Thursday, October 16, 2003
Annals of Adventure--The Big Schuss: I'm not a climber so I've never truly understood the pull of Everest. There doesn't seem to be much pleasure in scaling it. Your body rebels at the altitude, you endure headaches, possible pulmonary edemas and brutal, extremity-freezing temps. From the accounts I've read, climbing Everest is about enduring pain. You trudge upward killing brain cells by the handful, littering the mountain with oxygen bottles and trash because you are too exhausted and turned inward to pick up after yourself, and barely noticing the view. The best part of the Everest experience, it seems, is....the aftermath--having climbed the world's highest mountain. But skiing Everest? Now that's a thrill I can picture. And American born Maegan Carney, two-time extreme skiing world champion, is currently on the mountain, aiming to become the first woman and the first North American to ski from the top all the way to base camp--a vertical descent of some 12,000 feet. If all goes well, Carney and her climbing expedition, which is being led by Berg Adventure's Wally Berg--who has been to the top four times--will summit early next week, on Oct. 20 or 21. Carney has skied some big peaks. But as tame as Everest has become in recent years, with hundreds of climbers swarming all over the mountain in the Spring, the mountain is a tiger in October. According to MountEverest.Net out of 1924 total summits, only 279 have taken place in the Fall, and of those only 17 succeeded after Oct. 20. That's because the weather starts to deteriorate after October 10. And right now hurricane force winds are expected at the summit over the weekend and maybe into next week. Berg is prepared to wait it out, if necessary, but the odds only get longer. If Carney pulls this thing off, it will have to rate as one of the greatest ski runs in history....
Mad Maegan: "It would be a lot easier if they would just fix the damn T-bar...."
Mad Maegan: "It would be a lot easier if they would just fix the damn T-bar...."
Welcome, Purple Kermit!: If you root around in obscure places long enough you never know what you might find. And in the Western Ghats Mountains of southern India biologists have discovered a wholly new species of......frog. It's a funny looking little sucker: purple, with a small head, tiny eyes, and the chubby body of a non-frog athlete. Big deal, you say? Consider the fact that there are only 29 known families of frogs and the last new one was identified more than 75 years ago, in 1926. Plus, this guy, who will be known as Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis (he definitely needs a new PR agent), is believed to be the last representative of a type of frog that gamboled at the feet of Cretaceous period dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This frog is also similar to a family of frogs that lives across the Indian Ocean, in the Seychelles, supporting the theory of "Gondwana," the supercontinent which is believed to have incorporated all of earth's current continents before splitting apart. Here's hoping no one decides his funky skin, soaked in boiling water, is an aphrodisiac, or would look good as a purse........
Barney Beware!: "I'm cute and huggable, and I don't sing annoying songs...."
(Photo: S.D. Biju)
Barney Beware!: "I'm cute and huggable, and I don't sing annoying songs...."
(Photo: S.D. Biju)
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