Award-winning French physicist Etienne Klein has issued a public apology for presenting a photo of a slice of chorizo sausage as an image of Proxima Centauri taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

In his retraction, Klein said that he did this as a satirical way to inspire broader, healthier skepticism over the validity of astronomical images before accepting them as fact.

"I come to present my apologies to those who may have been shocked by my prank, which had nothing original about it. It was only intended to incite caution regarding images that seem to speak for themselves," he tweeted on Wednesday.

Klein shared the image on July 31 via Twitter. "Photo of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun, located 4.2 light-years from us. It was taken by the JWST," he stated in the caption. "This level of detail... A new world is revealing itself day by day.”

Photo de Proxima du Centaure, l’étoile la plus proche du Soleil, située à 4,2 année-lumière de nous.
Elle a été prise par le JWST.
Ce niveau de détails… Un nouveau monde se dévoile jour après jour. pic.twitter.com/88UBbHDQ7Z

— Etienne KLEIN (@EtienneKlein) July 31, 2022

Klein's tweet, to his surprise, took off like a rocket across the internet, garnering around 3,000 retweets/quote tweets and 14,300 "likes."

What appeared to the nascent eye a legitimate astronomical photo of the red dwarf star was, of course, just a slice of sausage against a black backdrop.

"I was surprised by the extent of the dissemination: I thought the image would immediately be detected as false," Klein said on The Objective, via Agence Free Press. "And when I saw that a major journalist from BFMTV was enthusiastic about the issue and was at risk of spreading it, I told him it was a joke. He took it with a lot of humor."

Young British climber Anna Taylor aims to summit 100 routes all over the UK, while Germany's Stefan Glowacz and Phillip Hanns hunt down multi-pitch first ascents in the Alps. All three climbers will access each destination by self-propelled, or "fair," means.

Anna Taylor, 100-peak 'Mountain Rock' link-up

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Last year, Lake District climber Anna Taylor made waves as the first woman to complete the UK's 83-route Classic Rock circuit. By the end of the challenge, she had climbed more than 10,000 vertical metres and cycled more than 2,500km.

Now at the ripe age of 24, Taylor is back at it. On July 24, she set out to attack the 100 climbs listed in Steve Broadbent's Mountain Rock guidebook.

"As far as I know, this is the first time this link-up has been attempted, so that should make it even more fun," she noted. "The climbs are spread out over Scotland, the Lake District, and Wales, and I'll be cycling/walking/running every mile between them!"

She will receive marginal support from her fiancé and fellow crusher, Matthew Wright, to charge up her cycling computer, cameras, and other devices. She described charging as "a real pain in the ass when you're alone with just a pair of power banks."

Taylor may be young, but she has already established herself as one of Britain's most adventurous — and promising — gritstone climbers. She has the benefit of legendary mentors on her side, including (but not limited to) the likes of Leo Houlding and Neil Gresham.

Last year, she soloed 68 of the 83 Classic Rock routes and tackled the rest with a handful of familiar partners. That's a theme she'll likely continue in this rotation.

At the time of writing, Taylor was 10 days and 480km deep, with no days off.

"End result - knackered," she wrote. "It's nice to still feel quite functional having not yet had a rest day. Tomorrow won't be one either, as hopefully, the weather is going to give us a window of opportunity to get the final Cairngorm climb done. Fortunately, it's one of my all-time favorites, so I won't resent the slog up to Lochnagar too much…"

Stefan Glowacz & Phillip Hanns, Wallride 2 expedition

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Just to the east, German expedition climbers Stefan Glowacz and Phillip Hanns are headed for the first stop on another bike-and-climb challenge, the Wallride 2 Tour. Both headed off toward the Swiss Alps from German's Starnberger See lake on August 1, bike packs stuffed and solar panel sleighs in tow.

Last year, the pair put together the wildly successful inaugural Wallride, a 2,500km fair means expedition in which they established epically long multi-pitch routes in three Alpsian countries. By the end of Wallride 1, they'd gained more than 50,000 vertical metres.

In keeping with last year's format, Glowacz and Hanns will seek out virgin rock and establish a handful of long, new alpine routes. Physical taxation aside, Glowacz has said that the biggest challenge is finding undeveloped dream lines within an abundantly developed area like the Alps. Planning, stocking up, and training for such an attack takes the better part of a year.

The pair have kept the specific objectives of this summer's expedition to themselves, but the first stop on Wallride 2 is the Wetterhorn massif.

In a March 2022 La Crux interview, Glowacz waxed poetic about the initial experience and teased at Wallride 2.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think of one or two anecdotes about the Wallride. Be it the bivouac at the Croda Bianca during our first ascent in the Dolomites, the descent down into the Engadin over perfectly developed flow trails, or the quiet moments before sunset somewhere high up in the Alps," he explained.

"The Wallride was the fulfillment of a childhood dream."

Nick Gardner of Gairloch, Scotland, is 82 years old and nearing the end of a considerable challenge: bagging all 282 Munros. "Munro" is parlance for any Scottish mountain 3,000 feet (914m) or more high. At the time of writing, the former physics teacher is only eight peaks away from a complete ticklist.

The circumstances that inspired Gardner to undertake such a massive project make his story all the more remarkable.

One 82-year-old man, 282 Scottish Munros

In mid-2020, he and his children made the difficult decision to move his wife, Janet, into a live-in care facility for advanced Alzheimer's patients. Gardner had just turned 80.

"When Janet went into care, it absolutely shattered me," he told the BBC. "We were incredibly close as a couple ... and now she doesn't recognize me.

"I was heading into some mental condition, so I thought I have to get myself a challenge, to pull me out."

Climbing the Munros to raise $12,000 for Alzheimer Scotland and the Royal Osteoporosis Society (ROS) is what he opted for. Thus, the stoic granddad summited his first Munro in July of 2020, at the age of 80.

 

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Having never attempted a mountain of Munro caliber before, much less 282 of them, he gave himself 1,200 days to run the circuit. He's currently 400 days ahead of schedule and plans to top his last pitch before August is over. If so, he'd run the table in under 800 days.

No end in sight for Nick Gardner

By the end of it, Gardner will have climbed the equivalent of 17 Mount Everests (8,848m) and walked more than 3,200km. He's raised over $60,000, far surpassing his goal, and made a bevy of friends along the way.

"[A]fter the first two or three Munros, I just started stopping people on the hill to tell them what I was doing...and they started joining me and donating money. Now, when I am walking, I regularly hear, 'Nick' shouted."

So far, Gardner reports that topping Cuillin Ridge on the Isle of Skye was the most physically demanding challenge he's faced along the way.

Of the peaks left on his list, there are three in the Knoydart region, four in Glen Dessary, and, finally, the pride of the Highlands — Cairn Gorm. He'll make that ascent in the company of family, friends, and the head of the ROS.

But, as far as the spirited Nick Gardner is concerned, Cairn Gorm will not be his last hike. "I will keep walking when I've finished this challenge, as long as my legs can carry me," he said.

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Below, a film that students at Stirling University made about Gardner's quest.

In January of 2020, alpinist Dani Arnold headed for a challenge unlike any he'd faced before. The mountain athlete's reputation had plenty of purchase in mountaineering circles, but the horizontal plane was a world unfamiliar.

This film from Mammut follows the affable Arnold and his partner, Martin Echser, to the heart of Siberia, to the deepest lake on the planet. His objective? Seeking out virgin climbing routes on the lake's Olkhon Island.

Lake Baikal

Lake Baikal is a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site, and experts estimate that it dates back more than 25 million years. At its deepest point, the freshwater lake measures 1,642 metres. By volume, it contains more water than any other freshwater body — just over 23,000 cubic kilometres.

Its remote location, coupled with the remarkably cold clime and jutting islands, made Lake Baikal an unlikely but prime candidate site for vertical discovery. During the winter, temperatures run as low as -40° Celsius.

Decrypting Siberian ice

The Siberian winter provided fascinating conditions for this extraordinary trip, involving Arnold, Escher, Arnold's father, and a diminutive film crew.

Due to the unadulterated nature of the Siberian tundra — particularly with regard to climbing — Arnold had perhaps more orienteering challenges than he'd initially imagined.

"It was very difficult to find helpful information," he wrote. "Since certainly only very few ice climbers or even none, have been there before...Siberia is not exactly tiny. On departure, everything was still unclear, we did not know if we could even hit the ice machines somewhere. But there was also hope because there had to be something there.

"In a country where summer is only three months old and the lowest temperatures in the world are measured. We tried our luck on Lake Baikal. There we knew at least that the whole lake was frozen with a thick layer of ice."

Traveling across the ice via hovercraft by day was a mainstay for their expedition:

"The trip with the hovercraft was something new for all of us...This vehicle was powered by a large propeller and was usually very loud and not exactly fuel-efficient. One liter for one kilometre. The first steps on the lake or rather on the clear ice will remain in our memories for a long time. The perfectly clear layer of about 40-80cm of ice was already solid. Nevertheless, we were reluctant to move away from the safety boat. The knowledge that we are on the deepest lake on earth was of course also present in our minds.

"We took the hovercraft north all day in search of ice... Minus 35°C and about 50 kph wind. Every move becomes tedious in this cold and everything takes much longer. We were then completely frozen when we reached our boat again. Only now did we realize how important this heating is on the boat!"

Route finding

During their next full-fledged voyage on the ice, Arnold and Escher headed to Olkohn Island, one of around 50 landforms on Lake Baikal. There they found what they were looking for: a litany of ice climbing potential. Over several days, the team curried up 10 new routes, graded from WI5 to M8. In the thick of winter, the pair dangled over the frozen lake.

"Due to the cold, the ice was pimple-hard," Arnold recalled, "Climbing was still quite good, but screwing in an ice screw was nowhere in the world more tedious! A squeak and enormous friction took almost both hands! And the screw was new and sharp!"

As the first ascensionist himself put it, it was an incredibly beautiful time. Given the deterioration of relations between the West and Russia, it may be some time before adventurers again have a chance to explore Baikal. Take a look.

Runtime: 26 minutes

On the early afternoon of April 25, 2015, a 7.8 earthquake shook Nepal and neighboring countries.

High in the Himalaya, the event triggered a cacophony of avalanches that extended from Pumori eight kilometres to the west through Mount Everest Base Camp. The snowshed pummeled Everest climbers, claiming 18 lives in an instant and trapping dozens of others.

2015 Everest disaster

Among those caught in the tumult were British reporter Tom Martienssen and his team of British Army Gurkhas. Though not immediately killed, there was no guarantee that they'd survive. The quake had sequestered the group between barricades of rock and ice at 6,100m.

"It's 11:50 am on 25 April when the Earth starts to move beneath my feet," Martienssen later recounted. "There are 500m-deep crevasses immediately behind me, three of the world's tallest mountains in front -- and a crackling rumble accelerating through the mist, getting rapidly closer."

Having lived through the event, Martienssen later told the tale in this brief documentary from the BBC.

" 'Stay calm, stay calm. Prepare to run!' my guide Rob Casserley's words reach me through a curtain of fear. I am truly petrified," reported Martiessen. "Later I discover that three of our group's Sherpas are among [those] killed when an avalanche ripped through Base Camp.

"The earthquake has killed thousands more below them. Whole villages have been wiped off the map in remote areas of Nepal -- many covered by landslides -- and some neighborhoods of the capital Kathmandu have been reduced to rubble."

Matthiessen and the other surviving members of his contingent lived through 48 gutting hours before a rescue helicopter found its way to them.

"[The] helicopter takes me back to Base Camp, where the bodies of the dead lie covered by orange canvas. I have to go back to the UK but there's one thought on my mind: I want to meet the families of the dead Sherpas left behind."

A reporter's duty

After three weeks of recuperation back home, Martiessen returned to the mountain that almost took his life. There he met up with Gurka warrant officer, Govinda Rana. At that time, Rana had served the British Army for 23 years and was commissioned as an Everest summit officer.

The two drove through Nepal for two days toward the remote village of Priti. It would be the first time that Priti received aid since the calamitous event.

"A recce team is sent further into the wilderness to check on the 1,400 houses in the surrounding area. The results are staggering — not a single one is safe to live in. Water supplies are failing and a bridge has collapsed."

Martienssen helped the Gurkhas hand out a limited supply of corrugated steel material to the villagers to protect their structures from the impending monsoons. He noted that there wasn't enough to go around. Many families had to wait longer for another supply delivery.

He then visited the home of Kumar, a Sherpa lost in the avalanche. Kumar's family lived in Cheskum, "a place so remote that helicopter is the only realistic way for me to get there," he explained.

The lost Sherpa was survived by his wife, Pancha, and their four children. "Kumar...never stopped smiling...Pancha never stops working."

After a few days of staying with the family, helping around the farm, and collecting their memories, Martiessen moved on to Kathmandu. There he sought out the family of another Sherpa, Tensing. He met up with Tensing's widow, Pema, and two "boisterous" boys. Tensing's income was vital, Pema told the reporter. Not wanting her sons to follow their father's footsteps as guides, she was faced with the likely reality of having to sell their home to pay for the boys' education.

At the end of his stay in Kathmandu, Martienssen admitted, "The monsoon is coming -- there will be three months of rain and hundreds of thousands of people still have nowhere to live. I admire the resilience of the Nepalese people, but I can't help but think the toughest challenges may still be to come."

Follow Martienssen in his humanitarian scribe's quest to document one of the mountain's most earth-shattering events in Disaster on Everest.

Runtime: 30 minutes

Born in 1923, Swiss alpinist Marcel Remy is now 99 years old.This documentary from Mammut, however, focuses on 2015 and 2017. That's when Remy set out to tackle Switzerland's 450m-long Miroir d'Argentine.

Meet Marcel Remy, one stubborn alpinist

"I can't figure out people who don't understand that at my age, you can still be active," Remy says, mildly bewildered. "I just don't get it."

Over a quick cup of espresso at a local café, Remy reflected on a recent climb. "Yesterday, on the rocks, I loved being able to climb as if I were 60, 70, or 80 years old."

These are words that those 30-, 40-, or 50-year-olds who feel prematurely ragged should perhaps take to heart.

'F.O.S.L.' route - February 2015

At the age of 92, Remy lead climbed (and decisively fired) F.O.S.L., a limestone sport climb graded 5C (5.9) in Leonidio, Greece — no small feat, especially at an advanced age.

"It is so beautiful out here," he remarked softly while steadily ascending F.O.S.L. "The rock is stunning." To follow? The king's seat at a long table set with tapas, red wine, and loved ones followed — the determined old Switzer had, after all, earned at least a bit of pomp.

And yet, Remy doesn't exactly sugarcoat the truth. Age has presented him with a handful of its own proverbial summits.

"We realized that he was finding it tough to put the rope in the quickdraw," his son Claude notes before turning to his father for confirmation. "It has to be said that you were in trouble. You really were at breaking point."

The elder Remy nods in reluctant but dignified agreement. But would that be any reason to stop? Quite to the contrary.

'Miroir d'Argentine' - August 2017

Argentine (2,421m) resides in western Switzerland's Vaud Alps. Though empirically climbable on all sides, the route that dominates its Northwest face, Miroir d'Argentine, 5C (5.9), is the peak's undisputed classic. Some experts have even called it "the most celebrated multi-pitch climb in Switzerland."

No stranger to the formation (he first tied in at its base in 1946), Remy describes it as "something extraordinary...known around the world." By his estimation, he'd returned "200, 220, or 240 times" over the years. He lost count when his physical strength began its slow, unauthorized descent.

And of all the routes on Remy's prolific ticklist, the northwest face of Miroir is the one he's loved and returned to the most.

When he told his son that he wished to return in 2017, Claude and his brother Yves, both well-known ascensionists, acquiesced — with a condition. "We set up a training plan with targets to achieve," said Claude. "If the targets weren't achieved, we wouldn't do the Miroir."

And so it began, a flurry of days spent smearing his low-angle La Sportiva climbing shoes against the time-hardened limestone slab.

The trail leading up to the 5C route offered its fair share of difficulties. It is steep, peppered in scree, and therefore rather technical — it's a Class 5 scramble in some stretches. Yet Remy kept on pace throughout the training program; by all metrics, he was ready for another battle with his favorite line.

"I am already so pleased," Remy remarks joyfully to the film crew, "because I can tell it's going to be ok. I will struggle, but it will be fine." One can't help but suspect that the promise of struggle is what so enticed him back to the mountain at 94.

So, did the excelsior Marcel Remy reach the summit of Miroir de l'Argentine once more? I recommend taking a look for yourself to find out.

Runtime: 24 minutes

On May 7, 26-year-old Madison Eklund left Minneapolis to kayak 2,400km alone to Hudson Bay, in the Canadian north. Her journey will cross through Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, and span most of Manitoba.

ExWeb caught up with the young paddler to learn what motivates her, how she prepared for what she calls Expedition Alpine, and how the trip's going so far.

To the best of Eklund's knowledge, hers is the fourth expedition to pursue the Minneapolis to Hudson Bay line, but the first solo.

Those previous paddling expeditions were:

• Eric Sevareid and Walter Port, 1930
• Sean Bloomfield and Colton Witte, 2008
• Natalie Warren and Anna Raiho, 2011

A handful of other voyages have taken a similar route but departed from the Grand Portage/Boundary Waters area of Lake Superior instead of Minneapolis's entry to the Minnesota River. Both routes begin to overlap at Lake Winnipeg.

The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Last we heard, you'd passed the "century" (100-mile) mark on your voyage. Congratulations! How's it going so far?

At this point, I’m well past my century mark, and actually almost done with the 315 miles [563km] of the Minnesota River. I’d be further, but I had to spend two weeks off the river due to severe flooding and debris in the river.

The trip has been a blast so far, and I’m really looking forward to the next leg, where I’m going with the current!

First soloist

You're following the route charted by Sevareid and Port in 1930 and you'll be the first soloist to do this route. But why choose this one over any other route that hasn't been soloed?

Honestly, this was never about being the first soloist on this route. It just kind of evolved into that.

My now-husband was stationed out here with the military. We did the long-distance thing for a while, and I lived in the mountains of Upstate New York. I was an extremely active hiker, climber, and kayaker while I lived there. When I planned on moving out here to join him, I knew I'd be losing the mountains, forests, and in a way, a part of myself.

I started thinking about a long-distance kayaking trip since I knew there was a river right through town. At first, I considered doing an end-to-end of the Red River. I started researching the area and found that the Red River flows into Lake Winnipeg to the north, and has a tributary [Bois De Sioux River] to the south. Once I started talking to the locals about doing a South Dakota-to-Manitoba trip, several mentioned a much larger historic trip that was recently done by two women: Minneapolis to the Hudson Bay.

I looked it up and was really impressed. I read every single blog post [from the expedition members], looked at their maps, and researched each of the water features they traveled on. Natalie Warren of the Warren/Raiho expedition had an upcoming book release event, so I went. In the meantime, I purchased Canoeing with the Cree and Adventure North. I read both and connected with Warren at the event.

The more I learned about this trip, the more I could see myself doing it. It was my kind of crazy.

I was pretty sure the trip would be solo. It's hard to find someone skilled who is also interested and willing to take the time off/save up the finances to go on a crazy trip for up to four months. A partner also adds a very different dynamic to the trip. It's one more person who you have to worry about safety and well-being for. One more person where you need to be aware of their skill levels and deficiencies...you always have to travel at the pace of your slowest group member.

I did genuinely look for a partner for this trip but ultimately could not find one. I'm very comfortable on my own in the backcountry, so it's not that big of a deal for me.

Kayaking background

Could you give us some idea of your kayaking experience?

I first kayaked around the age of seven at my grandparent's summer home in Maine and fell in love! I'd spend each summer bombing around on the lake in one of two older Perception Acadias that we would borrow from the neighbors.

At some point, I tried to fly the idea of circumnavigating the island [on the lake] by my parents and grandparents. It caused quite a fight! I explained that the neighbor's son had done it, and then was forbidden to go.

My dad came to console me later that night and asked, "What's stopping you? Take your sister and some supplies, and leave at sunrise before everyone has their coffee. Text me periodically, and I'll keep everything under control here."

Long story short, my sister and I completed the trip. She slept for the rest of the week and vowed never to go again. I was hooked and made it a yearly trip!

Since then, I've kayaked regularly. I also completed some challenging hiking/backpacking trips that were several days long and I lived out of my two-door Wrangler for four months in the mountains, so being without a house or bed isn't an issue.

First long-distance expedition

However, this will be my first truly long-distance trip. I've worked to acquire any skills I may need. I've been working on learning to roll my kayak. I have tons of first aid/medical training already but brushed up on that as well. I also volunteer for our regional swiftwater search and rescue, so I've been able to get an idea of where issues arise and how paddlers can put themselves in danger.

Unfortunately, I'm not as experienced as I'd like to be in whitewater. There is quite a bit of that on the northern reaches of my trip. I've studied up as much as I can, but theory is very different from experience. All the classes I signed up for were canceled because of COVID. This is the one area where I plan on being extremely cautious. I fully intend to walk many of the rapids because of my lack of knowledge, even though portages can be long, overgrown, and buggy.

With all this being said, it's important to keep in mind that all three prior trips were done by people fresh out of high school, and two of the three had minimal whitewater experience themselves.

Polar bear safety

Are you at all concerned about encounters with predatory animals? Polar bears are known to show up inland on Hudson Bay. Are you carrying any form of animal deterrent or self-defense?

Yes, I am a bit wary of polar bears and maybe wolves. I've also been told that grizzly bears are slowly making a comeback into northern Manitoba.

I have bear spray and an electric bear fence for my campsites. My dad also sent me a flare gun.

I plan on being strategic with food storage and cooking times. Preventing any interest in your camp is much simpler than preventing death from an attack. Overall, I will only be inside the polar bears' range for a short period of time. Previous trips did not see any at all, only the girls' trip saw one being chased by a groundskeeper at York Factory [in Hudson Bay].

Animals are also quite predictable. They generally fear humans and only want their food/territory/safety. If you don't provoke them and give them plenty of space and respect, there is generally no issue.

Minimal new equipment

What about gear? Can you tell us a bit about your kayak and any of the ancillary equipment that you think will be especially vital to the trip?

This was an area where I really hoped to limit my carbon footprint for this trip. New products and clothing carry such a heavy environmental burden. They consume a lot of water and energy to produce. It's really important to use what you have first. With that being said, I did get some items I needed for the trip.

My kayak is a Wilderness Systems Tempest 170 (17 feet long, roughly 56 pounds). It's a bit heavy for portages, but these rotomolded plastic boats are extremely durable and can take quite a beating. I opted to deal with the extra weight to give me some safety and wiggle room because I lack experience with whitewater. A punctured boat up there could mean serious trouble, and many others have had to call for help in that same situation. Additionally, Lake Winnipeg can get some rough water where you can actually bottom out on rock reefs up to a mile from shore between the swells. This is a capsize risk, but also a boat-damage risk.

I purchased a Garmin Inreach Explorer...[and] I also bought a solar panel. This will supplement my battery packs and charging frequently at town stops along the way.

Follow Expedition Alpine

For trip reports, updates, and more, head to expeditionalpine.com and follow Eklund on Facebook and Instagram.

In November 2019, Swiss alpinists Lukas Hinterberger, Nicolas Hojac, and Stephan Siegrist set out to forge new routes in a remote and little-visited range. Their shared quest brought the three halfway across the world to the central section of the North Patagonian Icefield.

In their five weeks abroad, the trio pursued the second-ever ascent of Cerro Largo (2,799m) and the first ascent of the northeast face of Cerro Cachet (2,632m). Both peaks tower above Chile's immense Nef Glacier.

Base camp and bad weather

The location of the team's base camp was so untouched by civilization as to require access via boat and horseback.

On arriving in the heart of a Chilean forest, they set to work building a shelter. Felling timber, pitching walls, and lining their hut with moss filled the trio's first day. "We were still tired after the journey," Hinterberger recalled. "It would have been too much to take on Cerro Largo straight away."

The following morning, they embarked on an hours-long approach to the foot of the Nef Glacier. There they felt out the terrain and begin stashing equipment for their eventual summit attempt.

Then a block of unfavorable weather moved in. "In the mountains, the precipitation amounted to some two metres of fresh snow," explained Hojac. "In avalanche terms, this is a relatively critical volume."

Reprieve from the flurries finally came on day nine, and all three men set out eagerly for Cerro Largo. Knowing that avalanche potential could hold them off the summit push, they nonetheless skinned toward the headwall with great determination.

Cerro Largo -- second ascent, northeast ridge

The hike to Cerro Largo was long, and the team arrived at its base later than they'd hoped. But they were determined to cut their teeth on the peak's northeast ridge.

And so it began.

"For Nicolas and me in particular, it was very special to climb on Patagonian rime ice for the first time," said Hinterberger. "We had a lot of fun."

And in short order, around 6:30 pm local time on November 22, all three mountaineers found themselves on top of Cerro Largo. It was a celebratory moment but not nearly the challenge they were after. Siegrist later described it as "similar to a demanding ski tour, but with a short passage of ice at the very end."

They'd spend the next seven days waiting out more unsavory weather and preparing for something more gripping.

"One mountain had caught our eye when we were setting up the equipment store," Siegrist reported. "A mighty, beautiful mountain looming up slightly out of the valley." It was Cerro Cachet.

Cerro Cachet - first ascent, northeast face

Although slightly lower in elevation than Cerro Largo, Cachet's faces are notably steeper and more dangerous.

The cap of Cachet wasn't wholly untouched. Two expeditions before theirs had summited the peak. But as noted in Siegrist's trip report, the prior ascensionists had gone "via the fairly easy terrain on the side facing the inland ice."

But that was not what the Swiss climbers had come to Chile for. They yearned to establish an entirely new and more technically demanding route up Cerro Cachet. To do so, they would have to scout quickly and adeptly.

"Cachet now looked considerably larger and more impressive than we'd realized while looking through binoculars. There's one thing you basically never have on the mountain in Patagonia: time. In our case, it was a mere day. The weather forecast predicts wind speeds of 100 kph for the following morning," Siegrist recalled.

Heavy snow and precarious cornices sheathed much of the mountain, and base camp lay four hours off in the distance.

After a morning of scaling and rappelling over the massif, they found what they'd been seeking. "[A] 600m vertical wall rises into the blue Patagonian sky before us," wrote Siegrist. "Uncharted climbing territory. One of the rare white spots in the vertical world that mean about as much to alpinists as the big nuggets did [to the] the gold diggers in the 19th century."

And so began the Swiss expedition team's 10-hour summit push up Cerro Cachet's 600m virgin wall. Establishing the mixed-terrain route meant overcoming graduated pitches of up to M7+ climbing.

Finally, late in the afternoon of December 3, Hinterberger, Hojac, and Siegrist reached the summit. They named their proud line Homenaje a los Amigos Perdidos, in memory of fallen alpinists David Lama, Ueli Steck, and Julian Zanke.

Footnotes

See the 2019 expedition in full through this brief but thorough documentary by Mammut.

For additional route information, refer to the team's AAC-sanctioned report, Cerro Cachet, Northeast Face, Homenaje a Los Amigos Perdidos, and Hinterberger's PlanetMountain report.

Runtime: 13.5 minutes

Late Wednesday evening, Brazilian authorities announced that they have located what they believe to be the bodies of journalist Dom Phillips (57) and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira (41). As previously reported, Phillips and Pereira went missing near the Vale do Javari region on June 5.

In the press briefing, regional police chief Eduardo Fontes explained that the lead suspect, Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira, confessed to shooting both men and led investigators to the location of their remains.

"On Tuesday, he informed us the location where the bodies were buried, and he promised to go with us today to the site so we could confirm where the bodies were buried."

Interpol is now working with Brazilian officials to confirm the victims' identities.

That site was in an area known as the Lago do Preguiça, approximately three kilometres inland from the River Itaquaí and 1.5 hours up river from the town of Atalaia do Norte. Phillips and Pereira were due to arrive in Atalaia do Norte the morning of their disappearance.

An eyewitness for The Guardian reported seeing officials remove two bodies from Lago do Preguiça and transport them by boat to Atalaia do Norte Wednesday night.

Fontes also indicated that search teams will return to the area on Thursday and that more arrests are likely.

Phillips and Pereira were ardent proponents of environmental preservation and Indigenous rights in Brazil. The two men had traveled to the Javari valley to conduct research for a book on Amazon rainforest conservation.

The 10-day search was a coordinated effort involving Brazil's police force, army, navy, and Indigenous people. Though now coming to a tragic close, the case of Dom Phillips and Bruno Pereira has shed light on the dangers that advocates for environmental and Indigenous protections face under the country's far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazilian authorities are analyzing human remains recovered while searching for British journalist Dom Phillips, 57, and indigenous expert Bruno Araujo Pereira, 41, missing since June 5. Evidence linking the remains to the missing pair is mounting, and experts strongly suspect foul play in the men's disappearance.

As we previously reported, Phillips and Pereira were last seen on June 5 when they left the Vale do Javari on the Brazilian-Peruvian border. The two were due to meet an indigenous leader in the Brazilian settlement of Sao Rafael before continuing down river to the port city Atalaia do Norte, but they failed to arrive at either location.

Police launched an intensive investigation that afternoon. Federal, civil, and naval military authorities have assisted in the ongoing search.

Earlier this week, police arrested fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira and took control of his boat after finding traces of blood and unauthorized weapons aboard. Eyewitnesses stated that da Costa de Oliveira and two more armed men had threatened Phillips, Pereira, and 13 Indigenous people on June 4.

Da Costa de Oliveira is currently the primary suspect in the investigation and will remain in custody.

Experts will now compare the human remains, as well as the blood found in da Costa de Oliveira's boat, with genetic material taken from Phillips and Pereira's possessions.

Reportedly, Pereira was accompanying Phillips as a field guide and Amazonian tribal expert. Phillips researching a forthcoming book on sustainable development.

According to The Guardian, Pereira had received death threats for his indigenous and environmental advocacy work. The region has been at the center of increased political violence over environmental and indigenous concerns since President Jair Bolsernaro took office in 2019.

The infamous Bugaboos-to-Rogers ski traverse charges across 137km of alpine wilderness and gains nearly 11,000 vertical metres. Often referred to as Canada's grandest traverse, the Bugs to Rogers route has drawn a long line of expert ski mountaineers to the Canadian Rockies over the years.

In the spring of 2021, accomplished backcountry skiers Leah Evans, Madeleine Martin-Preney, and Marie-France Roy sought to add their names to that list.

"In local ski culture, it has become somewhat of a rite of passage for people wanting to expand their mountain skills or test themselves to see if they have what it takes to join the ranks of the big-mountain elite," Evans notes.

The Bugaboos to Rogers ski traverse in context

Legendary skiers Bill Biggs, Barry Corbet, Bob French, and Sterling Neale pioneered the traverse back in 1958. Their flagship effort across the Purcell and Selkirk Mountains took nine days and remains one of the most fabled ski traverses today.

In April 2021, Adam Campbell, Greg Hill, and Andrew McNab bested a 16-year pace record on the Bugs to Rogers line, skiing it from tip to toe in just over 53 hours. Their blinding pace dethroned the objective's previous speed record (80 hours, set by Troy Jungen, Douglas Sproul, and Jon Walsh in 2005) by nearly 27 hours.

And then, on May 3, 2022, Kylee Toth, Emma Cook-Clark, and Taylor Sullivan swooped in with an even more expedient time: 44 hours and 37 minutes. The record-holding team's blistering pace averaged 3.03 km per hour. Given the traverse's harrowing uphill gain, the group of two women and one man executed a feat that was nothing short of sleepless — if not heroic.

And yet, pursuing a speed record is but one way to ensnare yourself with the Bugaboos to Rogers Pass traverse, and not the only one worth courting. So perhaps I should note here that the three women featured in Mind Over Mountain weren't pursuing the fastest known time — completion of the course is more than enough adventure for the majority of ski mountaineering's most prestigious. Why wouldn't it be?

As with most expeditions above tree-line and below freezing, high risk reaps high rewards. The route is an amalgam of glaciers and steep avalanche terrain. Conditions need to be perfect and skiers must tread lightly to succeed.

Team profile: Evans, Martin-Preney, & Roy

Leah Evans

Evans is a professional skier, Association of Canadian Mountain Guide (ACMG)-certified hiking guide, and founder of Girls Do Ski, a freeski camp provider for women. She grew up skiing the British Columbia mountain ranges and makes her home in Revelstoke today.

The Canadian native harnesses nearly three decades of experience on skis and has completed expeditions to Iceland, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Northern B.C., and Turkey.

In addition to founding and directing Girls Do Ski, Evans also founded 12 Under 20, a charitable freeski camp for girls and women under the age of 20.

Madeleine Martin-Preney

Martin-Preney is an ACMG skiing and hiking guide and works alongside Evans at Girls Do Ski. She has spent most of her career teaching avalanche safety and ski touring, often with Outward Bound and Avalanche Canada's youth education program.

Notably, Martin-Preney became the first woman to traverse the entire Selkirk range from Nelson to the Mica Dam (520km and 43,000 metres of vertical gain). Her expeditions have taken her to the Andes, the European Alps, India, and the Yukon. Marin-Preney also participated in a kayak/ski expedition from the Gulf Islands to the Whitemantle Range.

Marie-France Roy

Roy is a former professional snowboarder and climate activist. After retiring from a decade on the X-Games circuit, Roy turned to ski mountaineering, activism, writing, and filmmaking.

She began skiing at the age of 11 near her hometown of Quebec. Later, she moved to B.C., where she splits her time between Whistler and Vancouver Island.

In 2015, Roy received the Climate Activist Award from Protect Our Winters and TransWorld SNOWboarding magazine. She has gone on to win awards at the Banff Mountain Film Festival and others for her production of The Little Things. 

Most recently, Roy is credited as the primary driver behind the Westcoast Triple Plank. This is an annual, come-one-come-all boardsport and environmental conservation event on Vancouver Island.

Footnotes

Produced by Patagonia and directed by Nick Waggoner, Mind Over Matter follows the tightly knit trio as they test their fortitude on the world-famous line.

So, do the three Candian powderhounds notch their names on the Bugs-to-Rogers manifest? "No idea," one skier says in the film. "No idea what I was getting myself into." You'll have to watch to find out.

Runtime: 40 minutes

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are one of many lingering mysteries in modern astronomy. Each FRB pulse lasts mere thousandths of a second and carries as much energy as our Sun emits in a century. That is hard to fathom, for starters.

In a study released this week, researchers with the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (better known as FAST) in Guizhou, China, released detailed observations of a repeating FRB located at the edge of a dwarf galaxy. That distant galaxy, they estimate, resides some 3 billion lightyears from Earth. They've dubbed the repeater FRB 20190520B.

FRB theories & the rare repeater

What causes FRBs? One theory suggests that the bursts come about when incredibly dense matter (as in a black hole or neutron star) collides and subsequently explodes. A second theory is that FRBs result when distant stars collapse.

Thanks to FRB 20190520B's repeated bursts, the FAST lab has been able to observe the node regularly, via telescopes around the world.

According to study author and leading FAST scientist Di Li, the project has detected more than 500 bursts since 2007. Of those 500, only 5% are repeaters. Poignantly, FRB 20190520B is just the second repeating burst that scientists have associated with a "persistent source of weaker radio waves between the pulses," PopSci reported. Astronomers detected the other in 2012.

Echoes of the newborn universe?

For now, the majority of FRB research simply catalogs and classifies the FRBs. Li's team hopes that this will unlock some of the many questions FRBs have inspired. These include: What drives these violent explosions? Why do some repeat, while others do not? Where in the cosmos do FRBs originate?

Li proposes another theory regarding unique, repeating, radio-emitting FRBs like 20190520B and the one detected in 2012 He says that it's possible that both bursts behave as they do because they are younger than what seem to be singular bursts.

He compares it to fallout after an initial explosion, where debris lingers for some time before expanding out and achieving entropy. If FRB 20190520B indicates an explosion that astronomers captured in the early stages, what they see now could be the reverberations of that event.

“We live in this very dynamic universe,” Li reflected. "There are way more things in the universe that are unknown than what has already been known.”

Jerry Moffatt is, handily, one of modern climbing's great innovators. In the 1980s and 1990s, Moffatt and hard-climbing cronies like Ben Moon put up some of the UK's burliest boulder problems and routes. They did what many had thought impossible. But to do what had never been done before, they had to develop a method that had not previously existed.

"For me, the most important thing is variety and changing where you climb," Moffatt states. And thus systematic training for climbing was born.

Moffatt's approach — to train multiple styles in a variety of environments from bouldering gyms to gritstone —  was simple in theory but immense in application. Not only would the great experiment demand time, testing, and physical dedication, but many of their contemporaries would balk at the idea. Train in a bouldering gym to climb better outside?

"Everyone thought I was crazy," he chuckles. But it soon became apparent that his visionary approach to training would bear substantial results.

Some 30 years on from his psych-fueled heyday, Moffatt continues to train and send as hard as ever. Spend some time learning from one of the sport's unparalleled masters in this short but delightful retrospective.

Some of history's most commendable outdoor sporting moments happened wearing unlikely attire. When women climbed mountains at the dawn of the century, they wore cumbersome dresses. Early kayakers wrapped themselves in sealskin.

Sport is not exempt from fashion faux pas, either. Neon-clad skiers in the 1980s are remembered fondly for their eye-watering brightness and frenetic graphics.

Prehistoric outerwear

There was once a time when outdoor clothing selection was limited. Nowadays outdoor enthusiasts can walk into any store and make color or style selections to suit personal tastes. But it wasn't always that way.

In 1991, the mummified remains of an ancient climber were uncovered high in the Alps. The significant recovery provided historical insight into the clothing of early summiters. Back then, the wilderness and the creatures in it were our only source of cover. The selection and tech were limited.

“Otzi” perished at 3,210m on the east ridge of Fineilspitze in the Ötztal Alps. Archaeologists rebuilt his replica, piecing together his attire.

At the time of his death, he wore a woven grass mantle, a coat, a sheepskin loincloth, and goatskin leggings. A leather chin strap tethered his bearskin cap. Moisture-absorbing grass filled his boots. Otzi's getup was absolutely state-of-the-art — for 3230 BC.

The 1700s-1800s

A lot changed between Otzi’s ill-fated climb and the 1786 Mont Blanc summit of Jacques Balmat and Michel Paccard. By contrast, Balmat and Paccard had already begun using layering as insulation from the elements. They wore oversized wool coats, waistcoats, tall leather boots, and layers of stockings. As temperatures rose, they removed layers to cool off, just like people today.

But dampness makes garments heavy. Such clothing was warm and readily available, but nimble it was not.

In the late 1870s, mountaineering also became a women's pursuit. But social requirements meant women had to wear dresses. They were usually made from light wool or alpaca. Earthy colors mimicked Otzi's. They might seem bland by today's standards, but fashion wasn't a thing -- at least outdoors -- back then.

It wasn’t just mountaineers who wore cumbersome clothing in unlikely places. Early kayakers around the Pacific Rim wore kamleika. The long, parka-like outer shell was often made from waterproof bands of cured bear or seal intestine.

To make a kamleika, kayakers used animal gut, which they soaked in fresh water to clean and soften the tissue. Once ready, the intestine was cut into bands, dried, and sewn together to form a waterproof outer. Cleverly, a single garment consisted of a hood, padded jacket, and skirt.

Pacific Northwest kayakers soon added the bentwood hat to their ensemble. The ornately decorated headpiece, trimmed with sea lion whiskers, brought color and fashion to the otherwise lackluster kit.

Around this time, pointed wool hats came into fashion among skiers. The ski cap was an early mark of skiing culture's proclivity to blend fashion with function.

The 1900s-1910s

When transportation improved, so did exploring new destinations. Holidays in the Alps meant that climbing became more popular, but attire hadn’t quite caught up with demand. Women skied wearing woolen, ankle-length skirts. Specialist clothing was mostly hewn from tightly woven cotton. It was warm and often windproof but susceptible to absorbing water.

And though a number of new brands rose in the first two decades of the 20th century, apparel stayed much the same during this period.

One notable exception to the lull was the invention of the first functional zipper by Gideon Sundback in 1913. The stroke of ingenuity forever altered clothing, outerwear, and gear. Suddenly, not everything had to be a pullover or linked together with cumbersome buttons.

The 1920s-1930s

Perhaps a casualty of the World War and Great Depression, outdoor apparel remained largely unchanged through the late aughts and into the early 1920s. For example, the 1921 Everest Party wore tweed, Norfolk jackets, and camel hair coats.

That said, the 1920s were a heyday for wax and rubber engineering, prized for their water repellency. Though imperfect (wax and rubber coatings ramped up waterproofness but occluded airflow, blocking perspiration in).

Perhaps inspired by flapperism, the '20s were a defining era for sportswomen. Female skiers ditched their bulky, inefficient skirts during this period. Freedom and comfort were no longer just for men.

A turning point for ski wear came along in 1924. The first Winter Olympics popularized skiing and specialist garments were designed for functionality. Women began skiing in Norwegian trousers (baggier at the top, with cinched angles) paired with a tailored jacket, inspired by the pilot’s uniform.

When George Mallory’s body was discovered after his ill-fated 1924 Everest summit, he was wearing gabardine, wool, cotton, and silk. It was the first sign of what alpinists and mountaineers would wear in the modern age. The lighter, blended fabrics boasted dynamic performance features (airflow, insulation, moisture-wicking) and signaled a positive turn away from the sport's traditional layers.

The year 1936 marked the invention of the goose-down jacket, replacing lambswool as a lightweight alternative. It revolutionized the ski slopes and nicely accommodated the advances in open chairlifts.

In 1937, climbing reached new heights with the entry of the Vibram rubber mountaineering sole. Grippy even in the cold, the unique rubber colloid was also relatively easy to mold, enabling new footwear shapes and specialized designs for different applications.

The 1940s-1950s

Industry improvements in the 1940s and 1950s primarily focused on gear, but certain innovations bled into clothing.

Velcro (1941), mass-produced Ventile fabric (1943), and synthetic fill (1950) all came entered the scene in this era. 1951 saw zippers explode, all thanks to RiRi’s invention of injection-molded zipper teeth. And in 1952, Gerry engineered the first-ever cordlock toggle — a fixture that would soon adorn the hems of all types of outerwear.

According to a report by Filson, "World War II and the ensuing years saw better oxygen gear, an endless supply of surplus nylon ropes, and cheap pitons."

In terms of maritime and naval apparel, 1949 was notable. Jacob Jacobsen, who had innovated Norwegian wool (a fishermen’s favorite) at the turn of the century, saw a need for lighter wool apparel with lower water absorption. To foster a solution, Jacobsen partnered with Captain Henrik Bruun. Captain Bruun suggested knitting a mesh fabric out of cotton to allow more air to pass through. Jacobsen knitted up a mesh prototype which Bruun tested out on his soldiers stationed in the Norwegian alpine. The garment was wildly effective against cold, moisture, and gravity.

1949 was a similarly incendiary year for climbers — Emile Bourdonneau and Pierre Alain designed the first climbing slipper. It looked bizarre — like a boxing shoe gone wild. And it would be the slipper by which future generations of hyper-specialized climbing shoes sprang forth.

In 1953, Brynje was recruited by Englishmen John Hunt to create fast and light “health shirts” for an upcoming Everest expedition. When Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stood atop the world’s highest peak on May 29, 1953, they did so with health shirts on. The expedition did wonders for Brynje’s design, and soon the shirt fell into the hands of sports stars like boxer Ingemar Johansson.

Then, in 1959, chemist Joseph Shivers introduced a fabric that could stretch more than 100 times beyond its form before snapping back into shape: Lycra. The hyper synthetic, versatile material took to snow sports like wildfire. Skiwear quickly became stretchy, tight, and high fashion. It wouldn't be long until the outcasts of climbing employed Lycra's dynamic fit and bold, bright applications.

The 1960s-1970s

In 1961, Helly Hansen conceived of the “W” pile fleece garments, targeted at professional and casual skiers. The “W” line remains a sturdy staple of powder hounds 60 years later.

Until the late 1960s, outdoor garments consisted of cotton, leather, silk, and wool. Down filling was still reserved for major Himalayan expeditions.

According to the Go Out Project, all of those materials had great limitations. “[They] either absorbed humidity very easily, as it was the case of wool, cotton, silk, and down, or they were far too heavy and not breathable, like leather.”

The synthesis of synthetic fibers from petroleum derivatives made clothing lighter and more resistant to water and wind. Blends of synthetic and natural fibers led to fabrics that combined the best of both worlds.

In 1965 Sierra Designs' iconic 60/40 Mountain Parka was born. The parka sparked similar designs from competitors, and the style is now associated more with high-elevation activity than any single brand.

The advent of waterproof coatings and waterproof/breathable laminates in the 1970s led to a further evolutionary step in mountaineering attire.

In 1970, Gore-Tex changed the game for clothiers and gear manufacturers alike. That year, Bob Gore secured a patent on the application of thinly stretched PTFE (better known as Teflon) to create a waterproof membrane. Within a couple of years, Gore-Tex material was on its way to achieving household name status.

Around that time, climber and Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, along with a handful of collaborators, developed the synthetic pile sweater for mountaineering. The first generation of synthetic pile sweaters comprised the same material found in toilet seat covers. The introduction of the light, highly insulated, quick-drying design came just as the fur market was bottoming out, and they outperformed traditional wool sweaters. The new sweater drastically reduced bulk and the need for multiple layers. These traits took the market by storm, and the synthetic pile sweater quickly became one of the most successful outdoor garments ever.

The synthetic fibers were especially easy to dye, a feature that allowed clothing brands to offer colors and patterns of all varieties. This worked well with the bright, bold mainstream trends, and brought vibrance to outdoor clothing in ways never previously possible. Funk, groove, flower power, and rainbows were now on offer to the adventurous.

1975 was a helluva year for adventure garment components. ITW Nexus granted a patent for the first side-release plastic buckle. Buffalo Systems rolled out Double P (pile/Pertex) garments. Berghaus released the full coverage Yeti gaiter (complete with a rubber rand).

And, perhaps most stylistically distinct of all 1975 innovations: Rohan's Tundra introduced the very first softshell, a close-fitting stretch jacket that was both wind and showerproof.

The 1980s-1990s

By the 1980s ski fashion hit a pinnacle of outlandish colors, patterns, and styles. No tone was too bright, no pattern combination too wacky. Men and women both wore fluorescent neon snowsuits. Much of this trend was thanks to the previous decade's entre of Gore-Tex, which allowed ski wear to be lightweight yet weatherproof.

Mountaineers managed to evade the loudest of the 1980s neon saga with earth-toned snowsuits and large goggles.

In terms of technical trends, again, Chouinard and his partners struck gold with the emergence of synthetic long underwear in 1980. The ultralight, hydrophobic alternative to cotton long johns enjoyed similar success to that of Chouinard’s sweater. Shortly after developing it, the renowned climber formed Patagonia.

In the climbing segment, the trend toward cragging was met in 1980 by Boreal and Nike. That’s the year Boreal launched the Fire — climbing’s first “sticky rubber” shoe. Nike handled the hikes to and from climbing walls by developing the very first approach shoe, the Lava Dome.

Five Ten followed Nike’s lead in 1985, introducing the Five Tennie approach shoe. The Five Tennie featured the brand’s proprietary (and still popular today) Stealth climbing rubber sole.

In 1992, Scarpa and Black Diamond collaborated on skiing’s first plastic telemark boot. Bold 1990s colors and graphics flocked the boot’s distinctive, sharp form factor. To this day, it’s easy to tell a Scarpa boot from the rest.

The 2000s-Present

The 2000s saw a new rise in environmental concerns. In 2007, Nau became the first brand to fully heed the call, introducing a complete line of eco-friendly outdoor apparel.

This remains a major trend today and has cultivated an almost competitive milieu among outdoor clothing brands. Especially in today’s burgeoning market, the race to offer the most earth-friendly, sustainable option is on and seemingly endless.

While this vibe has significantly altered the way that companies manufacture and package items, the trend is as visually apparent. Revivals of older styles emerge every so often (take the classic Five Tennie approach shoe as an example), but the looks of high-tech garments seem largely unaltered.

One notable upcoming trend: off-white or near-white outdoor gear. Brands like Arc’teryx and Patagonia are turning towards simpler and less caustic production methods. The most visually obvious change, and something we expect to start seeing a lot of in the coming seasons, is undyed, natural fabric.

The exclusion of dyes reduces the raw materials and water consumed in the manufacturing process. The resulting products, therefore, get their hues from undyed fibers. And since most apparel-friendly natural fibers (bamboo, cotton, wool) are innately off-white, so too is the outdoor apparel spun from them.

As a final treat, here is Glamour magazine's jaunty take on ski clothing through the decades.

What did we miss?

Are there any outrageous or noteworthy flashpoints in outdoor clothing history that we missed? Let us know in the comments!

Water is everywhere. And it touches everything. Recent events and studies have shown us that even once-safe water sources (like your friendly municipal water treatment plant) may be harbingers of dissolved lead. I don’t care if you’re a suburban Jones or a rugged adventurer, your biological imperative for potable water is one thing you can’t change. The fastest, most cost-effective way to survive and conquer unsafe drinking water? A well-engineered filtered water bottle.

Lucky us, there is a wellspring of bottle-based water filters and purifiers available today. But the science behind what you need for your exact situation is overwhelming. Not only that, sorting the poser filters from those that are truly reputable is painfully time-consuming. (We put this guide together; believe me — we get it.)

We dove into the science, waded through the ocean of options, and brought only the best filtered water bottles to the surface with us. So suck it up and jump on in — time to take control of your H2O. The water’s not great, but we’re about to change that.

Best for adventure: MODL Filtered Water Bottle with Pure MOD Filter

• Removes 99.9% of bacteria and protozoa
• Extremely long-lasting filter life
• Bottle, hydration reservoir, and gravity filter options
• Inexpensive to replace

The MODL is a modular all-in-one bottle that isn’t simply a large filtered water bottle that morphs into a filtered hydration pack. Instead, it’s “an entirely new category of gear: the utility bottle.”

I had the chance to test out the MODL and all of its four function-modifying attachments, or "MODs." First is the Go MOD (creates a sports bottle-like configuration), then the Flow MOD (morphs the MODL into a 1-liter hydration reservoir), the Rinse MOD (a screw-on cap that turns the MODL into a shower-like spray gun), and finally, the MOD de resistance — the Pure MOD (a robust, versatile filtering attachment).

The Pure MOD is an extremely stringent portable water filter that boasts a 790-gallon (3000-liter) lifecycle. The 0.1-micron hollow-fiber membrane filter removes 99.9% of bacteria and protozoa from any freshwater source at a flow rate of 1 liter per minute — comparable to the fastest, best filtered water bottles currently available. Just one of many testaments to MODL's worth: When the Texas power grid collapsed, our city was placed under a days-long boil water mandate. Within a matter of a few hours, every store in Austin was sold out of bottled water. Fortunately for my dog, George, and me, the Pure MOD kept us hydrated, safe from waterborne illness, and about as happy as two peas in an icy, post-apocalyptic pod could be.

The Pure MOD pairs with both the Go MOD for classic water bottle usage or the Flow MOD for a hydration reservoir setup. The Pure MOD provides interior and exterior mounting options for both bottle and hydration reservoir configurations; interior for on-the-go, exterior for base-camp friendly gravity filtration. With the Pure MOD, the MODL is a full-on, go-anywhere water filtering system. Read the in-depth review here.

See MODL Filtered Water Bottle with Pure MOD Filter on MODL Outdoors

Longest lasting: LifeStraw Go Filtered Water Bottle

• Protects against bacteria (99.999999%), parasites (99.999%)
• Filters out microplastics, chlorine, organic chemicals (99.999% )
• Long-lasting, 2-stage filter straw
• Meets EPA and NSF/ANSI standards

The LifeStraw Go Water Filter Bottle houses the company’s original claim to fame  —  the LifeStraw  —  in a durable, BPA-free Tritan food grade bottle with a leakproof lid.

The large straw contains a two-stage filtering configuration. The first stage uses a 0.2-micron hollow fiber membrane microfilter to removes bacteria (like E. coli and Salmonella) as well as parasites (like Giardia) and microplastics from your water. The second stage comprises an activated carbon filter, which mitigates chlorine and organic chemical compounds (like herbicides and pesticides). Activated carbon filters are widely used to improve the flavor and odor caused in water by less caustic chemicals like chlorine.

The LifeStraw bottle’s membrane microfilter has a lifespan of 1000 gallons (4000 liters). However, the activated carbon filter needs to be changed out every 26 gallons (100 liters). Replacements of both filter components are pretty cheap. It's a good idea to stock up before going afield for long bouts of time if you're, say, hiking the PNW Trail — which would be a great way to put the Go bottle to use.

Our tester and his daughter used the Go for a week of alpine hiking during a summer vacation in Colorado, and it was their only source of water while in the backcountry. The filter worked as advertised but required considerable suction that slowed the intrepid seven-year-old daughter's drinking rate. Notably, the friction-attached filter element fell off the lid once. We recommend visually checking that the filter is properly seated before drinking, as the bottle includes no other safety measure against drinking unfiltered water.

LifeStraw offers the portable filtered water bottle in 16 different colorways, so there’s something to suit even the glampy-est of gear collections.

See LifeStraw Go Filtered Water Bottle on REI

See LifeStraw Go Filtered Water Bottle on Walmart

Most packable and lightest: Katadyn BeFree Fast Flow Filtered Water Bottle

• EZ-Clean Membrane
• 2-liter/minute fast flow rate
• Removes harmful organisms
• Collapses down for easy storage

Made to hydrate users quickly with minimal spatial requirements, the BeFree fast flow filtered water bottle is, to our knowledge, is one of the few collapsible options among all water filtration bottles on the market. And that’s not the only reason it makes our list. Katadyn’s been a prize-holder in the outdoor industry for around 90 years. The company is pro at making unpotable water safe for human consumption.

Using the BeFree water bottle filtering system is easy — just fill the hydration-bladder-like sleeve with water from any freshwater source, cap it off, squeeze, and sip. The fibrous EZ-Clean membrane filters out certain types of pathogens  —  bacteria and protozoa  —  but it isn’t rated to handle viruses. And at a flow rate of 2 liters per minute, the BeFree is easily one of the fastest on-the-go portable water filters out there.

The drawbacks? Many users complain that the bottle is prone to leaking and breaking. That said, with gentle handling and storage, trail runners and hiking mavericks say that it’s their favorite filtered bottle for lightweight, on-the-go demands.

Our tester has been using the BeFree for a few years, and it's his preferred water filtration method when weight counts – it's one of the lightest filter systems available for backcountry use. And he agreed with the flow rate claims, stating how refreshing it was to gulp down an entire bottle as fast as possible in the Texas heat, especially when it had been a while since he had come across surface water on summer backpacking trips.

See Katadyn BeFree Fast Flow Filtered Water Bottle on Amazon

See Katadyn BeFree Fast Flow Filtered Water Bottle on REI

See Katadyn BeFree Fast Flow Filtered Water Bottle on Walmart

Best in extreme situations: GRAYL GeoPress Filtered Water Bottle

• Ultra-fast purification time
• Eliminates 99.9999% of waterborne pathogens
• Filters out toxic inorganic compounds
• Innovative SimpleVent drinking cap

GRAYL’s GeoPress is the maker’s second fast-action water purifier. Like its predecessor, the Ultralight, the GeoPress uses advanced filtering technology and positive pressure to eliminate 99.9999% of all waterborne pathogens (bacteria, viruses, and protozoan cysts). It also traps toxic inorganic compounds found in freshwater in record time. It takes just 8 seconds to process 24 ounces of water — or 5 liters per minute (which is…really fast, you guys).

The GeoPress underwent independent testing by a certified lab and successfully met or exceeded NSF/ANSI protocols 42 and 53 for pathogen and chemical removal. It’s also met the EPA's guidelines for the protocol used in testing microbiological water purifiers. Some of the pathogens it conquers include Rotavirus, Hepatitis A, Norovirus, Giardiasis, Cryptosporidium, E. Coli, Cholera, Salmonella, and Dysentery. And GRAYL’s award-winning One-Press global protection endorsement means the unit is fit to protect you from the nasties on all seven continents.

The drinking cap of this portable filtered water bottle is cross-contamination-proof and the fast-flow spout is manageable with just one hand.

The GeoPress is close to the best water purifier bottle currently available. The only downside? A filter this discerning gets spent faster than others  —  350 purification cycles (65 gallons) is all she wrote for each filter cartridge.

But back to the good news  —  the GeoPress, just for funzies, is available in five colorways: Alpine White, Camo Black, Covert Black, Coyote Amber, and Visibility Orange.

See GRAYL GeoPress Filtered Water Bottle on Amazon

See GRAYL GeoPress Filtered Water Bottle on REI

Best filter/purifier combo: Epic Water Filters Nalgene Outdoor OG Filtered Water Bottle

• Advanced ION exchange purification technology
• Activated carbon filter handles particulate
• Tested against NSF/ANSI standards 42, 53, 401, P473, P231
• Lid/filter fit any Nalgene bottle with standard mouth

The Epic Nalgene Outdoor OG is a serious water bottle and one of the best filtered water bottles for travel to parts unknown. Epic Water Filters is a Colorado-based filter maker that engineers everything from single-trip filters to plumbed-in home filtration systems. The company partnered with Nalgene to create the Epic Nalgene adventure bottles.

The OG is a water bottle with purifier capabilities owing to its advanced ION exchange and activated carbon filter construction. Its advanced filter design looks like what you’d expect from a collaboration between two industry sweethearts  —  independent laboratories tested the filter successfully against NSF/ANSI standards 42,53, 401, P473, and P231. That means it meets water filtration standards for removal of contaminants including bacteria, cysts, viruses, arsenic, lead, organic chemicals, VOCs, and heavy metals.

The only drawback to a purifier/filter of this precision is its lifespan  —  each replaceable filter peters out at around 100 gallons. Fortunately, replacement filters are readily available through Amazon and all Epic retailers  —  usually for less than $30 a pop.

The 32-ounce classically styled Nalgene bottle is available in two colorways and features a lid-integrated carrying handle. It's also available in a 48-ounce OG Grande style, although by default, the larger version comes with a lighter-duty filter than the Outdoor OG.

See Epic Water Filters Nalgene Outdoor OG Filtered Water Bottle on Amazon

Best for UV-C purification: LARQ Self-Cleaning UV Filtered Water Bottle

• Two organism-neutralizing modes: Normal (kills 99.99%) and Adventure (kills 99.9999%)
• Qualified water purifier
• Rechargeable lid, no need to replace filters
• Double-wall insulated stainless steel

The stainless steel LARQ bottle isn’t exactly a filtering bottle, but it is one of the best water purifier bottles on the market. What gives it the ‘purifier’ distinction? The UV-C LED sanitizing tech housed in the bottle’s lid.

Okay, so you can’t use UV rays to clear out sediment, chemicals, most odors, or flavors  —  those jobs are for activated carbon filters. But when it comes to breaking down the DNA of bacteria, protozoa, cysts, and viruses in relatively clear water, the LARQ is what’s up  —  at least according to some independent labs and 2019’s Core77 Design Awards. In-lab testing showed it to be 99.9999% effective against E. coli, Salmonella, Staph, and MRSA.

With the lid secured, users can initiate a 60-second cleaning cycle by pressing the LARQ’s button; alternately, the UV-C mechanism will auto-clean the bottle's interior every 2 hours. And the lid is endlessly rechargeable via the included micro-USB cable, meaning you won’t need to stock up on replacement filters. The company claims (and many a customer has verified) that a single, full charge results in up to 1 month of power.

For water that is already clear to the eye, free of heavy particulates, and sans any unappealing odors/tastes like chlorine and silt, the LARQ’s UV-C technology is a chemical-free, filter-free last stop before consumption.

The LARQ stainless steel, double-wall vacuum insulated water bottle is available in 17- or 25-ounce capacities and five colorways (Granite White, Himalayan Pink, Monaco Blue, Obsidian Black, Seaside Mint). Fancy.

See LARQ Self-Cleaning UV Filtered Water Bottle on Amazon

See LARQ Self-Cleaning UV Filtered Water Bottle on LARQ

Best for lead-reduction (light-duty): astrea ONE Premium Stainless Steel Filtering Water Bottle

• Meets ANSI/NSF lead-reduction standards
• Proprietary filtration media
• Inexpensive filter replacements
• Easy-fill flip cap

The astrea ONE stainless steel filtered water bottle makes our list for one crucial reason: it’s one of the very few options that’s capable of reducing lead. It's a feature worth splurging for, given alarming concerns over lead particulates in some of the United States’ water systems. Not that you'll need to splurge — the astrea ONE and its filter replacements won't break the bank.

The astrea ONE is certified to ANSI/NSF standards 42, 53, and 401 for heavy metal and chemical reduction. That means, in addition to lead, the astrea filters out other heavy metals like benzene, mercury, and copper, and a laundry list of noxious chemicals, including pesticides, herbicides, and pharmaceuticals.

Not much is known about the ONE's proprietary filter technology, but we do know that it isn’t comprehensive enough to tackle organic pathogens. That's why we recommend the ONE Premium Filtering Water Bottle for light-duty, tap water-only use.

The ONE is also available as a 23-ounce BPA-free plastic bottle. Both options come in a number of colorways; bright, bold, or muted in tone. For more in-depth information about the astrea ONE and its proprietary granular media filter, check out its old Indiegogo page here.

See astrea ONE Premium Stainless Steel Filtering Water Bottle on Amazon

See astrea ONE Premium Stainless Steel Filtering Water Bottle on Bed Bath & Beyond

Best light-duty budget: Brita Plastic Water Filter Bottle

• Slimline filter fits inside the straw
• Leak-proof
• Built-in carrying loop
• Fits standard cup holders

The Brita Plastic Water Filter Bottle is designed for long-term, light-duty use. It excels at sequestering flavor and odor resulting from chlorination, a common water treatment element. Don’t expect this filter to do any heavy lifting -- it’s more of a “home-to-yoga” companion.

A replaceable filter inside the straw filters water as it gets sucked up through it. Owing to its household name and big-box store availability, Brita’s replacement filters are some of the market's most cost-effective and easiest to come by. When used with potable tap water (which is the only type of water you should run through a filter of this tiny caliber), an individual filter should last through 40 gallons.

The BPA-free bottle holds 26 ounces of water, features a leakproof lid and integrated carrying handle, and has a unique lid design. It opens by pressing the button on the front, revealing an easy-sip straw. This lid is 100% leak-proof and has a handle, making it easy to carry. We also like the fact that it’s available in five colorways.

See Brita Plastic Water Filter Bottle on Amazon

See Brita Plastic Water Filter Bottle on Walmart

Who this is for

Anyone and everyone who wants to clean up their water act with a viable, reputable option regardless of budget constraints.

Whether you’ve come here looking for a portable, everyday solution to tap water contaminants like lead and chlorine, or a robust purifier capable of extinguishing waterborne pathogens for a week-long trek in the boonies, this guide runs the gamut.

Why you can trust us & how we chose

At our core, the ExplorersWeb crew is a bunch of adventure enthusiasts. Our various backgrounds reflect exploration, competitive cycling, outdoor thrill-seeking, international travel, trail-blazing, rock climbing, primitive camping, and the like. These experiences have put each of us head-to-head, mouth to mouthpiece, against many industry-leading filters and purifiers.

We looked to bottles that we’ve used and trusted, their makers, and paired that with the best information we could find about what you lovely folks in the cloud had to say.

We wanted to present a list of filtered water bottles that would answer every need, starting at the kitchen tap and ending at some remote reservoir miles off of the grid.

The clean water product category is a burgeoning and ever-growing one, so we’ll be updating this guide as we continue to test more contenders and as newer, better bottles are released. So don’t be a stranger — check back every now a then, won’t ya?

How we tested

Every which way we could! I personally took one filter bottle on a 5-week, hard-riding test drive that included a weekend gravel biking trip, two camping trips, multiple trips to the funkiest corners of the Austin Greenbelt, and a pull from every public faucet and spigot I could access.

Features to look for in filtered water bottles

Lead removal certification

Look for water filters with NSF/ANSI Standard 53 certification marks and lead particulate reduction claims (Class I). You will find each of these listed on the product packaging or the manufacturer’s website. NSF 53 certification requires ‘point of use’ filters, like water bottle filters, to reduce dissolved, soluble lead and insoluble lead particulates.

Lead is an extremely difficult contaminant to filter out, but it’s perhaps the single most common pollutant found in municipal drinking water in the developed world. If that doesn’t concern you, it ought to; according to the EPA et al., “Lead and copper enter drinking water primarily through plumbing materials. Exposure to lead and copper may cause health problems ranging from stomach distress to brain damage.”

Regulatory institutions like the EPA, Center for Disease Control, and NSF International are taking renewed action to mitigate lead contamination of tap water, and stringent filtration technologies are being developed. Despite these and other ongoing efforts, surprisingly, few bottles are capable of filtering lead.  Even fewer bottles have received NSF 53 certification. Unfortunately, it's a new, rare thing to offer.

In this guide, we’ve made it a point to include bottles that meet NSF International standards for lead reduction/removal. We’ve highlighted these capabilities in the bottle’s Key Features sections.

Until all the old, deteriorating lead plumbing lines in your municipal water system are yanked out and replaced with non-lead pipes, strongly consider using an NSF 53 filter on any tap water you intend to drink, cook with, or give to your pets. Fortunately, big household names like Brita and Pur now offer lead-reducing models of the older, classic pitcher, tank, and faucet versions at most big box stores. (An aside: both companies advertise the lead reduction models in BIG OBVIOUS LETTERING on the packages, it’s hard to miss ‘em. If a filter can handle lead, the maker generally wants buyers to know it).

If you would like to learn more about how to safeguard your drinking water from lead contamination, the US EPA’s Basic Information about Lead in Drinking Water primer is an accurate and thorough place to begin.

Filtration capability

How you plan on using your filtered bottle — and where you plan on using it — should guide your choice of filtration.

For everyday use in domestic and urban settings, like filtering your tap water, you don’t need a lot — a simple single-stage activated carbon filter or block should do the trick. Look for the bottles in our list that we’ve flagged as “light-duty.”

Mid-duty filters typically consist of an activated carbon stage and a second stage composed of fiber-like media, which traps unpleasant tastes and odors.

Heavy-duty filters often qualify as purifiers and contain additional, specialized stages like ion exchange and/or 0.2-0.01 micron hollow-fiber membranes. These lattermost stages typically eradicate or trap waterborne pathogens. Most heavy-duty filters can also handle more organic and inorganic contaminants than their lighter-duty counterparts.

Whatever your needs, it’s crucial that you find a filter that has been independently tested against and certified to meet the corresponding ANSI/NSF Standards. You can find this information on the bottle’s packaging or, at the very least, on the manufacturer’s website. You can also access the NSF database, which lists every manufacturer and filter model that meets the ANSI/NSF standards.

Filter lifespan

Manufacturers can’t anticipate exactly how, where, or when customers will use a filter  —  it’s too variable from person to person. So ‘lifespan’ of most filters is measured by the total water volume that a single filter can adequately process. The range of filter lifespans included in this guide is broad, starting at about 30 gallons (114 liters) on the low end and up to 1000 gallons (3800 liters) at the upper limit.

It’s important to keep a record — or at least have a sound estimate — of how many gallons/liters your filter has processed (especially if you’re braving unpotable conditions with it). I recommend this method because a filter’s flow rate does not reliably indicate its performance on a micro-level. Just because water comes out on the other side doesn’t mean that your cartridge has fettered out the bad stuff.

When water filters and water purifiers reach maximum accumulation of impurities, they can no longer produce safe, healthy water.

Water-holding capacity

Bottle capacity varies a little, but not by a lot. A filter bottle should be fully functional but easy to carry. As such, most filtered water bottles and purifiers have a capacity between 16 and 48 ounces.

Benefits of using filtered water bottles

Environmental impact

When you ditch mass-marketed bottled water for a reusable filtered bottle, you actively reduce the number of single-use plastic bottles that end up in landfills and waterways. Most expandable plastics today take up to 1,000 years to biodegrade.

According to recent data, Americans alone toss 35 billion plastic bottles in the trash every year. Not only does single-use plastic directly harm vital ecosystems, but the amount of energy (oil and coal) used to manage plastic bottle waste and the space (landfills) dedicated to containing it is immense - an estimated 1 billion gallons and 44 million cubic yards annually.

Harmful contaminant reduction/removal

The filter you choose determines which various gnarlies you'll be protected from. Modern filtration tech mitigates contamination from volatile organic compounds (VOCs), dissolved pharmaceutical compounds, steroidal hormones, heavy metals like lead and mercury, microplastics, and harmful waterborne pathogens like bacteria and cysts -- even viruses if you're using a purifier.

While most filters only offer protection against some contaminant classes, there are quite a few filter bottles that nearly do it all, including purification of certain viruses. You'll find that we've included several maverick-level bottles in this guide.

Improved taste and smell

Removing pollutants from your drinking water carries the nice fringe benefit that it removes the unappealing tastes and odors that accompany them. Activated carbon filters excel at sequestering many (not all) of the most common flavor/fragrance offenders.

Light-duty filters remove unpleasant flavor/odors like chlorine from tap water; heavy-duty filtration systems mitigate harmful, foul-smelling pathogens from the swampiest backcountry, and everything in between.

Cost

On average, one single-use bottle of water contains $0.04 of water. And with the typical 20-ounce bottle costing around $1.50, that equates to a 3,750% markup. With that math, a gallon of water in 20 oz. bottles costs $10. The same simple math displays the cost-benefit of investing in a self-filtering bottle.

Convenience

Dexterous filtered water bottles or purifiers make it possible to travel further and deeper without depending on traditional infrastructure. The human individual's potential for outdoor adventure has never been more physically accessible. With the advent of modern filtration and purification technologies, waterborne illness has never been so surmountable.  This means more opportunities to explore and experience remote and unpopulated regions the world over.

Q: Is a water filter the same as a water purifier?

A: Short answer: Not quite.

Long answer: Portable water filters and purifiers use different types of technology to remove water-borne pathogens. Portable water purifiers can eradicate or otherwise remove viruses from polluted water, whereas most portable water filters cannot.

But, unless you're traveling to areas where untreated human or animal waste impacts your source of water, a dexterous two- or three-stage filter will (probably) be all you need to hack it.

A filter removes contaminants according to the filter's porosity. Basically, if a contaminant is larger than the filter's pore size, that contaminant becomes trapped in the filter media as the water is pushed through it. This simple mechanical function is largely what enables filters to trap bacteria, chemicals, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, dissolved solids, particulates, sediment, and protists like Giardia and Cryptosporidium. Viruses, however, are close to one-tenth the size of most bacteria and significantly smaller than the pores of most filter media.

Water purifier bottles available today feature either a hollow-fiber filtering membrane with 0.02-micron pore size (virus-catching) or UV-C light technology, which eradicates viruses by scrambling their DNA.

That said, most purifiers are highly specialized at removing harmful microorganisms but come up short in areas like heavy metal or chemical removal, where filters traditionally shine. For this reason, some manufacturers have developed portable options that combine filter and purifier capabilities.

Think of it this way: All purified water has been filtered in some way, but not all filtered water is purified.

Q: Can a filtered water bottle be put in a fridge or a freezer?

A: Refrigeration is fine for filtered bottles. Freezing  —  in most cases  —  is not, as it can corrupt the more sensitive materials that make up a water filter. Water that gets frozen inside a filter expands, and can shred the mechanism beyond repair.

Some filter types are unaffected by icing (UV lights, for instance), but the options are limited and often very expensive.

Q: How does a filtered water bottle work?

A: A filtered water bottle works just like any other water bottle. You fill it with water, and you drink from it throughout the day, refilling when necessary. Filtered water bottles can come in handy whether you fill them with tap water from your kitchen, visit a location with subpar drinking water, or rely on natural water sources.

Q: How long do filters last?

A: This varies substantially from model to model. For a more precise estimate, look into each filter’s technical information.

A filter’s useful life also depends heavily on the frequency of use, the severity of pollutants in the water being processed, and how well you maintain and store your filtered water bottle between uses.

To give you an idea of how disparate one type of filter’s lifespan can be from another, take the bottle with the shortest lifecycle in this guide (30 gallons) and compare that to the one with the longest lifecycle (1000 gallons).

Generally speaking, sequestering more contaminants shortens a filter/purifier's life cycle.

Q: Does the filter deplete important minerals and nutrients from the water?

A: It can. If a filter is certified to remove TDS and VOCs, it likely extracts nonharmful minerals and solids.

Some filter makers also offer enriched filters or add-on units to remineralize clean, filtered water with only the good essentials.

Q: Are filtered water bottles dishwasher safe?

A: For the most part, the bottles, NOT the filter/purifiers, are dishwasher safe. Look to the manufacturer’s specifications before committing your filtered water bottle to the dishwasher. And never put a filter or purifier element in the dishwasher.

Most filters and purifiers (except for UV light purifiers) can withstand mild rinses under clean, room-temperature water. Any excessive heat, cold, or force can destroy the filter's delicate elements and ruin its functionality altogether.

Q: How do you clean a filtered water bottle?

A: Cleaning most filtered water bottles is as easy as cleaning most normal water bottles. But, since the materials used both in the bottle and in the filtering/purifying elements vary so greatly from one model to another, always consult the manufacturer’s recommendations for your specific bottle.

Never place a filtering or purifying assembly in a dishwasher, freezer, or submerge it in liquids that are extremely hot or extremely cold (including clear water). Avoid exposing your water filter/purifier to chemical treatment except as approved by the manufacturer.

Sources:

1. Standards Development - NSF
2. NSF Standards For Water Treatment Systems - NSF
3. Emerging Drinking Water Contaminants - NSF
4. Search for NSF Certified Drinking Water Treatment Units, Water Filters - NSF
5. Understanding a Microns Role in Your Whole House Water Filter - Aquasana
6. How Much Water Should You Drink per Day - Healthline
7. When And How To Change A Water Bottle Filter - Brita
8. 3 Ways To Clean Water Bottles - WikiHow
9. What is the Difference Between Water Filters and Water Purifiers? - SpringWell

MODL (pronounced maw · dohl) is a modular all-in-one bottle that’s light, packable, exceptionally tough, airtight, and — to borrow from MODL Outdoors cofounder, Justin Guld — it isn’t simply a water bottle, hydration pack, filter bottle, etc. It’s “an entirely new category of gear: the utility bottle.”

The MODL system is adaptable and grounded in the startup's "flexible design philosophy." What might sound like an overly ambitious product is actually an intuitive and conceptually simple multitool that's ideal for the avid outdoor person, casual camper, cyclist, kayaker, trail runner, or work-to-gym professional.

After several weeks of putting it through the wringer, I've found the MODL all-in-one system to be incredibly dexterous, capable, and, in most cases, quite preferable to traditional contenders.

MODL Bottle Complete System, Unboxed

I had the opportunity to try out the MODL Complete system, which combines the base bottle and four function-modifying attachments, or “MODs."

• Go MOD - Includes a silicone sports bottle spout and straw. Turns MODL into your everyday water bottle.
• Flow MOD - 1-meter long straw and unified mouthpiece. Unlocks MODL’s hydration reservoir functionality.
• Pure MOD - An extremely stringent portable water filter that boasts a 790-gallon lifecycle. The 0.1-micron hollow fiber membrane filter removes 99.9% of bacteria and protozoa from any freshwater source at a flow rate of 1 liter per minute. The Pure MOD provides interior and exterior mounting options; interior for on-the-go, exterior for gravity filtration. With it, the MODL is a full-on, go-anywhere water purifier.
• Rinse MOD - A showerhead-like cap that turns the MODL into a portable camping shower and water sprayer.

Also in the box were a set of the company’s new, extra-long SuperLoops and a spare set of LifeLoops. Both loop types are silicone bands that attach to the MOD caps and are key to mounting and securing the bottle “from bag to branch to bike.”

As for the base bottle's construction, imagine a 1-liter widemouthed jar that's made entirely of BPA-free silicone and is open on both ends. Lining each end is a threaded stainless-steel rim for screw-top compatibility with the MOD caps. What you get is a collapsible, hyper-versatile tube that’s modular, open-ended, easy to clean (dishwasher safe, too), and full of ever-evolving potentiality.

At the time of writing, the MODL bottle is available in black, blue, and vapor (translucent) colorways. I received a vapor MODL, and it's the option that I recommend by a mile due to the small host of additional functions a transparent device has to offer (nightlight, trekking-pole mountable lantern, etc.).

Overview of Methods and Mischief

To get a feel for the thing, I decided to swap it out with my trusty old blue insulated water bottle, which has seen years of rugged abuse and dons the most tasteless sticker assortment in all of Austin. I was pretty sure that I’d come back to the old battleax following the review period.

Spoiler alert: I was wrong about that.

The next few weeks found me functionally glued to the MODL bottle. This was largely for the purposes of field research; I wanted to see how versatile the utility bottle really was, what it could withstand, and how applicable it might be at any given time and in any situation.

But the MODL also benefits from playful architecture. The body is 360 degrees of dense, grippy silicone, which gives it a structure that's surprisingly pliable. It looks and feels like something you’d find in the Discovery Store next to the water wobblers and dinosaur K’Nex (read: awesome and loads of fun).

During those 5 weeks and through dozens of applications, the MODL utility bottle proved capable:

• Bikepacking/cycling sport bottle (self-mounting; no bottle cage necessary)
• Camping shower (crude and shortlived but functional)
• Conversation starter
• Devastatingly precise squirt gun
• Dry storage container
• Everyday water bottle
• Filtered water bottle
• Gravity water filter
• Hot water bottle (just like gramma had)
• Hydration reservoir/water bladder
• Improvised dog water bowl
• Lantern/light diffuser for cell phone lights and headlamps (clear colorway only)
• Pillow (surprisingly cush)
• Portable water filter/purifier
• Rinse station

MODL Bottle a la Gravel Bike: The Real Test

After a short familiarization and tinkering phase, it was time to test the MODL complete utility bottle's ilk. First up? A weekend gravel biking tear through the rural hill country.

Go MOD + Pure MOD for on the Road

It was a 3-hour drive from Austin to Llano, a remote area southwest of the capital, so commuting attire was the vibe. I, in my best pairs of joggers and Crocs and the utility bottle, donning its Go MOD sport bottle spout and Pure MOD filter, hit the road dressed for comfort.

The Go MOD spout, which comprises the same high-grade silicone as the body, was something I didn’t know I needed until I had it – taking a swig requires no more than a soft bite and flip of the integrated plug. Easier than unscrewing the saucer-sized caps on polycarbonate bottles and more tooth enamel-friendly than the hard plastic pull-and-push nozzles. And the optional silicone straw means you can sip away while keeping your chin down and eyes on the road.

Flow MOD + SuperLoops for the Gravel Bike

After arriving and setting up camp, it was time for a change. To accommodate my gravel bike's bare frame, I employed MODL's new, extra-long SuperLoops. I swapped the Go MOD out for the meter-long Flow MOD straw to get my hands-free hydration game on. And away I went.

The Flow MOD was especially impressive. The extra-long hose and unified silicone mouthpiece far outpaced the small litany of other hydration packs in my apartment. It proved exceptionally hermetic, and without the funky “new” plastic taste that plagues so many water bladders.

The MODL, even at maximum capacity, didn’t spill a drop, nor did it budge from its original position on the bike’s frame. Which, given the nature of backroads gravel biking, says so much. Using the Flow MOD hose meant I didn't have to pry a bottle from its cage. I've been known to crash while futzing with bike water bottles (what?), so this perk took me from fangirl to brand loyalist.

The only thing that could have improved the ride? A clip system for the straw, maybe. But I'm not entirely sure that would be desirable, and it's not at all necessary.

...Nose MOD? (Pure Filter MOD to the Rescue)

In an email to the fellas at MODL as a follow up to the gravel biking trip, I wrote the following:

I came home with a gnarly sinus infection, and I desperately needed 0.1-micron filtered water for a saline rinse kit.
So...thank you for including the Pure MOD. It totally saved me from running to the store in my sweatpants and Crocs. The general public thanks you, as well. 

Take note — the MODL may come in handy when you least expect it.

Purchasing Information

Given the MODL bottle's dexterity, I imagine we’ll see MODL systems and an ever-expanding arsenal of MODs at local and national adventure retailers in fairly short order. For now, MODL Outdoors is a direct-to-consumer seller.

Over at the shop, MODL Outdoors has more than a few options on deck:

• MODL Complete, MSRP $95
  Includes: 1 MODL Bottle, 2 LifeLoops, 2 caps, 4 MODs (Go, Flow, Rinse, + Pure)
• MODL Bottle,  MSRP $40
  Includes: 1 MODL Bottle, 2 LifeLoops, 2 caps
• Go + Flow MODs, $35
  Includes: 1 Go MOD, 1 Flow MOD, 1 multi-MOD cap, 1 straw, 1 LifeLoop
• Pure MOD Filter, $25
  Includes: 1 Pure MOD (3,000-cycle filter), small silicone straw adapter
• Rinse MOD Cap, $15
• LifeLoops (x 4), $5
• SuperLoops^TM (x 2) , $12

Tapping Out

The MODL utility bottle and system is truly a fun, creative, modular contrivance — a product that takes after its founders, I've found. Apart from occasionally wishing that there were a few more loop configurations and lengths available and maybe a standard cupholder adapter, there's not much constructive criticism I can offer. They'd probably just take it and patent it into another MOD anyway.

MODL Outdoors is a young, footprint-focused, vivacious, well-intentioned, and innovative startup. It's made up of three outdoorsy dudes who took the time to craft a nuanced, flexible solution to gear shortcomings. Nothing is set in stone, you know. Just because we've done something one way for X amount of time doesn't mean that a better approach isn't out there. The MODL crew went with the flow and created something pretty mega in doing so — an adaptable, ever-evolving line of durable, multipurpose gear.

In this contributor's humble opinion, the MODL may very well be the biggest thing to happen to the outdoor gear world in recent history. You can bet I'm staying tuned for whatever MODL Outdoors does next.

See MODL Filtered Water Bottle with Pure MOD Filter on MODL Outdoors

At a time when postal carriers are turning to high-tech delivery solutions like drones, one Amazon package runner is keeping it simple. His name is Helmut Edelmaier or 'Heli', as the locals call him.

Heli lives in Austria's remote Tauplitz mountain village. It's a quaint and striking ski town, but its roads are impassable during the winter. And that's where Heli and his skis come in — delivering packages to Amazon customers in Taupalitz with all the speed, precision, and convenience of modernity.

As you might imagine, the winter is a busy time for the picturesque village and its chalet, so staying stocked up is of the essence. As for the milder seasons, what does Heli do to stay occupied? His answer: he waits for it to snow again!

Take a look at a day in the life of the skiing delivery man in this short but delightful cut.

Runtime: 1.5 minutes

Switzerland is home to some of the most renowned multi-pitch climbing in the world. Over the years, the Alps' rich mountaineering culture has spread across the country, inspiring all manner of adventurous routes — from the lonesome peaks to the meadow-cradling foothills.

Accordingly, the Swiss are not strangers to climbing. From past to present, they have contributed many notable figures to the sport. One such contemporary figure is Cedric Lachat.

Lachat is perhaps one of the most talented multi-pitch climbers of all time. Swissway to Heaven follows Lachat on a 14-month pursuit of five tremendous alpine routes around Switzerland's most iconic ranges. Yeah Man 8b+ at Gastlosen, Zahir, 8b+ on the Wendenstöcke, Odyssee, 8a+ on the Eiger, Flight, 8c in Lauterbrunnen, and Wögu, 8c in Rätikon.

Joining him at different stages in Swissway to Heaven are contemporary legends Nina Caprez, Fabien Dugit, Beat Kammerlander, Melissa La Neve, Claude Remy, Roger Schaeli, and Stephan Siegrist.

Five classic Swiss multi-pitch routes in 'Swissway to Heaven'

Yeah Man, 8b+ (330m) - Gastlosen

Yeah Man is a harrowing, nine-pitch line on the north face of Gran Pfad in the Gastlosen range. Swiss guides bolted the route nearly two decades ago. In 2004, Josune Bereziartu and Rikar Otegi freed the individual pitches but never made a free, ground-up ascent. In 2010, the late Giovanni Quirici bagged the first ascent in a single day.

Lachat worked the line briefly with Melissa La Neve. He then returned with Caroline Minivielle to repeat the ascent just as Quirici had done.  Lachat described Yeah Man as "one of the most beautiful routes I've ever climbed. And also one of the most difficult."

Zahir, 8b+ (300m) - The Wendenstöcke

Located in the Bernese Oberland, Günther Habersatter established Zahir between 1996 and 2004.

Habersatter first freed the line in 2006. But Lachat, with Fabien Dugit on belay, became the first to put it down in a single day. He managed to onsight all but the crux pitch, which he was able to redpoint on his second go.

Flight, 8c (500m) - Lauterbrunnen

In a starkly impressive showing, Lachat and Tobias Suter claimed the first repeat and first single-day ascent of the stunning 20-pitch Lauterbrunnen line, Flight. They'd planned for two days on the wall.

Roger Schaeli, Michel Pitelka, Markus Iff, Bernd Rathmayr, Max Grossman, and Stephan Eder bolted the route between 2006 and 2009. Alexander Megos claimed the first ascent in 2014 — an effort that took the young German four days.

Flight's final two pitches are exceedingly difficult and varied, characterized by a severely overhung roof and thin, technical face climbing to the top.

WoGü, 8c (250m) - Rätikon

A challenging testpiece, WoGu is a steep seven-pitch route on the Ratikon massif, named for the legendary Wolfgang Gullich.

Beat Kammerlander established the route in 1997, but it wasn't until 2008 that it received a free ascent. Its first ascensionists were Pietro dal Pra and none other than the excelsior Adam Ondra. At the time (and perhaps even to this day), Ondra believed WoGu was one of the most challenging lines in the Alps.

That distinction isn't surprising, given Kammerlander's affinity for bolting long, world-class lines at the spectrum's elite edge. Since Ondra's go in 2008, the route has seen very few repeats, and only by some of the sport's absolute strongest.

Edu Marin sent WoGu in 2016, followed by Roland Hemezberger in 2017. Lachat's redpoint with Nina Caprez was the third repeat overall — a testament to the route's difficulty.

Odyssee, 8a+ (1400m) - The Eiger

In the final run, Lachat and Tobias Suter opted for a newer classic route on the north face of the Eiger.

Alpinists Roger Schaeli, Robert Jasper, and Simon Gietl established and then freed the 33-pitch route in 2015. In 2018, Barbara Zangerl and Jacopo Larcher nabbed the first repeat in a four-day single push.

As it turns out, the route didn't go down so quickly for the pair of Lachat and Suter — thus ending Swissway to Heaven as a bit of a cliffhanger. We hear the duo will be returning for the send and eagerly await news of their redpoint.

With Lachat as the primary lens, we get a chance to learn just how profoundly influential Switzerland has been in climbing. And that influence isn't just profound. It's broad, resonating through all aspects — from its primally appealing landscapes to its proficiency-inspiring technical challenges.

Enjoy!

Runtime: 55 minutes

Swedish polar explorer Mikael Strandberg sustained a serious concussion after taking a bad fall on the Greenland Ice Cap on May 4.

Strandberg's trip cut (extremely) short

On May 5, one of Strandberg's four teammates called a search-and-rescue helicopter to the glacier. They had just begun their expedition and were not far from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland's main airport.

Medics found the 60-year-old responsive but unwell and promptly airlifted him to a hospital in the small city of Nuuk, some two hours away.

Although his CT scan results were clear, the medical team will monitor his brain for any swelling until his condition improves.

"I will not be fully functioning for weeks. I have a severe concussion," he wrote. "I am really dizzy and nauseous and have headaches. It is really difficult to do anything, even write this. I sleep on my back. I pretty much sleep the entire day."

It is not clear how the accident occurred, although in a video post on May 2, Strandberg had mentioned struggling with a "bad muscle".

Greenland expedition continues

Led by Strandberg, the skiers were just two days into their 560km west-east crossing of the Ice Cap at the time of his spill. His partners James Ketchell, Peter Wilson, Milka Raulin, and Mikael Mattsson are determined to stay the course.

A recent audio clip from Ketchell indicated that conditions had been wet and "very, very difficult." They had managed to advance just six kilometres in two days. The forecast looked much clearer in the coming days, Ketchell noted.

The great Fridtjof Nansen and his only slightly less famous partner Otto Sverdrup first crossed the Ice Cap in 1888 from the east. Today, it is a popular training ground for Antarctic-bound skiers.

Strandberg's teammates are, for the most part, following the path of the 1988 Swedish expedition team.

"The Expedition is in honor of the first Swedish Expedition to Cross the Icecap unsupported," Strandberg wrote ahead of the trip. "[The expedition leader] was my buddy Lars Wallgren, who I wish was on the trip, but preferred to stay home tend his garden."

On April 14, 2022, American alpinist Ben Lieber soloed Moose's Tooth Peak (3,150m) in Denali National Park. He took the mountain's obvious and classic Ham and Eggs route, graded 3+, WI4, 5.6, to the summit. His ascent took just 3.5 hours, and he was back in base camp just 2.5 hours after he'd summited.

Ben Lieber, solo on the Moose's Tooth

The 27-year-old New Hampshire native provides a full and enthusiastic trip report on his personal site. Ideal conditions and two successful summit pushes by parties the day before his attempt boded well.

"The ice pitches weren’t overly difficult, but the ice was airy and felt rotten and insecure," he told PlanetMountain. "It took some good focus to get through them without the rope on."

Under bluebird skies, he arrived at the top, where he briefly took in the summit views ("Denali, Hunter, Huntington, Foraker to the west, Silverthrone to the north..."), snapped a couple of selfies, and then proceeded back down. He downclimbed most of the summit ridge, then rappelled and hiked the remainder of the descent.

A laborious 20 rappels on two 60m ropes got him there safely.

Lieber hasn't been climbing that long. He migrated to Alaska in 2017 after deciding to ditch all of his belongings and "begin a new life — a mountain life."

He fell for Moose's Tooth during a helicopter tour of Denali National Park in 2016.

"Towering granite beyond something I, as a novice mountaineer, could comprehend as climbable. It was guarded by the biggest glaciers I’d ever seen. We were East Coast people. This was something out of a book. Finally, as we brushed in front of the highest snow-capped point, Paul said over the headset, 'This is the Moose’s Tooth, that couloir is Ham & Eggs.'"

This trip constituted his very first solo climb in the Alaska Range.

"Soloing in the big mountains is something I have been working towards. After a really productive winter of cragging, I felt the time was right."

Krakauer on 'Ham and Eggs'

Ham and Eggs is a 914m line that shoots up the mountain's South Face. Tom Davies, Jon Krakauer, and Nate Zinsser bagged the first ascent in the summer of 1975. The harrowing adventure took them more than a day and involved a bevy of mishaps.

Krakauer's humorous recount of the trip raised Ham and Eggs to relative fame within mountaineering circles. The route's name is a nod to how underprepared Davies, Krakauer, and Zinsser were on the climb. "If we had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs," Krakauer wrote.

Sketchy conditions, general lack of preparation, insomnia, and instances of partners falling asleep on the rappel down all occur in Krakauer's trip report.

Given Lieber's smooth, six-hour romp, it's almost hard to believe he and Krakauer were climbing the same route.

A team of researchers has found six previously unidentified species of tiny, thumbnail-sized frogs in Mexico. One of the new species is Mexico's smallest known frog.

Finding Mexico's tiniest frogs

Experts from the University of Cambridge, London’s Natural History Museum, and the University of Texas at Arlington led the effort, which examined nearly 500 specimens. All the frogs within the study come from Mexico and belonged to the miniature Craugastor group.

"They’re small and brown and look really similar to other frogs," explained Tom Jameson, the study's lead zoology expert. "Frogs in the group known as Craugastor are very difficult to tell apart, so scientists have long suspected that more species may exist."

Jameson's team employed two distinct types of analysis on each specimen to identify variations among closely related animals: DNA sequencing and computerized tomography (CT) scanning. They created 3D models of the skeletons from the scans. Then they cataloged the specimens according to similarities in DNA and skeletal structure. That's when they realized that they had found six previously unknown species.

And here's a fun fact — all six types of frogs are 'direct-developing,' meaning that they skip the tadpole stage altogether, emerging from their eggs as fully formed little froglets.

The team found that one of the species, Craugastor candelariensis males is the smallest known frog ever found in Mexico, measuring a diminutive 13mm at maturity. By contrast, most species within the Craugastor group grow to 15mm.

Though candelariensis is relatively tiny, even smaller frogs exist outside Mexico. The smallest frog in the world is New Guinea's Paedophryne amauensis, which is about the size of a housefly. Reaching a mere 7.7mm at maturity, the Paedophryne amauensis is also the world's smallest known vertebrate.

Conservation efforts on the horizon

Now that they completed the analytical work, the team is working to protect the tiny creatures. Due to the frogs' miniature size, scientists believe they play a critical role in their ecosystems.

"With millions of these frogs living in the leaf litter, we think they’re likely to play a hugely important role in the ecosystem as a source of food for everything else, from lizards to predatory birds," Jameson noted.

Some of the freshly identified species are what scientists call 'micro-endemics.' Micro-endemic species are isolated to one specific location — like a hilltop or marsh — and are unlikely to exist anywhere else. For that reason, micro-endemic populations are incredibly delicate; habitat disruption or disease can wipe out an entire species.

"We need to make sure that they don’t just get wiped off the map because no one even knows they’re there," said Jameson.

But there is hope for future generations of these tiny frogs. Jameson's team has found protected areas throughout Mexico where these new species live. They're reaching out to nongovernmental organizations and local Mexican governments to engender a conservation plan.

For many years, American Ivory-billed woodpeckers inhabited the dense hardwood forests of the southern United States. But in the 19th century, the American subspecies began to vanish. Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposed declaring the bird extinct.

Now, an ornithology team says the extinction claims are exaggerated. And it's offered new, albeit scant, photographic evidence of the bird's existence.

Once thought to be extinct, the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker has been documented by researchers with Pittsburgh ties, @kate_blackley
reports https://t.co/seOsRm5tBe pic.twitter.com/KklHdxUc0m

— 90.5 WESA (@905wesa) April 25, 2022

The elusive 'Holy Grail bird'

Like other wood harvesting birds, the American Ivory-billed Woodpecker had a distinct appearance. Striking white and red details at its crown and wings contrasted starkly with the bird's jet-black body. Standing at an average height of 51cm and showcasing a 76cm average wingspan, the ivory-billed was fairly large. The species' distinct characteristics made it especially sought after by ornithologists, casual birders, and collectors.

Habitat loss from large-scale logging was the primary cause of its disappearance. But trophy hunting and poaching also victimized the birds, which people at the poverty line eventually ate en masse.

The once abundant species became such a rare sight that birders began referring to it as the "Holy Grail bird". In fact, the last verified sighting of an American Ivory-billed Woodpecker was in 1944. In the public imagination, it eventually evolved into a cryptozoological creature like Bigfoot, sought after, allegedly glimpsed, but its existence never confirmed.

Last fall, the FWS proposed placing the American Ivory-billed Woodpecker on the extinct list. The proposal, for which the FWS held a public hearing in early 2022, stirred up quite a bit of commotion.

"Some people cannot believe a bird can defy documentation by modern humans because we have such dominion over nature," subject matter expert Geoffrey Hill told the Guardian, "but it is endlessly interesting because if it has done that, it’s one pretty impressive bird."

Illustration of the male (above) and female (below) Ivory-billed Woodpecker, circa 1874. Image: Biodiversity Heritage Library

Recent findings

Led by aviary expert Steve Latta, the team in question just wrapped a three-year research expedition into the hardwood forests of Louisiana. Its primary mission? To track down the elusive Holy Grail bird. To do so, the group peppered the research site with microphones and unmanned trail cameras. They also used a camera-equipped drone.

Now Latta's group is on the verge of publishing its findings, pending peer review. Comparing the markings, morphology, and foraging behavior of the birds they observed with those in historic photographs and videos, the researchers concluded that the ivory-billed woodpecker is not extinct after all.

"Our findings, and the inferences drawn from them, suggest an increasingly hopeful future for the ivory-billed woodpecker,” the report states.

"No one has held a camera and got a picture of one in years because it’s a scarce bird in tough swampy habitat and they don’t want people close to them because they’ve been shot at for 150 years,” said Hill, who did not participate in Latta's expedition, but led a similar (though unsuccessful) effort in 2005.

"They have better eyes than we do, they are high in the trees and actively flee people. They aren’t great thinkers but they have developed a pretty simple strategy to avoid people."

Today, April 25, marks World Penguin Day — an opportunity for many wildlife organizations to tout conservation efforts for these charismatic, amphibious birds.

It's nearly winter in the southern hemisphere, and April 25 coincides with Antarctic penguins' annual northward march to the sea.

Penguins are some of the hardiest and most adaptable birds on the planet. But like all wildlife, they are not impervious to all things. Rising global temperatures, lost or discarded fishing equipment, and ocean pollution pose significant threats to many penguins' existence.

Experts say that of the 18 penguin species, 5 are endangered -- Galapagos, African, northern rockhopper, erect-crested, and yellow-eyed -- and another 5 are threatened.

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Recently, an Antarctic expedition discovered a newly settled gentoo penguin colony. Researchers found that habitat loss forced the Gentoos' out-of-character exodus upon them. Rapidly rising temperatures unequivocally caused their habitat loss.

Penguin species and locations

Penguins (order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) include aquatic, flightless birds that are native exclusively to the southern hemisphere.

While many colonies reside in colder climes like Antarctica, others are indigenous to more temperate zones. The Galapagos penguin lives just south of the equator, making them the northernmost penguins. In contrast, a colony of Adelie penguins found near Cape Royds, Antarctica, is the southernmost.

As noted above, 18 species make up the penguin family. Below are the regions where most of the world's penguins are found.

Antarctica

Five species spend time on the Antarctic peninsula, but only emperor and Adelie penguins live there year-round. The other three — chinstrap, Gentoo, and macaroni penguins — visit the peninsula, but they breed on Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands further north.

Australia

Though recent evidence shows that ancient penguins likely originated in Australia and New Zealand. Today, just one species calls Down Under home — the little (or "fairy") penguin.

Some little penguins nest along the mainland's southern coast, but most colonies live on Australia's outlying islands to the south.

Bounty and Antipodes Islands

The Bounty and Antipodes Islands, deep in the South Pacific, are erect-crested penguins' only known breeding grounds. Not much is known about their migration patterns because of the extremely remote location.

Falkland Islands

The Falklands, a remote archipelago south of Patagonia in the Atlantic Ocean, has five species — Magellanic, rockhopper, Gentoo, king, and macaroni penguins. The Falklands house the world's largest Gentoo population. Their numbers have risen substantially in the last two decades — a trend that's refreshing but rare.

Galapagos

Off the coast of Ecuador, the Galapagos are homes to the Galapagos penguin — a slight and cave-crawling variation of the bird. Only 600 breeding pairs exist in the wild, making this northernmost penguin species one of the most endangered.

New Zealand

Perhaps surprisingly, New Zealand has four penguin species — little, snares, yellow-eyed, and Fiordland. Most New Zealand penguin colonies exist along the South Island and outlying southern islands, where cold currents are available.

The yellow-eyed penguin is the largest in the region. Next to the Galapagos penguin, it's also the most endangered.

Southern Africa

Just one species is known to Africa — the African penguin. For most of history, African penguin colonies lived on islands along the southern coast. But, in 1980, two settlements were established near Cape Town, South Africa.

Although the species is decidedly endangered, the South African colonies are doing relatively well. Researchers believe that an uptick in humans to the region has driven back some of the penguins' natural predators.

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands

None of the several species that frequent South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are year-round residents. However, some impressively large colonies breed at both spots.

Chinstrap, king, and macaroni penguins gather in dense groups to mate there. Recent estimates indicate that more than a million pairs of macaroni penguins breed on the islands.

Tristan da Cunha

Tristan da Cunha is a series of small islands in the South Atlantic, equidistant from Africa and South America. It is the most remote island chain in the world. Nonetheless, it is home to some 27,000 northern rockhopper penguins.

Unfortunately, northern rockhopper populations have been on the decline since the 1950s, mainly due to rising temperatures and the reduction of prey. The northern rockhopper is considered endangered.

Some facts about penguins

1. According to various studies, penguins are the world's most popular birds. (Puffins are second on the list. There's something that draws people to flightless, comical-looking birds.)
2. Penguins are exceptional divers. They can dive up to 50 metres deep and stay underwater for up to 20 minutes.
3. Penguins spend one-half to three-quarters of their lives at sea. When seaborn, Magellanic penguins can travel up to 16,000 kilometres searching for food.
4. Some penguin colonies have returned to the same breeding grounds for thousands of generations — they are absolute creatures of habit.
5. Parent and chick penguins share unique chirps, which allow them to locate one another among the crowd.
6. When preparing for a dive, the emperor penguin can accelerate its heart rate to 250 beats per minute, which courses oxygen through its body. Once submerged, it can conserve oxygen by slowing its heart down to 6 beats per minute.

To learn even more about these exceptional birds, check out the below video, courtesy of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition.

Gwen Moffat is a name that lines the halls of British climbing history. As Britain's first female mountain guide and a prolific first ascensionist, Moffat is nothing short of legendary.

Operation Moffat, inspired by her book Space Below My Feet, catalogs her most remarkable adventures and dives deep into her philosophy on life, struggle, and the mountains. To her, they are all one and the same.

Who is Gwen Moffat?

Ask the 97-year-old who she is and the answer is long: farmer, rancher, field hand, hotel worker, crime novelist, reporter — "I've done practically anything that was going!" she says. "And then it comes down to, really, just one thing," her voice turns sober, "and that was guiding and then writing about it."

As Moffat tells it, fear doesn't come naturally to her. "I've only been benighted about...three times, I think." Given her cool confidence and apparent tenacity through a cornucopia of challenges, one is inclined to believe that statement.

Early years

Moffat was 16 when World War II ushered her family out of Brighton and into Yorkshire. She learned to climb in the hills there, where she "had complete freedom".

During the war, she filled several roles for the British Army before running away to mid-Wales to climb and work the odd job. She was, by all definitions, an Army deserter. That is, until her delinquent status got in the way of her aspirations.

At the age of 24, Moffat very briefly returned to the military to obtain a passport. Her destination? The Alps.

Britain's first female mountain guide

Moffatt leaned into the task of amassing a wealth of mountaineering experience as soon as she got to the Alps in the late 1940s. While she was there, she also raised her young child, worked as a hostel warden, and wrote for various publications.

In 1953, Moffat leveraged her reputation as a highly-skilled mountaineer to become a climbing guide. As a guide, she traveled throughout Europe and the U.K. In her personal time, she did her own climbing, notching notable first ascents throughout the Dolomites, Pennine Alps, and Dauphiné (or Valais) Alps.

She wrote about her experience as a guide in a Pinnacle Club Journal article titled, simply, "Guiding":

There are times when it becomes a little boring, when the old burns across the back are wakened into new and painful fire by fresh pressure, but such episodes are remembered only as cold facts. They are swamped by other memories: of pure joy in the eyes of natural climbers on their first climb and the wonder at the end of it, memories of elderly people carefully and neatly coming up Cneifion Arete, or looking at the cushions of moss campion on the Kitchen cliffs. It's a pleasant profession where you can make other people happy merely by doing something you enjoy yourself.

Moffat's epilogue

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She continued guiding and writing throughout the '60s and '70s. In 1961, she published Space Below My Feet to critical acclaim and followed it with a number of successful crime novels.

In the 1970s, she traveled to the U.S. on an assignment writing about the 8,000-kilometre California Trail. Along the way, she soon fell in love with the American Southwest, and spent the following 20 years bouncing between the U.S. and Wales climbing, writing, and adventuring.

In 1990, Moffat finally settled down in the English countryside, where she could continue exploring terrain unknown to her.

Now nearing 100 years old, Moffat holds another distinction — she is the longest-standing active member of the Pinnacle Club for women climbers, which she joined in 1949.

Footnotes

Operation Moffat won the 2015 Kendal Mountain Festival People's Choice distinction and close to 20 additional film awards.

Alex Messenger directed the film, and the BMC produced it with support from outdoor companies Rab and Lowe Alpine.

Writer Claire Carter and filmmaker Jen Randall co-star in the documentary, alongside Gwen Moffat.

On March 23, an international group known as the Transglobal Car Expedition lost a Ford F-150 truck through the ice 240 kilometres northwest of Taloyoak, in Canada's Nunavut.

According to an Environmental and Natural Resources spill report, the modified truck was carrying 40 litres of fuel, a backup generator, and other noxious liquids when it foundered. The vehicle sank into the ocean in a key habitat and migration zone for numerous marine species.

Environmental concerns, outrage, and inaction

Now, the Spence Bay Hunters and Trappers Association and outside experts worry about the ecological and economic ramifications.

"We live off the land. We're not farmers. We're hunters and gatherers, and we need our game to be clean," Jimmy Oleekatalik told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). "We want it cleaned out as quickly as possible."

To aggravate matters, the Transglobal Car Expedition hasn't made much effort to recover the F-150.

"They didn't consult the locals, nor did they have adequate knowledge of the terrain/ice over which they drove. Most importantly, they don't have a way to prevent contaminating the water or a way to quickly and effectively recover their trashed vehicle," wrote West Hansen, an explorer whose kayak expedition will cross paths with the site this summer.

An Icelandic member of the expedition, Emil Grimsson, was put in charge of evaluating the situation. Grimsson told the CBC that his team located it eight metres from the surface. Its fuel tank appeared intact, he said, and the likelihood of fuel and antifreeze seepage was low — unless the truck was somehow damaged.

Grinding ice may damage vehicle

But that shallow depth is vulnerable to ice movement, especially during spring and summer. Moving ice may rupture the truck. Furthermore, eight metres is in the heart of the aquatic life zone.

Joe Ashevak is chair of the local Hunters and Trappers Association. "It's going to harm the wildlife, one way or the other," he says.

Grissom said the team will decide whether to recover the truck "by the end of May". It will not attempt to retrieve it "until the ice is gone".

An advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, Andrew Dumbrille, told the CBC: "Oils and lubricants and petrol and diesel...bioaccumulate in the environment, they don't disappear, they don't go away. They build up in fatty tissues in marine mammals or fish…and from there, it affects human health."

An avoidable offense — and not the first

The incident occurred after the expedition had crossed over the sea ice from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories to Resolute Bay, Nunavut. The Hunters and Trappers Association in Taloyoak insists that the catastrophe was avoidable, if only the expedition had asked for advice from locals familiar with the terrain and seasonal patterns.

Apparently, the expedition crew was surprised to find that the ice was only 15cm thick when the truck foundered.

"We could have at least advised them of areas where there's fast water and open polynyas or places where it's dangerous to travel," said Ashevak.

Interestingly, the Transglobal Expedition's 'news' page hasn't been updated since March 25. The last post, "Towering sea ice and a lost Ford truck: Team treks from Yellowknife to Resolute Bay" does mention the F-150 loss, but only after a few hundred words celebrating the team's successful "world first by trekking overland from the continental shelf to the High Arctic."

Not the first controversy

Furthermore, the report follows its notably brief description of the incident with a statement that Nunavut locals likely take issue with.

"One of the team’s goals is to feed the Indigenous ice database siku.org with data its members collected during the trip, including information about thin-ice areas like those around the Tasmania Islands," it states somewhat boldly. "'We are hoping that on this trip, the ice data we are collecting will be helpful to communities,' [expedition driver Andrew Comrie-Pickard] said."

The expedition team had its first controversy following its inbound flight in early March. Reportedly, the team flew into Yellowknife aboard a Russian charter plane. This broke an airspace ban resulting from Russia's February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

Both of the plane's pilots, one Russian national passenger, and the Swiss aircraft operator were all penalized by Transport Canada for the violation. The aircraft operator, Dunard Engineering Ltd., was fined $15,000.

Possible penalties for the Transglobal Car Expedition

The Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) is overseeing the spill on an administrative level. The organization is not involved in the vehicle's recovery. It's there to enforce the law as provided by the Nunavut Waters and Nunavut Surface RightsTribunal Act. In that role, CIRNAC can also fine the expedition.

Unfortunately, the Transglobal Expedition did not require an assessment before it set off because it didn't involve archaeological research, water use, or wildlife sampling.

According to a study published on April 7, 2022, microbiologists from Ohio State University have identified 5,504 previously unknown species of RNA viruses in the Earth's oceans.

The research is part of a four-year ocean research project. The discoveries could help us understand how genetic information — and life itself — came to be on our planet.

Of the millions of viruses in the world, only a few hundred infect humans, but those are the ones we're aware of. There are two types of viruses, DNA and RNA viruses. These new ones are the RNA type.

We're already all-too-familiar with RNA viruses such as COVID-19 and the common flu, but most are harmless. Of these RNA viruses, the researchers found so many new species that the number of phyla -- a large scientific grouping -- has suddenly doubled from 5 to 10.

Matthew Sullivan, a lead author of the study, said it's too early to know if any of the viruses could pose a danger to humans.

Missing link in virus evolution?

The study's authors explain:

Two of the new phyla were particularly abundant across vast oceanic regions...We believe that [one of the phyla] might be the missing link in the evolution of RNA viruses that researchers have long sought, connecting two different branches of RNA viruses that diverged in how they replicate.

The team gleaned the viruses from 35,000 ocean water samples from various locations around the world.

Whitney Clark and Nicole Lawton spent the latter part of February stringing together big-wall lines and scrambling up Patagonian granite. Reportedly, the two women climbers not only ticked the 900m Thaw is not Houlding Wright, 6b on Aguja de l’S, they linked it to the 750m Chiaro di Luna, 6b+ on Aguja Saint-Exupéry.

Clark said the linkup and adjoining scramble provide "almost 2,000m of (nearly) perfect granite, some rather plush alpine bivvies and those dreamy windless days that made this an adventure I’ll never forget."

The link was part of a longer climbing trip that began in early February and consisted of sketchy alpine adventures and a bailed summit attempt on Patagonia's fabled El Chalten.

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Aguja de l'S and Aguja Saint-Exupéry reside in the El Chalten (or Fitz Roy) Group. Thaw is not Houlding Wright and Chiaro di Luna are on the north face of both peaks, respectively.

Archaeologists stationed at a dig site in North Dakota have just unearthed an extremely well-preserved thescelosaurus leg.

And we do mean well-preserved. The bone has some skin attached, plus remnants of the debris that rained down on earth immediately after the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs hit 66 million years ago.

What's the big deal? Scientists are suddenly zeroing in on the date the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit the earth. The thescelosaurus, which Sir David Attenborough called "impossible," could be an integral clue.

A mounting body of evidence shows that the small herbivorous dinosaur died immediately after the asteroid hit. Phillip Manning, a natural history professor at the University of Manchester, was involved in the discovery at the well-known dig site called Tanis.

“It’s absolutely bonkers,” he told the BBC. He added that the leg amounts to the “ultimate dinosaur drumstick”.

'Gobsmacking' debris shows time of death

The Chicxulub asteroid that triggered the global extinction struck some 3,000km south of the Tanis dig site in the Yucatan peninsula. At Tanis, scientists found not only the thescelosaur's leg but other intriguing fossils and debris.

These treasures included the remains of fish that had inhaled impact debris and a turtle skewered with a wooden stick. It also had fossils of small mammals, skin from a triceratops, a pterosaur embryo inside its egg, and what would be the piece de resistance if not for the drumstick: a possible fragment of the asteroid itself. All added to the mounting evidence that these creatures were alive the day that the asteroid struck.

Some specific debris that only came down immediately after the strike makes for more accurate dating than traditional carbon dating.

"The time resolution we can achieve at this site is beyond our wildest dreams," enthused Manning. "It’s absolutely, gobsmackingly beautiful. I never dreamed in all my career that I would get to look at something...so beautiful, and also tells such a wonderful story."

'Impossible fossil,' says Attenborough

For the past three years, a film crew led by Sir David Attenborough has documented the Tanis dig and its findings. "When Sir David looked at [the leg], he smiled and said ‘That is an impossible fossil’. And I agreed,” said Manning.

"We’ve got so many details with this site that tell us what happened moment by moment, it’s almost like watching it play out in the movies," said Robert DePalma, a graduate student who is leading the dig. "You look at the rock column, you look at the fossils there, and it brings you back to that day.

Dinosaurs: The Final Day with Sir David Attenborough premieres on April 15 on the BBC.

For November through March, through the Antarctic summer, the U.K. Antarctic Heritage Trust (UKAHT) is looking for seasonal workers to run the Peninsula's Port Lockroy post office and museum. Plus, keep track of its Gentoo penguin population.

Three positions are up for grabs: base leader, shop manager, and general assistant. All will share the task of keeping tabs on Goudier Island's penguins, including the hatchlings.

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Applicants must be eligible to work in the U.K., physically fit, mentally sound, and able to withstand the harsh Antarctic environment. International applicants with legal work status in the U.K. may apply but must provide documentation proving their status.

Interested parties must submit their applications according to the UKAHT's instructions by 23:59 GMT on Monday, April 25, 2022. Interviews will follow on May 9, and the chosen applicants will attend a week of training in Cambridge in October 2022.

To learn more and apply, head to ukaht.org.

Port Lockroy: a historical, 'magical' place

Port Lockroy, on Antarctica's Goudier Island, was the first permanent British base on the glacial continent, active from 1944 until 1962. In 2006, the UKAHT took over custodianship and transformed the site into a post office and museum.

In 2020, due to the pandemic, the Trust boarded Port Lockroy up. It remained closed through the 2021-2022 season. This year marks the base's reopening to the public for the first time in two years.

"We look for applicants that can bring a range of skills to the team such as retail experience, heritage, conservation and building maintenance, and leadership or management," said Lauren Luscombe, UKAHT operations manager. "The successful candidates will be living in close quarters for five months, so it is also essential that we curate the right balance of skill sets and personalities."

A contingent of Black mountaineers from the U.S. is on its way to attempt Everest this spring.

The group of 11 is guided by Himalaya Asuka Treks & Expedition and led by Phil Henderson, a veteran mountaineer and National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) instructor.

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Should they reach their objective, the number of Black Everest summiters will more than double immediately.

Full Circle Everest team

Phil Henderson, Expedition Leader – Colorado

Henderson has nearly 30 years of experience in outdoor leadership and mountaineering. Previously, he participated in and co-led The North Face/National Geographic Everest Education Expedition in 2012, summited Denali in 2013, led an all-African American ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro in 2018, and received the Outdoor Afro Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020.

Social account: @phil_henderson

Abby Dione – Florida

Abby Dione is an AMGA-certified climbing instructor and U.S. climbing coach. Dione is one of a mere handful of Black female gym owners in the States. In 2011, she opened Coral Cliffs Climbing Gym in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Social account: @playswithmountains

James "KG" Kagambi – Kenya

KG Kagambi is a NOLS field instructor with experience in training Kenyan mountain rescue teams. He has climbed three of the Seven Summits. Kagambi became the first Black African to summit Denali and Aconcagua in 1989 and 1994, respectively. He represented his home continent by climbing the Eiger in the U.S. Peace Climb for the World in 1992. Kagambi carried the Kenyan flag to the summit of Mt. Kenya to mark his nation’s 50th year of independence.

Manoah Ainuu – Montana

Manoah Ainuu is a member of The North Face team and is a children’s climbing instructor and protegé of Conrad Anker. Twenty-five years old, Ainuu has several notable ascents in Yosemite and on Mt. Rainier.

Social account: @adreadedclimber

Fred Campbell – Washington

Fred Campbell is a statistician, indoor climbing instructor, and The North Face ambassador with 10 years of mountaineering experience. His tick list includes ascents in the Alaska Range, Bugaboos, Cascades, Sierra Madres. He also climbed Kilimanjaro.

Social account: @fred_climbs

Demond "Dom" Mullins – New York

Dom Mullins is a mountaineer, sociologist, and combat veteran who employs his field experience and Ph.D. in sociology to conduct research into the benefits of outdoor recreation. He led an ethnographic study of fellow combat veterans during a Denali summit bid in 2015 and has summited both Kilimanjaro and Mt. Kenya.

Social account: @domthesoulifugid

Rosemary Saal - Washington

Rosemary Saal is a NOLS backpacking field and mountaineering instructor. Her climbing education began at the age of 12. She summited Denali in 2013.

Social channel: @everywhere.rose

Eddie Taylor – Colorado

Eddie Taylor is an accomplished climber, mountaineer, and skier. His list of achievements includes skiing Denali and a one-day ascent of El Capitan in Yosemite. Taylor’s bio states that “he enjoys climbing in all forms, but he finds himself most excited by moving efficiently on long rock routes.”

Social channel: @alldayeddie

Thomas Moore – Colorado
Thomas Moore is an advocate for diversity in mountaineering and the outdoors. He has summited Kilimanjaro.

Social channel: @thomasdmoore

Adina Scott, Expedition Tech and Researcher - Washington

Adina Scott is a climber, skier, and electrical engineer for the U.S. Antarctic program. She is also a volunteer outdoor educator. Her most notable ascent is Denali.

Social channel: @sardina.s 

Evan Green – New Mexico

Evan Green is an outdoor photographer and filmmaker whose work has appeared in Rock & Ice, Outside, and Climbing magazines, among others. His experience in mountaineering comes from years spent summiting Colorado’s 13'ers and 14'ers.

Social channel: @thegreenevan

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"Our goal here is to help folks aspire to have a profound and respectful relationship with the outdoors and feel not entitled to it, but welcome to it," Dione said.

Sponsorships from Smartwool, TNF, MSR, and other notable brands helped raise the more than $500,000 needed for their climb.

To learn more about the team, head to its website or follow its Instagram account.

A recent paper in an Andean archaeology journal indicates that Machu Picchu is a misnomer for the famous UNESCO World Heritage Site in Cusco, Peru.

The ancient peoples that built the citadel actually called it "Huayna Picchu" or, simply "Picchu", after the recognizable peaks overlooking the area.

Coming to 'Huayna Picchu'

Donato Amado Gonzales of Peru’s Ministry of Culture and Brian S. Bauer from the University of Illinois looked at maps and documents from the 17th and 19th centuries. They also studied U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham's notes after his 1911 rediscovery of the site. Reportedly, Machu Picchu never appeared in those records. Instead, Bingham's sources informed him that the ruins were called Huayna Picchu.

Further accounts from 16th-century conquistadors also refer to the area as Huayna Picchu.

Don't expect the findings to lead to an official name change. As Natalia Sobrevilla, a professor of Latin American history at England's University of Kent told the Guardian, "Machu Picchu is an established brand very linked to Peruvian identity, so what would be the point of changing it?”

Later this spring, Madison Eklund will leave on a four-month, 2,400km solo kayaking expedition from Minnesota north to Hudson Bay.

2022 Hudson Bay kayak expedition

Eklund will set out from Minneapolis, cross through Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, and span most of the length of Manitoba.

"This expedition will take me from urban city, to sprawling midwestern prairies and farmland, up to the Canadian backcountry, and into the subarctic taiga along the Hudson Bay," she wrote.

During her journey from Minneapolis to South Dakota, Eklund will paddle 515km up the Minnesota River. She will cross Lake Winnipeg and eventually reach York Factory, Manitoba, on the shores of Hudson Bay.

The sparsely populated route abounds in rich indigenous history. She intends to host several river cleanup rallies along the way and has partnered with the North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality to collect water samples.

Route history

The route was first charted in 1930 by Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port. The pair later documented their journey in Canoeing with the Cree. Sevareid and Port's objective was to follow the historic Hudson Bay Company fur-trading routes.

Eklund notes on her adventure site, Expedition Alpine, that only a handful of people have followed Sevareid and Port's in the near-century since their expedition.

The first documented repeat, by Sean Bloomfield and Colton Witte, occurred in 2008 by canoe. Their journey took a northern variation on the original route, via the Hayes River to access Hudson Bay, whereas Sevareid and Port had taken God's River, which traverses Manitoba.

In 2011, Natalie Warren and Ana Raiho became the first women to complete the Minneapolis to Manitoba trip. The pair followed Bloomfield and Witte's Hayes River variation and also traveled by canoe.

Eklund bills herself as a lifelong outdoor enthusiast who has benefited from the knowledge and experience of those around her. She began Expedition Alpine in 2019 with the goal of providing a trustworthy educational resource to the outdoors and to serve as a catchall for her personal trip reports.

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For trip reports, updates, and more, head to expeditionalpine.com and follow Eklund on Facebook and Instagram.

Every so often, an old story resurfaces and goes viral via a new crop of Internet rovers. Such is the case with the "news" about the bodies of the Easter Island statues.

As early as 1914, archaeologists on Easter Island discovered that the heads of at least some of the megalithic statues, traditionally called moai, were attached to subterranean torsos, covered up over many centuries by erosion.

But that information remained largely hidden from the public until 2012 when a chain email containing images of full-bodied Easter Island statues taken from excavations in the 1950s and 2010s began circulating.

"The reason people think they are [only] heads is there are about 150 statues buried up to the shoulders on the slope of a volcano, and these are the most famous, most beautiful, and most photographed of all the Easter Island statues," director of the Easter Island Statue Project, Jo Anne Van Tilburg, told Live Science. "This suggested to people who had not seen photos of [other unearthed statues on the island] that they are heads only."

From 2010 until late 2014, Van Tilburg and several colleagues unearthed a number of Easter Island statues. The excavation documented for the first time the complex carvings found on the buried statues' bodies, which their burial kept well protected from the elements.

Their work, as well as several galleries of images from the project, are accessible at eisp.org.

Some facts about the 'moai'

Indigenous Polynesian peoples known as the Rapa Nui carved the moai between A.D. 1100 and 1500. Archaeologists believe that these statues of volcanic rock represent the ancestors of the Rapa Nui. They likely created a moai every time an important tribal figure passed away, according to Van Tilburg.  They stand up to 10m tall and weigh up to 80 tons. Nearly 1,000 of the statues reside on the island.

Early travelers to the remote island, which lies some 3,200km off the coast of South America, included Captain James Cook.

“We could hardly conceive how these islanders, wholly unacquainted with any mechanical power, could raise such stupendous figures,” the British mariner wrote in 1774.

According to the Smithsonian, by the time of Cook’s arrival, the islanders had toppled many of their statues. And those left standing were neglected.

March is Women's History Month, and Grape-Nuts is taking a unique approach to honoring the occasion. The 125-year-old brand looks to donate a total of $125,000 to 10 adventurous women in need of expedition support.

No application required

Between March 15 and March 30, 2022, Grape-Nuts' donor panel will review the GoFundMe campaigns of women seeking to head for Everest or the South Pole in 2022 or 2023. No applications are required. The selection of awardees will be made at Grape-Nuts reviewers' discretion, subject to each explorer's campaign appeal and "overall need for support".

Selected women will receive funding from Grape-Nuts sometime between March 31 and April 8, 2022.

Extra credit: Grape-Nuts history

Did you know that Grape-Nuts dates back to 1897? Lightweight, compact, and non-perishable, the granular cereal became a nutritional staple for fast-and-light explorers and expedition teams in the early twentieth century.

In 1933, the brand sponsored Admiral Byrd's Antarctic expedition. In World War II, Grape-Nuts landed in the backpacks of Allied forces. Hillary and Norgay reportedly carried some with them on Everest.

Learn more here, and for updates on Grape-Nuts's Women's History Month initiative, follow @GrapeNutsCereal.

On Friday, March 11, 2022, winter explorer Emily Ford and Diggins — a retired sled dog and her adventure companion — pulled the plug on the final days of their 320km ski trek along the Minnesota-Ontario border.

They had fewer than 50km to go and were just two days out from the intended endpoint of Grand Portage, the area where several streams coalesce into Lake Superior.

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Open water

The Duluth native explained that she had initially planned to reach Grand Portage by skiing the Pigeon River, which began near the trip's 270km mark. But when she and Diggins arrived at Pigeon River's banks, they found it "open and flowing" — it was thoroughly intractable.

Ford signed off on the trip without any palpable regrets:

This was a fantastic trip. I did what I set out to do: traverse the Boundary Waters by ski and paw. I am so incredibly proud of myself and Diggins! We saw one of the most spectacular places in one of the most spectacular seasons. No. We lived in it!

The Duluth native is a passionate advocate for, in her words, "getting kiddos into the outdoors". She uses her expeditions to fundraise for children's wilderness trips.

The adventures of Emily Ford & Diggins

Ford and Diggins's 28-day tour began on February 11 in Crane Lake, Minnesota. It was the duo's second epic winter trek in less than a year. The plan was to ski, skijor, and snowshoe from northwestern Minnesota across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) to Lake Superior, at the state's northeastern tip.

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Their first expedition, and the one that put Ford's name on the adventure map, followed the 1,900km Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin. Because of its length and remoteness, the Ice Age Trail rarely sees a complete thru-hike even in summer. Ford is only the second person to walk the Ice Age Trail's entire length in winter.

Breaking Trail is a short film about Emily Ford and Diggins's 2021 expedition that premiered at the Banff Film Festival last November. The documentary is available to stream (for a small fee) through The Banff Centre and will show at select venues throughout 2022 as part of the Banff Festival's World Tour.

On February 23, 2022, rockfall on Patagonia's world-famous Cerro Chaltén — also known as Fitz Roy — killed beloved big-wall climber and California native, John Bolte. He was just 26 years old.

Losing John Bolte on Cerro Chaltén

Bolte and his climbing partner, Adam Martos, had traveled to Patagonia to summit Afanassieff, a 1,500m 5.10 that follows the massif's northwest ridge. Two days on the wall proved fruitful, and on February 22, the pair had claimed their ascent and spent that evening bivvied on the summit.

For the descent, Bolte and Martos went the conventional route, a neighboring line called Franco-Argentina. They planned to break the hours-long rappel into two parts — first by rapping from the summit to La Silla col in the morning. There, they would post up and wait out the hottest part of the day before continuing the second leg of the descent.

 

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As with their ascent of Afanassieff, the first half of Franco-Argentina went smoothly, and they continued down the massif that evening. Descending big walls requires the climbers to set up and execute multiple rappels. They were on their final rappel to the glacier when loose rock dislodged from a notoriously unstable gully above. Experience had taught both climbers to tuck hard and fast into the wall at the first sign of collapse. Martos emerged from the shower uninjured; for Bolte, the impact was immediately fatal.

According to a close friend and climber, Tyler Karow, Martos managed to fix the line and rap down to the glacier alone and amidst continued rockfall. He continued on to a camp at the base, where he alerted a contingent of climbers about the accident.

Climbers honor Bolte's memory

Climbing recently published an intimate profile of the alpinist from Santa Cruz as his family, closest friends, and many climbing partners around the world knew him. In an email to the outlet, Candian climber and one of Bolte's many friends, Josh Schuh, said the following:

Bolte was an absolute gem of a human, and I feel honored to have had some incredible trips and experiences alongside him. I’ll miss his goofy jokes, laughing at his ridiculous mullet, but also his thoughtfulness, integrity, and outlook on life. I’m saddened that we won’t share another alpine sunrise together or sit around a fire. You will be sorely missed, brother.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on GearJunkie.

A 28-year-old climber fell more than 300m while attempting to summit the U.K.'s tallest peak on Tuesday, March 8, 2022. He was declared dead at the scene.

According to eyewitness reports, the man fell from around 1,000m up the 1,345m Scottish mountain Ben Nevis. Officials have not yet disclosed his identity.

Civilian rescue attempt leaves 23 stranded

Fellow climbers attempted to rescue the fallen man but soon became stranded when a fast-moving winter storm front and heavy winds moved in.

A contingent of Army personnel climbing nearby came to the climbers' aid and issued an emergency call-out, prompting an 8-hour rescue mission.

Forty responders from the Lochbar Mountain Rescue Team (MRT) and helicopter rescue were dispatched to the mountainside. They attended to and successfully evacuated 23 civilians and soldiers from the scene.

Officials caution against unpredictable winter weather

Tuesday's recovery and rescues are just the latest in a wave of recent incidents on Ben Nevis. Lochbar MRT told the BBC that it had responded to 12 call-outs between March 5 and March 8 — three of which involved fatalities. A total of six people have perished in the Scottish mountains since the beginning of March.

Scottish authorities advise people to exercise great caution when venturing outside during the winter and early spring.

"Challenging winter conditions still prevail in the hills with large areas totally covered in snow and ice," Inspector Matt Smith, Police Scotland mountain rescue coordinator, said in a statement. "Often, these areas are completely unavoidable, and snow may be rock hard with a high likelihood of a fall unless crampons and an ice axe are carried, and most importantly, the group has a knowledge in how and when to use them."

This season is about to look quite different for Europe's highest peak and its mountain guides. Mt. Elbrus (5,642m) belongs to the western Caucasus Mountains of Southern Russia, near the Georgian border.

As one of the Seven Summits -- as well as one of the Volcanic Seven Summits, Elbrus attracts many visitors to the Caucasus each year and helps keep several guiding companies in business.

This week, the U.S. Embassy in Russia issued a Level 4 - Do Not Travel advisory for the mountain, citing extreme geopolitical tension created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Do not attempt to climb Mount Elbrus, as travelers must pass close to volatile and insecure areas of the North Caucasus region. The U.S. government is unable to provide emergency services to U.S. citizens traveling in the North Caucasus region, including Mount Elbrus, as U.S. government employees are prohibited from traveling to the region.

Accordingly, guiding companies have called off all Mt. Elbrus expeditions for 2022.

Alpinist and guide Adrian Ballinger announced the cancellation of his company's expeditions on Instagram.

 

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After 107 years, the mystery of where in Antarctic waters that Ernest Shackleton's Endurance ended up is over. An expedition team of marine researchers and archaeologists discovered the world-famous shipwreck in the early hours of March 9, 2022. It lay 3,000+ metres down, in the Weddell Sea.

Like other wrecks in polar waters that are deep enough to evade the destructive effects of ice and waves, the vessel is in exceptional condition.

How Shackleton's 'Endurance' Was Found

The team arrived in the region in mid-February aboard the icebreaker S.A. Agulha II. For more than two weeks, the team scanned a 240 sq km region where experts believed the Endurance foundered in 1915. Undersea drones located and documented the largely intact polar ship.

One of the most storied shipwrecks in history, the Endurance became trapped in sea ice on January 18, 1915. Its captain, Irish polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, and his 28-man crew attempted to free the three-masted ship. But by the end of February, temperatures had plummeted, and the ship was frozen in place.

The Sinking of the 'Endurance'

According to the Endurance22 team, pressure from the ice tore away the ship's rudder post and crushed its stern. Shackleton wrote:

...We have been compelled to abandon the ship, which is crushed beyond all hope of ever being righted, we are alive and well, and we have stores and equipment for the task that lies before us. The task is to reach land with all the members of the Expedition. It is hard to write what I feel.

Incredibly, the expedition team survived aboard the frozen Endurance until October 27, 1915. On that day, Shackleton made the decision to abandon it. By November 21, the Endurance finally sank to its watery grave in the Weddell Sea.

Shackleton's great escape

After its sinking, there ensued one of the great survival stories in exploration history. In three lifeboats, all 28 crewmen traveled across sea ice and open water to Elephant Island. From there, Shackleton and a select team of five sailed 1,250km across the stormiest seas on earth in an open boat to little South Georgia.

Shackleton then somehow traversed the mountainous island to the far side, where a whaling station provided help. Even today, that wild alpine crossing impresses the few mountaineers who have managed to duplicate it. Shackleton's remaining expedition members were rescued from Elephant Island on August 30, 1916.

National Geographic broke the news of Endurance's recovery. A documentary of the 2022 expedition is set to air on National Geographic this fall.

Other famous polar shipwrecks

The Endurance marks the latest historic polar shipwreck discovered in recent years. In 2014, after a concerted six-year search, Sir John Franklin's ship, the Erebus, turned up in 11m of water in the Northwest Passage south of King William Island. Because of its location in such shallow water, the Erebus, which sank around 1848, was in much poorer condition than the Endurance.

Two years later, researchers found the Erebus's sister ship, the Terror, in the well-named Terror Bay, off King William Island. It lies 21 to 24m below the surface and is in much better condition than the Erebus.

Less celebrated than the Endurance, the Erebus, and the Terror, Robert McClure's HMS Investigator was abandoned in 1853 after being trapped in the sea ice off northern Banks Island for three years.

The location of the shipwreck was never a mystery, but it lay in such a distant corner of the High Arctic that no one went to look for it until 2010. They found the ship in just eight metres of water, exactly where they expected it to be, in Mercy Bay off northern Banks Island.

Undiscovered but in known locations

Some still-undiscovered polar ships are just waiting for a research crew like the one that found the Endurance or even a passing cruise ship with its side-scan sonar switched on at the right time.

In 1883, the Proteus sailed northern Baffin Bay, between Canada and Greenland, to pick up the U.S. Arctic Expedition under Adolphus Greely. Greely's men had been stationed on northern Ellesmere Island for two years, exploring and doing science for the First International Polar Year. Unlike almost every other polar expedition, they didn't have their own ship. The Proteus had dropped them off two years earlier with a promise to return.

But 1883 was a bad ice year, and the Proteus couldn't get within 300km of Greely's men. Trapped in the ice, amid strong currents, ice floes crushed the Proteus like a walnut. The crew escaped in lifeboats, but Greely's men were stranded, and 19 of 25 died in the aftermath, mostly from starvation. The spot where the Proteus went down is well-known -- just remote. And it lies 350m down, so like the Endurance, it should be well-preserved.

The USS Bear, one of the ships that later saved the few Greely survivors, was found last year off the coast of Massachusetts. It had foundered in a gale decades after that arctic rescue.

Yuji Hirayama is a 53-year-old climber from Japan. And let me tell you, he's not to be trifled with. The highly skilled veteran from Kunisaki just made the remarkable first ascent of Peaceful Mountain, a 9a sport route on Futagoyama — also known as Mt. Futago (1,165m).

'Peaceful Mountain', 9a first ascent

If Hirayama's name seems familiar, that's probably because he made similar waves in the climbing world just three months ago by establishing Hanabi, 8c+. Hanabi and Peaceful Mountain reside at the same crag. Both lines will likely stand as respectable test pieces for elite sport climbers in the area.

In grading the new line, Hirayama drew upon his experience with neighboring routes, stating simply, "I think it's easier than Flat Mountain 9a/a+ and harder than my recent Hanabi 8c+ and Time Machine 8c+, so that's why I propose 9a for this route."

 

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His explanation behind the name Peaceful Mountain, however, goes considerably deeper:

Mt. Futago is a mountain where peace reigns. Here you encounter endless smiles, friends, human relationships, creativity, routes, a community of climbers, freedom and challenges. In addition, my surname suggests it: 平 'Hira' (peace) 山 'Yama' (mountain).

He went on to indicate that the timing of his ascent — which coincided with the ongoing crisis in Ukraine — influenced his choice of name, as well:

Now I realize that peace is really precious. And even that a dictator is enough to ruin this peace… Suddenly… Stupidity... Sadly… Peaceful mountain is the place to be.

Extra credit: Hirayama as a renaissance climber

But the man is not bound to Mt. Futago — quite to the contrary. A quick internet search of his name reveals that the 53-year-old crusher has embedded himself in the global climbing community for many years. He also appears to be close friends with British climbing legend James Pearson and American climber/filmmaker/general wild man, Cedar Wright.

In light of that, it's little wonder that Mr. Hirayama has kept in such remarkable climbing shape. He's tackled and, more to the point — kept his skills sharp in — a number of climbing styles, including sport (of course), trad (British trad alongside Pearson, no less), big-wall, and the lesser-known but infinitely fascinating sawanobori, or waterfall climbing.

Sawanobori is a centuries-old Japanese discipline. Due to its incredible difficulty and the elevated risks involved (slippage, mudslides, unstoppable torrents of water), one is inclined to assume it was born out of necessity.

You'll get a taste for just how impossible the style seems and how adeptly Hirayama climbs over moss, mist, and fear in this brief and wild film from 2019. Enjoy.

On March 3, 2022, Simon Gietl of Italy's South Tyrol successfully completed the first-ever traverse of the Rosengarten route in the Italian Dolomites. No less, he did it alone and in the dead of winter.

The Rosengarten traverse's first ascent

Gietl, 38, is an accomplished alpinist and mountain guide. Following his online travel log makes it clear that when he isn't guiding, he's pursuing first ascents.

The Rosengarten traverse rides along the Catinaccio massif in the Italian Dolomites from Val di Fassa in Trentino to Eggenstal in South Tyrol. Outfitters offer some moderate portions of the traverse as guided treks during the summer and early autumn.

A solo winter excursion in the alpine loft of northern Italy, though, is a different animal. The frozen task could only ever appeal to a real adventurist. Gietl happens to be just such a character.

The ascent took Gietl three days and two nights, beginning on Tuesday, March 1. The route gains more than 5,000 vertical metres in total. Despite its clear challenges, Gietl posited that the Rosengarten is "a route that’s absolutely logical. Unlike the Tre Cime di Lavaredo where I know every nook and cranny, here I was climbing a mountain that I hardly know at all. I had to break the trail, self-belay all hard pitches and climb them twice to get my gear, and for three days I didn't see a soul.

I was completely alone, and this was exactly the experience I'd been searching for."

It was Gietl's second attempt at the undertaking. His first began one week prior, in the company of fellow alpinists Egon Resch and Daniel Habock. According to his report, the trio retreated from that attempt when rockfall hit their first bivouac.

Watch Gietl's personal 'First Ascents' page for his forthcoming Rosengarten traverse report, and keep busy reading through his remarkable tome of earlier climbs while you wait.

 

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The logistics required to pull off any adventure filmmaking endeavor are immense. But true adventurers love a good challenge, and there is hardly a more adventurous crew than Alex Honnold, Renan Ozturk, and Jonathan Griffith.

Recently, the expert trio collected a few other key team members and banded together to produce a next-level virtual reality documentary. The Soloist VR follows Honnold on a risky but picturesque free solo climbing tour of the U.S. and Europe. It premiered on Oculus and Meta VR platforms on March 3.

Along with it, the filmmakers released a "making-of" style documentary series on Red Bull TV. The challenges they face, problems they solve, and spectacular positions they capture combine to make it a worthy component.

Making a VR climbing film

The three-episode special, succinctly titled Making The Soloist VR, takes an instructive, conversational, and warm perspective on the filmmaking process. The result gives viewers a chance to appreciate the knowledge, technology, problem-solving, and sheer will that such a cutting-edge production requires.

Ozturk and Griffith are the project's cinematic visionaries. Griffith takes primary credit for The Soloist VR, while Ozturk led Making. However, both men are also highly skilled climbers and rope technicians. The combination of that skill set is hard to come by. To pull off The Soloist VR, they'd need it all.

Severely technical 3D video equipment, novel staging, and a variety of wild locations from the European Alps to the western American desert come together in the process. Egged on by Honnold, Ozturk and Griffith figure out how to make incredibly awkward, bulky 3D cameras dance around their quickly moving subject.

Despite their initial doubts, the frames they produced are near-perfect, and nothing short of visually arresting.

All three episodes of Making of the Soloist VR are available at no cost on Red Bull TV.

It seems that the further technology stretches toward the future, the more artifacts that humankind dredges from the past. In 2021, scientists confirmed that a crescent-shaped ridge in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province marked the edge of a meteorite crater. Called the Yilan Crater, it took its name from a neighboring city.

Spanning 1.85 kilometres across and 319 metres deep, it formed some 50,000 years ago. This makes Yilan is the largest known impact crater on Earth under 100,000 years old. The scientific journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science published details of the discovery in its July 2021 issue.

Yilan Crater significance

By crater standards, Yilan is very young. Notably, it's only the second crater known to China. The other, the Xinyuan Crater, is just slightly smaller (1.8km) but is thought to be significantly older, though it's never been carbon dated.

The next largest crater from the same period as Yilan is the famous Barringer Crater in Arizona. Estimates indicate that an impact created the 1.2km crater about 49,000 to 50,000 years ago.

Two-thirds of the Yilan Crater's ridgeline remains intact, which gives it a crescent-like appearance. Its rim rises 150m above the forest floor.

More than 100m of sediment and swampy, overgrown terrain covers the Yilan Crater's basin. That organic layer overlays a dense, deep bedrock layer of granite. Inside the metamorphic rock, researchers found evidence of a super-heated impact.

Yilan impact evidence

People first settled around the crater, which they called Quanshan, or "circular mountain ridge", centuries ago. But only in recent years did researchers begin to suspect that it was the site of a major extraterrestrial collision.

The team that published the 2021 article confirmed its suspicions by analyzing a core sample from the crater's centre. It yielded ancient lake sediments, shattered granite, glass, and previously melted mineral deposits. Altogether, the findings constituted geological evidence of a high-impact origin.

To carbon-date the crater, experts sampled organic material and soot. The most precise estimates indicate that the Yilan Crater formed 47,000 to 53,000 years ago. If that date range is correct, it's distinctly possible that ancient human inhabitants of Asia bore witness to the impact.

The roster of confirmed extraterrestrial impact craters on Earth includes around 190 sites. It's a near certainty that many more craters exist, obscured beneath the cover of ice caps, buried deep within the sea, or worn away by the elements.

On Tuesday, February 22, three ski mountaineers captured the first descent of the east face of Mt. Ethelbert (3,180m) in Canada's Purcell mountain range.

First ski descent of Mt. Ethelbert's east face

Mark Herbison, Christina Lustenberger, and Sam Smoothy began their trek from the 1,200m mark in early morning conditions that Lusternberger described as frigid but ideal.

"Alpine low of -30," she wrote, "ridge winds east 15km. But splitter." Elevation and exposure gain ultimately rendered a -40°C windchill. Smoothy later said it was "the coldest day of my life."

Herbison and Lustenberger had previously attempted the route a week earlier but intractable fog socked them in at the summit, and forced a bail.

The ascending line trended up the peak's west face. They started by taking snowmobiles to the Templeton Lake trailhead, then broke a new trail to the base of the wall. Mountain photographer Jamie Tanner posted up on an adjacent ridge, documenting their effort via drone.

Instant frostnip

The team summited Mt. Ethelbert at 1:30 pm, amid high winds.

"Instantly Mark and Sam had frostnip on their faces," Lustenberger reported.

Looking down from the top, they found perfect snowpack for skiing. They proceeded to cruise down Mt. Ethelbert's east face, dividing the descent into three pitches. Per Lustenberger's report:

Mark dropped first, leaving billowing snow in his tracks. We skied the face in three pitches, yo-yoing leads while Jamie reset the drone to capture the descent.

Skiing out the bottom and into the windless sun was a quick break from the chilly shade. We transitioned and [started] skinning back up the south aspect to meet Jamie on the ridge. After a quick high-five we skied a north couloir back to the valley we started in. 15min of skinning back to the sleds we then reversed our tracks back to the truck. Frozen, but enjoying the Arctic sunset over the Columbia Valley.

On October 11, 2017, tragedy befell an accomplished young big wall climber in Yosemite Valley. That was the day that Quinn Brett fell more than 30 metres from a fabled multipitch line on El Capitan's Boot Flake.

The injuries she sustained were harrowing. The impact shattered her T12 vertebra and split open her scalp. Most heartbreaking of all, it robbed her of the ability to use her legs.

Quinn Brett & the accident that changed her life

It was no small miracle that she survived the incident. Flight For Life lifted Quinn from the Valley and carried her to a new chapter. It would prove far more challenging than any big wall route ever could.

She underwent a litany of operations, began physical therapy, and slowly started to learn how to live in a body so transformed from the one that had carried her to the world-renowned summits of Longs Peak, Half Dome, and Cerro Torre, to name a few.

An Accidental Life, a mountain festival film, documents Quinn after her fall. Through it, director Henna Taylor bears witness to Quinn's tenacious spirit as she fights to reclaim her strength, peace, and stoke.

In a 2018 essay, Quinn Brett on Her Life-Changing Accident and Her Passion for Wilderness, the young woman wrote:

My accident rerouted my life, but I’m still alive. I can still act. The therapists have a machine that supports my legs so I can stand, and although I can’t feel my legs, standing tall feels good in ways that I cannot describe. When my friends help wheel me onto gravel and gentle dirt trails, my heart sings. I still love wild places so much.

An Accidental Life premiered this week at the 2022 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Viewers can take in the feature-length film here from February 23-26, 2022.

A study published this week indicates that an exoplanet (a planet outside our solar system) some 855 light-years away has a metallic atmosphere and liquid, gem-like rain. Researchers believe that vast temperature differences cause this phenomenal weather. One side of the exoplanet is cold enough for iron and corundum -- a mineral common to rubies and sapphires -- to form clouds. As we'll see, the ruby-sapphire mineral then rains in a weather cycle similar to, but much more violent than Earth's.

Never a calm day on WASP-121b

Exoplanet WASP-121b is a gas giant that astronomers discovered in 2016. It is larger in diameter and mass, and hotter than any planets within our solar system. It's akin to a giant, ultra-hot Jupiter. The Hubble Space Telescope has provided what we know about its weird atmosphere and weather. The study, published in Nature Astronomy journal, follows a recent examination of the exoplanet's dark side.

Much like Earth's moon, WASP-121b is tidally locked, meaning that one side permanently faces the star around which it orbits. The exoplanet's star-facing side thus experiences constant daylight, while the space-facing side remains in continual darkness.

Study coauthor Tansu Daylan of MIT explained, "Hot Jupiters are famous for having very bright day sides, but the night side is a different beast. WASP-121b's night side is about ten times fainter than its day side."

The two-faced conditions on the gas giant come from its tidal lock, while its nearness to its sun whips up bizarre weather. Here's how experts think it works.

Heat, wind, and gemstone rain

First, let's note the two key influences on WASP-121b's atmosphere: temperature and wind speed.

• Temperatures - "Extreme" seems like an understatement about the planet's temps: Its solar side is a more-than-balmy 2,227°C at its deepest layer and 3,227°C at its uppermost. On the dark side, its deepest layer is its warmest, at a still-scorching 1,527°C, while the upper layer cools off -- if one can call it that -- to around 1,227°C.
• Wind speed - Estimates suggest blustery winds of up to 17,703kph.

"These winds are much faster than our jet stream and can probably move clouds across the entire planet in about 20 hours," said Daylan.

That wind hellaciously and turbulently influences WASP-121b's cloud/rain cycle.

The immense heat of WASP-121b's sunny side means that water molecules that reach it do not evaporate, condense, and fall in the form of rain as on Earth. Instead, the heat violently breaks those molecules into atoms. The wind then violently sweeps those atoms back to the night side, where they once again merge into water.

Like the water particles, the iron and corundum clouds likely blow to the planet's sunny side every 20 to 30 hours. As they approach, the clouds get hotter until they finally rain liquid gems. Eventually, the remaining metal compounds evaporate into gases. Then the cycle repeats.

Future research

"With this observation, we're really getting a global view of an exoplanet's meteorology," said lead author Thomas Mikal-Evans of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. "We're now moving beyond taking isolated snapshots of specific regions of exoplanet atmospheres to study them as the 3D systems they truly are."

Later this year, astronomers will deploy the new James Webb Space Telescope to further investigate WASP-121b.

A shark attack at Little Bay Beach in Sydney, Australia, has left one swimmer dead. Eyewitnesses described the shark as a 4.5-metre great white.

The deadly attack is the first of its kind in the city since 1963. But it's Australia's fourth unprovoked shark-related fatality since 2021.

Beach visitors alerted first responders on February 16, just after 4:35 pm local time.

"This person had suffered catastrophic injuries as a result of the attack, and there was nothing paramedics could do when we arrived on scene," a spokeswoman for the New South Wales Ambulance told AP.

Footage of the incident

Non-graphic footage of the incident (read: gore blurred out) has since surfaced, showing that it happened just a few metres from shore.

"We heard a yell and then turned around," local Kris Linto told Nine News TV. "It looked like a car just landed in the water, a big splash, then the shark was chomping at the body and there was blood everywhere."

New South Wales police officers and marine response teams sectioned off the site. Human remains were recovered at around 6:00 pm. The victim's identity has not yet been released.

Little Bay beach will remain closed to the public while authorities attend to the scene.

Worldwide, human deaths from shark attacks are markedly rare. The International Shark Attack File (ISAF) catalogs each incident in a comprehensive database. ISAF research showed Australia led the world with three unprovoked shark-related deaths in 2021.

New Caledonia, about 1,500km off the east Australian coast, followed with two. The United States, Brazil, New Zealand, and South Africa each had a single unprovoked fatal shark attack. There were a total of 11.

A new book on anthropological genetics shakes up what we thought we knew about the first Americans. Instead of crossing by foot over the Bering Land Bridge, (a theory known as the Clovis hypothesis), geneticist Jennifer Raff suggests that early settlers in to the Americas likely came via what is known as the Kelp Highway. This is also called the coastal route theory.

Kelp Highway hypothesis: no Bering Land Bridge

Archaeologist Jon Erlandson first developed the Kelp Highway hypothesis. It evolved from a similar theory about the early human settlement of Australia, Melanesia and Japan, which eventually expanded into Russia and Alaska. Eventually, these longtime Beringians traveled along a Pacific coastal route to settle in the Americas.

Erlandson's hypothesis suggests that these ancestral peoples found their way to Chile and California's Channel Islands at least 14,500 and 13,000 years ago, respectively. This doesn't necessarily mean that those locations were the initial entry points for inward migration into the Americas — just that human activity at those sites predates any known activity further inland.

Erlandson posits that settlers used dense seaweed forests to survive and navigate their surroundings. The kelp forests along the Pacific Rim once flourished far beyond today's patches. Those vast swaths of kelp would have made for easier and safer travel, as the nutrient-dense sea vegetable not only fosters an abundance of edible sea life, it dampens waves in the same way that swimming pool lanes do — important for those primitive, vulnerable boats.

Overall, prehistoric coastlines were much more hospitable to survival than inland areas, which featured harsher weather, more challenging terrain, and less food than the always abundant ocean.

Coastal Route theory and the Americas

In her book Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, Raff combines data supporting the Kelp Highway hypothesis with information from archaeological digs, genetics, and linguistics. She argues that the Bering Strait was a homeland, not a passageway. People inhabited it for thousands of years, first brought by coastal walkers from western Melanesia and Japan.

"Beringia...was a place where people lived for many generations, sheltering from an inhospitable climate and slowly evolving the genetic variation unique to their Native American descendants." she wrote.

Two critical pieces of evidence "strongly suggest" that when various groups in Beringia began migrating, they did so along the coast rather than inland.

First, Raff points out, coastal America was open by 16,000 years ago, whereas the ice-free corridor between the two ice sheets wasn't a viable route until about 12,500 years ago. Second, the populations split so swiftly — almost instantaneously, according to their genetics. This fits more closely with southward migration by boat rather than overland.

She admits, however, that we are still beginning our journey of understanding the multi-pronged outreach of humanity from our African beginnings.

Four Masted Barque Rounding Cape Horn is a dull title for a flamboyant compendium of live-action footage of life aboard a monstrous cargo vessel in 1928, all captured and curated by a young captain, Irving Johnson.

In 1980, Johnson compiled his collection, added his own narration, and created this energetic, one-of-a-kind film. It's informative, humorous, full of action, and remarkably well documented — even by today's adventure film standards.

Captain Irving Johnson

American captain Irving Johnson was a colorful adventurer, sail training pioneer, speaker, and writer.

The documentary opens with a reel of Johnson riding boneshaker and big-wheel bicycles on his family's farm in Hadley, Massachusetts. (The footage includes an over-the-handlebars face plant.) He then proceeds to scale a rotted, wobbling electrical pole, and pulls off a pearl-clutching, hands-free headstand once at the top "to make sure he'd never be scared."

He did all of these things to get in shape for his lifelong ambition — a maritime voyage to Cape Horn.

"Now there's a boy with a one-track mind if you've ever seen one!" the elder captain exclaims. "I got ready for it on the farm before I'd even seen saltwater."

The Peking

Johnson set sail for Cape Horn aboard the Peking, the largest sailing ship in the world, and one of the last cargo vessels ever used in the nitrate-and-wheat trade around Cape Horn.

Built by F. Laesiz company in 1911, the film's titular steel-hulled, four-masted bark weighed 3,100 tons when bone-dry (which it never was), donned more than an acre of canvas across its 32 sails, and ran entirely off human and wind power. It had benefited Germany and Italy by the time Johnson joined its ranks.

The crew stuffed its cargo hold with 5,300 tons of goods and set off on a 17,700-kilometre voyage from northern Ireland to South America's southernmost tip.

Sailing to Cape Horn, 1928

The Peking spent 17 hectic days in the North Sea. Storms battered the ship, sometimes submerging its rails up to nine metres underwater. Drenched but seemingly cheerful sailors dumped out the water from their galoshes between turns at managing the great bark's 315 lines. The only way to dry one's clothes? By sleeping in them.

"There's something about these vessels that causes a kind of hypnotism! You can do things you'd never dream of doing on land," Johnson enthuses in the film.

Mending sails — Johnson tells us they'd learned to sew seven metres of canvas an hour at "racing speed" — lining up for weekly trims, harvesting shark, and sharing four-on/four-off shifts knit the crew together tightly.

In unfavorable weather, the Peking could sail at speeds up to 16 knots with, as Johnson notes, the help of her crew. "We felt like Superman!" said the extroverted skipper. "We made all of this happen!"

After weathering one last nautical storm, the crew approached Cape Horn — and then the Peking came to a lulling halt. The wind had literally been taken out of its sails. Foggy, warm, still air enveloped the ship for a week or so. The crew was forced to mitigate the current without so much as a breeze, causing the Peking to pulse to and from the Chilean coast.

He wanted to experience a storm

"I'm disgusted with the weather." Johnson's narration showcases the exasperation he felt as a greenhorn. "I came all these thousands of miles to get a big 'storm-off' coupon."

And then came the storm he'd always wished for. And a second storm. Johnson, miraculously, provides comprehensive footage from high up on a mast. "Now watch this," he prompts us, "the bottom of Niagara Falls looks exactly like what you're gonna see here."

So what did the young sailor learn? And did the Peking ever make it to the port of Cape Horn? You'll just have to see for yourself.

Runtime: 38 minutes

A quartet of geophysicists and hydrobiologists has obtained a permit to dive beyond the 30-metre mark of Lake Cheko in Siberia. Their research, slated to begin in late February, will focus on the cataclysmic Tunguska event. It will be the deepest expedition ever conducted at the site.

Using lakebed samples, the team aims to answer a century-old question posed by the leader of the first Tunguska research expedition, mineralogist Leonid Kulik. His question was this: If a meteorite caused the explosion, where is the epicenter of its crater and the extraterrestrial matter from it?

The Tunguska event and conflicting research

In July 1908, a meteoroid measuring 50-60 metres in diameter plunged through the atmosphere above the Siberian taiga, catalyzing the 12-megaton Tunguska explosion. Experts estimate that the blast decimated some 80 million trees and dispatched at least three human beings. It is Earth's largest impact event on record, but scientists have yet to locate its crater.

Some believe the blast was caused by a mid-air explosion. Others think it was caused by hard impact. In 2012, an Italian research team found evidence that pointed to a small 500m crater in Lake Cheko as the point of impact. The study was hotly contested because that crater is located some eight kilometres from the Tunguska event's supposed epicenter.

The Italian group collected seismic measurements of the crater's bottom, which showed about 100 years' worth of accumulated sediment. And Lake Cheko's bed — which is shaped like a crater — was deeper than is typical for the region. Dense stony substrate beneath the sediment was likely the remains of the exploded meteoroid, they concluded.

In 2017, a Russian team contested those findings. Core samples drawn by the Russians seemed to indicate that the lake bed was nearly 200 years older than the Tunguska event. Geologically young, but not young enough to be the epicenter.

Tunguska research expedition, 2022

Lake Cheko bottoms out at 54m and resides in the Tungussky Nature Reserve, a rural stretch in central Siberia's Krasnoyarsk region. This winter expedition will start a cycle of long-term research there.

"The team of researchers aim to study how thick the lake bottom’s sediments are, and take primary samples," reserve inspector Evgenia Karnoukhova told The Siberian Times. "The data they’ll gather will be analyzed and passed on to geologists. We are not speaking about the search for any celestial body at this stage."

In the summer of 1965, Tété-Michel Kpomassie became the first African to explore Greenland. He was 24 on the day that he stepped onto the dock at Qaqortoq, on Greenland's southern coast. But his arctic journey had actually begun some seven years prior, in the West African town of Lomé, Togo.

Now approaching 81 years of age, Kpomassie is packing up his Parisian apartment and heading back to northern Greenland, where he intends to live out his gloaming.

The story of an African and Greenland

Kpomassie's fabled life story starts with a bit of chance and a book. The young Togolese was 16 when he bought anthropologist Robert Gessain's Les Esquimaux du Groenland à l’Alaska (The Eskimos from Greenland to Alaska) from a small bookshop in Lome. Immediately, the subject captivated him, and within a year he'd run away from home in pursuit of the Arctic.

His trajectory to Greenland was anything but direct. He traveled along the West Coast of Africa, from Côte d’Ivoire in the south to the northern crest of Algeria, eventually crossing into Europe. Ther,e he stayed for some time before disembarking for Greenland via Copenhagen.

"I took my time to step out," he recalled in an interview with The Guardian. "I suspected none would have met a black man before. When I did, everyone stopped talking, all were staring. They didn’t know if I was a real person or wearing a mask. Children hid behind their mothers. Some cried, presuming I was a spirit from the mountains."

Kpomassie found his true home in Greenland's northern reaches, where the Inuit culture that he'd pored over in a book as a boy was very much alive. Over the next 18 months, Greenland's first African transplant learned to ski, mush, ice fish, hunt, and flourish in the tundra.

He returned to Togo in late 1966, reluctant but determined. He adapted the journal he'd kept into a tome, and taught himself several languages through correspondence with friends he'd made on his pilgrimage.

Kpomassie then went on to give numerous lectures about his experience in halls and classrooms throughout Africa and Europe. And he settled down in Paris and raised a family, returning to Greenland on three occasions in that time. "[A]ll the while I knew where I ultimately needed to end up," he said.

His seminal book, "An African in Greenland," was published in France in 1977 and reproduced in English in 1981. It earned him France's Prix Littéraire Francophone International award, also in 1981, and has since been translated into eight languages.

Kpomassie intends to close his story much as it began — with a book and a bit of chance. "I'll have a dog sled and huskies," the explorer remarked. "I’ll find myself a small fishing boat. And here I’ll happily spend my remaining days, and finally find time to write my second book, about my childhood in Africa."

Climate scientists have published a groundbreaking study on the degradation of glaciers in the Hindu Kush and the Himalaya, including Everest (8,849m). It revealed a rapid and accelerating melt-off at the top of the world.

Few studies exist about how rising global temperatures affect the world's highest ranges. To bridge this gap, scientists went to the Nepalese side of Everest in spring 2019. They did in-depth studies of biology, geology, glaciology, and meteorology. They reported their findings this week in Nature Portfolio Journal Climate and Atmospheric Science.

Everest South Col glacier dwindling rapidly

The team installed Earth's two highest weather stations on the South Col Glacier and pulled an ice core sample. They found that this glacier is losing ice 80 times faster than it took to build up. That amounts to a loss of 2,000 years' worth of ice in just 25 years. The rate of degradation continues to increase. Currently, the glacier is shedding several decades of ice annually.

Among other things, the study concludes that the glaciers aren't safe anywhere on the mountain. Strong winds at high, dry altitudes lead to more sublimation, though less melt-off. Increased humidity at lower altitudes lessens sublimation, but then melt increases in the warmer air.

"[This study] answers one of the big questions...whether the highest glaciers on the planet are impacted by human-sourced climate change," said glaciologist Paul Mayewski. "The answer is a resounding yes, and very significantly since the late 1990s."

Last winter, Emily Ford of Duluth, Minnesota, became the first woman and only second person to hike Wisconsin's 1,900km Ice Age Trail, supported by Diggins, her sled dog.

This year, the 29-year-old and Diggins aim for a 320km ski tour along the Minnesota-Ontario border.

Emily Ford's winter ski trek

Ford and Diggins will depart from Crane Lake on February 11 and spend the next month skijoring, and when necessary, skiing and hauling along the Boundary Waters.

She is also packing snowshoes for the inevitable portages through the deep snow of the north woods. Ford will tow a pulk with all of the gear and provisions she and Diggins need along the way. The pair should reach Grand Portage near Lake Superior around March 13.

They'll follow the Border Route that crosses the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) for part of the trek. The Border Route is a millennia-old line historically used by Native Americans and fur traders.

After rocketing to influential heights following her historic hike last year, Ford said she's very aware that the causes she chooses to support and the trails she decides to pursue are important. This trip is about adventure, sure. But it's also about elevating wild places that need preservation and respect, like the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

"A lot of people know about the Boundary Waters in the summer. But it's so much more than that. I want to give it a face in the wintertime," Ford said.

You can follow her and Diggins on their 2022 trek via her Instagram account, @emilyontrail.

In September 2019, climber Emma Twyford became the first British female to climb 9a. The accomplishment, which required more than two solid years of dedication, broke the climbing grade 9 barrier for British women. What may be more impressive is the route that she chose to break that barrier with — The Big Bang. And a just-released film by the same name documents Twyford's ride to the chains.

The Big Bang resides at a seaside cliff in North Wales known as Lower Pen Trwyn (or ‘LPT’). Owing to the often inclement weather and the stoutness of its rock formations, crags in the U.K. are notoriously challenging. Those conditions are made all the worse when the location of the route is sea-level and metres from the shore.

So it's little wonder why very few climbers can say they have successfully redpointed The Big Bang, which is the LPT's ultimate test piece. When Twyford first encountered the route in 2017, only two people in the world had sent it.

A bit about 'The Big Bang' 9a

Despite LPT's temperamental conditions, it is home to one of the few limestone havens in the entire United Kingdom. Britain is best known for its burly gritstone trad routes, but limestone lends itself to sport climbing.

Limestone's steepness, variety of features, and intricacy inspire the cutting-edge acrobatics seen on many advanced sport routes today. The LPT has all of that to offer, which is why it became the U.K.'s epicentre for elite sport climbing in the 1980s. Those familiar with the climbing there describe it as steep and sharp. As the area's most difficult route, The Big Bang is no exception.

Neil Carson claimed The Big Bang's first ascent in 1996. The next ascent wasn't until 2011 by James McHaffie. Reportedly, it took McHaffie just 13 days to project and redpoint the watershed line.

At the time of Carson's ascent, the climbing world heralded it as the U.K.'s first 9a sport climb.*

Emma Twyford

Twyford began trad climbing when she was just seven years old. At the age of 10, she began competing and earned the title of British Bouldering Champion when she was 24.

After retiring from competitions, Twyford turned back to trad climbing and became quickly accomplished in the style discipline. She landed several impressive E9 headpoints, one E8 flash, and numerous E7 flashes by her early 30s.

Then she turned her sights on sport climbing. When asked why she chose The Big Bang specifically, "I think because of the history behind it," she told UK Climbing. "LPT was at the forefront of British climbing back in the day with hard and historical climbs being put up by Ben Moon and Jerry Moffatt such as Statement of Youth (Britain's first 8a) and Liquid Ambar (8c)."

According to Twyford, setting the record as Britain's first woman to 9a is just a bonus. "I'm more psyched about getting the 3rd ever ascent of this route. That feels pretty special, knowing it is hard and hasn't been repeated very often, and that I'm one of three people to unlock the sequences."

*This claim has met some dispute, particularly after Hubble at Raven Torr. Ben Moon claimed the first ascent of Hubble in 1990 and graded it 8c+ at the time. The route has seen fewer than 12 ascents since Moon's FA. Most of the climbers that have redpointed Hubble agree that a grade of 9a more accurately reflects the route's difficulty.

As such, Hubble is technically the first 9a sport climb in the UK, preceding The Big Bang by six years.

Australian marine archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be the wreckage of British explorer Captain Cook's HMB Endeavour off the coast of Rhode Island. The 18th-century vessel foundered in the western Atlantic nearly 250 years ago.

After 22 years of research, Australian National Maritime Museum chief executive Kevin Sumption has confirmed that the wrecked ship filed under the name ‘RI 2394’ was the Endeavour.

HMB Endeavour in history

Captain James Cook launched the HMB (Her Majesty's Bark) Endeavour to fame or infamy, depending on who you ask. He sailed it around the South Pacific in the early 1770s. During the voyage, Cook and crew collected vast amounts of previously unknown data.

"It's an important historical moment, as this vessel's role in exploration, astronomy, and science applies not just to Australia, but also Aotearoa/New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States," Sumption told reporters. "It's arguably one of the most important vessels in Australia's maritime history."

So important, in fact, that the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) built an exact and functioning replica of the Endeavour from the original blueprints. It's one of the Museum's greatest attractions.

Captain Cook eventually docked the ship and disembarked on Australia's east coast, where British maritime troops took it over. In the late 1770s, it was sailing through the western Atlantic and into the American War of Independence. In 1778, British forces scuttled (intentionally sank) the Endeavour in Rhode Island's Newport Harbor. The famous ship lies just 14m down and a mere 500m from shore.

There, it remained alongside the remnants of four smaller 18th-century vessels, undisturbed and undetected until 1999.  That's when teams of Australian and Rhode Island-based marine archaeologists began investigating.

Controversy: Captain Cook and his ship

Over the past 20-plus years, efforts between Aussie and U.S. teams to positively identify RI 2394 have been largely cooperative. Each new discovery about RI 2394 seemed to match what archaeologists and Endeavour experts knew of the famous ship.

Ultimately, the evidence mounted to a threshold that some archaeologists believed was more than sufficient proof that RI 2394 and Captain Cook's ship were one and the same. That's when some of the project's experts gave Sumption the nod to go public with the news.

But Dr Kathy Abbass of the Rhode Island-based archaeological contingent (RIMAP) thinks that the announcement is premature. In an interview with ABC, Abbass said, "What we see on the shipwreck site under study is consistent with what might be expected of the Endeavour, but there has been no indisputable data found to prove the site is that iconic vessel, and there are many unanswered questions that could overturn such an identification."

The case for the Endeavour

Archaeologists affirming HMB Endeavour's identity, including project veteran Kieran Hosty and Dr James Hunter, believe that the current body of evidence is sufficient proof. There are many similarities between the two ships, including:

• The Endeavour was the largest of five 18th century ships scuttled by British forces in Newport Harbor, and the RI 2394 wreckage is the largest of any other 18th-century vessel on site.
• The length of the hull is almost exactly that of the Endeavour's hull. The same is true for the RI 2394's bow joinery and the locations of both masts.

Hosty, who began working on the Newport Harbor discoveries in 2000, offered additional justification: "Archaeology is an interesting process where we call on the preponderance of evidence," he said. "We've got a whole series of things pointing to RI 2394 as being HMB Endeavour. And so far, we've found lots of things that tick the box for it to be Endeavour and nothing on the side which says it's not."

To learn more about the discovery, and stay up to date on any developments in the case, head to the Australian Museum’s site about the Endeavour. It includes some great underwater footage of the ship. The Museum also put together the film below.

In March of 2022, Bhutan will restart its historic Trans Bhutan Trail, a 430km footpath that runs through the Himalayan nation, connecting east to west.

Once well-maintained by its many anointed "trail runners", it fell out of use when Bhutan introduced its national road system in the 1960s. It was closed by Bhutanese authorities shortly thereafter.

Now, after 60 years of closure, the Tourism Council of Bhutan and the Bhutan Canada Foundation (BCF) are ready to reopen the ancient trail to Bhutanese locals and international visitors alike.

From tip to toe, the Trans Bhutan Trail encounters 400 cultural and historic sites, including fortresses, monasteries, and a national park. A thru-hike takes 28-30 days and carries hikers from Bhutan's eastern province of Tashigang to Haa in the west. Shorter itineraries and tours by bicycle will be optionable, as well.

Trans Bhutan Trail Restoration

Efforts to revitalize the Trans Bhutan Trail began in 2018 as a joint project between the Tourism Council and BCF.

In that time, teams of specially appointed volunteers, or De-suups, have restored all 430km. Working the entire length of the route on foot and by hand, the De-suups have forged new footpaths, remediated crossings, mended and updated signage, and recorded points of interest along the way.

Officials undertook the restoration to unearth the centuries of storied history within Bhutan.

According to BCF chair Sam Blyth, the project has been community-based. It aims to "restore an ancient cultural icon and provide a sustainable, net carbon zero experience in the country for pilgrims and travelers."

History of the Trans Bhutan Trail

The trail dates back to the 16th century when it served as the Buddhist kingdom's trans-regional thoroughfare. For several centuries, it strung together the region's monasteries and fortresses, enabled trade, and provided monks with a means of pilgrimage to sacred sites.

Historians call it the mechanism that unionized the royal kingdom's provinces and ultimately culminated in Bhutanese nationalization in 1906.

"By walking or cycling the Trans Bhutan Trail, you will immerse yourself in generations' worth of stories, and become a piece of a unique part of the country's history," promise the Trans Bhutan Trail's organizers.

For more information, visit transbhutantrail.com.

On January 31, heavy rains pummeled Australia's arid Northern Territory, triggering a remarkable and rarely seen phenomenon at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park.

During the region's very rare downpours, rainfall collects at the top of Uluru rock. As the water spills over the monolith's sides, it creates transient waterfalls and alters the sandstone from a tawny grey to shades of orange and red. The waterfalls only last a few minutes.

Owing to Uluru's landlocked and barren location, rainstorms are rare, and mass rainstorms like the one experienced this week occur only once or twice a year. Park officials reported 70mm of rainfall on Uluru between January 30 and 31. The region's annual average is just below 300mm.

The Uluru monolith

Sometimes called Ayers Rock, Uluru s a 600-million-year-old sandstone monolith, and one of the most recognizable natural landmarks in the world. It juts 348m up and above the grassy flatlands of Central Australia and stretches 9.4km across.

It's especially important to Anangu tribes, who have inhabited the region for more than 30,000 years. It is also a sacred destination for aboriginal peoples from the Western Desert.

Uluru, along with the surrounding Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

A solar storm is expected to summon the northern lights further south than usual today.

Energetic auroras are more than likely over Alaska, most of Canada, and other northern regions. But its intensity could spark hours of auroras from the Arctic Circle to the northern U.S., reaching as far south as Maine and New York, according to the NOAA.

Experts suggest finding a dark skies location away from city lights to catch sight of the event. The spectacle will likely occur low on the horizon, even in cloudy conditions.

Solar storms and the aurora borealis

Formally, the storm has been assigned a moderate G2 intensity rating on a scale that slides from G1 (least intense) to G5 (catastrophic). The impact that a G2 geomagnetic storm has on Earth fluctuates on a storm-by-storm basis. The fiercest examples have downed power grids and radio and satellite communications. Those instances also catalyze strong auroral responses even closer to the equator than the current storm.

This week's space weather doesn't fall within the extreme range of G2s, though experts say that spacecraft and northerly power systems will experience some fluctuations.

These storms result from coronal mass ejections, also known as solar flares, which expel charged particles. The Earth's magnetic poles pull on the particles that reach our atmosphere. Their polar trajectory causes the particles to shed energy, which, in this case, is emitted in the form of the northern lights.

Some extra credit: 'aurora borealis' is a term reserved for lights emitted by particles drawn to the North Pole. Lights emitted by particles at the South Pole are referred to as 'aurora australis,' otherwise known as the southern lights.

The magnetic pull that causes the light emission is strongest at Earth's poles and grows weaker at latitudes further away from each pole. Since the equator is the strip of Earth that's furthest from the poles, auroras rarely appear in its atmosphere. There are no documented instances of northern lights reaching as far south as the equator. In 1921, the southern lights appeared 13° below the equator. It remains the only known instance of equatorial aurora australis.

Refer to our previous write-up here for an in-depth explanation of solar cycles, flares, and geomagnetic storms.

In April 2020, a 768-kilometre lightning bolt split the skies over the Gulf of Mexico's northwestern shores. After, yes, two years of research, meteorologists have confirmed it as the longest-reaching megaflash ever recorded.

Lightning bolt garners world record

The strike was a cloud-to-cloud event, which occurred 1,000 or more metres above Earth. Satellite imagery shows its span from the Texas coast, across the Louisiana panhandle, and over lower Mississippi.

The length effectively breaks the record established by a 709-kilometre bolt recorded over Brazil in 2018. Experts at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) say that the southern coastal regions of the U.S. and South America are geophysically inclined to produce megaflashes. Very few regions are.

According to Arizona State University's chief of meteorological records, Randall Cerveny, a megaflash of lightning is greater than a typical bolt by orders of magnitude. Most bolts rarely exceed 16 kilometres.

Categorically, they are considered extreme weather events, but scientists say that climate change does not play a role in their formation or frequency. The recent uptick in reports of megaflashes is due to improvements in satellite technology, Cerveny explained.

The WMO is taking the opportunity to remind the world that lightning, while spectacular, is extremely dangerous. It encourages people to seek safe shelter during any electrified storm. "Any time there is thunder heard, it is time to reach a lightning-safe place."

For more information, check out the WMO's website and social channels.

Last month, two of Brazil's foremost highliners set sail for the skies. Their mission: to string up and traverse the highest slackline in the world. And they would do it in the whimsical fashion so baked into balance culture, supported by a pair of rainbow-colored hot air balloons.

From 1,860 metres above Earth, Rafael Bridi lifted himself over the hot air balloon basket and planted his bare feet on the narrow, 2.5cm tightrope. With a grin on his face, the 34-year-old daredevil smoothly cantered across the webbing.

The feat, captured on Bridi's GoPro Max, suspended him at a height twice that of the world's tallest building. His balancing act shattered the previous highline record and landed Bridi's name in Guinness World Records.

Take a look.

A meteor as bright as the moon flared over the night sky in Croatia earlier this week. In a blaze of fire, the meteor was entirely consumed upon entering Earth's atmosphere.

According to the Croatian Astronomical Union, the meteor was traveling at 22 kilometres per second and had a magnitude, or astronomical brightness, of -7, nearly five times brighter than the brightest visible star in our night sky.

Sporadic meteors like this one are defined as those which cannot be traced back to any known collection of meteors. The trajectory of Monday's skyfall suggests that the object originated near the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars.

Croatian broadcast service HRT relayed high-resolution footage to the public, seen below.

Scientists have discovered a newly established colony of 75 gentoo penguin chicks on little Andersson Island in Antarctica. It is the first documented gentoo migration to the archipelago, an unusually southern location for the breed.

Gentoo penguins are inclined to relatively temperate, ice-free zones. Until recently, conditions within Andersson Island's latitudinal band were too icy for gentoo chicks. Similar migratory trends observed with other species suggest that the birds are responding to fast-rising global temperatures.

Antarctica and climate change

The Antarctic Peninsula is one of Earth's most rapidly warming regions. Temps there have risen 3° C on average since the early 1970s. What may seem like a minor increase has already proven catastrophic for the area's fauna and flora.

Elimination of livable terrain through industrial fishing, glacial calving, and rising sea levels, as well as the sweating-out of sensitive species, has resulted in monumental habitat losses and food chain disruptions. A recent expedition to Elephant Island found that chinstrap penguin colonies had collapsed by as much as 77% in 50 years.

Gentoo penguins as climate sentinels

Though research on Andersson Island's fledgling penguin colony has just begun, experts say the reason for the bird's uncharacteristic migration is apparent. The gentoo penguin was expelled from a region they've inhabited for millennia by a very sharp and fast uptick in atmospheric heat. The same warming effect also morphed an intractable polar region into a relatively hospitable landing for the flightless birds — at least for now.

The discovery has spurred renewed calls from the scientific community to establish a network for marine protected areas in Antarctica to help safeguard the region in the face of a rapidly changing climate.

"Penguins are a sentinel species and a great indicator of the health of the Antarctic ecosystem," stated the expedition's lead ecologist, Dr. Heather Lynch. "As expected, we're finding gentoo penguins nearly everywhere we look –- more evidence that climate change is drastically changing the mix of species here on the Antarctic Peninsula."

Marine ecologists have just discovered a vast and untouched coral reef near the Tahitian coast in French Polynesia. The reef spans nearly 3.2 kilometres and resides between 35 and 70 metres below the surface — a space known as the ocean's "twilight zone." The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is now leading the mission to map the grove and search for more like it.

Coral and the twilight zone

Overfishing and scourges of pollution have greatly depleted coral reefs in recent years. Between 2016 and 2017, 89% of the Great Barrier Reef collapsed due to climate-induced bleaching. A report published in One Earth journal last fall found that human-caused erosion has degraded 50% of the globe's coral since 1950.

The reef was found in November, during a seabed mapping expedition to the ocean's largely unexplored twilight zone.

Unlike many of Earth's reefs, the one found near Tahiti is flourishing. The reef's depth positions it far enough from the surface to protect it from coral bleaching and destructive human activity, yet close enough to give it adequate sunlight. Its discovery has given some scientists hope.

According to Dr. Julian Baberbie, one of UNESCO's marine ecologists, coral reefs are home to about 25% of all marine life.

"The next stage is to find what species live around this type of reef," he told the BBC. "As shallow waters warm faster than the deeper waters, we may find these deeper reef systems are refuges for corals in the future. We need to get out there to map these special places...and make sure we protect them for the future."