a boulderer for more than 30 years -- has established a score of new, difficult problems characterized by handholds so small that climbers either disregarded them as too painful, or were simply shut down.

Indeed, while some elite climbers snub the mountain's exceptionally sharp and sometimes loose rock, Beal is an outspoken Flagstaff apologist. On his thought-provoking blog (mountainsandwater.com), Beal wrote about why he climbs at Flag and -- one can infer -- why he seeks out such new climbs: "I like finding value in things that the mainstream ignores, that the bandwagon passes by, especially when that bandwagon represents an increasingly commercialized vision of the sport."

Indeed, the sport of bouldering -- more akin to gymnastics than alpinism -- has burgeoned into the most popular climbing genre. New bouldering nooks and niches are yielding more finger-friendly problems than Flag's classic (read: hard) problems at a given grade, which is probably one reason why a whopping 32 years passed before Trice was repeated.

Number-chasers tend to steer clear of Flagstaff. But while Flag's popularity waxes and wanes, its colorful characters, past to present, have left a legacy of historic problems that still attract the best. Swiss climber Fred Nicole, famous for setting world bouldering standards for more than a decade, made a quick repeat of Trice in October. He blogged on Prana's website "I would like to tell all my respect to Jim Holloway for his performances in bouldering, which are still great inspiration for all of us."

Chris Weidner: Daily Camera

Experts clash on Kilimanjaro's disappearing ice cap.

2011-12-12T01:11:00.001-08:00

There is no evidence that ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro would disappear by 2025 as some researchers have claimed, the minister for Natural Resources and Tourism, Mr Ezekiel Maige, has said.

He said while it has been confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that the ice glaciers on Africa's highest mountain were receding, there was no conclusive evidence that there will be no snow there in 14 years to come. "However, this is under debate by other researchers who say the ice cap will continue to exist even after that," he explained when he was opening the 8th scientific conference of the Tanzania Wildlife Research Institute (Tawiri) at an Arusha hotel Tuesday.

He said Mt. Kilimanjaro had a substantial snow and ice-capped peak for over 11,000 years, but now there is much concern that the natural wonder (it is the only snow-covered mountain in the Equatorial region), has apparently fallen victim to man's destructive activities during the last 100 years. It is estimated that Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice cap volume has dropped by more than 80 per cent. While in 1901, there was approximately 12.1 square kilometres of ice on the mountain, aerial photographs taken in 2000 showed only 2.2 square kilometres remained.

"The truly disturbing point is that most of the loss has occurred since 1970," the minister said, noting that the glaciers were, indeed, the source of water for the people's livelihoods and for several rivers, such as Pangani, which originate from the slopes of the mountain.

On climate change which is the theme of this year's conference, the minister said the African continent was the most vulnerable region compared to other parts of the world and warned that global warming may impact on wildlife conservation, tourism and development.

Overall, climate change is expected to have devastating effects on biodiversity, agriculture, glaciers and water supply, diseases, human migration and its cascading effects.

UN Climate panel confirm Himalayan glaciers are melting

2011-12-06T03:20:00.001-08:00

DURBAN, South Africa: A U.N.-backed panel of climate scientists says it has confirmed Himalayan glaciers are melting, though more work is needed to ascertain the extent and impact.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was released at the United Nations' annual climate summit this weekend in Durban, South Africa.

The panel had been forced to back off wording in a 2009 document that stated the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 and possibly sooner. Now, panel Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said, the latest scientific data available, while limited, show the glaciers are receding.

One Swedish study found all 10 glaciers studied between 2002 and 2005 had shrunk, and another study found reduced snow cover over the region in the past decade. The region has 54,000 glaciers.

"These reports provide a new baseline and location-specific information for understanding climate change in one of the most vulnerable ecosytems in the world," he said. "They substantially deepen our understanding of this region -- and of all mountain systems -- while also pointing to the knowledge gaps yet to be filled, and actions that must be taken to deal with the challenge of climate change globally and to minimize the risks from impacts locally."

He said the reports show the impact climate change could have on mountainous regions.

Many climatologists worry the melting of Himalayan glaciers could have a severe impact on the region's animals and people. About 1.3 billion people rely on water from the mountains and would face shortages if the glaciers were to disappear.

Outdoor activists in the Ochils face industrialisation threat.

2011-12-04T03:30:00.001-08:00

Photo: Geograph.org.uk

THE Ochils, currently a draw for walkers of all abilities, will be “fatally compromised” if the latest wave of wind turbines plans gain planning consent.

Friends of the Ochils committee member Malcolm Best warned the scenic hills between Stirling and Perth will become “one giant wind farm” resulting in a disaster for visitors, hill-goers and local residents and “industrialisation” of the wilderness.

“The Friends are incensed as yet another plan to cover the hills in wind turbines is unveiled,” he slammed.

“Earlier this month Wind Prospect filed three planning applications for 18 more wind turbines at and next to the Burnfoot Hill wind farm.

“If Wind Prospect have their way this will result in a total of 31 turbines on three adjacent sites.

“Friends of the Ochils believe the Ochils are a critically important recreation area and clearly recognised as such by the significant funding the Heritage Lottery Fund has given to the Ochils Landscape Partnership.

“Clackmannanshire has already designated their part of the Ochils as an Area of Great Landscape Value (AGLV) and the Rhodders site is in the AGLV and while the other two are in Perth and Kinross they will be highly visible from the AGLV.

“The erection of these turbines tears at the heart of the Ochils. The experience of climbing to the top of Ben Cleuch, the highest peak in the Ochils, will be fatally compromised for at least the next 25 years by the ridiculous number of turbines on display from that peak.”

Mr Best outlined the popularity of the hills for recreation.

“This area of the Ochils is less than one hour from Scotland’s two largest population centres, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and as such is visited by many people from these two cities and elsewhere,” the Glendevon resident said.

“To put even more wind turbines on these hills would simply be wrong. In fact this development would turn the Ochils into a landscape of wind farms rather than a landscape of beautiful hills with some wind farms.”

“The Wind Prospect planning applications have been lodged with Clackmannanshire and Perth and Kinross Councils and deadlines for objections will be set within the next few days.”

Formal objections to the scheme can be made online at www.pkc.gov.uk and www.clacks.gov.uk.

Perthshire Advertiser

Scientists discover new species in Indonesian mountain range

2011-12-03T07:38:00.001-08:00

It takes six hours to drive from Kendari in Southeast Sulawesi to the town of Kolaka, and then another three hours to reach the Mekongga mountain range region, where a team of Indonesian and American scientists begin their trek — the real start of their epic journey.

“If you get in there [the Mekongga mountain range], there is no guarantee you can get out,” said John A. Trochet, a field ornithologist at the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology at the University of California, Davis. “That’s the truth.”

Since 2009, scientists from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), the Ministry of Forestry and the Bandung Institute of Technology have collaborated with American scientists from the University of California’s Davis, Berkeley and San Francisco campuses to survey one of the world’s most biodiverse areas.

Their destination, however, is not an easy one to reach.

“We have to cross a river six times and then it’s a very steep climb to the remnants of an old logging road,” said Trochet, who has broken a finger and hurt his ankles on past treks.

“We follow the logging road, and in many places it’s a wall on one side and a vertical drop on the other,” he said. “In many, many places the logging road has washed away over the years. It’s just very difficult.”

Sometimes more than 80 porters must assist the scientists with their equipment and all of the samples they collect as they head up and down mountains.

“The reason this project is so big is because we are doing everything from plants to birds to microbes,” said Alan T. Hitch, assistant curator at the same institution at UC Davis. “These expeditions in modern times don’t really exist anymore.”

It has been about 80 years since the last extensive survey of the area was conducted.

“There are so many insects that are undescribed and so many undescribed microbes,” said Rosichon Ubaidillah, head entomologist at LIPI.

Despite difficult conditions and weeks of Indomie on the menu, the scientists smile with excitement as they describe expeditions that may be among the last of their kind.

Several trips have yielded samples from different elevation classes, many of which still need to be identified.

“Potentially on the vertebrae side, we have at least a few new species of frogs, definitely a new species of bat, probably a couple new species of shrews, and maybe a new subspecies of rodent,” Hitch said.

More than 1,500 vertebrae specimens have been collected, he said, and fish and lizard discoveries may also be classified as new species.

On the plant side of the expedition, 109 species have been collected including a new orchid and a new begonia species.

“This is a new record for us, said Elizabeth Widjaja, a member of the botany division at LIPI, who has potentially found a new genus of bamboo. “For scientific purposes it is very important.”

In addition to the discovery of the Garuda wasp, named after the national symbol of Indonesia, there have been new discoveries of a bright blue sawfly, a long-tongued bee, and numerous flies and tiny wasps, which scientists are currently in the process of describing.

“We estimate that there might be as many as 100,000 different insect species in the region we’re working in, perhaps half of which are new to science, waiting to be discovered and described,” Lynn S. Kimsey, an entomology professor and the director of the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis, wrote in an e-mail to the Jakarta Globe.

Indonesia’s national collection has gained three species of birds from the expeditions. And that’s only the beginning.

“Out of 80-odd different species of yeasts that we’ve isolated, 37 of them are new to science,” said Kyria Boundy-Mills, a curator at the Phaff Yeast Culture Collection at UC Davis.

Although studies are still in their infant stages, scientists are excited about their potential yields.

“We are finding potential activity in the plants and microbes that we are collecting in Mekongga — things that have potential for anti-cancer activity, potential effects on the nervous system, they might be new pain relievers or things for treating addictions,” Boundy-Mill said. “We are finding some very good candidates.”

But the scientists worry about protecting the watershed area, as well as the plants and animals of Sulawesi, which, as Trochet put it, “are to a tremendous degree found nowhere else.”

“This area has been logged. It is definitely not pristine rain forest,” Hitch said.

Logging officially stopped in the early 1990s and the area became protected forest, but illegal logging still occurs.

“We have to ask the local people not to go to the forest and do logging again,” Elizabeth said.

Rosichon added that establishing profitable industries in cocoa and coconut plantations could help the region turn away from illegal logging.

“For the people there, it’s easy to just go to the forest and take something from there. We would like to develop an effective biodiversity conservation strategy,” Rosichon said.

Mining interests in the area are also raising concerns.

“Local mining is already open,” Elizabeth said. “Not in the area we visited, but after that on the way to Lasusua. It belongs to Antam [mining company].”

A rise in mining activity could threaten Sulawesi’s biosphere.

“We worry about that [mining],” Rosichon said, adding that the government recently released new regulations to stop the mining in 2015.

“The mining is getting crazy … They are trying to get more and more raw material before they have to stop.”

Despite threats to the region, Rosichon remains optimistic, and the team hopes to approach the government in Jakarta with a proposal to create a larger protective area.

“Hopefully the research from this project will contribute significantly to the broad range of issues, not only for the knowledge of biodiversity in the area, but for conservation and sustainable use of the resources in Sulawesi, and also for the whole country,” Rosichon said.

Grant funding for the project from the US National Institutes of Health will end in 2013.

The scientists are hoping to expand the scope of their research past 2013 with additional grant funding.

“Why should Mekongga be special? The prospect of other areas having similar riches is extremely high,” Trochet said.

JakartaGlobe

Road trip

2011-12-02T07:54:00.001-08:00

Shea Harris has traveled to different states to follow his passion. Harris and fellow climber Clay Carnes are travelling to Kentucky soon to climb at Red River Gorge: Photo Clay Carnes.

Everything is packed up and it's time to go home. The driver's arms feel too heavy to lift. Struggling to wrap his fingers around the steering wheel, he gathers one more push of endurance. He is on the road, his truck filled with his energy-deprived companions, driving back into responsibility. Only one thought is consuming his mind; he could have climbed harder.

Jonesboro is not the first place someone would look for a community of rock climbers; there must be something to climb before someone can call themselves a climber. Yet, a group of about 10 to 15 climbers have settled in Jonesboro despite the lack of climbable rock in the area.Jamestown Wildlife Management Area near Batesville is the closest area to climb for a Jonesboro resident, which requires a little over an hour of travel.

Other popular areas in the state are Horseshoe Canyon Ranch in Jasper and multiple areas scattered throughout Mt. Ida, all about four hours from Jonesboro.On the website for Horseshoe Canyon Ranch it says that multiple outdoor magazines have claimed it to be "one of the best climbing areas east of the Rockies." Shea Harris, an ASU alumni and climber from Tyronza agreed saying, "Arkansas is a hidden gem."

Climbers are always seeking a new challenge. Rocks don't move, so they have to go to them and traveling becomes essential. Clay Carnes, an ASU alumni and climber from Jonesboro said, "I would say the general consensus is: if you're a climber, you're on the road." Some just can't get enough when it comes to climbing, so they load up their vans and give up their jobs and homes to pursue climbing 24/7.

There is an unspoken bond between climbers. No matter where they travel, a new friend is waiting. The climber's network is vast and welcoming. Harris traveled to Wyoming to climb and lodged with a friend he met while climbing. On the road he stopped in Springfield, Mo-to stay with another friend he met while climbing. Carnes traveled to Spain for six weeks with a main objective of climbing, meeting many people in the process and staying with a fellow climber that he met. He said that climbing is just part of their culture. Rock walls were in the public parks and rock holds were on the bridges in Madrid.

"The climbing style and energy was so different," Carnes said. "I came back with better technique and am an overall better climber." Experiencing new rock and locations make a well-rounded climber. "It's like a puzzle, you have to be able to put all the pieces together, but sometimes you physically can't do it," Harris said. "It's improved my problem solving skills, and I see things more simplistically now."

The initial cost of gear and the rise in gas prices may steer Jonesboro natives from pursuing the sport. Climbing can even cost less than other popular fall activities. "You could spend $70 for the entire weekend climbing and have a blast," Carnes said. Carpooling is an essential part for the traveling climbers of Jonesboro. It also adds an unforgettable aspect to the experience of the trip to the rock. Both Carnes and Harris agreed that the time will fly by on a road trip to Red River Gorge in Slade, Ky., with a group of friends in the car.

"On occasion when we head out to climb, it can turn out to be terrible." Harris said. "The highlight of the trip can end up being the traveling." If a person is hooked on climbing, it can become a way of life. Everything is seen through a filter and situations in life can be related back to that time when they were hanging by their finger tips 100 ft. in the air on a rock trying to make the next move. Despite the hours of travel, it is all worth it to climbers. "You come back so drained, but once you recover, man, you feel great," Carnes said.

Kayla Payne
The Herald

Why environmentalists should stand with Bradley Manning

2011-11-30T02:19:00.000-08:00

If you had free reign over classified networks for long periods of time and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do?

Say… a database of half a million events during the iraq war… from 2004 to 2009… with reports, date time groups, lat-lon locations, casualty figures… ? Or 260,000 state department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world, explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail, from an internal perspective?

This quote is attributed to PFC Bradley Manning, a 23 year-old intelligence analyst for the U.S. military who was stationed in eastern Baghdad until his arrest last May. It comes from an internet chat log turned over to the FBI by hacker Adrian Lamo, famous originally for his internet activism against large corporations. In these chat logs Bradley allegedly discussed his role in leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks.

PFC Manning’s case has already drawn the attention of most major news sources, with mixed coverage. On the positive side, he was just nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and was the UK Guardian reader’s choice for the award. Undoubtedly, more Americans will hear of him as the year progresses.

But what should the public think of this undeniably complicated case? And why does discussion of PFC Manning belong here on an environmental blog? I will attempt to answer both of these questions shortly, but first allow me to introduce myself.

I currently work as an organizer for Courage to Resist, a non-profit that supports GI War Resisters facing various sorts of legal and political challenges. However, I organized for environmental justice throughout college and I even spent four months interning at RAN.

Courage to Resist is the fiscal sponsor for the Bradley Manning Support Network, an international movement involving a broad range of organizations and activists. We have taken up the cause of PFC Manning because he is the most prominent GI Resister of our time, and we believe the handling of his case will set a precedent for other government and military whistleblowers. Not only that, but the outcome of PFC Manning’s trial will have a significant influence on the future of our democracy, and the work of those advocating for social change in particular, RAN being no exception.

What we know about PFC Bradley Manning prior to his arrest is that he was a young idealistic man from a working class background. According to a gay rights activist with whom Manning had conversations, Bradley followed his father’s footsteps in joining the army because he had dreams of attending college to study Physics, but did not have the financial resources. Smart, technologically adept, openly queer (a friend once said Bradley credited his participation in anti-DADT marches for sparking his interest in other political issues), he also took the perspective of a world citizen. Although he wished the Army was more friendly to diversity, he hoped that through his service he could spread democracy, and save both U.S. and Iraqi lives.

Because of his technological skills, he was given the job of Intelligence Analyst stationed in Eastern Baghdad. At the beginning of his deployment, he told friends and family that he was happy and proud of his position. It was some time during his deployment that his views began to change. Insight as to why comes from the chat logs attributed to him:

I think the thing that got me the most… that made me rethink the world more than anything… was watching 15 detainees taken by the Iraqi Federal Police… for printing “anti-Iraqi literature”… the Iraqi federal police wouldn’t cooperate with US forces, so I was instructed to investigate the matter, find out who the “bad guys” were, and how significant this was for the FPs… it turned out, they had printed a scholarly critique against PM Maliki… I had an interpreter read it for me… and when i found out that it was a benign political critique titled “Where did the money go?” and following the corruption trail within the PM’s cabinet… I immediately took that information and ran to the officer to explain what was going on… he didn’t want to hear any of it… he told me to shut up and explain how we could assist the FPs in finding MORE detainees… everything started slipping after that… i saw things differently… i had always questioned the things worked, and investigated to find the truth… but that was a point where I was a part of something… I was actively involved in something that i was completely against…

Several months after that incident took place, Bradley Manning was charged with releasing the documents now known as the Collateral Murder video, Iraq War Logs, Afghan War Diary, and U.S. Diplomatic Cables (which included one document which is being credited with the Obama Administration agreeing to withdraw all troops from Iraq).

The revealed information describes thousands of secret actions of top U.S. State Department and military officials, as well as officials from other governments around the world. Actions that fit into a historical pattern of how wealth and big business influence U.S. relations abroad, but that run contrary to the public image most politicians strive to present. The information he is accused of releasing has been cited in over a third of New York Times editions of the past year. The revealed documents give us tremendous insight into what it truly means to call the United States a world power.

Many environmental organizations, RAN being a prime example, recognize that the immense power of modern multinational corporations is a major threat in the struggle for a just and sustainable world. Beholden to their shareholders and their bottom-line above all else, these corporations stoop to promoting lies about how ethical their operating processes are, debunked by groups such as RAN. They also use their immense financial resources, with larger spending power than many small countries, to influence public policy through backroom lobbying.

Here are some examples of the sorts of environmental crimes revealed through the documents Bradley Manning allegedly gave to WikiLeaks, crimes which have been blogged about by Greenpeace, RAN, and other similar organizations:

* The 2010 BP oil disaster could have been predicted and prevented. It turns out BP had a massive oil blowout in Azerbaijan in 2008 that was very similar in cause and consequence to their blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

* The Fukushima nuclear disaster could also have been avoided. The disaster is now ranked more severe than Chernobyl, due to contamination. Japan was warned two years ago that their nuclear power plants could not withstand a major earthquake.

* The U.S. used spying, threats, and promises of aid to gain support for the Copenhagen Accord. The Copenhagen Climate Accord of 2009 has been criticized by environmental groups across the board, because it is not legally binding and does not commit countries to agree to a binding successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Additionally, although the United States has the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world, the Accord allows us the lowest target for emissions reductions of any industrialized nation, at 17%.

* Peru’s government has secretly admitted that 70-90% of its mahogany exports were illegally felled. Home Depot, Lowe’s and Lumber Liquidators have all confirmed they use the timber in their products. The loggers pose a grave threat to uncontacted Murunahua Indians who could be wiped out by diseases brought by outsiders or face inter-tribal warfare if they are pushed off their lands.

 *   An Indonesian governor believes that the Indonesian Military keeps more troops in Papua New Guinea than it admits to in order to facilitate illegal logging operations. Additionally, a senior official for Freeport mine, Indonesia’s largest taxpayer, admitted that average Papuans see few benefits from the extractive industries’ revenues.

* Several countries, including the United States, are preparing to fight over Arctic oil. While President Obama publicly declared a commitment to protecting the Arctic’s unique ecosystem and Indigenous culture, State Department correspondence reveals an alarmingly different story.

* A U.S. diplomat warned the Obama administration about significant environmental impacts stemming from Canada’s controversial tar sands oil production program. This contradicts public statements from the State Department that attempt to downplay the environmental impact of the tar sands.

* The U.S. government conspired with Biotech companies to force genetically modified organisms (GMOs) on the European Union.

* In correspondence with U.S. officials, the oil giant Shell claimed that it had inserted staff into all main ministries of the Nigerian government, allowing it secret insight and political influence in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

* Chevron executives worked in tandem with U.S. officials to avoid paying $18.2 billion in court-ordered damages after the energy giant acquired Texaco, which had dumped billions of gallons of waste in Indigenous areas.

Looking at this evidence, I conclude that we cannot create a sustainable world for ourselves and fellow living beings without government and corporate transparency and accountability. And we cannot have transparency and accountability of powerful systems without whistleblowers like PFC Bradley Manning.

When Adrian Lamo asked PFC Manning what he hoped to accomplish as a result of the leaks, he allegedly said “hopefully worldwide discussion, debate, and reforms… I want people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.” It will be nothing short of a tragedy for our democracy if a young, conscientious whistleblower who has exposed so much of the dirty underbelly of foreign diplomacy between powerful economic interests goes to prison for life to prevent the American conscience from being challenged with the truth. The truth that a world led by neoliberal policies and corporations cannot create a more just future. The truth that it’s up to us, as American citizens, to hold our leaders accountable and organize ourselves persistently until we create the world we want to see.

On Monday last week the Military finally announced that after 18 months of incarceration, Bradley’s first day in court will be held on December 16 in the Washington D.C. area. The Bradley Manning Support Network is organizing a demonstration on December 17, which is also Bradley’s birthday, and there will be solidarity actions taking place around the world. Please visit our website for more information.

More resources:

Bradley Manning now faces a military trial and the possibility of life in prison. Find our petition to free him and other ways you can help here.

Filmmaker Michael Moore recently explained at the OccupySF general assembly how Bradley Manning helped inspire OccupyWallStreet. Watch the video.

This post was written by Emma Cape, former RAN intern and current organizer for Courage to Resist.

The Understory

Scottish mountaineering body laments loss of wilderness

2011-11-28T03:05:00.001-08:00

BRITAIN’S largest national park is in danger of losing its unique “sense of wildness” due to the damaging effect of wind farms and a proposed housing development, outdoor enthusiasts have claimed.

In a strongly-worded response to the Cairngorms National Park Authority’s draft plan for 2012-2017, the Mountaineering Council of Scotland (MCofS) has urged planners to ensure there is no further loss of natural habitat. The council highlights the impact of wind farm developments and a housing project, which it claims will have an adverse effect on the natural landscape.

Similar concerns were raised by the director of planning for Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park. Gordon Watson said yesterday regular applications for wind farms close to the edge of the national park were putting treasured landscapes and views at risk.

“It is a worry,” he said. “It isn’t just about the impact on the landscape and environment but on the tourism economy as well.

“If you are sitting in a boat on Loch Lomond with turbines on the horizon in every direction then is the experience still as good and what impact does it have on people’s wish to come and visit?”

In its statement, the mountaineering council, which represents 11,000 walkers and climbers, say: “It is the wildness of the arctic-alpine zone, and the opportunities for quiet recreation and physical challenge both in those areas, and on lowland crags, that makes the national park special to mountaineers.

“The feeling of wildness is central to the special experience that the park offers.

“There is great urgency to address the threat of a reduced sense of wildness as a result of the visual impact of development.

“The minimum should be to achieve no loss during 2012-17 as wildness is frequently lost through both incremental and major developments.”

MCofS says wildness is one of the defining features of the park and that it is the “glue” for the identity of the scenic area.

It believes the CNPA faces a particular challenge in ensuring the landscape context of the park does not become a ring of wind farm developments.

“There is already a significant impact on the special qualities of the park which are threatened by the numerous developments constructed or planned close to the boundary of the park.

“Many are highly visible from core upland areas within the park, and are having a significant impact on the wild quality.

“These are primarily wind energy developments, which pose an immediate and growing threat as the cumulative impacts are already evident, and there are more applications in the planning system.

“This is a challenge that needs to be urgently and consistently addressed by the CNPA, which should exert as much pressure as possible on decisions outside the national park.”

The group has also reiterated its opposition to the proposed new town of An Camas Mòr at Aviemore because the development would “change the character of the park and detract from the communities’ ‘sense of place’ in the landscape”.

It welcomes a project to address erosion caused by human activity in the hills and supports the continuation of the “closed system” on the Cairngorm funicular mountain railway which stops users getting out and walking on the mountain summit.
The Scotsman

Crag fast on 'The Matron'. A cautionary tale.

2011-11-26T02:05:00.001-08:00

The Matron

The rock felt like ice. I breathed hot air onto my chalked fingers one hand at a time, but my stubborn digits remained numb. Up and left, I could see the angle ease off, but a body-length of difficult climbing separated me from the fun scramble I'd expected. I grabbed the miniscule holds anyway, pasted my left foot on a rounded ripple of sandstone and tried to stand up.

This can't be right, I thought.

I retreated to a stance for a minute, then tried a second time. Again I backed down, and I repeated this dance perhaps a dozen times, going nowhere in the process. The moves felt doable, but much harder than the guidebook suggested. I wished I'd brought a rope.

Just before Thanksgiving last year, I threw on my running shoes at the South Mesa Trailhead and ran toward a tall, slender Flatiron called The Matron. I could see my breath in the weak afternoon sunlight. At the base of the east ridge, I changed into rock shoes and started climbing. After 40 diagonal feet, I became acutely aware of the ground that dropped away to my left, leaving me about 150 feet above the ground. I soon reached a stance below a short wall with nothing but tiny fingertip holds.

Half an hour must have passed as I feebly climbed up and down. Finally, as dusk approached and my body shivered, I decided to abandon the climb altogether. But when I tried to down-climb, I was horrified to realize that I was too scared to reverse what I'd already climbed up. Most of our lives are spent seeking triviality, and climbing is no exception. Indeed, climbing can be a fast track to self-absorption.

In the latter half of the 1990s, I renounced my faith in God and turned instead to climbing as my new religion. Between classes at the University of Washington, I pored over climbing guidebooks and sought partners for weekend trips months in advance. I felt like I couldn't relate to non-climbers because they just didn't understand how important it was. Even my girlfriend at the time was a distant second to climbing. It was messed up.

But this dark side of climbing has a luminous, if not ironic, corollary. For as self-centered as it can be, climbing is also a candid cure for egocentrism. Death is a possible and constant outcome of our sport, no matter how "easy" a climb is perceived to be.

Most of the time, climbing feels safe and controlled, but even the most benign climbing situations can unexpectedly turn serious, offering an unwelcome yet piercing glimpse into our own mortality. Nothing I've ever experienced has so quickly snapped me out of a self-serving mentality and redirected my focus toward family and friends. In those pivotal moments between joy and horror, climbing is a means to transcend the trivial.

That's exactly what happened on The Matron last Thanksgiving week.

A climb that should have been an easy stroll suddenly left me desperate. In a moment of clarity, I realized my insignificance, how meaningless climbing can be and how deeply I cherish the people in my life. It was an unwelcome yet vital lesson that seemed preternaturally timed for Thanksgiving.

With renewed determination, I somehow forced myself to commit to the insecure moves, and I soon flopped shamelessly onto easier terrain. I raced to the summit with just minutes to spare before darkness shrouded the Flatirons.

The Matron was certainly not my first transcendent experience vis--vis climbing, nor was it unusually traumatic, as close calls tend to be. But for some reason, it was one of the most influential.

Perhaps it's because that experience (finally) helped me internalize climbing's place in my life -- as a passion to pursue wholeheartedly, but a distant second to the people I love.

Chris Weidner: Daily Camera

Accidental death verdict on popular Pembroke climber .

2011-11-25T11:49:00.001-08:00

Pembrokeshire Coroner, Mark Layton, recorded a verdict of accidental death at the inquest held into the death of local climber, Louise Smithson. This came after a post mortem concluded that Miss Smithson died of multiple traumatic injuries sustained in a rock climbing accident.

Louise Smithson was said to be an experienced climber, who had climbed in locations all over the world. She fell to her death just a short distance from her Pembrokeshire place of work, an inquest heard on Thursday. Ms Smithson aged 32, was the outdoor learning manager at the National Trust’s Stackpole Centre. On September 4th she and her partner, Paul Thorne, parked at the centre before walking with their dog to Mowing Word cliff on Stackpole Head.

After checking their equipment Mr Thorne abseiled down the cliff, using the popular classic route, Diedre Sud, followed by Miss Smithson. They then both proceeded to climb back up to the top of the cliff, following the same line. The route was one that both had completed frequently in the past. At the top of the cliff and with the weather beginning to close in Mr Thorne began to pack up their equipment. Miss Smithson however, wanted to practice jumaring. She abseiled two to three metres down the cliff and began to jumar back up the rope using what is mechanical device designed for ascending a rope.

In his statement Mr Thorne said he could see his partner from the top of the cliff where he was playing with their dog. He heard a click and saw her fall into the water. He shouted at nearby walkers for help and then abseiled down the cliff to her. “I swam towards Louise and gave rescue breaths. I could see she was in a bad way,” he said. “I swam over to a ledge and gave CPR. A wave washed us off the ledge.”

Mr Thorne then swam 80 metres with Miss Smithson to a nearby cove where he administered more CPR before putting her in the recovery position and free climbing up the cliffs to get help.
Emergency services arrived at the scene shortly after but further attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful. Subsequent examinations of the climbing equipment revealed no failures or cause for concern. The inquest heard that Miss Smithson was in good health and had no medical problems.

Himalayan nations in climate change pact

2011-11-24T11:51:00.001-08:00

Himalayan nations are doing it for themselves.
In the absence of a global agreement, four of the seven countries in the region have agreed to work together to deal with the harmful effects that climate change is expected to bring to this ecologically fragile part of the world.

India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan met at the Climate Summit for a Living Himalayas in Thimphu, Bhutan, last weekend. There, they agreed to work together on issues including food and water security.

All four countries rely on melt water from Himalayan glaciers. Recent temperature, rainfall and snow projections suggest flow into the Indus river – which supports the world's largest irrigation system – will fall by 8 per cent by 2050. Other rivers in the region will see even greater declines, leaving millions vulnerable to drought.

Upstream dams built with regional cooperation could help control the flow – and generate electricity into the bargain, says Saleemul Huq of the International Institute for Environment and Development in London. "It's a significant step forward for the region."

Historically, Himalayan countries have rarely worked together, but regional cooperation could be the best way to tackle climate change – especially as the upcoming UN climate change talks in Durban, South Africa, are not expected to produce a global treaty. To have a lasting impact, though, the group will need to include China, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Scottish sea lochs contaminated by toxic chemical brew

2011-11-22T02:14:00.001-08:00

They look like pristine, unpolluted beauty spots – but in fact they are contaminated with toxic pesticides. The sea lochs that line Scotland’s north-west coast, famed for their natural splendour, are polluted by poisonous chemicals used by fish farms, surveys by the Scottish Government’s green watchdog have revealed.

The sediments in nine sea lochs – all of those surveyed by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) – have been found to contain detectable levels of pesticides widely used to kill the sea lice that eat caged salmon. Environmentalists, anglers and creel fishers condemn the contamination as unacceptable, and claim the chemicals could be damaging marine wildlife.

Sepa has released the results of its latest surveys of sea lochs for four pesticides: teflubenzuron, diflubenzuron, emamectin and ivermectin. These are all compounds for treating salmon infested with sea lice. Traces of emamectin were found in sediment at all nine lochs tested in 2008 and 2009, including Loch Linnhe, Loch Ewe, Loch Nevis and Loch Fyne. Teflubenzuron was found at six lochs, and diflubenzuron at four.

Sepa pointed out that although the chemicals were known to be used at fish farms, they could also be applied by foresters and land farmers trying to combat various pests. Further investigations were required to pinpoint the exact sources of the contamination, the watchdog argued.

Sepa’s fish-farming expert, Douglas Sinclair, said: “These surveys have provided Sepa with important information on chemicals in the marine environment. “Sepa has already instigated a programme of site visits to carry out sampling and inspections. Future monitoring programmes may be designed in a different way to provide more definitive evidence of the source of any residues.”

Sepa was targeting 40 of Scotland’s most polluting fish farms in an effort to clean them up. “As well as tackling poor performers using this action-plan approach, Sepa will undertake formal enforcement action where offences or significant environmental harm have occurred,” said Sinclair.

Others expressed more concern. “Scotland trades on its beautiful and pristine environment but the truth is we are still letting poisons contaminate our sea lochs,” said Dr Richard Dixon, director of the environmental organisation, WWF Scotland. “International agreements quite rightly require us to eliminate discharges of toxic chemicals to the sea over the next decade. Fish farmers, farmers and the forestry industry have made progress but they all need to do more.”

Guy Linley-Adams is a solicitor who works with the Salmon and Trout Association, representing anglers. “Although Sepa suggests it cannot be sure where these residues come from, I would observe that the sampling points they have chosen are all at or near to cage salmon fish farms,” he said.

“Are we sure that these residues are having no effect on local populations of other crustaceans, such as prawns and lobsters, upon which many inshore fishermen rely for their livelihoods?”

The Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation, which represents the industry, argued that there was no problem. “We work within consent limits set by Sepa to ensure our unique marine environment is maintained and we are reassured that these reports confirm this is the case,” said Scott Landsburgh, the organisation’s chief executive.

Sepa stressed that the levels of contamination are mostly low, adding that although a few of the samples breached environmental standards, there was a “low risk of possible impacts”.

On Friday, the Scottish Government released new figures showing that farmed salmon production increased by seven per cent between 2009 and 2010, from 144,000 to 154,164 tonnes. That is the highest level in six years, officials said.

Farmed salmon is Scotland’s single-largest food export, with most going to the US, France, Poland, Ireland and China. Last year the industry was worth £540 million, and was the third largest in the world after Norway and Chile.

The Herald

Alone on Denali: A midwinter night's dream.

2011-11-20T02:57:00.001-08:00

Lonnie Dupre self portrait

At 20,320 feet, Mt. McKinley can be harsh and unforgiving any time of year. In winter it can be downright brutal: Long hours of darkness, subzero temperatures, hurricane-force winds.

After 22 days alone on McKinley last winter, Grand Marais adventurer Lonnie Dupre doubted he would return. But now he says he will.

“A little time passes and you forget the hardships,” he said, laughing. Dupre, 50, will return to Alaska next month for a second attempt to become the first solo climber to summit North America’s highest mountain during January.

“Now that I’ve been up the route in winter I got a lot of questions answered,” he said. “The chances of success are always much better on the second go-around. Of course, everything is weather-dependent.”

Last winter’s ascent ended after a storm pinned Dupre down in high camp at 17,200 feet for several days. After last winter’s experiences with bad weather, he decided to be flown onto McKinley (also known as Denali) at least two weeks earlier this year.

“Even though it’s darker, I believe the weather is more stable at that time,” he said.

If all goes as planned, Dupre will be dropped at 7,200 feet on Dec. 21 — the shortest day of the year. “It’s going to be cold,” said climbing guide Vern Tejas. “But the dark is what is really overwhelming. I’m thinking he’ll have about four, maybe five usable twilight hours then. The rest of the time he’ll be working in the dark. To me that is the biggest challenge. That is why I pushed my climb out to the middle of February.”

Tejas has reached McKinley’s summit 50 times — including the first successful solo winter climb in February-March 1988. Japanese climber Naomi Uemura had reached the summit solo on Feb. 12, 1984. But he vanished on the descent.

Uemura is one of six climbers who have died on the nine winter expeditions that reached McKinley’s summit. A three-member Russian team put two climbers on the summit in January 1998 — the only time climbers have summitted in January.

“I think he is playing a finer game,” Tejas said of Dupre. “He’s definitely trying to bite down on the hardest time of the year to do it. It’s been done midwinter by a team of Russians, but no one has been ballsy enough to challenge it in that time frame. It’s going to be tough.”

“If you have climbed it in the summertime and seen 40 below, you can imagine where it is going to go in the wintertime,” he said. Temperatures could drop to 80 below at 20,000 feet, Tejas said. Windchills could easily be 100 below or lower.

Add to that the dangers of crevasses, cliffs, rock falls, avalanches and altitude. The thin air at 17,000 feet holds only about half the oxygen that is available at sea level.

To prepare physically for the trip, Dupre has run daily and put in a lot of miles carrying a 50-pound pack. He’s on his way to Colorado to snowshoe up and down 13,000- and 14,000-foot peaks for two and a half weeks.

“That will get me acclimatized just prior to the mountain,” he said. He’ll travel to Talkeetna, Alaska, on Dec. 14 and continue to train and prepare his equipment until he is flown to McKinley’s base camp.

In addition to an earlier start, Dupre has fine-tuned his food and equipment, reducing his load from 150 to 110 pounds. He’ll cache food and supplies in snow caves he’ll build as he ascends the mountain.

Dupre also has planned a shortcut on the final climb from high camp to Denali’s 20,320-foot summit. The regular route above 17,200 feet starts with a traverse to the left. After reaching Denali Pass at 18,200 feet, the route turns right to follow a ridgeline up to a relatively flat area before the final summit ridge.

Dupre plans to cut the Denali Pass corner, using two ice axes to climb a steeper slope above high camp directly to the ridge. “It is much safer going up a steeper slope double ice-axing, I believe, and is going to cut off about two hours of travel time, which is critical when you only have six hours of daylight,” he said.

Dupre figures it will take him 12 hours to go from high camp to summit and back. He plans on ascending largely in the dark, saving daylight to negotiate the descent of the ridges and the traverse down from Denali Pass. “Ideally I would like to summit on full moon, which is Jan. 9, but that is going to be if the weather conditions are ideal, and of course that probably won’t happen,” he said.

“I wish him all the luck in the world,” Tejas said. “I’ve met him; I think he is a man of integrity and great skill. He’s a smart guy; he doesn’t have a death wish. I would like to see him do it. It would be fabulous to see if man can push that hard in those kinds of conditions.”

Duluth News Tribune

Conservationist accuses Greenpeace of cowardice

2011-11-18T12:23:00.001-08:00

Paul Watson

Trying to save the world can be a confrontational business. Paul Watson, president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, believes Greenpeace, where he started out as an activist in the 1970s, isn’t doing enough to protect whales in Antarctica. The 60-year-old Canadian says the more political tactics of Greenpeace don’t get results.

‘This behind the scenes crap is not something that Greenpeace was involved in. I think they’re just too cowardly to go back to be perfectly blunt about it,’ he says.

Watson is a divisive figure. An eco-terrorist to some, a hero to others. As the star of reality cable TV show Whale Wars, he featured in an episode of South Park two years ago, in which he was branded an ‘incompetent media whore’.

He says: ‘It was good for us. If you make it on to South Park you really know you’ve gotten into the culture. If they want to put us on the level of Tom Cruise and all those guys, that’s fine with me.’

For the past seven years, Watson and his Sea Shepherd crew have taken ships to Antarctica to try to stop the Japanese hunters.

This can involve destroying the whalers’ nets, boarding their ships and throwing bottles of stinking butyric acid – rotten butter – at them.

‘We have noticed over recent years the increasingly confrontational approach there doesn’t help in Japan, which is where we think we need to win the argument,’ says Willie MacKenzie, Oceans campaigner at Greenpeace. ‘There are reasons why we don’t work together. The fact is we don’t agree on tactics, so we can’t work together.’

While the eco-groups disagree on methods, they both contend Japan’s claim to kill the whales for scientific research is ‘bogus’.

Sea Shepherd’s eighth mission in Antarctica, beginning in December, is called Operation Divine Wind, which translates as ‘Kamikaze’.

‘I ask every one of my crew members if they’re willing to risk their life to protect the whale and if they say “no”, then we don’t want them,’ says Watson. Last year, they forced the whalers to suspend their three-month hunt six weeks early, saving about 850 minke whales in the process.

The Institute of Cetacean Research, the Japanese government-sponsored group carrying out the hunt, maintains its actions are legal. Spokesman Glenn Inwood says: ‘If the Sea Shepherd followers are willing to die for their cause, and if that occurs, it will be because of the actions of the person they follow, Paul Watson.’

It says the hunt is necessary to study the whales’ ecosystem. Since 1986, Japan has been hunting under ‘permits’ – issued by its own government – to kill the animals. About 10,000 minke whales have died since then. There has yet to be any significant scientific breakthrough.

Eurasian Cranes return to Ireland after 300 year absence.

2011-11-15T07:34:00.001-08:00

THREE CENTURIES after they became extinct in Ireland, a flock of 15 Eurasian Cranes has been sighted flying over the southwest at the weekend.

“A good omen” is how Lorcan O’Toole of the Golden Eagle Trust has described the sighting over Castletownroche, north Cork, which he describes as being of “spiritual and scientific” interest.

The 15 birds were flying north. On the same day, one crane flying with lapwings was photographed over Rogerstown estuary, Dublin. While there have been occasional sightings, cranes have not bred here since the early 18th century and were under severe pressure for several centuries before. The majestic bird breeds across northern Europe, Russia and the Ukraine.

Cranes were once so prevalent here that their Irish name “corr” is recorded in hundreds of place names – such as “Curragh” or “crane meadow” in Co Kildare.

“Few native birds can rival the widespread cultural footprint and the connections with Fionn Mac Cumhaill, the druids, St Colmcille and the Book of Kells,” said Mr O’Toole.

Druids believed in transmigration of the soul and the cranes were said to carry the spirits of the dead. They are best known for their migratory trumpeting and their predilection for display.

“Research by Prof Fergus Kelly suggests that the ‘peata corr’ was the third commonest pet after dogs and cats during the Brehon Law period,” said Mr O’Toole. “The crane bag was a well known magical container in our ancient folklore, which had associations with Manannán Mac Lir, the great sea god, Lúgh and Fionn Mac Cumhaill.”

Its familiar bald red patch on its crown is depicted in the Book of Kells, and St Colmcille was known as the “crane cleric”, he added.

Colonisers from Viking and Anglo-Norman times who had no qualms about eating the bird may have contributed to its demise, along with an increase in the fox population, said Mr O’Toole.

Loss of wetlands was also a factor. And Mr O’Toole believes restoration of a breeding population could take place on restored peatland and wet meadows in areas like the north midlands.

Irish Times

Gamekeepers target protected Peregrine Falcons

2011-11-12T02:07:00.001-08:00

Shocking new research by the RSPB and the Northern England Raptor Forum has revealed the true extent of persecution of peregrine falcons - the world's fastest bird - that attempt to nest on England’s grouse moors.

The paper is published in the international scientific journal Biological Conservation. The study used Google Earth to map the characteristic 'strip burning' that is typical of moorland managed for intensive grouse shooting. This map was then combined with nearly three decades of nest monitoring information that had been collected by teams of dedicated volunteer monitors from raptor groups across the north of England.

Comparisons of the fortunes of peregrine falcons breeding on grouse moors with those breeding in other habitats in northern England revealed that breeding success was half that in other habitats, for example on other moorland, open country and forested areas. Only a third of nests produced young on grouse moors.

Dr Arjun Amar, of the The Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town is the paper’s lead author. He was formerly an RSPB scientist. He said: “I was shocked at just how low the bird’s breeding output was on grouse moors; they were significantly less likely to lay eggs or fledge young.” He added: “The few birds that did lay eggs or fledge young on grouse moors did just as well as those breeding off grouse moors, which suggests that a shortage of food supplies can be ruled out of the equation. The only logical explanation for these differences is that persecution is rife on many driven grouse moors.”

In the 1950s and 1960s, the global population collapse of the peregrine alerted the world to the long-term effects of pesticides, such as DDT, which built up in the food chain and caused the peregrine to lay eggs with dangerously thin shells.

The UK's peregrine population thankfully recovered after these pesticides were withdrawn, and ultimately banned.

However, increases in peregrine numbers have not been uniform, and their recovery has been particularly slow in some areas where intensive management for grouse shooting is the dominant land use. Red grouse can form part of the peregrine's diet which has led to historical persecution of the peregrine on grouse moors.

Although peregrines have been fully protected by law since 1954, there have been numerous confirmed persecution incidents on land managed for grouse shooting over the years. However, many conservationists believe that these reported incidents are just the tip of an iceberg, and that the true number of offences is really much greater. This study examined how widespread this persecution was and whether it occurs at a scale that could have an impact the bird’s population.

Paul Irving, chair of the Northern England Raptor Forum, added: “To people who visit and live in the uplands of northern England, the peregrine should be a familiar bird in an iconic landscape. However, the guilty few deny the pleasure of many.”

The data used in this study was collected by a community of dedicated volunteers across the north of England and it is a great resource to help inform conservation actions.

The Government has identified bird of prey persecution as one of its six wildlife crime priorities and earlier this year, it added peregrine to the list of species. A welcome decision which this study vindicates.

Paul Irving added: “Now it’s up to the Government and the Police to turn fine words into action. So far, there has been little real progress in tackling bird of prey crime and this needs to change urgently to help species like the peregrine.”

The study also looked at all the distribution of confirmed and probable incidents of peregrine persecution between 1990 and 2006 across the study areas in northern England. It found that these incidents occurred far more frequently on grouse moors than on other habitats, despite there being more pairs breeding away from grouse moors.

The higher levels of breeding failure meant that peregrine populations on grouse moors were not self-sustaining and regional extinction was only prevented by more productive birds nesting in sites away from grouse moors.
Intensive

Martin Harper is the RSPB’s Conservation Director. He said: ““If you removed these highly productive birds there would be real trouble. If the whole of the north of England were managed as intensive grouse moor, peregrines, we fear, would be extinct across the region.”

Recently the Government minister, Richard Benyon, suggested that birds of prey are adequately protected in England. However, this peer-reviewed research further highlights that wildlife laws are flouted meaning the peregrine population is not adequately protected. The populations of this and other iconic birds of prey are faltering in some areas dominated by grouse-shooting estates.

In recent years, peregrines have started to breed in the centres of many cities, enabling more people than ever to experience the thrill of seeing these magnificent birds close up. Martin Harper added: "The fact that peregrine falcons are nesting in cities highlights the stark contrast between urban areas and areas of suitable habitat in the English uplands where the species is largely absent.”

Last year, 134,000 people enjoyed seeing peregrine falcons with the RSPB’s Date With Nature viewing scheme at 11 sites across England and Wales. Six of the sites were urban, including Manchester city centre, and five were rural, including Malham, in the Yorkshire Dales.

Martin Harper added: “The results of this study suggest that without the highly productive birds in other habitats, the peregrine could go extinct on driven grouse moors. To me it is unacceptable that a few lawbreakers are removing a species which has lived in our uplands for thousands of years. The shooting industry has repeatedly assured us that the illegal killing of birds of prey is not tolerated on moors, and we hope they will be quick to act to improve prospects for peregrines on upland shooting estates."

The RSPB launched its latest annual Birdcrime report on Thursday 3 November which again highlighted the persecution of birds of prey, including peregrines. The report identified a series of areas where Government needs to step up to address illegal persecution of birds of prey and secure the future of our raptors.
Notes

1)     The Northern England Raptor Forum is a coalition of Raptor Study Groups from the North of England speaking with one voice to represent birds of prey and is at the forefront of promoting and sharing best practice amongst Raptor Workers. The Forum also publishes an Annual Review that determines population trends and identifies the threats to each species, targets monitoring towards the most vulnerable species and utilises technology to enhance knowledge of raptor behaviour, works with statutory authorities and other organisations to promote raptor conservation and counter persecution.

2)     Membership of the Forum is Calderdale Raptor Group, Cumbria Raptor Study Group, Durham Upland Bird Study Group, Manchester Raptor Group, Northumbria Ringing Group, North York Moors Upland Bird (Merlin) Study Group, Peak District Raptor Monitoring Group, South Peak Raptor Study Group, South Ryedale and East Yorkshire Raptor Group and Yorkshire Dales Upland Bird Study Group.

3)     The full reference for the paper is: Linking nest histories, remotely sensed land data and wildlife crime records to explore the impact of grouse moor management on peregrine falcon populations. Arjun Amar, Ian R Court, Martin Davison, Steve Downing, Trevor Grimshaw, Terry Pickford & David Raw. It is published in the journal Biological Conservation. Website www.raptorforum.org

RSPB

Attempt to create 'world's hardest free climb' on El Cap

2011-11-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

Tommy Caldwell grapples with pitch 13, the first of three 5.14 pitches in a row, on El Capitan's Dawn Wall. (Kyle Berkompas/Courtesy photo)

The tantalizing fragrance of gourmet food and fine wine permeated Yosemite's Mountain Room Restaurant two weeks ago.

A photograph of El Capitan shrouded in ice and snow hung near our table, as if portending the weather soon to arrive. I dined with four friends including Tommy Caldwell, of Estes Park, and his wife, Becca. It was a celebratory send-off for Tommy who, 36 hours later, would begin his multi-week attempt to free the Dawn Wall on El Capitan. If successful, this will indisputably be the world's most difficult free climb.

Before I go on, let's get a few terms straightened out. The difference in wording between "free soloing" (no rope) and "free climbing" (a rope and gear are used for safety) is subtle yet crucial. Free climbing is what most climbers do most of the time.

On big walls like El Capitan, however, more than 99 percent of the ascents require, at times, "aid climbing." This means pulling on gear to get through difficult sections rather than climbing "free," i.e. using chalked hands and sticky rubber shoes, with a rope and gear only as a safety net.

The distinction between "free" and "aid" is enormous. For example, hundreds of climbers have "aided" to the top of El Cap in the vicinity of the Dawn Wall, but only Tommy had the audacity to attempt to "free" it. As Tommy explained in an article in the 2011 edition of Ascent magazine, "Getting to the top is no longer important. It's how -- preferably via a first free ascent -- that matters."

On Sunday -- nine days into this year's Dawn Wall attempt -- a snowstorm struck Yosemite. Tommy, Becca and filmmaker Brett Lowell hunkered down some 1,500 feet off the ground in two suspended, ice-coated portaledges. They were barely visible from the valley floor as two white dots adrift in an ocean of granite on what Tommy calls "the steepest, tallest, blankest wall on El Capitan." It's as if they were sucked right into that wintry image of El Cap in the Mountain Room.

But Tommy expected to endure storms like this. After all, the 33-year-old has dedicated more than one-third of his life to free climbing El Capitan. He's succeeded on 11 of El Cap's 14 free routes (every one that he's tried), including four of his own first free ascents that are so difficult they remain unrepeated.

Tommy's original partner for this year's attempt was Kevin Jorgeson, of Boulder. Kevin joined the project in the autumn of 2009 when they worked on the route together for two months. At that time, they still hadn't freed all the individual moves on the Dawn Wall, let alone many of its 30 total pitches.

One of the moves that stymied the pair for months is an improbable all-points-off, 8-foot sideways leap to a small, slanting edge. A few weeks ago, Kevin severely sprained his ankle attempting this move and was forced to abandon the project.

Seven of the Dawn Wall's pitches are rated 5.14, with three of them rated 5.14+. For perspective, free climbing even a single pitch of 5.14+ is so impressive (and so rare) that when any climber accomplishes it, anywhere, the ascent is immediately front-page news in worldwide climbing media. Tommy now faces three 5.14+ pitches in a row. In the middle of a 3,000-foot wall.

Tommy has now invested much of the last five years into freeing the Dawn Wall -- something so much harder than anything he (or any climber) has ever done that he nearly gave up. In Ascent, Tommy wrote that he worried about wasting too much of his life "on the impossible."

But now, despite the freezing temperatures and falling ice of the last few days, his project seems more possible than ever. Tommy is "feeling strong" (according to his frequent Facebook updates), the weather forecast looks promising, and he's completed four out of the seven hardest pitches.

Regardless of the outcome, we can all draw inspiration from Tommy and his devotion to his passion. He wrote, "If a decade spent free climbing El Cap had taught me anything, it is that if something you want seems impossible, work harder."

Chris Weidner: Daily Camera

Scottish mountaineers urged to fight national park development.

2011-11-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

SCOTLAND’S mountaineers are being encouraged to raise funds to help finance a legal challenge to proposals to build the first new community for a UK national park.

The Mountaineering Council of Scotland (MCofS) has joined the charity, the Cairngorms Campaign, to urge walkers, climbers, mountain bikers, skiers and bird watchers to donate funds to fight against the decision of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) to adopt a plan to erect 1500 houses at An Camas Mòr.

The location is on the east bank of the River Spey, opposite Aviemore, and the houses are to be constructed over the next 20 years.

The MCofS stresses this will be a mere six miles from the summit of Cairn Gorm and that the park authority has also authorised 450 houses at three further locations.

The legal challenge follows a Public Inquiry after which two Scottish Government Reporters concluded “the rationale for the calculation of the housing requirement is unconvincing”.

The appeal for funds is being made by the Cairngorms Campaign, the Scottish Campaign for National Parks and the Badenoch & Strathspey Conservation Group.

A legal challenge will be made in the Court of Session in January 2012.

The Herald

Hundreds of Everest trekkers left stranded

2011-11-06T09:23:00.000-08:00

            A group of tourists arrive at Tribhuvan Domestic Airport from Lukla, some 160 kilometres northeast of Kathmandu. Picture: AFP              AFP          

HUNDREDS of foreign tourists stranded by heavy fog in the Everest region are hiking their way to safety across the Himalayas.

With continuing bad weather hampering their rescue, up to 400 of the thousands of stranded trekkers have given up waiting for the fog to lift and are heading to Jiri, a four-day walk away, to pick up buses back to Kathmandu, a Nepalese official said on Sunday.

Managers on Wednesday were forced to close the only airstrip in Lukla, the gateway for climbers heading to Everest and surrounding mountains, grounding all flights in and out of the region.

''There is a very low visibility so we are not expecting the resumption of regular flights today,'' said Utsab Kharel, the manager of Tenzing Hillary Airport in Lukla.

''Around 300 to 400 tourists have walked from Lukla to Jiri after losing hope of an improvement in the weather.''

The Nepalese army had hoped to deploy its rescue helicopter, which carries up to 40 people, but bad weather has prevented it from accessing Lukla, 135 kilometres from Kathmandu.

''Small helicopters have continued rescuing tourists from Surke, a village a one-and-half hour walk from Lukla,'' Kharel said. ''They have carried around 400 foreigners to Kathmandu.''

The stranded trekkers, including Americans, Britons and Germans, have been sleeping at the airport and in tents and dining halls at Lukla hotels, officials say, with the fog not expected to lift until at least today.

''Still 300 tourists are in Surke waiting their turn. Around 2200 to 2500 are languishing in Lukla,'' Kharel said.

''The prices of daily commodities have soared up and the stock of meat and vegetables is running empty.''

Nepal, a popular destination for mountaineers and trekkers, has eight of the world's 14 tallest peaks over 8000 metres, including the world's highest, Mount Everest, at 8848m.

Thousands of foreign tourists visit the Everest region during the peak tourism season late in the year.

About 500 travellers fly in and out of Lukla on a normal day when weather conditions are good.

US mountain guides talk turkey at 'The Gunks'

2011-11-05T02:05:00.000-07:00

Guide Peter Keane climbing at The Gunks: ASW

Succeeding in the business of guiding clients up sheer cliffs or into untamed backcountry is a balancing act that demands the entrepreneurial spirit of a dot-com startup, the patience of a first-grade teacher and the physical gifts of a professional athlete — all without the benefit of a seven-figure salary.

Many of the top guides in the United States worked on some of those skills during the annual conference of the American Mountain Guides Association at New York's Shawangunks climbing area last month.

They spent much of their week at the "Gunks" in clinics on subjects that ranged from thermal physiology in extreme environments to crevasse rescue, avalanches, human factors in decision-making, GPS navigation, rope work, permit sharing, international trip planning and dealing with insurance underwriters.

The AMGA certifies guides in the U.S. with the goal of building their credentials, whether it's for a day of rock climbing at the local crag, a multiday excursion up peaks in the Tetons or Rockies, or a weekslong expedition to Alaska, the Andes or Himalayas.

The association also is focused on elevating the profession so it is respected in the U.S. — and economically feasible — as it is in Europe.

"If you are a guide in Italy or in France you get special treatment at the huts and discounts on the chairlifts," said Betsy Winter, the AMGA's executive director.

The Colorado-based organization is the U.S. representative to the 21-member International Federation of Mountain Guides Association, which sets international standards.

Since 1997, the AMGA has certified 78 guides in the U.S. to top international standards, while another 647 are certified in a single discipline, either rock climbing, Alpine climbing or ski mountaineering, Winter said. Another 1,600 AMGA-certified climbing instructors have achieved an entry-level certification that has prerequisites of one year's experience and the ascent of at least 15 climbs.

The AMGA's full set of courses costs about $30,000 and takes 93 training days, including exams, requires four years of experience in a discipline and at least 90 climbs or ski descents of advanced difficulty.

"We have high standards," Winter said. "And we really believe in establishing a profession in this country."

While climbing puts a premium on physical abilities such as balance, upper body strength and endurance, being a guide also requires an understanding of physics and an aptitude for problem solving.

Jesse Williams, a guide from Keene Valley, N.Y., started out as an apprentice to experienced Adirondack guides and now needs to complete just one more of 12 courses to have all three full AMGA certifications plus its sequence on avalanche forecasting. He likened the rigorous training to graduate school, with exams, demonstrations of technical skills and critiques identifying areas for improvement.

To have the complete package, however, guides also must possess the people skills needed to relate to their clients, ensuring that they have a safe and enjoyable experience.

Williams said guides in mountain communities across the country tend to be assertive and self-directed.

"I always joke about mountain towns; same person, different face," he said.

Many of these attributes were on display at the conference's annual Guide's Olympics, where about 30 guides started by donning Halloween costumes and competing in timed events that took offbeat twists amid hoots, cheers and laughter. Williams said it was a break for professional athletes who have to be "dialed in" nearly all the time.

"The lowest cumulative time plus the most amount of fun equals the best win," organizer Matt Farmer said.

The guides then walked the quarter-mile from the parking lot to the cliff, joking, chatting and effortlessly carrying heavy backpacks up the steep trail.

In one event at the cliff, Markus Jolliff, a 45-year-old guide from Joshua Tree, Calif., quickly scaled a 50-foot face while wearing a gorilla mask. Competitors in that relay first submerged their hands in cold water, donned waterproof gear, and got squirted with water to simulate New England's sometimes chilly, wet conditions.

Teammate Dominic Asselin also climbed a vertical crack in the cliff in about a minute, shouting "frozen hands" when his grip slipped once due to the pre-climb dunking. The 32-year-old wore a fright wig, and in between events a red clown nose.

A certified rock instructor, Jolliff said he makes a living in the popular California climbing area by keeping his overhead low. He calls his approach Jollification, saying the goal is to spread merrymaking.

"When I push people to the edge of their comfort zone I want to include them having a good time," he said.

Asselin, who has the rock guide certification and is pursuing it in Alpine, said business was slow in the beginning, but clients in Ste. Adele are starting to appreciate that difference and he now has three people working full time.

"We could live off that, but we're not rich," he said. "Currently we do it because we like what we're doing."

Asselin, who takes clients to Quebec's Laurentians, New York's Adirondacks and New Hampshire's White Mountains, said passing the certification exams is just a starting point.

"You need to maintain that standard to be able to guide your clients in any terrain they want to go," he said. "They expect that if you guide them you will be able to do the routes. It is for the rest of your career you have to be able to do that."

Association President Margaret Wheeler, a 37-year-old guide from Seattle, worked a part-time engineering job during the five years it took her to acquire full certifications in rock, Alpine and ski mountaineering, and kept the side job for a few years afterward.

"It's taken a while to build up enough work," said Wheeler, who is affiliated with a guide service and has private clients. Her outings are mostly in the Pacific Northwest and Europe's Alps, with trips to places such as Colorado and Alaska thrown in.

"You have to take good care of yourself. It's a very physical job," she said. "... You also have to be healthy and strong all of the time. There's no sick days."

The guides all say the profession's biggest challenge in the United States is getting access to public lands, with the federal government regarding guides like the concessionaires who sell ice cream or souvenirs, not "connectors" to the wilderness as the guides see themselves, Winter said.

That can result in guides being allowed to work only on certain days or permits for a specific cliff or mountain range being limited to one or two services.

In New York, rock and ice climbing guides on state lands, including the Catskills and Adirondacks, need a state license requiring certifications in first aid, CPR and water safety, a doctor's health verification, and success on a written exam. Guides don't have to be certified, but must have a resume showing at least 30 days of climbing each of the previous three years and having completed at least 10 climbs requiring use of a rope and climbing safety equipment.

Given all the demands, succeeding as a guide is much more than just being able to do the most difficult climbs, Wheeler said.

"You have to do that plus like 12 other things," she said. "It's a lot about being with people as well. It's about reading people, about understanding their goals and then taking them sort of out of their comfort zones."

Washington Examiner

Something in the air: The Honister Zip wire controversy revisited

2011-11-02T05:50:00.000-07:00

The late Mark Weir

The first programme in the current BBC4 series National Park Stories, brought into sharp relief the conflicting interests which inevitably are brought into focus when economic development and conservation issues meet head on within an area of natural beauty. In this instance the controversial Honister Zip wire application in the Northern Lakes of England. An tourism initiative which more than any recent issue within the mountain environment, highlighted the deep divisions between those who see the natural environment as a resource to be exploited and developed in the interests of profit and employment,and those who would see economic activity such as this,sacrilegious and a dereliction of the National Park Authorities' duty and obligation to protect and preserve our wild places from exploitation.
An issue which is given greater significance within our national parks by virtue of the fact that despite attracting millions of incomers each year, unemployment,particularly in this period of economic instability,is a massive issue with serious social implications within the wider area.

The Story so Far......
The Honister slate mines are in fact a group of underground and open cast slate quarries situated above the Honister Pass with workings on the flanks of the mountains of Fleetwith Pike and Dale Head. Their situation between the beautiful valleys of Buttermere and Borrowdale, high above the road which dissects the peaks, gives the workings a high degree of visibility within an area popular with fellwalkers,rock climbers and general outdoor activists. Of course those who come to the area to get their outdoor activity fix are overwhelmingly outnumbered by general sightseeing tourists who drive over the pass in their hundreds of thousands each year.

The main quarry on the Fleetwith Pike, in common with most quarries which date from the Victorian era, has seen its fortunes ebb and flow over the decades as demand for its product has declined and revived. Ownership changed hands regularly,with periods of complete closure coinciding with world war hostilities.
Honister Quarry like most UK slate quarries the post war period became a statistic in a a massive closure programme as cheaper imported slate replaced home produced material. The Honister mine closed at the end of the 1980's. A closure given added poignancy when legendary fellwalker Alfred Wainwright,tramped through the dead workings with Eric Robson for a television programme. Wainwrights feelings of 'great sadness' amplified by the sombre grey skies projecting salvos of gusting rain which rattled the empty work sheds and emphasised the passing of an era.

Enter Mark Weir. Local lad made good Mark Weir, acquired the Honister Mine under Fleetwith in 1997 and set about reopening the mine for small scale production but more importantly, from both an employment and conservation perspective,developing the mine for tourist activities. Underground guided tours were a few years ago complimented by the UK's first Via Ferrata, literally Iron Road. Popular on the continent.Via Ferratas offer the adventurous walker the opportunity to experience the rock climbing experience in relative safety. More difficult sections of cliff are studded with metal rungs with rope or cable alongside to clip into. The Honister VF followed an old miners path up Fleetwith with deviations.

The Honister Via Ferrata.Carrying a Mountain Bike on your back is not compulsory apparently!: Photo Berghaus

Now it starts to get complicated. The Via Ferrata was installed without planning permission. To add fuel to the fire,The headstrong owner of the mine then went ahead with a planning application for one of the world's longest zip wires.Running from Fleetwith's summit to the quarry car park half a mile below. To say that the application went down like a lead balloon with Lake District conservation bodies and outdoor organisations like the British Mountaineering Council would be an understatement! The climbing forums for example were positively smouldering with hostility for the zip wire proposal.

By a coincidence,the BBC were filming proceedings for the aforementioned BBC series on National Parks. The programme confirmed what we already know about local politics, That is,planning applications such as this are immersed in a tide of bureaucracy and pettiness,with the main protagonists equally unappealing in their intransigence. Before the zip wire application even reached its denouement, The main player in the saga, Mark Weir was dramatically killed in a helicopter crash just yards from the quarry itself. Despite the tragedy, it is perhaps not too controversial to suggest his 'vision' might in future have more chance of success now that he has left the stage. In truth,The BBC programme revealed him as at times,an overbearing and boorish figure. Witness him haranguing two young volunteer conservationists and shouting at them as they were being filmed putting the conservationist argument. Accusing them of getting their facts wrong. A performance made even more gruesomely embarrassing by the fact that they were basing their objections on Mark Weir's own planning application which stated that the zip wire would run from the summit of Fleetwith Pike and not the lower subsidiary peak of Black Star,as he claimed at the time.

With the zip wire application THE burning issue, an added complication arose when it was revealed that the Via Feratta...the one established without planning permission...passed through a protected SSSi. As Mark Weir accompanied a sodden band of ecologists and planners up Fleetwith's ravaged flank in a downpour, it was hard not to sympathise when he pointed out that the route up the wasted mountainside was home to the ubiquitous Herdwick Sheep. The ecological implications of allowing sheep to freely roam upon a site which conservationists claim is of national ecological significance is bizarre, contradictory and just plain daft!

The zip wire application was thrown out by the planners after Mark Weir's death. Despite the fact that he had closed the Via Ferrata to pacify the planning authorities and conservation bodies. ( The Honister Mine website is at present advertising the VF as open for business however ) For outdoor activists and conservationists, it was surprising to see figures like Chris Bonington and chair of The Wainwright Society broadcaster,Eric Robson, attending the planning application IN SUPPORT of the application. Despite the fact that Chris holds positions within mountaineering organisations who are four square against the proposal.

The void which separates the two sides highlighted by the statement from Richard Leafe, Lake District Chief Executive, who stated that he wanted to see the Lake District become 'The UK's Adventure capital' A statement so asinine and clunky that it would make the tea boy at Saatchi & Saatchi blush! Yes...the Lake District is such a backwater where there is absolutely nothing to do.Just like North Wales in fact !

My own conclusions for what they are worth. Despite my deeply held conservationist instincts, I did have some sympathy for Mark Weir's argument that the area to be exploited upon Fleetwith has already been degraded by human activity. I personally don't have an issue with the Via Ferrata as I agree with the late entrepreneur that if the site is so important then get the bloody sheep off it! I think the planners were right to throw out the zip wire application though. Somebody zipping through the air at 60mph dressed in garish safety gear is quite a visual intrusion and distraction.Particularly for an unwary motorist trundling over the pass who may suffer a 'WTF!!!' moment. Yes..I know about RAF jets and helicopters but I'd like to see the back of them too.

As it stands, Mark Weir's widow and the Honister company are vigorously pursuing a fresh application to construct a zip wire (or Zip Weir as they are calling it in tribute). In fact in a display of confidence-or arrogant bravado?-the company are actually advertising zip wire rides on their website. Mind you,at £35.00 a go for an experience which would take less than a minute to complete, then it remains to be seen how many takers there will be if the fresh application is successful? One thing for sure...I won't be in the front of the queue!

To be continued.......

Honister.com

Friends of the Lake District

John Appleby

Scientists puzzle Ladakh altitude sickness statistics

2011-10-31T01:49:00.000-07:00

For trekkers and mountaineers, scientists have issued a mysterious warning. The worst place in the world for altitude sickness is Ladakh, the stark, beautiful region on India's northern border with China and Tibet – and nobody knows exactly why.

Ladakh, literally "the land of high passes", lies between the Himalayas and the Kunlun mountain range at a height of more than 3,000 metres (9,800 feet). It is a high-altitude desert which has become a popular destination for adventure travellers in the last decade, drawn by its remote culture and extraordinary panoramas.

Now the largest study of visitors to mountainous regions around the world who were previously assessed for their vulnerability to altitude sickness has found that Ladakh presented the biggest threat.

Jean-Paul Richalet, professor of physiology at the University of Paris North, who led the study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, said: "When adjusted for all other risk factors, especially rate of ascent, one location – Ladakh – remained associated with a higher risk of severe high-altitude illness."

But the researchers were unable to identify why the region had the greatest impact. "No clear explanation, linked to the climate or the difficulty of the terrain is available, although many informal reports mention the higher risk of this location," Dr Richalat said. The researchers assessed more than 1,300 people who planned excursions to mountainous areas which involved at least three days above 4,000 metres, and sleeping overnight above 3,500 metres.

Before they left, they were given a series of tests to measure their breathing and heart rate at low-oxygen levels – to mimic the effects of high altitude – and the results were compared with their actual experience after they returned from their trip.

Almost one in four (318) suffered a severe altitude illness with symptoms of headache, nausea, fatigue and dizziness, associated in the some cases with swelling of tissue in the lungs and brain.

The study is the first to suggest an association between the geographical location of ascent and altitude sickness. The drug acetazolamide (Diamox) cut the risk of developing the condition among the participants by 44 per cent, the study found. Neverthleless, among the 318 who developed altitude sickness, a third (105) had used Diamox.

The research revealed potential risk factors for altitude sickness. Participants who experienced a significant reduction in the amount of oxygen in the blood when exercising in a low-oxygen environment were more likely to develop symptoms.

A common experience at altitude is how breathing fails to keep pace with the demands of the body which triggers involuntary gasps for air and a feeling of suffocation. A conscious effort to breathe faster and deeper is necessary as part of acclimatisation.

But getting fit is no defence against altitude sickness. The study found that those who took most exercise to prepare for their trip were at increased risk from the condition. "Those who visit high altitudes should realise intense aerobic training is not a predictor of success in high-altitude expeditions," Dr Richalet said.

The Independent

Rescuers give up search for lost Korean climbing team

2011-10-30T00:56:00.000-07:00

Top Korean climber Park Young-Seok: Photo Korean Times

South Korean climbers have ended a search for three mountaineers who went missing during an attempt to scale one of the world's highest peaks in the Himalayas, the Korean Alpine Federation has confirmed.

Nepalese sherpas and climbers from Seoul had been searching the southern flank of Annapurna after renowned climber Park Young-Seok and two colleagues went missing last week.

The three last contacted base camp on October 18 saying they had stopped climbing at 6,300 metres (20,790 feet) and would descend due to snow and falling rocks.

"The rescue team judged that it was difficult to search the area any more due to continuing avalanches and falling rocks," the KAF said on its website late Saturday.

The rescue team and families of the missing would return to Seoul on Monday after holding a memorial service at base camp, it added.

Park, 47, has already scaled Annapurna, one of the world's 14 highest peaks.

He returned this year to try a different route to the 8,091-metre summit.
In 2005 he became the first in the world to complete the Adventurers' Grand Slam by conquering all the world's 14 highest peaks as well as reaching the North and South Pole.

Annapurna is both technically difficult and avalanche-prone and has a much higher death rate among climbers than Everest, the world's highest peak.

Korean climbers still missing after nine days

2011-10-27T23:28:00.000-07:00

A rescuer descends into the Bergschrund area of the Annapurna mountain range

The ninth day of rescue efforts to find mountaineer Park Young-seok and two of his colleagues who went missing near a 8,091-m-high peak in the Himalayan mountain range of Annapurna in Nepal bore no fruit, the rescue team said Thursday.

"We searched the bottom of the Bergschrund (a large crevasse) on the southern flank of Annapurna, which is where Park and the other two mountaineers are believed to have gone missing, but we did not find any traces of them," the team said in its dispatch to base camp.

The 19-men rescue team, which consists of five Korean mountaineers and local Sherpa guides, was split into three groups. They descended into the 40-m-deep Bergschrund at 6:20 a.m. (local time), and searched for seven hours.

The search team decided to conduct a thorough search of the slope formed by a recent avalanche on Friday. Park and his team last made contact at 6 p.m. on Oct. 18 as they were heading back to the base camp, when they referred to treacherous conditions including heavy snow and falling rocks.

The life and climbs of Emily Harrington

2011-10-26T02:36:00.000-07:00

Emily Harrington

I first knew Emily Harrington 10 years ago as "Little Emily," a soft-spoken girl with bright blonde hair who climbed for the Boulder Rock Club's Junior Team.

She was a talented teenage gym rat coached by my friend and housemate, Justen Sjong.

In 2003, under the tutelage of Robyn Erbesfield, Harrington became the sport climbing national champion -- a title she held five of the following six years. In 2005, she placed second in the world, and in 2006 she became the world champion. That same year, she was named the female climber of the year at the Teva Mountain Games.

Harrington was also dedicated to outdoor climbing. She became the second American woman to climb the extremely difficult grade of 5.14b when she redpointed "Burning Down the House" near Sonora, Calif., in 2007. And somehow, between training, competitions and road trips, she graduated magna cum laude from the University of Colorado in 2007 with a degree in international affairs.

One week ago, the now-25 year-old Harrington climbed her hardest route to date, "Waka Flocka" (5.14b) at Rifle. Though it carries the same (ridiculously hard) grade as her previous best, Waka Flocka was substantially more challenging for her because of its relentless and reachy (Emily is 5-feet, 2-inches tall) powerful movement. The steep, 70-foot route required about 50 attempts over at least 25 days and was a "really proud achievement for me," she wrote on her blog (emilyaharrington.wordpress.com).

But underneath the glorious stats and successes of her teens, early twenties and today, Harrington is, in some ways, still Little Emily. Over the past few years she experienced the confusing conundrum that many young people endure, asking herself questions like, "Who am I?" and "What do I really want?"

Climbing had been Harrington's focus since she was 10 years old, but at some point it "became my identity," she said in a phone interview last week. "I never even thought about whether there was something else that I wanted."

For a few years, Harrington felt lost. She eschewed the discipline that made her a champion; she didn't train or compete as often; she traveled the world with more than just climbing in mind.

But over time, Harrington began to miss the training, the projects and the unique way that climbing challenged her. She realized that she loved the climbing lifestyle as much as the climbing itself.

"Now," she said, "climbing feels like something that I've made a decision to do. It's something that I really love and something that makes me happy."

Last winter, Harrington began to explore other aspects of the sport by learning how to climb ice and mixed terrain. She immediately proved herself by placing third in the world-famous Ouray Ice Festival Mixed Climbing Competition. She also climbed her first 5.13 traditional route -- a much different (and sometimes more dangerous) style of rock climbing than the well-bolted sport routes she's famous for.

Harrington plans to continue her quest for mastery in other climbing disciplines, but for now sport climbing remains her priority.

Last Wednesday was Harrington's last chance of the season to finish Waka Flocka. An imminent, two-week climbing trip to China (where she is now) and the arrival of wintry temperatures to Rifle gave her an absolute deadline. The pressure manifested in a

tantrum when, on her first attempt, she fell off fatigued, disappointed and angry. On her blog, Harrington expresses the absurdity of "all that emotional turmoil and stress over a piece of rock."

But then, on the ground, she let go. She wrote, "I felt calm and relieved, finally surrendering to the idea of failure. I had given up, no longer attached."

Harrington drew upon her 14 years of experience in competitions and other now-or-never situations to channel her energy in a positive way. She prepared for her second attempt "relaxed and level-headed."

Then, Little Emily tied back in and successfully climbed the hardest route of her life.

Chris Weidner: Daily Camera.Photos 

McInerney/coletteloc.com)

Welsh climber Ben Wintringham killed in Morocco

2011-10-24T06:20:00.000-07:00

Ben Wintringham:Photo Chaplog

North Wales based climber and owner of the now defunct Wintergear outdoor equipment manufacturer, Ben Wintringham,has been killed in an abseiling accident in Morocco. Ben, a member of the UK's Climbers Club,was climbing with his wife Marion and fellow club member Mike Mortimor.
After completing their route,Marion and Mike had apparently abseiled down the route and as Ben followed the anchor point failed.
A brief biog on the Wintringham.Com website offers the following information...

"Since hi school days Ben has had a abiding passion for climbing and this has determinded his working life. His career has been very varied. He started work as a shop assistant at the then premier outdoor shop in London "Black's of Greenock". Very soon rising to become assistant manager. After serving his apprentership in the outdoor trade, and finding a wonderful house in north Wales, it was decided to move out of London and start our own company.
Wintergear was born, using the then new fabric 'Gortex' to make climbing bivouac sacks. This led onto tents and Wintergear's designs are still current even after 30 years (Quasar for instance). Wanting to move on he sold the tent designs to Wild Country, and for several years ran a small mail order business making and selling otdoor clothing. The resession at the end of the 80's put paid to that.
So a career change was made to computing, designing and coding software. Having first hand experience at running compaines, it was easy for Ben to understand the types of processes businesses needed. By 2000 it was obvious that the web was going to very important, and since then he has been producing web applications. Working for companies like Channel 4, Jet2.com, and the DTI. '

1982 Wintergear catalogue

Ben's enthusiasm for climbing in Morocco in his later years is reflected in this extract.....

During the 90's every time we saw Joe Brown, he was raving about the Jebel el Kest area of Morocco near Tafraoute where he had been climbing every march. "Acres of unclimbed rock, crags like 600 foot Castell Helen's, and near perfect rock. Unfortunately March was a busy period for work, so it was not until 2000 before we got there. We spent a wonderful week, repeating a couple of routes and finding a couple of new ones as well. That was it we were smitten again. Since 2005 we have been going there at least once a year and lately twice a year. Joe was right there are hundreds of new routes to do of all grades. In 2007 a new road was driven across the north side of the range and opened up to new valleys and tons more rock. A small group of us including Mike Mortimer, Jim Fotheringham, Paul Donnithorne, Emma Aylesford, and more recently Pete Johnson and Lun Roberts, along with Marion and me. Have been busy developing the north side big time. With close to 500 new routes since the beginning of 2007. Joe is unable to still go because of knackered knees, but his mates are still active notably Claude Davies, Derek Walker, Paul Ross, Les Brown, Pete Turnball, Chris Bonington all of whom are in their 70's but still putting up the new routes. I am currently collating information for an online guide which we hope to have live in the very near future
Ben Wintringham

Snowdon summit Frontera driver charged on repeat offence

2011-10-23T01:41:00.000-07:00

Craig Williams and motor. The lights are on but no one's home it seems

The 39 year old Cheltenham man who attempted to drive his Vauxhall Frontera up Yr Wyddfa ( Snowdon) in September and who is already facing one set of charges after the incident has been charged a second time. This time after a second attempt to repeat the stunt shortly after,saw him actually reaching the summit and parking his 4x4 vehicle in the lee of the controversial summit cafe.

Craig Williams, from Cheltenham, has appeared in court on charges relating to the first time a 4x4 vehicle was abandoned on the mountain in September.

Police have now revealed a 39-year-old man has been charged in relation to a second incident earlier this month and Mr Williams' solicitor has confirmed that it is indeed his client who has been charged again.

After the wide publicity in September, Mr Williams attempted to sell the Frontera on eBay and promised to donate the funds to Ogwen Mountain Rescue Team. The bidding had reached nearly £2k when it was suddenly de-listed from the eBay pages?. Within days it appears that Mr Williams had once again driven his vehicle up the mountain.

In a statement released on Thursday, North Wales Police said: "A 39-year-old man was last night charged with driving a motor vehicle dangerously and driving a vehicle on common land/moor land/land not part of a road.

"He has been bailed to appear before Caernarfon Magistrates Court on November 4."

Johnny Dawes autobiography: Full of Myself. Exclusive extracts

2011-10-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

Next week on Footless Crow. Exclusive extracts chosen by Johnny Dawes himself, from his much anticipated autobiography 'Full of Myself'. The reviews thus far have been overwhelmingly positive.......

"Written with devoted passion and brutal honesty, Full of Myself lays bare Johnny's bipolar mix of privilege and pain, wizardry and dysfunction. Master of friction and momentum, the living embodiment of poetry in motion turns his hand to pen with great effect." Leo Houlding
"It's brilliant - frank, funny, telling his full life story, not just the climbing. And the climbing accounts are riveting as well. A great read from cover to cover." Sir Chris Bonington ........
..... so open up the Dawes of Perception and catch JD's unique style and creative vision. Features original images from the man himself.

Johnny Dawes.com

Korean climbers missing on Annapurna

2011-10-21T02:42:00.000-07:00

Park Young-seok: Photo North Face

KATMANDU: A renowned South Korean climber and two of his partners have disappeared while trying to summit Mount Annapurna, official and rescuers said Thursday.

Dipendra Poudel of Nepal's mountaineering department in Katmandu said rescuers have not been able to find any trace of the three South Korean climbers missing since Tuesday.

Park Young-seok has climbed the world's 14 tallest mountains and reached both the north and south poles. He first climbed Annapurna in 1996. It is the 10th tallest and considered a technically difficult climb.

The department identified the two other missing South Korean climbers as Kang Ki-seok and Shin Dong-min.

A colleague who equipped their expedition said the trio last contacted base camp Tuesday afternoon while heading up the peak. Ang Dorjee is now coordinating rescue efforts from Katmandu.

Dorjee said a rescue helicopter did not see any signs of the mountaineers on the slopes.

Park was part of a seven-member team that was trying to carve out a new route to the summit of Annapurna. He had made the attempt in 2008 but was unsuccessful.

Dorjee said they would continue the search but was having difficulty communicating with the search party.

The Korean Alpine Federation in Seoul said that a team of four South Korean mountain climbers will head to Annapurna on Friday morning to aid the rescue.

The climbers are already in Nepal and decided to suspend their own expedition plans to help the rescue, the federation said in a statement. The climbers include Kim Hyung-il, another renowned climber who had planned to climb Cholatse in Nepalese Himalaya.

Sea Shepherd launches 'Operation Divine Wind' against whalers,

2011-10-18T09:53:00.000-07:00

October 2011: Japan has confirmed its whaling fleet will be returning to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, despite public protest. The Japanese government has allocated £17 million to boost security for the fleet.
Marine wildlife conservation organisation Sea Shepherd, which has long battled with Japan about its whaling, says the decision does not make financial sense and now seems to be a matter of misplaced pride. It has launched Operation Divine Wind in a bid to halt the killing.

‘It now seems the Japanese government is simply obsessed with killing whales not for need, and not for profit, but because they believe they have the right to do what they wish and kill whatever they wish in an established international whale sanctuary, just for the sake of defending their misplaced "honour",' said Sea Shepherd's Captain Paul Watson. ‘It's a disgrace.'

'They will have to kill us to stop us intervening'
Sea Shepherd will return to the remote waters for their Eighth Antarctic Whale Defence Campaign with a stronger anti-whaling fleet in early December 2011 to protect the great whales.

‘They will have to kill us to prevent us from intervening once again,' said Captain Watson. ‘Are the Japanese people ready to take human lives in defence of this horrifically cruel and illegal slaughter of endangered and protected species of whales? Do we have to die to appease Japanese honour?

'If so, my answer to the Japanese government is "hoka hey" - Lakota for ‘it's a good day to die' - and we will undertake whatever risks to our lives will be required to stop this invasion of arrogant greed into what is an established sanctuary for the whales.'

Operation Divine Wind will send more than 100 volunteers to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary to defend the whales. ‘We intend to stop them and we will stop them - that's a promise,' said Peter Hammarstedt, first officer on Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker.

This will be the eighth year that Sea Shepherd has sent ships to the coast of Antarctica to frustrate the profits of the Japanese whaling fleet. It saved more than 800 whales during last year's Operation No Compromise.

Sea Shepherd

Mountaineering's speed kings.

2011-10-16T01:26:00.000-07:00

'Not so fast Meester Steck'-Ueli Steck
Photo Petzl

MOUNT RAINIER NATIONAL PARK, Wash. — A popular route here that includes an ascent of 9,000 feet of rock and ice takes days for most mountain climbers. One man needed only five hours. The face of the 13,000-foot Eiger, in the Swiss Alps, has long presented climbers with one of the most daunting challenges in the world. One man recently conquered it in less than three hours.

From the big walls of Yosemite to the peaks of the Alps, climbers are setting speed records as techniques develop and gear becomes lighter or is left behind in favor of a minimalist approach that leaves little margin for error. Many quick athletes say they are doing what climbers have always done — striving to reach the summit a bit faster or with purer style. But as stopwatches become as important as carabiners, others say focusing on speed runs counter to the ethos of climbing.

“I don’t feel, personally, that setting records and using the routes as tracks to set a new speed record — I don’t feel that that’s important to climbing,” said Steve House, an American alpinist known for his fast and light style of carrying the bare essentials on difficult climbs. “I feel like that’s important to people’s egos, and I feel like that’s important to people’s sponsors.”

Chad Kellogg, a 40-year-old general contractor from Seattle, rejects such notions.

On a late-summer afternoon, Kellogg, in running shorts and tennis shoes, hurtled up Mount Rainier’s steep snowfields, his labored breathing audible for yards. A few casual day hikers gawked.

Kellogg cannot afford to dawdle with passers-by. He is among an elite group of mountain climbers who are not only devising new routes and making first ascents, but also speeding up established routes in stunning times. His accomplishments have been personal quests, he said. He is training for a record ascent of Mount Everest.

“I don’t really care what anyone else thinks,” he said. “Ultimately, I’m doing this for me.”

The number of climbers capable of such record times on the earth’s vertical planes is quite small, said Steve Swenson, the president of the American Alpine Club, a national climbing organization. Many elite climbers, he said, are not interested in speed — records are often reported on an honor system and are hardly official — but he understands the draw to push boundaries.

“Fifty years ago, adventure in the mountains was more about going places where no one had been,” he said. “Most of these places have been more thoroughly explored. Maybe adventure gets redefined.”

At one vertiginous end of that redefinition are climbers like Alex Honnold, 26, a rising star of the rock climbing scene at Yosemite. He stunned the climbing world last year not only by completing record ascents on the northwest face of Half Dome and the nose of El Capitan in a single day, but also by choosing to use minimal protective gear.

“I put more value in difficulty of climbing,” said Honnold, who shrugs off the records as a by-product of his climbing style. “I think speed is a fun game that you play on the side.”

Though he used some gear while setting his Half Dome and El Capitan records, Honnold often climbs as a free soloist, going without a rope, a harness or other safety equipment in favor of the simplicity and commitment of pure climbing.

Ueli Steck, a Swiss mountaineer, has become an Internet sensation because of his record climb up the face of the 13,000-plus-foot Eiger, a classic Alps challenge first climbed in 1938. In 1950 the route was climbed in 18 hours. Steck brought the time down to 2 hours 47 minutes.

A film of his ascent, in which he is often running, has been viewed more than a million and a half times on YouTube. Since then, another Swiss climber, Dani Arnold, has trimmed the Eiger record to 2:28.

But even Steck, the face of speed ascents to many, said too much emphasis on speed for its own sake could be detrimental.

“It goes very fast in the wrong direction,” he said, “and if there are young people, they may do it to get famous and sponsorship. It’s dangerous for the sport.”

Steck, 35, said he had little desire to set another record on the Eiger. Instead, he has shifted his focus to the peaks of the Himalayas, which are often climbed by large parties reliant on supplemental oxygen canisters and a siege-style of ascent. Emboldened by his experience on the Eiger, Steck made a daring sprint in Tibet this spring on the south face of Shishapangma, the world’s 14th-tallest peak.
“I had one and a half days of good weather,” he said, referring to the forecast. “Normally you wouldn’t even try if you have 8,000 meters in your mind. You need at least three days.”

Steck bolted up the 26,290-foot mountain in 10 ½ hours, setting a record.

“These guys are harnessing their strengths and pushing the limits in areas where they feel most proficient,” Kellogg said of Steck and Honnold. “So am I.”

Kellogg, who once worked as a climbing ranger on Mount Rainier, has twice held records for dashes from the mountain’s parking lot at 5,400 feet to its summit at 14,410 feet and back again. For most climbers, the trip is measured in days, not hours. Kellogg was the first to crack the five-hour mark in 2004, a feat he accomplished in part by trading heavy mountaineering boots and crampons for a pair of Nike track spikes.

Today he says he is not interested in the record for Rainier, which has been whittled to 4 hours 40 minutes. But he often returns to its slopes, which offer nearly 9,000 vertical feet of training for his next goal, a solo speed ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen.

In May 2010, Kellogg made his first attempt on Everest but stopped short of the summit, hampered by other climbers on the route and bad weather. His goal is to climb from the mountain’s base camp to the summit and back via the Southwest Ridge route in less than 30 hours.

“It’s not that I’m a great climber,” he said. “It’s that I want it more than anyone else does, and I’m willing to go out there and put in the work, put in the days, to achieve what I think is important.”

In 2007, Kellogg’s wife, Lara, also a climber, fell to her death on a mountain in Alaska. Three months later he learned he had colon cancer. He was back in the mountains, albeit in a limited way, a month after surgery to remove nine inches of his colon, determined to climb again.

“Despite constant setbacks, I’ve been very fortunate,” he said. “Bad things happen but good things happen and come out of it.”

Kellogg largely finances his expeditions by working as a general contractor. Although he has a few sponsors, they contribute less than $20,000 annually to his climbing, He saves money by sleeping on friends’ couches and in his worn Toyota pickup.

“If I have been given one gift, it’s that I can move pretty well in the mountains,” he said. “So I’m not going to squander that. If I need to live in my truck and fund a lot of my trips by swinging a hammer, that’s what I’m going to do.”

To Brent Bishop, a fellow Seattle resident who climbed Everest twice, Kellogg’s goal and the shift toward faster ascents might be best compared with Roger Bannister’s contribution to running by breaking the four-minute mile.

“Everybody wants to do something faster and stronger,” Bishop said. “They want to look inside and see what they’re capable of. Chad just happens to look inside, and what he’s capable of is a lot higher than the rest of us.”

New York Times

Environmentalists call for toilet installation on Everest

2011-10-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

KATHMANDU: An environmental group is asking the Nepal government to consider installing portable toilets on Mount Everest for climbers caught short at the roof of the world.

Eco Himal says the thousands of trekkers who set off from the South Base Camp in Nepal each year would do a better job of keeping the place clean if they and their porters had somewhere civilised to go when nature called.

"Human waste is a problem, of course," said the group's director, Phinjo Sherpa. "I am merely suggesting that if we have public toilets they can be used."

Many groups bring expedition toilet cans, but Phinjo Sherpa said porters were often left with little choice but the nearest snowdrift.

Environmental activists say Everest is littered with the detritus of past expeditions, including human waste and mountaineers' corpses, which can take decades to decompose because of the extreme cold.

Phinjo Sherpa said installing the toilets would be discussed as part of a wider waste management plan being prepared by the government that would encompass popular peaks throughout the Everest region.

"If there could be two or three toilets that would be good but this is just at the planning phase. We will have to decide what is a good idea and what isn't," he said.

Climbers spend tens of thousands of dollars trying to reach the 8,848-metre (29,028-foot) summit of Everest, but campaigners say few pay much attention to the rubbish they leave behind.

There is no definitive figure on how much trash has been left on the mountain, but the debris of 50 years of climbing has given Everest the name of the world's highest dumpster.

The privately-funded Eco Everest Expedition, a Nepal-based coalition of environmentalists campaigning to keep the mountain clean, has collected more than 13 tonnes of garbage, 400 kilogrammes of human waste and four bodies since 2008.

Eco Himal

Death in the High Sierras.The mystery of the Rettenbachers.

2011-10-12T03:57:00.000-07:00

In a beautiful, desolate valley in the Sierra, high above the valley of the Middle Fork of the San Joaquin River, is a plaque, attached to a boulder, that reads: Here rests Conrad-Anna Rettenbacher who lost their lives climbing Mt Banner July 1934: Die Naturefreunde INC, San Francisco

Largely a curiosity to the climbers and occasional backpackers who would pass this spot on the way to climb Mt. Ritter or Banner Peak; or, to make their way over North Glacier Pass to the remote North Fork of the San Joaquin; little was know of the couple who tragically died on the peak. The identities of the climbers and the circumstances of the accident, occurring in the height of the Great Depression followed by the World War and “general prosperity,” had become obscured by the passage of time.

Light was shed on the event in William Alsup's 2001 book, Missing in the Minarets, the Search for Walter A. Starr, Jr., an account of the 1933 search for, and ultimate discovery of “Peter” Starr's body on a rock ledge on Clyde Minaret, just three miles south of Mt. Banner (commonly known as Banner Peak). Alsup, on page 133, during a description of the legendary Sierra mountaineer, Norman Clyde, wrote that Clyde in 1934, “helped find the bodies of a couple from San Mateo, California, who had fallen together while climbing the East Face of Banner Peak.”

Alsup references a San Francisco Examiner article of August 16, 1934 (a copy is in the Norman Clyde Collection in the Bancroft Library at the University of California in Berkeley) which gives details of the couple and their demise. Under a front page banner of “Couple Plunged 600 Feet”, the Examiner described the discovery of the bodies on a glacier at the base of the northeast face of Banner Peak. It went on to say that the pair were “intrepid mountaineers” originally from Germany, “who had scaled many of the State's difficult peaks.” They were identified by members of “San Francisco's German Hiking Club,” the “Die Naturfreunde Inc.” on the plaque.The article goes on to say that the pair "were to be buried in a peacefull mountain meadow about a quarter of a mile from the glacier."

Research by Hrjove “Harv” Galic of Stanford University has produced the definitive description of the event which can be found at the website, Lonely Grave in the High Sierra.

Ironically, one of the few other bodies interred in the High Sierra is that of Walter A. Starr Jr. on a narrow ledge on nearby Clyde Minaret. Other tragic accidents in the area include that of Steve Fossett, the acclaimed aviator. He was killed in 2007 in a crash into Volcanic Ridge, a spur of the Minarets, and was not found for over a year. Galen Rowell, the mountain photographer, and his wife Barbara were killed in a plane crash in the nearby Owens Valley in 2002.

Peter Scott-Examiner

Lonely grave in the High Sierra

Clear link between solar activity and severe winters.

2011-10-11T02:22:00.000-07:00

Scientists have demonstrated a clear link between the 11-year sun cycle and winter weather over the northern hemisphere for the first time.

They found that low solar activity can contribute to cold winters in the UK, northern Europe and parts of America. But high activity from the sun has the opposite effect.

The study helps explain why the UK has been gripped by such cold winters over the last few years: the sun is just emerging from a so-called solar minimum, when solar activity is at its lowest.

'Our research establishes the link between the solar cycle and winter climate as more than just coincidence,' says Dr Adam Scaife from the UK's Met Office, one of the study's authors.

The findings, published in Nature Geoscience also raise the tantalising possibility that the regularity of the solar cycle might help weathermen predict cold winter weather over the northern hemisphere.

'We've been able to reproduce a consistent climate pattern, confirm how it works, and quantify it using a computer model. This isn't the sole driver of winter climate over our region, but it is a significant factor and understanding it is important for seasonal to decadal forecasting,' says Scaife.
Up until now, researchers have only managed to see a weak link between solar activity and winter weather: when the sun is less active, we're more likely to see weak westerly winds during the winter in the northern hemisphere. This pattern suggests that easterly winds could bring cold weather from the continent to the UK.

But scientists have struggled to incorporate these ultraviolet (UV) signals into climate models.

Now, new satellite measurements from NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) have revealed that differences in UV light reaching the Earth during the 11-year solar cycle are larger than previously thought. The satellite, launched in 2003, is the first ever to measure solar radiation across the entire UV spectrum.

'The instrument on the SORCE satellite divides UV light up into small wavelength regions, providing good spectral resolution. Before this, climate models used broad spectral bands, so couldn't reveal the solar signal,' explains Professor of atmospheric physics, Joanna Haigh from Imperial College London.

Using this new information in a Met Office climate model, Scaife, Haigh, and other researchers from the Met Office and the University of Oxford, demonstrate that it's possible to reproduce the effects of solar variability which show up in climate records.

It seems that in years of low UV activity, unusually cold air forms over the tropics in the stratosphere, about 50 kilometres up. This is balanced by a more easterly flow of air over the mid latitudes – a pattern which then makes its way down to the Earth's surface, bringing easterly winds and cold winters to northern Europe.

But when solar activity is higher than usual – around the peak of the 11-year solar cycle – the opposite happens: strong westerly winds bring warm air and so milder winters to Europe.

'What we're seeing is UV levels affecting the distribution of air masses around the Atlantic basin. This causes a redistribution of heat – so while Europe and the US may be cooler, Canada and the Mediterranean will be warmer, and there is little direct impact on global temperatures,' explains Sarah Ineson from the Met Office, lead author of the report.

'Even with the most sophisticated atmospheric models, it is very hard to predict weather patterns on seasonal timescales. This study, along with our ongoing research through the NERC Solar Variability and Climate (SOLCLI) consortium, is adding much detail to our current understanding,' says Haigh.

She is keen to point out that this finding is based on just one satellite: 'If there's something wrong with the instrument we used to get this new data, this might not be right.'

Haigh is however, confident of the mechanism. 'While statistical data pointed to links between UV from the sun and winter weather, this new paper explains how those links come about,' she says.

Sarah Ineson, Adam A. Scaife, Jeff R. Knight, James C. Manners, Nick J. Dunstone, Lesley J. Gray and Joanna D. Haigh, Solar forcing of winter climate variability in the northern hemisphere, Nature Geoscience, published 9 October 2011, doi:10.1038/ngeo1282

Planet Earth Online

Boulder hosts world sports climbing competition

2011-10-10T04:59:00.000-07:00

Young Austrian hot shot Jakob Schubert making music in Boulder.

BOULDER — Boulder hosted the world's best sport climbers over the weekend in the first World Cup Lead Climbing competition on American soil in more than 20 years.

Austria and Japan joined the U.S. in celebrating its hosting, with two athletes from each country reaching the podium.

The International Federation of Sport Climbing event drew 65 elite climbers from 14 countries. Sixteen finalists stirred high drama on the overhanging wall Sunday night at Movement Climbing + Fitness, where Austria's Jakob Schubert and Johanna Ernst took gold medals.

No climber among the eight men and eight women finalists reached the top — a sign that the route-setter succeeded in besting likely the strongest climbers to ever gather at the gym. But a few came very close.

"It was really hard from the beginning," said Schubert, whose finesse and power fueled his sixth consecutive World Cup title by reaching four holds beyond any other finalists on the overhanging wall.

Given only six minutes to review the route from the ground — an intense process that involved climbers conducting a frantic mime- like climb before the contest — and locked in isolation during the competition, no athlete knows how far any other climbed. But Schubert could tell when he passed the previous high mark.

"The audience here was so loud," he said. "When you got to the high point, you knew. You could feel it. It really got you psyched."

Ernst also culled deafening applause as her grip landed on the sloping orange hold at the top of an overhanging arête. As both her feet dangled in the spotlight, with only one hand connected to the wall, the crowd erupted. A thousand spectators drowned out the deejay and national identities faded into a raw celebration of athleticism and sport climbing.

With sport climbing short-listed for potential inclusion in the 2020 Olympics, the event — like the dozens scheduled around the globe in the coming years — was a strong display supporting Olympic inclusion.

"A competition like this is the best advertisement we can have," Schubert said.

The rabid response from locals, who snatched up tickets to the soldout contest in minutes, and the fact that the world's most elite climbers were challenged in one of the few indoor gyms on the international World Cup circuit, shows that the U.S. is more than capable of hosting international climbing contests, said USA Climbing president Pete Torcicollo.

"We did it proud," Torcicollo said. "We deserve to be in the Olympics. I think this kind of event — and all the other World Cup events around the world this year — continues to demonstrate to the IOC that this is our time. It is our time."

RESULTS

MEN

1. Jakob Schubert, AUT

2. Sachi Amma, JPN

3. Romain Desgranges, FRA

WOMEN

1. Johanna Ernst, AUT

2. Mina Markovic, SLO

3. Momoka Oda, JPN

24,000 feet above the war

2011-10-09T05:22:00.000-07:00

Recent photo of Afghan Noshaq mountain climbers Afiat Khan, Gurg Ali, Amruddin Sanjar and Malang Daria, from left,on the stage after the "24,000 Feet Above The War" screening at the French Institute of Afghanistan in Kabul, Afghanistan. KAMRAN JEBREILI — AP Photo

KABUL, Afghanistan — At 2:30 p.m. on July 19, 2009, the first Afghans to climb their country's highest mountain unfurled a national flag on the icy peak in the blue above the clouds.

The celebration was fleeting. Minutes later, they headed down with a French companion, buffeted by violent gusts of wind and worried that exhaustion and a lack of oxygen would imperil their descent.

They aimed to deliver a message one doesn't hear much, that Afghans can succeed. To say, according to a new film about the adventure, that there is more to Afghanistan than the Taliban, opium and burqas, the head-to-toe garments worn by some Muslim women.

Yet the upbeat tale masks a back story of reversals and obstacles that parallels the challenges of operating in a nation eroded by conflict. The saga is about rivalry, persistence, and tension that can flare among Afghan officials and foreign benefactors and promoters with clashing agendas. On a tiny scale, the story echoes other moviemaking ordeals. The filming of "Apocalypse Now," a 1979 award-winner set in the Vietnam War, was so fraught with drama that a documentary was made about its production.

On Sept. 22, at Kabul's French Institute, a boxy, 1970s-era structure, more than 100 Afghans and foreigners attended the first public screening of "24,000 Feet Above The War," a 52-minute documentary that profiles four Afghans who sought to scale Mount Noshaq, a 7,492-meter-high (24,580-foot-high) peak - Afghanistan's highest - in the Hindu Kush mountain range in the northeast.

Noshaq, close to the Himalayas, presides over a sliver of land, the Wakhan Corridor, that borders China, Pakistan and Tajikistan. Its isolation has largely spared it the violence that has gripped much of the rest of Afghanistan. An annual trickle of international tourists, many of them veteran climbers, is returning after a generation's absence.

The September film screening, meant to be a celebration of hope, came two days after a suicide bomber killed former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of a government-backed peace council trying to reconcile with the insurgency.

The crowd applauded the wiry, weathered Afghan climbers who ascended the auditorium stage after the lights came up. Some had worked as guides and porters for foreign expeditions up Noshaq, going as far as base camps but never to the top.

In the 2009 bid, helped by French climbers, Malang Daria and Amruddin Sanjar reached the summit. Another climber, Afiat Khan, turned back because of altitude sickness, and the fourth, Gurg Ali, accompanied him for his safety.

At the screening, Daria wore a blazer over his traditional garb, a shalwar kameez. He embraced his role as an ambassador for Afghan pride, describing what he felt at the peak in this way:

"I saw all of the Afghan people at the top of Noshaq."

It was the message that Louis Meunier, a 32-year-old trekker from Paris who crossed Afghanistan on horseback in 2005, had hoped to generate during the several years he spent preparing the three-week expedition and then producing the documentary from 50 hours of footage. The total cost was 90,000 euros ($122,000). Meunier didn't make it to the summit because of acute bronchitis.

The film images are lush and the cutting is crisp. Meunier shows the so-called "Wakhan Tigers" during nearly a month of training at Chamonix in the French Alps; setting off with 70 porters, each carrying a 23-kilogram load to base camp; picking their way with crampons and ice axes in the upper reaches; celebrating at the summit; and returning to garlands of flowers in a village below.

As the climbing party sets out, a police chief arrives and Meunier fears he will cancel the project - "everything being possible in Afghanistan," the narration says. But the officer just wishes them well. Then the team takes a rocky, steep route to avoid a minefield.

"The story behind the movie is much more complicated than it looks," Meunier wrote in an email from France after attending the screening. "I decided to focus on the positive aspects of the expedition, to outline the fact that the Afghan climbers were willing to send a message of peace in their war-torn country."

Trouble began long before the climb when Meunier and two French associates fell out with the French head of an adventure sports company who had promised financing. Later, Meunier got support from the French Embassy and the Aga Khan Foundation.

In other setbacks, a French production company dropped out, and the Afghan Ministry of Culture and Information objected. At a base camp, Meunier was informed by telephone that authorities might send helicopters to bring down the group. He quickly called the French Embassy, which used its influence to save the mission, according to Meunier.

Footage of his urgent phone conversations was cut from the film. The Afghan climbers, who are Shia Ismaili Muslims, speculated the culture ministry had wanted someone from Afghanistan's biggest, mostly Sunni ethnic group, the Pashtuns, to be involved in the climb.

Najib Manalai, a Pashtun who was deputy culture minister at the time, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that there was "absolutely" no ethnic motivation for opposing the project, citing ethnically diverse teams in cricket and other sports.

"My proposal to the French was to give us, rather than this very symbolic, one-shot action, investment in a mountain-climbing course in Kabul where we would have trained tens of Afghani young people, who could have climbed many of the summits of Afghanistan," he said.

He said the climb organizers sidestepped his ministry by getting support from other authorities, possibly in the presidency, and that the outcome "pleased some French and showed the incapacity of the Afghan government to take care of its interests for the long term."

Manalai, now an adviser to the finance minister, spoke of tension between the "ideological concerns" of some Western donors and the "fundamental needs" of Afghans. He recalled telling French actors that street theater in Afghanistan was marginal, that their plan to stage shows would have little meaning and that any investment should be directed elsewhere.

Meunier is mild of manner and lanky of build. He has a rugged verve for the outdoors and Afghanistan. He arrived in 2002 for a six-month stint as an aid worker and ended up staying seven years. In Kabul, he played buzkashi, in which horsemen vie for a headless goat carcass.

"Why did it take me so long to edit the movie?" he wrote of the Noshaq documentary. "I was reluctant to address all these issues in a film. A few months later, when I decided to do it anyway, I did a first edit without starring myself. But the narrative was not good, and lacked direction. So I did a second edit... speaking in the first person, in French and English."

It took another six months to get a $42,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy to dub the movie into Dari and Pashto, the two main languages in Afghanistan, produce DVDs and cover other costs. The embassy is sending copies of the film to provincial offices so more Afghans can see it. The U.N. mission plans to organize a national tour for the climbers.

The documentary helps "put a happy face" on Afghanistan, said Matthew Case, a public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy, which was targeted on Sept. 13 by insurgents during an attack that killed seven Afghans. No embassy staff members were hurt.

"Afghanistan is not just about the war," Case said. "There are people here trying to do well and survive and live a normal, quasi-normal, life."

The Afghans who climbed Mount Noshaq hope to use their experience to promote tourism. At the film screening, Daria said he was willing to set up a mountaineering school for Afghans, but needed equipment because "I don't have anything."

As for Meunier, he is working on what is surely another monumental project, a film about the last Kyrgyz nomads of Afghanistan.

Schoolboy Arjun follows Everest success on Manaslu

2011-10-07T14:00:00.000-07:00

After a successful ascent of the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, 18-year-old Noida boy Arjun Vajpayee on Tuesday achieved another feat by scaling the 8,163-metre-high Mount Manaslu in the western Nepal Himalayas. Out on an odyssey to climb most of the 8,000-metre peaks in the world, Vajpayee probably became the world’s youngest mountaineer to reach the top of the world’s eighth-highest peak, early Tuesday morning, Ang Tshering Sherpa, the chairman of Asian Trekking who organised the expedition,confirmed today.

The schoolboy had summited Mt. Everest (8,848 m), the highest peak in the world, in May 2010, but lost the race to a 14-year-old American boy to be the youngest to step atop the summit.
But not to lose morale, Vajpayee has since also climbed Everest’s neighbour, the 8,516m Mt. Lhotse. He has now set a record of being the youngest person to have climbed three 8,000-metre peaks.
An overjoyed Arjun called his home in Noida at 11 am on stepping foot on Manaslu peak. In his arduous ascent the teenager was accompanied by two Sherpa, Mingma Sherpa and Nima Tshering Sherpa. He has now returned to camp III after the successful ascent.
He was planning to spend the night at camp III and return to base camp the next day, according to his family sources. Arjun has completed his 12th grade from Ryan International College and is currently pursuing his bachelor’s degree at IILM College, Delhi, with marketing as specialisation.

Asian Age

The Iceman Cometh: Andy Kirkpatrick's Cold Wars review

2011-10-05T02:12:00.000-07:00

There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill.

John Lennon

First of all a confession. In recent years I have become increasingly bored with what has become an almost clichéd genre; the mountaineering epic.Inevitably set in the Alps and Greater Ranges. I realise that judging by book sales and prizes handed out at mountaineering literature/arts festivals that this appears to be a minority view but there you go. In my eyes, there are only so many creative ways you can describe derring-do and purgatory on a big wall.

I have a theory. Take a selection of mountaineering writers. Take a chapter from each of their works. Toss them in the air and then slot them together into a 250 page work. Change a few names and you would be left with a coherent work with readers none the wiser!
So it would be fair to say that I approached Andy Kirkpatrick's Cold Wars with a certain amount of trepidation. Anyone who titles their first two books Psychovertical and Cold Wars can be judged to have not exactly had the essays therein,dragged out of them under threat of violence! Andy Kirkpatrick, like his alter ego from the Fast Show, Gareth 'I'm Mad Me! Hunt, likes you to know that he's a bit crazy and that he's good...very good at doing dangerous things in wild places. Then again, you have to say after reading his books and articles...And why not! If you can fanny around above a 1000m vertical drop, trusting your life to a blob of copper hammered into a suggestion of a crack,then why not share the experience. I can imagine Andy marketing a range of T shirts with the slogan 'You don't have to be mad to climb here, but it helps' emblazoned across their-in Andy's case-ample chest.

And so to Cold Wars. The opening two chapters appeared to confirm my misgivings. Here was Andy with trusty sidekick, Ian Parnell having an epic on the desperate Lafaille route on the Dru. A route without a second ascent at the time and put up by legendary diminutive French climbing demi God, Jean Christophe Lafaille who perished on Makalu in 2006.
Apart from the usual disasters which bulk out just about every big wall mountaineering tale; snagged haul bags,collapsing bivis,lost gear,freezing temperatures,white-outs, taking a leader fall on a piece of metal no bigger than a pin head etc etc. I exaggerated that last one but only slightly!....the most stomach churning moment comes when Andy warms Ian P's stinking, putrefying feet on his belly. Talk about going beyond the call of duty! Mind you...dipping your wick in the same piss bottle ran it close.
By Chapter Three, I began to sit up and shuffle in my chair a bit. On the face of it 'Black Dog' is a short essay about going for a job interview on a push bike and ending up 'down where the drunkards roll.' The A&E department at midnight and more desperate and sadder places you would be hard pressed to find. However, it was not Andy's gaping head wound that exercised my attention but the wonderment of what exactly had happened to the black Labrador he had cannoned into on a Sheffield back street. At risk of being ostracised by the climbing dog lovers fraternity,we need to know. What happened to the black dog Andy???

From here on in,the book weaves an impressive line between man and mountaineer. Far from being a catalogue of mountaineering achievements,most of the climbing essays deal with failure and coming to terms with that essential part of the mountaineering game. As for Andy the man. As a parent and council estate kid from a Northern seaport myself; I totally identified with Andy's take on the complex mixed emotions felt by those who do dangerous things and take risks while a family waits anxiously at home. Here was someone who by his own admission, was eaten up with guilt,every time he left partner Mandy and his bairns,Ewen and Ella behind but who admits that he cannot resist the call of the wild or control his insatiable addiction to cutting edge mountaineering.

His working class discomfort and insecurity when in the company of middle class public school mountaineers like the late Jules Cartwright and Kenton Cool can be understood by anyone from Andy's background. While modern middle class young Alpinists were being taken to the Alps on skiing trips by their Doctor/Barrister parents. A grounding which Andy notes ignited their passion for the Alps. Young working class kids were being dragged to places like Skegness or Rhyl! In a way it's a credit to Andy and other working class climbers that despite their disadvantaged state in early life,that they have broken through and succeeded brilliantly in what still remains a middle class activity.

Unlike larger than life Kirkpatrick junior, Peter Kirkpatrick senior, who flits in and out of the book like Marley's ghost,is every inch the yang to Andy's yin. A modest,self effacing man who nevertheless like his son,is as hard as nails. Keeping his achievements locked in memory and never broadcast for effect or to stimulate admiration. A man who turned up to row a double sea kayak across the Irish Sea in a running vest and shorts,and without a life jacket or food. Peter Kirkpatrick comes across as every inch the reserved and unassuming Services man like his youngest son Rob-two years Andy's junior- who in the book is seeing action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Risking life in limb in quiet anonymity unlike his famous wacky brother.This is not a criticism of Andy by the way just an observation.

The mountaineering chapters,which take in many of the classic big walls of the world. From Patagonia to the Troll Wall in Norway. Colorado to Chamonix...are as previously described... more remarkable for their matter of fact description of failure. Failure through the elements,through human frailty,through equipment loss and breakdown. Failure through sheer bad luck. It's actually refreshing to read the heart felt emotions of someone accepting defeat and retreating back down the face than have to endure yet another Boys Own book of Adventures description of snatching success from the jaws of failure.
If I had to pick one chapter from the nineteen herein,it would be an essay which describes an attempt on the rarely climbed Leseur Route on the Dru. Andy meets up with a taciturn Scot who had been recommended by a friend of a friend. The fact that his Celtic partner comes apparently lightly equipped for a multi day big wall route suggests he's hard and fast. His sleeping bag for example, looking like it's been thrown out by the Dumbarton boy scouts. Deemed insufficiently togged for sleeping in a field next to Loch Lomond!
Despite shivering the night away,each morning sees the steady Scot take up his axes and methodically cut his way up the difficult line. I read this chapter in bed and woke my sleeping partner up by literally shaking with laughter at one point in the story. As scatological anecdotes go...this is a good-un! The humour is however,more than balanced by the unfolding action on the face. As they ascend it is clear to Andy that the quiet Scot is in fact the stronger climber as as he wilts and with blunted tools,Andy backs off to let his partner power his way up the route. What makes the essay remarkable is the fact that due to a misunderstanding, his partner is in fact a walking guide-hence lack of gear- and this is his first big multi day big wall climb! The final few lines are gut wrenching in their pathos. A remarkable essay which packs a lot into 14 pages
.
The closing chapter 'Magic' suggests that both philosophically and creatively Andy has passed his peak and has accepted a winding down in his climbing career. Like someone in high office who stands down from the cabinet to spend more time with their family, However, this theory appears to have been blown out of the water by news this week than AK has just completed a solo ascent of Troll Wall. So much for winding down !

Cold Wars works and manages to break out of an over-worked genre by dint of the authors honesty and vulnerability. A man who can feel awkward in the company of climbing Hooray Henrys but who is not afraid to tell an audience of sun tanned, perfectly honed climbing machines gathered at an Alpinist symposium in Boulder Colorado to SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! after their self absorbed babble threatens to drown out his lecture. Needless to say,you could hear a pin drop as Andy proceeded to first bemuse then gradually entertain them as they finally 'got' the self deprecation and robust piss taking which is part and parcel of the northern working class condition.

If you want to be like the folks on the hill. A working class hero is something to be.

Indeed Andy...Indeed.

John Appleby

Work finally begins on Monty Withnail's Crow Crag!

2011-10-03T03:36:00.000-07:00

Work finally began this week on the restoration of one of the Lake District's most iconic homes, and we are not talking about Wordsworth's Dove Cottage or Ruskin's Brantwood here. We've moved a hundred years or so into late 20th century cult cinema history and find ourselves visiting Uncle Monty's 'Crow Crag' or more accurately Sleddale Hall in Wetsleddale near Shap in the northern Lake District, which, as any movie fan will quickly inform you,was the central location in the classic 1985 film, Withnail and I.

The property was a run down and derelict old upland farmhouse owned by United Utilities which was discovered by location shoot investigators looking for a remote, semi derelict cottage which would stand in as Uncle Monty's Lakeland bolt hole and love shack. In the film which is set at the fag end of the 1960's, down at heel,out of work actors, Withnail and Marwood played by Paul McGann and Richard E Grant decide to get away from their grotty flat held fast in the grip of freezing London winter and take a holiday in the country, courtesy of Montegue Withnail, played by Richard Griffiths.

After a slow burning start,the film went on to become and remain and all time cult classic which retains a huge popular appeal for the young and the young at heart. Many of whom were not even born when the film was made. Scripted by Bruce Robinson and based on rich life tragi-comic characters from the writers past, the film's central farmhouse location became a place of pilgrimage for fans of the film who came to the appropriately named grey valley from all over the world.

Filming at 'Crow Crag'

Sleddale Hall was finally put on the market by United Utilities and in a well publicised auction which even made the national news in the UK, a hotly contested auction saw Sleddale bought by Cumbrian publican Seb Hindley, who promised to restore the ramshackle building for fans of the film.

However,months went by and doubts began to surface about the buyers ability to fund the purchase. After twice extending Mr Hindley's deadline United Utilities eventually announced that the sale had fallen through and offered it to the second highest bidder,Canterbury architect, Tim Ellis who now plans to restore Sleddale into a family home which will retain the special Withnail atmosphere.

A Certificate of Lawful Use was granted by the Lake District National Park Authority in March 2011. The Certificate confirms the residential status of Sleddale Hall in Planning Law. Now building work to restore Sleddale Hall has commenced it is hoped to complete the restoration by August 2012.
Anyone wishing to visit Sleddale Hall can get in touch with Tim Ellis through the Withnail and I website detailed below.

Paul McGann as Marwood outside Crow Crag

For all information on Withnail & I visit The Withnail and I Forum

Conditions hamper recovery of dead climber at Three Sisters

2011-10-01T00:47:00.000-07:00

Dangerous conditions are preventing crews from recovering the body of a climber who fell to his death in the Three Sisters Wilderness last weekend.

Search crews were back out Thursday, trying to recover the body of 37 year old Brian Jones.

Jones was hiking with a friend on Saturday, September 24th when he fell into an area known as the "Bowling Alley".

Crews have found his body, but they're having a tough time recovering it because of extreme rock fall hazards.

Several volleys of rock debris came down from the gully during Thursday's search.

Crews hope to return to the area after the winter snow and summer melt off to see if they can find a safer way to reach him.

Surgeons reattach climber's severed thumb after El Cap fall.

2011-09-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

The classic Zodiac on El Cap:Photo Brasovia

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif.—A rock climber whose thumb was severed when he fell and it was caught in a rope has had the digit reattached by surgeons, officials at Yosemite National Park said Wednesday.

The two climbers were nearing the summit of 7,569-foot-high El Capitan on Monday afternoon when the lead climber fell, said park spokeswoman Kari Cobb.

A safety rope wrapped around the man's right thumb, slicing it from his hand. The severed thumb fell onto a ledge, where the man's climbing partner was able to retrieve it, Cobb said.

A helicopter rescue crew took the injured climber, and his thumb, off the mountain using a technique park officials termed a "short-haul."

The technique involves suspending rescuers from a line while the helicopter hovers ahead, with the rescuers taking the climber off the wall of the mountain.

"This was an incredibly technical and complex rescue mission with a lot of inherent risk," said Yosemite Valley District Ranger Eric Gabriel.

"However, knowing that the thumb could be reattached, coupled with the confidence I have in my team, I made the decision to attempt this rescue. I was relieved, and thrilled, that this ended successfully and we were able to make a positive difference in this person's life," he said.

The climber was transported to another helicopter, then flown to California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, where his thumb was reattached, officials said.

Officials haven't released any details about the man, except to say he is from Austria.

Monday's rescue comes after three rock climbers were rescued last December after being stranded on the wall of El Capitan overnight. One of those climbers suffered moderate injuries when a rock hit her. The two other climbers were not hurt.

El Capitan's vertical rock formation is considered especially challenging, attracting experienced rock climbers from around the globe. The National Park Service describes its vertical face as the world's largest monolith of granite.

Idiot Wind..Clocaenog's Germanic makeover...... part two

2011-09-27T07:54:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan shooting the breeze in Wales

To compliment yesterday's feature about the Welsh Assembly Government's 'rush to wind' and the ecological and wider environmental consequences of its ill conceived,corporate friendly energy policy. With the spotlight on one particular forest in north Wales- Clocaenog- which will suffer particular environmental degradation,in the interests of shareholders in Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt. Professor Peter Cobbold-with a little help from Bob Dylan-looks at why 'a hard rain's gonna fall' on Clocaenog'!

Ten years ago the debate on wind power was polarised by green sentiment in favour of Dylan's early classic. But when we probe deeper comes the realisation that his 1974 masterpiece, “Idiot Wind”, is far the more prescient. We now know that wind power is hugely expensive, saves trivial amounts of carbon dioxide, if any, and does nothing to secure our energy supply.

So why are 32 generators – each weighing 70 tonnes and sitting on 100m tall towers – being proposed in the clear- felled remnants of a Welsh forest? The basic reason is that the wind does not blow all the time, and as a result a 3MW machine on a Welsh hillside will struggle to make an annual average power of one third of that – enough to power 500 electric kettles. When the wind dies down, other back-up generators will have to take up the slack.

The wind power industry would tell us the slack will be taken up by other windmills elsewhere because the “wind is always blowing somewhere” in UK. If wind turbines were spread evenly across the UK, that might just work. But the clustered layout of UK's turbines – a block in Wales and the Irish Sea, another array in the North Sea – guarantees it won’t.

As a work-around, the industry would have us spend vast sums, through our electricity bills, on a high voltage DC cable network across Europe.....Pigs might fly.....Batteries? More squadrons. So the UK will have to build its own back-up generators to bridge that gap, and to cover those long periods of high pressure when there is no wind at all anywhere, like the three snowy weeks of December 2010.

“Not dark yet”. Yes Bob. But 2013 keeps popping up as the year when engineers expect electricity supply to fall short of demand. We'll be asked to use power only when the wind blows. If wind power developers had been required to build their own back-up plants, we would not be facing blackouts. Back-up plants must be switched off and on as fast as the wind power goes up and down. That rules out using nuclear and coal-fired power stations.

Pumped-storage capacity like that at Dinorwig copes with rapid surges in demand for just a few minutes and is then exhausted. (To be fair Professor Mackay's book “Without Hot Air” identifies new pumped storage sites in North Wales and Scotland for a big expansion of pumped storage, but costs and funding are not considered). That leaves gas-fired plants. The best way to burn gas to make electricity is in a “combined cycle” gas turbine. Yet these machines do not operate effectively at less than full power – expensive gas is wasted.

So we are left with open-cycle gas turbines, resembling an aircraft jet engine geared to a generator. These are perfect for switching on when the wind fails, and off when it picks up. But no company wants to build them, because they waste that valuable exhaust heat and would be inoperative for about half their life. In Germany, which is years ahead of UK with wind power, the actual CO2 saving has proved to be just 6% of the turbines' rated power.

The Germans were not so daft as to site turbines in forests. But in Wales the Government's TAN8 planning legislation, promoted by Carwyn Jones, earmarked forestry land for turbines. That mistake wipes out the carbon dioxide savings completely. Trees have to be felled out to a radius of hundreds of metres to prevent loss of wind speeds – and a reduction in profits. This removes that last 6% of carbon saving. As far as climate change goes, wind turbines in forests are ineffective.

“All along the watchtower”. A watchtower in the forest? Yes, for the next time a wind turbine catches fire, as one did at Tir Mostyn. The planned turbines are no more than 100m from the nearest trees, and will be surrounded by brash from felling, all highly inflammable. It is astonishing that fire risk to forest dwellers has not been assessed by developers, nor the Welsh Government.

“Thunder on the mountain”. Mr Dylan, that's not quite right, wind turbine noise is not exactly thunder. It’s called aerodynamic noise and is caused by the blades being driven forcefully into slow or turbulent air. Noise assessment protocol uses data on turbine noise provided by manufacturers (yes, really!) from a turbine in the midst of an airfield where wind flows bear no resemblance to those in a forest.

When it became clear several years ago that the green credentials of wind power do not survive scientific scrutiny, the watchword for the embattled promoters of wind became “energy security”. Really? The open cycle gas-turbines that can mirror the wind's fluctuations burn gas one third less efficiently than the combined cycle turbines. And don't forget the extra cost of pylon connections to remote wind sites, and the destruction of landscape.

So here is Bob’s message to Rt Hon Carwyn Jones, instigator of the Welsh Government's TAN8 planning edict that targets wind power into forests. “...You have many contacts among the lumberjacks to get you facts when someone attacks your imagination... But something is happening here and you don't know what it is do you.... Mr Jones?”

Prof Peter Cobbold is a retired Liverpool University academic who lives near Derwen.

Daily Post

Welsh governments' massive deforestation programme revealed

2011-09-26T08:04:00.000-07:00

Greed and ignorance:A cautionary tale

To Hatch A Crow has received a copy of the Welsh Assembly governments' contract tender for private companies wishing to apply for exclusivity deals to implement massive clear felling operations and construction programmes within the government controlled forests of Wales.

The contracts relate to the discredited Tan 8 wind energy programme which will see a series of 'super wind farms' constructed throughout Wales. Since reorganisation, the previously independent Forestry Commission-Wales, has become an arm of the Cardiff administration. A convenient political structure which allows the WAG to implement its wind energy programme virtually unchallenged. Despite this,many people employed within the Forestry Commission are known to be unhappy that the organisation which originally was charged with timber production,and increasingly in recent years- in promoting leisure and conservation- are being forced by their masters in Cardiff to promote industrial programmes within the public owned forests it controls.

Now the South Wales administration has put out a 78 page tendering document which will see successful private companies receiving up to half a million pounds to clear fell huge swathes of forest,construct new roads, access points, new transmission lines,sub stations and borrow pits (quarries). Each element further contributing to the damaging ecological and aesthetic impact of these power plants which will be visible up to 30 miles away.

One highly controversial wind farm within the Tan 8 programme is in Clocaenog Forest in North Wales on the edge of the Snowdonia National Park which will see 32 giant wind turbines almost 500' high built in an area above the 1000' contour. The construction programme by the German energy company RWE has concerned environmentalists who are worried that the massive deforestation programme will adversely impact on the nearby towns and villages.Notably the market down of Ruthin in the beautiful vale of Clwyd which has suffered from severe flooding in recent years. Environmentalists are concerned that the clear felling operations will see a significantly increased water run off from the uplands above Ruthin. Thereby dramatically increasing fears that a new cycle of storms-as has been witnessed across the UK in recent years-will further exacerbate a potentially critical situation.

Conservationists are further concerned that a forest which is home to one of Wales' largest populations of endangered red squirrels, rare Black Grouse and deer amongst more common species,will see these species decimated or wiped out in the construction process. Of equal concern to conservationists,is the threat to the incredibly rare pine marten. Anecdotal evidence from more than one witness sites Clocaenog as home to the elusive creature. A possibility apparently ignored by the energy company, its agencies and the Assembly government.

The successful tendering companies will be expected to clear fell 66 hectares in Clocaenog alone. In total almost 400 hectares of forest will be clear felled in Wales to accomodate the Tan 8 scheme.

The massive deforestation programme within the forests of Wales will begin in less than two years. The Welsh government through it's Forestry Commission agency advising those tendering-Time is of the essence! One critic of the project commented "Possibly because the people of Wales and the UK are increasingly waking up to the great political/corporate scam ?'