With record-breaking summer heat becoming the norm each year, running endurance events beneath the beating sun becomes a tough — and dangerous — proposition. Just this spring, one runner died and others were hospitalized during a California half-marathon in May. Another died last year during a Disneyland half-marathon amid rising numbers of heat-related deaths in the U.S.
Even Paris had to make big changes to ensure athletes didn’t overheat during he 2024 Olympic games.
Amid all this hand-wringing over how to adapt to rising heat, a group co-founded by Bear Grylls has proposed a bold alternative: run underground.
On October 25, 60 runners will compete in a marathon using the underground tunnels of Swedish mining company Boliden. The race will occur 1,000 meters below the surface, with a goal of raising $1 million for charity.
In contrast to traditional marathons, participants will have to endure subterranean conditions, total silence, and “running in complete darkness with only their head torches for light,” organizers said.
“We’re incredibly proud to host this historic event at our Garpenberg mine,” Mikael Staffas, Boliden’s president and CEO, said in a news release. “As one of the safest and most technologically advanced mines in the world, it’s the perfect setting to show that mining can be both cutting-edge and purpose-driven. We look forward to welcoming the intrepid runners and shining a light on an industry that’s critical to a sustainable future.”
Not open to the public
Unfortunately, the race is not open to the public due to “space reasons,” organizers said. The selected participants mostly come from the mining and metals industry, and will represent 17 different countries. They all have “good running experience,” with many of them employees of Boliden who were offered the chance to participate.
The race will be a traditional marathon distance of 26.2 miles. Though Boliden also said that some of the race will be “partially illuminated,” we’re guessing that extra bright headlamps will be indispensable for this one.
Moreover, event organizers hope to earn two Guinness World Records with the race: one for the world’s deepest marathon and a second record for organizing the event.
This innovative event is organized by BecomingX, a digital platform co-founded by adventurers Bear Grylls and Paul Gurney. They partnered with the International Council for Mining and Metals and settled on the Boliden-owned Garpenberg Mine for the location. According to a news release, Boliden is “one of the world’s safest mining companies.”
Last year, 40-year-old British runner Jasmin Paris became the first woman to finish the Barkley Marathon. The infamously difficult ultramarathon covers 160 rugged kilometers of trail running. This new documentary, The Finisher, uses never-before-seen footage and interviews to tell the story of her run.
A personal challenge
The film opens with a 2015 clip of Barkley race founder and organizer Gary Cantrell. "The race is too hard for women," he laughs. "They are simply not tough enough to do it."
He says he won't believe a woman could complete the course until one proves him wrong.
Mocking spite is in the spirit of the Barkley. It was originally conceived in 1977 when Martin Luther King assassin James Earl Ray escaped prison into the Tennessee backcountry but made less than 13km in 54 hours. Dismissively, local runner Gary Cantrell declared that he could've done 100 miles (160km) in that time.
Accordingly, the course -- which still takes place in Tennessee -- is deliberately punishing. "It was just so incredibly unforgiving," reflected Amelia Boone, an obstacle runner who attempted but did not complete the Barkley.
While the distance -- officially 160km but actually closer to 200 -- is nothing to sniff at, the true difficulty, as with other ultra-marathons, lies in the terrain. Runners spend a fair amount of their time climbing (more than if they summited Everest from sea level twice) and crawling through the mud. They also have to navigate and fend for themselves in the wilderness for several days. There are no rescue teams.
In an interview, Jasmin Paris explains that when she heard that women apparently couldn't finish the race, she took it as a personal challenge.
Decides to compete
In 2019, Jasmin Paris set a new record at another ultra-marathon called The Spine and became the first woman to win the overall race. According to Cantrell, this is when he began hoping that she would become the first woman to finish the Barkley.
In 2022, she ran the Barkley for the first time. Training for the event was her (admittedly extreme) way of getting fit again after her second pregnancy. She didn't finish but did become the first woman in nine years to complete the "fun run" of three 40km loops despite terrible weather and broken equipment.
In 2023, the weather was better, and so was her time. But she still didn't finish.
Undaunted, Jasmin committed to an even more intense training regiment. The film lingers on footage of her training at home in the UK, running across rolling fields with a faithful but increasingly beleaguered dog.
The fateful year
Going into 2024, she felt that this was the year she would finally finish the Barkley. She lays out her plan: push herself far beyond her limits on the first three laps to make sure she has enough time left to finish.
Fancy equipment isn't part of the ethos. She wore the same shoes and even the same shirt all three years and is proud of it. What she does have is support. Her husband stays at the gate that marks a completed loop, where he can cook and provide first aid.
There is also camaraderie between the runners, who can be seen cheering each other on, taking their brief breaks together, and sharing supplies.
After loop three, she was several hours ahead of her previous years' time but behind the pack. This was the lowest moment for her, she says -- feeling so terrible but knowing she had just enough time to finish and so would have to go back out. We watch her push through, strap back in, and leave camp alone.
Finisher
"At one point, I literally curled up on the forest floor," Paris reflects, remembering feeling so sick and exhausted that she couldn't go on. But she did, completing her fourth loop and returning to camp. Again, the worst part is knowing that she will go on.
Headlamps lit up the night's blackness as everyone at camp clapped and cheered Paris into the final loop. She was the first woman ever to start loop five. She had a little over 13 hours to complete it within the time limit.
Animated recreations of her final lap show the dark woods closing in around her and a giant hourglass running out. She was running on empty, eating almost nothing, and knowing that one minute can make the difference.
With eight minutes left, on the final stretch, Paris described a devastating realization that she might not make it. Back at the gate, everyone waited, wanting her to make it but imagining that it was no longer possible.
Jasmin Paris made it with 99 seconds to go on the clock, collapsing at the gate. The relief and catharsis of the moment can be felt through the screen.
"I didn't believe what other people told me was possible," she says, reflecting again on the now disproved idea that no woman could run the Barkley.
From the frozen bottom of the world to the tropics, 45-year-old San Franciscan Chris Edell and 59 others ran a marathon every day for a week.
It's called the World Marathon Challenge. It brings participants on a whistle-stop tour of the planet, running 42.2 kilometers at every destination. Each participant pays almost $50,000 for the privilege.
The itinerary
This year's 60 participants met up in Cape Town, South Africa on January 28. Runners were responsible for finding their own way to the starting line.
From there, they fly over the Southern Ocean in a windowless "old Soviet jet." The temperature was -10˚C when they landed. Edell recalls thinking, "Holy shit, I'm in Antarctica now."
His awe didn't stop him from running a successful marathon. The need to keep warm was likely motivational. In less than five hours, he was back at the starting line in Ultima Basecamp. Not long after that, he was back in Cape Town, enjoying the warm weather and preparing for race number two in Perth, Australia.
After that, it was onto Dubai for the "Asia" leg, and then Madrid. But number six, Edell said, was the hardest: Fortaleza, Brazil. Having trained in the cool, foggy hills of San Francisco, Edell struggled with the humid heat of Fortaleza. The fact that he'd run 211 kilometers in the past five days didn't help. It took him a half-hour longer than any previous race to finish, but he did finish.
Back on American soil for the final race in Miami, Edell got his second (seventh?) wind. He described the pain of the last race as "incredible," but he pushed on, bolstered by a growing certainty of success.
Pain is the point
Chris Edell trained for two years to prepare for the World Marathon Challenge. His running had started as a simple hobby, a way to stay fit while working a desk job in the tech industry. But it escalated over time, and eventually, he was running 56 to 160 kilometers every week.
The hardest part of the 7-7-7 challenge wasn't the running; it was the recovery. Time normally spent relaxing and recharging involved frantically jetting to the next racetrack. Competitors changed clothes in airport bathrooms and took advantage of long international flights to catch whatever sleep they could.
But the point of a challenge is, of course, to be challenging. For Edell, the goal of his extreme hobby is to have "dominated the inner voice" by prevailing through pain. One must imagine that medieval flagellants had a similar mentality.
But even for Edell, once is enough. Although it gave him a long-lasting emotional high, doing it twice, he averred, would be "totally unnecessary." So he does draw the line somewhere.
BY ESZTER HORANYI
On July 15, Andrea Sansone and Andrew Hamilton established a co-ed supported fastest known time (FKT) on the Colorado 14'ers. They summited all 58 Colorado peaks over 14,000 feet in 12 days, 6 hours, and 43 minutes.
The duo is known for their many efforts in the Colorado mountains, including Sansone’s women’s supported FKT on the Nolan’s 14 route and Hamilton’s men’s supported FKT on the Colorado 14'ers, among other impressive efforts.
To date, this is the first co-ed supported effort for the Colorado 14'ers. For comparison, Hamilton’s men’s supported FKT is 9 days, 21 hours, and 51 minutes, and Danelle Ballengee has the women’s supported FKT in 14 days, 14 hours, and 49 minutes.
Good logistics
This co-ed supported FKT is also a feat of logistics, as the 58 peaks are scattered throughout the state and range from easy walk-ups to technical scrambling. There’s no set route for completing the peaks, but a person has to climb and descend at least 3,000 feet to the summit for it to count. There are then hundreds of miles of driving in between the peaks, ranging from good highways to difficult four-wheel-drive roads.
Sansone and Hamilton’s deep experience in Colorado allowed them to tag the summits as efficiently as possible, often using some of the more direct routes between summits to save time and elevation.
The pair started the effort on July 3 at 4 am local time, with the original goal of beating Hamilton’s 2015 men’s supported FKT. But issues plagued them from the start, and they soon fell behind their aggressive goal splits.
The day prior to the effort, the Durango-Silverton train, which they were using to reduce the approach distances to the four Chicago Basin 14'ers in the San Juan Mountains, was stopped by mudslides. Undeterred, they walked the extra miles instead of rescheduling. By the time they tagged the peaks and returned, the train was running again, and they could get a ride back to civilization.
Early problems
Storms, knee issues, rockfall, and various other issues slowed the pair down. By Day 3, they realized they wouldn’t be able to hit their target time.
“The whole thing in terms of our original speed estimates kind of fell apart at the end of Day 3," says Hamilton. "We actually had great weather, but then as we were doing this thing called the Gash Ridge from Blanca [Peak] to [Mount] Lindsey, it’s like you’re kind of down-climbing the stuff, and my memory is so bad. I had told [Sansone], oh, it’s just one hard down climb, and then it’s a piece of cake. Well, it wasn’t a piece of cake. It’s actually really hard. And then the next day, I think after being cold for several hours, our legs just never really came back.”
Sleep deprivation also took its toll, especially during the first half, which featured the more technical peaks.
Hardest peaks first
“It ends up being really front-loaded with all of the really hard ranges," said Hamilton. "And so by the time you’re on Day 4 or 5, you’re kind of brain-fried. You’re on no sleep. We’re very confident climbers, but on no sleep, you just kind of forget who you are in climbing and being comfortable with your climbing skills.”
To the pair, it felt like nearly anything that could go wrong went wrong. "It’s like, okay, what are we going to get hit with next?" said Hamilton. "It’s really hard to find joy while you’re doing it and enjoy it because you just keep getting slammed in the face with all of these obstacles.”
Both agree that it was their crew and community that kept them going. From having an off-highway vehicle driver who’d been up all of the 14'ers previously and was able to shuttle them up some of the four-wheel-drive approach roads much faster than a truck could, to Sansone’s sisters coming out to provide endless support and encouragement to a friend who was willing to run everyone’s errands so that the rest of the crew could focus on the effort, it was truly a team effort.
On the verge of quitting
Over the 12-plus days, the pair and their crew continued to climb peak after peak. Sansone says they wanted to quit several times.
“There was one time when we were on Mount Massive, and our videographer opened the door [to their van], and I looked at him straight in the camera, and I said, we’re done,” recalled Sansone.
Added Hamilton: "And so Riley [Hanlon] handed me the video camera, and he’s like, ‘Well, when you get to the point where you’re going to call it, just make a little video for me.’ And at that point, we just kept hiking, and we just never took that step where we couldn’t take one more.”
A few days after finishing the effort on Longs Peak, accompanied by many friends, the couple says they are still far from processing the entire effort.
Sansone says, “I think the biggest takeaway is that we didn’t quit...No matter how hard it gets, you don’t have to quit.”
This article first appeared on iRunFar.
Nicholas Bourne, a British runner who ran the length of Africa 26 years ago, has dismissed the controversy over "Hardest Geezer" Russell Cook. Bourne would like to see Cook celebrated rather than embroiled in a debate over who was first.
Cook, 27, arrived in Tunisia on Sunday after running from the southernmost to the northernmost tip of Africa. On Instagram, the flamboyant runner with the scraggly red beard called himself “the first person to run the full length of Africa.”
The claim has caused controversy. As he drew near the finish, the World Runners Association (WRA) released a statement saying a Danish man named Jesper Olsen ran from Egypt to South Africa from 2008-2012.
The WRA ratifies around-the-world runs by examining logbooks, data, and GPS to make sure claimants are genuine. It also defines continental crossings. By its standards, ocean to ocean, with a minimum distance of 3,000km, counts as a continental crossing.
Definition dispute
The debate centers around what constitutes the length of Africa.
Some say the length of a continent is a straight line as the crow flies along its longitude or latitude. In Africa, that's 8,000km on a north-south axis.
But Cook’s team defines the “full length” as covering any route between the southern and northern extremes. A huge following defends this common-sense definition.
To add further confusion about who was first, it emerged that another man had run from South Africa to Egypt and was recognized by Guinness World Records. In 1998, Nicholas Bourne, then 28, ran for 10 months and finished by the pyramids in Cairo.
The WRA is preparing a new statement recognizing Bourne as the first. But Bourne himself thinks the controversy is overblown.
“The term 'storm in a teacup' springs to mind," Bourne told ExplorersWeb. "My feelings are congratulations to Russ because what he’s done is absolutely phenomenal. To run that distance and in that time, I have a very good understanding of how hard and difficult it is."
He believes there wouldn’t be this debate if Russ Cook had just claimed that he was the first to run from the southernmost tip to the northernmost tip of Africa, but that is beside the point.
“It’s so difficult with all the things that get thrown at you,” said Bourne, a former model who now runs a sports management agency. "Russell had some incidents of being held up by people with machetes and running through war zones. I totally understand what he's been through."
What's important
Bourne wants people to focus on what's important, such as the $1 million that Cook raised for charity.
The debate has stirred good memories for Bourne. He’s gone through old pictures and reminisced about all the people he met during the adventure.
Bourne went back and cycled the same route in 2015. What struck him most was how the cities had grown since his run in 1998, especially in Kenya.
What does the WRA say?
Marie Leautey is a member of the WRA and ran around the world in 2022. She also commends Cook’s achievement. But she says he is not the first in the WRA’s eyes.
She compares it to running across America. Many runners do different routes, some from San Francisco to New York, others from Los Angeles to Miami. They are all considered running across America.
“If I said I have run from Seattle to New York, it would be self-evident that I have run, in effect, a transcontinental length of the continent,” she said. "And people would not go into the details of where the crow flies, or the length of, the lines of latitude, etc.
“I would struggle to understand why this [would be any different in Africa]," she added. “Because the north-south axis of Africa has been run so few times (three as far as I now know), it would be easy and deceitful to [claim a] 'first in history' for every route a runner takes.”
Today, Russ Cook finished his south-north run along the entire length of Africa after 350 days. All along, he has said that he was aiming to become the first to finish this mega-journey.
But a press release by the World Runners Association, amplified on Facebook by fellow runner Tony Mangan, takes issue with that claim. It states that Jesper Kenn Olsen of Denmark first ran the length of Africa between 2008-2012.
"It's disheartening to see that when Jesper, myself, and even the governing body for this kind of running, the World Runners Association, and others have tried to bring this error to Russ Cook's attention, they have been met with resistance and denial from his crew and supporters," wrote Mangan. "As runners, we should hold each other accountable and strive for honesty and integrity within our community."
Olsen began his run on Dec. 28, 2008 and concluded it 12,792km later at the Cape of Good Hope. His north-south route went through Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa.
But even if Cook is simply the first to do it within a year, it remains an impressive feat of endurance. Late Friday night, the 27-year-old British athlete checked in from Tunisia, the “16th and final” country of his tour.
“Here we go. 2 days to go. Final push,” he announced.
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Today, Cook reached Africa’s northernmost point, Ras Ben Sakka, 22km north of the Mediterranean port city of Bizerte. It’s over 16,000 kilometers and 19 million steps north of his starting point in Cape Agulhas, South Africa.
Given the convoluted course of Cook’s yearlong journey, his success was unlikely. Cook, aka @hardestgeezer, previously endured a gunpoint robbery in Angola that cost him his passport. Customs hassles in Algeria ensued after myriad other delays had already hazed him.
Cook somehow kept his outward stoicism intact through logistical and physical challenges including diarrhea on what looks like a near-constant basis. In total, he came in over 100 days behind his original schedule despite running over a marathon every day.
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“The relentless nature of this mission is quite something,” Cook said after the robbery. “Problems from every angle. No respite. Till the bitter end.”
Party time
Controversy aside, the end figures to be anything but bitter. A Bizerte hotel party awaited Cook, his team, and any qualifying supporters and acolytes after he broke the tape.
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The Great Himalayan Trail is a monster trek, the project of a lifetime for long-distance walkers. Still not impressed? Well, try to run it then.
Besides the speed climbers aiming for FKTs (Fastest Known Times) on the familiar giant peaks, ultrarunners are increasingly coming to Nepal to confront the rare challenge of altitude and distance. For trekkers and climbers on their way to base camp, it's not unusual to see runners whizz by in shorts, sneakers, and sometimes a small backpack.
By far the longest of all the events is the Great Himal Race. This year will mark its second running after the inaugural race in 2017. The route links Hilsa, in western Nepal on the Tibetan border, with Kangchenjunga Base Camp, on the eastern border with Sikkim (India).
The route follows the Great Himalayan Trail, traversing the entire country from west to east. It totals 1,700km and 90,000 vertical meters and includes 14 mountain passes above 5,000m over 64 stages. On 50 of these, the athletes stay in lodges or tents. On the other 14, they must carry all their gear and supplies on their backs.
French runner Bruno Poirier is organizing the race through outfitter Les Chevaliers Du Vent. Twenty-nine runners have signed up, including Poirier.
The participants are a mix of Nepalese and foreign climbers. Yesterday, they started the five-day trek to their starting point at Hilsa.
The race itself begins on April 9 and continues non-stop until May 31, when the survivors arrive at Kangchenjunga Base Camp.
A shorter option
The organizers have also put together a second, shorter version, linking Annapurna Base Camp with Lukla in the Khumbu. This is "just" 850 km and 41,000m vertical gain over 28 stages. It will take place from April 25 to May 23. Read more about it here.
American ultrarunner Camille Herron has set another world record.
This time, Herron ran 560.33 miles (901.8km) to set a new women’s six-day world record at the 2024 lululemon FURTHER event in La Quinta, California.
The event ran March 6-12 to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8. New Zealand’s Sandra Barwick set the previous record of 549.063 miles in Australia in 1990, a record that’s stood for 34 years.
Herron broke that record by more than 11 miles and also achieved at least 12 interim world records and milestones along the way. Her effort comes out to an average pace of at least 15:22 per mile over the entire six days. This includes hours of stopped time, which Herron used for sleeping, resting, eating, drinking, and more.
The race was held on a 2.55-mile loop made up of largely dirt. Herron ran 220 laps.
Here are the records, world bests, and other milestones that Herron hit en route. This was Herron’s approximate record progression through the six days:
- 48-hour USATF American road record – 247.7 miles (Her IAU world record and USATF American track record still stand at 270.5 miles from her 2023 effort at the time-based event.)
- 300 miles – 59:54:58 (hours:minutes:seconds)
- 500 kilometers – 62:50:45
- 3 days – 342 miles
- 600 kilometers – 81:23:38
- 400 miles – 88:34:26
- 4 days – 429.8 miles
- 700 kilometers – 98:33:59
- 800 kilometers – 117:44:55
- 500 miles – 118:19:17
- 5 days – 501.7 miles
- 900 kilometers – 142:40:58
- 6-day IAU world best performance benchmark – at least 560 miles
This story was first published on iRunFar.
On Jan. 11, Matthew Pavitt set a new FKT (Fastest Known Time) for a winter traverse of the Cuillin Ridge, located in Scotland's Isle of Skye.
He made it in 4 hours 35 minutes, and 17 seconds. That's 20 minutes less than the earlier FKT set on Feb. 26, 2018 by Uisdean Hawthorn, who completed it in 4 hours and 57 minutes.
The Cuillin Ridge traverse is a climb that follows a continuous 12km ridge crest from start to end. The route traverses the main summits of the Black Cuillin Mountains on the Isle of Skye.
The traverse is considered one of Britain’s finest mountaineering challenges. It requires crossing more than 30 summits and usually takes about two days. The terrain includes around 3,000m of ascent and descent, with some difficult climbing pitches on the TD Gap, King’s Chimney, and the Inaccessible Pinnacle.
Local climbers Leslie Shabolt and Alastair McLaren first did the traverse on June 10, 1911. They went from south to north in a little over 12 hours.
Pavitt started his north-south traverse at 10:29 am from Sgurr nan Gillean and finished at Gars-bheinn at 3:04 pm.
Too nice a day?
Pavitt wore crampons from start to end, did all the climbs, and included all the summits. Nevertheless, he felt obliged to apologize that the weather that day might not have been wintry enough.
”Were things rimed up to typical Scottish perfect expectations?" he wrote on social media. "No is the short answer. But equally, it didn’t really feel like summer or rock climbing at all.”
Finlay Wild holds the FKT of this traverse in a non-winter season. On Oct. 12, 2013, he did it in 2 hours, 59 minutes, and 22 seconds.
Joffrey Maluski of France has cycled 1,436km across Lapland at the coldest, darkest time of year. Starting in the Loften Islands of western Norway, Maluski fatbiked through Sweden and Finland before heading back into Norway, ending in Vardø. The entire expedition took 25 days. He averaged 57km a day.
It took him four days by train from France to northern Norway, followed by a ferry ride to the Loften Islands. There, he started cycling.
In midwinter, there are only a few hours of daylight each day. Most of the time, he pedaled through the polar night. Cycling in near-constant darkness was new to him.
He carried all his equipment on his fat bike, including a lot of extra photography gear to document the journey. To get aerials, he even took a drone with him. It was difficult to charge all this photography equipment. There wasn't enough sunlight to deploy solar panels. He brought several batteries and power banks, but twice he had to stop in towns to charge. At the same time, he treated himself to a non-dehydrated meal.
Because of these treats, he wasn't unsupported, but he did carry everything else with him. His food included 30 dehydrated dinners, meal replacement bars, chocolate, soup, an electrolyte powder, and three kilos of muesli. A perk of cycling in snow is that you don’t need to carry water. You just need to wait for it to melt.
Over the 25 days, the temperature averaged -20˚C, with a low of -28˚ at the start of January when his route reentered Norway. The first few days had rain and thunderstorms, but he kept pedaling. He camped for all but one night.
Maluski saw the northern lights many times. The slightly longer days during the last week of the journey were a particular treat. The sky was in a permanent state of sunrise and sunset from 10 am to 2 pm every day.
“It has been such an incredible, and cold, adventure,” he commented yesterday after finishing.
Maluski has previously undertaken several long-distance cycling expeditions. Late last winter, he biked across Iceland.
An infamous 2021 ultra-marathon that tragically killed 21 people has come full circle on its organizers.
The northwest China race turned deadly overnight on May 22, 2021, when desperate weather conditions suddenly befell the course. Disoriented runners scattered, either to safety or calamity.
Now, seven people who helped plan the event will face jail time. A court in Baiyin, Gansu (where the race occurred) leveled three- to five-year sentences on the individuals, state news agency Xinhua reported.
Dereliction of duty and “organizing a large-scale event that led to a significant safety incident” were among the charges.
Officials allowed the race to go on despite warnings of coming harsh weather. The forecasts came to bear early in the 100-kilometer outing. Rain and hail pounded the thinly clad runners, along with wind so strong that it flattened some to the ground.
“It was hard to stand up straight and move forward,” one survivor told Xinhua News at the time. “When the wind was the strongest, I had to grab the ground with both hands to avoid being blown away.
“I felt nothing but cold…I fainted halfway down the mountain.”
Thirty-one-year-old Liang Jing, a world-class ultramarathoner, was among the deceased. And while China’s long-distance running community had flourished leading up to the incident, it’s now laboring under tightened regulations. Beijing’s sport ministry suspended events, citing “national safety standards,” shortly after the incident, The Guardian reported.
Dave Alley doesn't consider himself a kayaker. Yet the 47-year-old Australian has just set an impressive new fastest known time (FKT) on Australia's longest waterway, the Murray River.
Alley paddled the 2,287km from Bringenbrong Bridge in New South Wales to Wellington in South Australia in 15 days, 11 hours, and 33 minutes (including a 12-hour time penalty), breaking a record that's stood since 1993.
Alley is an endurance athlete and coach with an impressive list of accomplishments. But notably missing from that list is much — if any — experience in a kayak.
18 months of prep
"It was an 18-month turnaround from [the] initial concept to hitting the water on day one," Alley told ExplorersWeb.
"I was like a sponge, soaking up as much learning as I could in the time I had available. But I was essentially self-taught, with no background in the sport."
Kayaking the Murray end-to-end gives a flavor reminiscent of America's Mississippi River — sometimes wild, sometimes industrialized, with locks to navigate, submerged obstacles to avoid, and slowing currents as the waterway reaches the coast. And like Old Man River, the Mighty Murray has suffered from low water flows in recent years.
Alley said that as he approaches his fifties, he's increasingly aware that he can't wait around for perfect adventuring conditions. The clock is always ticking. And because the Murray's headwaters are a three-day drive from his house, he also couldn't wait for ideal weather.
"The weather gods were against me from day one. On arrival, we quickly established that the river flow was down by a staggering 300% at times from the previous record holder back in 1993. I also had headwinds from day 1, battled storms, and temperature ranges from -3˚C to 41˚C."
Sleep deprivation, capsizing, and more
Alley racked up his impressive time through a combination of top physical conditioning, mental fortitude, and sleep deprivation — a familiar recipe to followers of endurance endeavors. He paddled up to 23 hours a day and slept on the riverbank. Occasionally, he grabbed a nap in the back of a support vehicle.
"I was hallucinating," the athlete said. "I also fell asleep while paddling!"
He had half a dozen capsizes throughout the trip caused by falling asleep or hitting submerged logs.
In addition to the unfortunate weather and low water, Alley suffered a mental blow when he lost his phone during a capsize on day one, We Are Explorers reported. With none of the podcasts and audiobooks he'd downloaded available to keep him sharp, he was faced with the daunting prospect of endless hours of silent paddling.
A light and fast boat
A crew of seven followed behind while Alley paddled his 6m Fusion LR6 TK1 kayak, a boat that had been customized with bulkheads fore and aft before setting out. Alley happily accepted the extra weight of the bulkheads for the additional strength they lent his boat. Even with the customizations, the whole thing came out to only 12kg. The support boat carried his food, fuel, and other supplies.
According to Alley, "Kayaking the Murray River is done by several adventurers each year. Most do it for the challenge and experience of stopping off along the way and soaking up the scenery and wildlife. However, there are always those [who] like to push the boundaries of what’s possible."
Ultimately, the paddler broke a 30-year-old record by 19 hours and 25 minutes despite considerably more challenging river conditions, a fact he says gives him both "satisfaction and pride."
Not bad for someone who was a kayaking novice a mere year and a half ago.
Kilian Jornet has been designing gear since he was a toddler.
Is there any other age group you would expect to produce the most radical outdoor equipment concepts?
Moments into Sketching the Future, Jornet references one of these embryonic designs. It’s a pair of shoes with attachments for skis, crampons and other specialty ice attachments, and a robust set of wheels for “if you wanted to go to the roads.”
The shoe company he started as an adult, Nnormal, isn’t there — yet. But as Jornet explains, actualization of dreams is a progressive pursuit, more so than a finish line.
It’s a familiar modality for any athlete.
“Most of the time you will not achieve what you are looking for,” he says. “But that should not stop us.”
No ultrarunner has produced more successful results. As Jornet’s longtime friend (and, recently, Nnormal ambassador) Dakota Jones puts it, “He’s transcended adjectives at this point. He’s best runner in our sport.”
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His worst regret
Jornet apparently floats above it all, occupying a notably consistent state that’s equal parts clear-eyed, candid, and childlike. It’s almost no wonder that the last thing on his list is limiting the footprint of his waste.
“The worst part” of his 15+ year career? The fact that he’s ragged out somewhere around 200 pairs of shoes, and doesn’t know where any of them wound up. He rankles at this waste because he’s concerned about his young daughters’ future.
So he seeks to build a shoe that lasts longer. In some ways, there couldn’t be a more normal guy behind Nnormal.
Watch Jornet comfortably switch contexts throughout Sketching the Future. As typical experienced runner guy, he recounts races and critiques his performance. As casual witness to environmental shifts, he makes it clear that he wants to participate in solutions.
Then as an explorer, he craves to push his own limits — which is something the film seems to want to do, too.
Moving beyond racing
“Jumping to the unknown, it’s something I have been searching for as an athlete — many times,” he says. During his prolonged focus on racing, “probably the easiest thing was to [say] ok, let’s keep on focusing on these distances where I feel very comfortable. But that’s very boring and that’s not progressing.”
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For me, Sketching the Future reaches its crescendo too early. The full film didn’t make me want anything except to sit across the table from Jornet while he opens his childhood notebooks and explains the protean ideas inside.
But the narrative won’t let it happen. The fact that the warp-speed creativity of a toddler culminates in a “Nnormal” black running shoe hits more stoically than I’d like.
Yes, it's an accomplishment for Jornet and the design team that the shoes stand up to hundreds of kilometers of racing. But that, too, reflects a very adult reduction of variables.
Still, the narrative is competent, and Jornet’s force of personality is mostly enough to carry it. All those who know that “most of the time you will not achieve what you are looking for” likely will not be stopped.
This article was originally published on GearJunkie.
Unsteady, vibrating skateboard wheels catapult forward foot-by-foot as a team of three 19-year-old Californian skate bums push along the road shoulder, wheels aimed for the Atlantic coast. They are doggedly pushing along the Santiam Scenic Byway in Oregon, surrounded by dark, tall Douglas firs and a constant stream of cars and semis that pass inches from their legs.
Packed to the gills with camping gear, a 1969 Firebird (their support vehicle) helps shuttle the skaters to and from impromptu rendezvous points. Jack Smith — one of these young skate bums — pushes on a tiny, proline skateboard with a translucent deck. Its first-generation urethane wheels are top-class for 1976, but tiny and insufficient for a cross-country journey. Smith’s feet can barely fit on his skate deck because it is so small.
Their route would take them from Lebanon, Ore., up through the Northern U.S. to Williamsburg, Va. The whole plan was haphazard, with a rough route scouted out to hopefully avoid the heat of the American Southwest.
Each skater, three in total, would earn $500 from a skate company (Roller Sports, Inc.) if they successfully made it across the country. Adjusted for inflation, that'd be over two grand today. The group would skate from Oregon to Virginia and cross through 11 states, taking 32 days to complete the journey.
“We had no idea what we were doing. We really didn't have a clue as to how many miles we could cover a day because we didn't train for the thing at all. You know, we were 19 and full of ourselves and thought, ‘Let's just go do this,’” said Smith.
A lifetime of skate trips
Jack Smith, now 66 years old, has a soft, welcoming voice. He uses phrases like “knuckleheads” and speaks slowly and thoughtfully, just like you’d expect from a man who has lived his whole life on the California coast.
Smith has skateboarded coast to coast across the United States five times, yet there’s no bravado in his storytelling. For such a feat, someone would definitely have the space to brag, but Smith refrains. Sure, he likes to reminisce, but he is reserved in his storytelling. You have to push him for details.
In the 1970s in California, the skate scene was evolving and hot. Technology was advancing from clay wheels to urethane and Smith was kicking concrete day in and day out in Morro Bay, competing in skate slalom competitions (where skaters race and weave through cones) and dreaming up new ways to spend his time on a skate deck.
The inaugural 1976 cross-country skate
Then came the 1976 trip, which would herald in a lifetime of skate crossings for Smith, pushing from the Pacific to cities on the East Coast. The routes over time would vary slightly, one time ending in New York; another time the team dipped down through Iowa. Always, the trip was dictated by unforeseen road conditions, closures, or construction. “You become a connoisseur of shoulders and road surface,” said Smith.
Most folks would call it quits after one cross-country trip on a skateboard. But for Smith, the journey continues to strike a nerve. “The thing I tell everybody is if you do this trip, it will change your life,” said Smith. Nothing about these attempts is easy, and in 1976 the team was woefully unprepared. “It was much harder than any of us expected,” says Smith.
Leaving Lebanon, Ore., on the first day of the ‘76 trip, the team would take on Santiam Pass, a 4,816-foot mountain pass in the Cascade Range. As the team pushed upward for miles, they had to teach themselves to push with both legs to avoid cramps and severe fatigue. Their feet would rattle and go numb, or hours would be spent descending a steep grade weaving back and forth across a lane.
From Oregon, the team would push through the boonies of Idaho and through small towns and cattle fields in the mountain states. The Midwest would bring more expanses of unfamiliar farmland that then opened up to the tough, relentless rolling hills of West Virginia. The team would finish to small flurry of press and meager stacks of cash, driving the Firebird on a winding trip back across the country to California once again.
Jack Smith: The founding father of long-distance skateboarding
Back in Morro Bay, years rolled by as Smith worked in the skate and sports world. But the journey of skating across the U.S. would soon return, this time as a tool to raise money for charity. In 1984, Smith headed out with a new team, completing the crossing in 26 days to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Nineteen years later, Smith completed another cross-country trip, this time raising money for Lowe Syndrome (which Smith’s son passed away from in 2003).
With each new attempt, new technology, skate-related or otherwise, improved conditions and route finding. In 2003 especially, longboards with drop decks built specifically for long-distance pushing had hit the scene. The team didn’t train, but still cut their time down to 21 days.
Another 10 years went by until Smith gathered a team together to raise money for Alzheimer’s research. The team of five, including two women, completed the attempt in 23 days. Smith was 56 and the oldest person to complete a cross-country trip on a skateboard at the time.
In a journal entry from the trip, Smith reflects on their progress: "The team is getting stronger every day. What we are doing is so foreign to 99% of the skateboarding world. It's hard to explain the stoke in pushing up miles of 6% grade, on rough road in 100+ degree heat. But the stoke is definitely there."
On that 2013 trip, Smith would injure himself, hitting a crack in the road and fracturing his elbow. “I was still able to finish skating, but the last few days were pretty painful,” said Smith.
Flash forward only three years, and Smith was skating again for his last trip, this time on an electric skateboard. Which unbelievably, is an artifact you can find at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. While Smith wasn’t pushing, the attempt was still physically and mentally draining. It was just him, the board, and cars whizzing by too close for comfort.
“Just standing on a board your legs cramp,” said Smith. “I would actually get off the board every two to three miles and walk around because I knew if I had to bail, my feet weren't gonna work and I would have a bad crash.”
Smith stopped in Mountain Home, Idaho, after several close calls with the grills of semi trucks. Two years later, in 2018, he would return to Idaho to complete the journey. The trip from Idaho took 45 days and covered 2,394 miles.
On the road
In 1976, the heat was horrendous and money was tight. The team wasn’t trying to set a speed record, all they wanted to do was make it to the Atlantic Coast. So, days often included detours. “When you're pushing a skateboard across America, you're in that same environment for three or four days,” said Smith. “It's up close and personal.”
Questions were abundant and generosity was frequent. One night, the skaters stayed at a “hippie man’s” property, slinking into his pond to clean their grimy bodies.
Sometimes their fame would precede them. Arriving in Hopkins, Minn., on the outskirts of Minneapolis, a marquee with big letters spelled out their arrival: Welcome Skateboarders.
Still, years later the allure of cross-country skating has really only captured a very niche audience. But, Smith has become an integral figurehead in the long-distance skate movement.
For one, Smith’s skateboard attempts have begun to formalize a routine for crossing the U.S. by skate deck. In all of the group attempts, Smith and the rest of the team would use a leapfrog relay method. One skater starts, a support vehicle drives several miles ahead and another skater starts from the van, skating onward until the van picks up the skater behind and meets them to switch out.
Most recently, a team of four, some of the world’s top long-distance skateboarders, set the record for the fastest crossing of the U.S. by skateboard using the leapfrog method while following the trend Smith started — raising money for the Invisible Disabilities Association.
The team completed the journey in 17 days and 6 hours and is in the process of formalizing FKT guidelines for the route. Smith drove the support vehicle. “I could have never imagined in 1976 that almost 50 years later I would be driving a support vehicle for a team attempting to break [my] record,” said Smith.
What's changed since 1976
“In the early days, there was no specialized equipment. I mean, that first trip, I can't even remember what kind of shoes we wore. In ‘84, we actually sent a letter to Nike and they sent us three pairs of shoes,” said Smith. “We used to joke that we never used the Nikes when we went downhill. Cause we didn't wanna burn 'em up.”
Now, skaters have boards and even paddleboard-style poles designed for pushing. Technical running and cycling gear has helped immensely too, with skaters often wearing running tights and running shoes for their attempts.
“The actual skating equipment is light-years beyond what was used in the early days. We adapted regular skateboarding equipment back in those days to fit our needs. Whereas now you can buy off-the-shelf long-distance skating gear,” said Smith.
The community has grown as well. “In ‘76, there was no cross-country skate community,” said Smith. “If there was, there were three guys that were in it.”
Now, there is a small but mighty group of long-distance skateboarders who compete in competitions around the world, including a 24-hour ultra-skate at the Miami Speedway. Others, like Paul Kent, specialize in “wild,” off-the-beaten-path attempts, with gnarly downhill descents and pushes through gravel.
“It was kind of bittersweet,” Smith tells us while driving the support vehicle. “I'm realizing that I probably won't be doing any more long-distance pushes myself. I'm 66 now. I still skate, but I think my really long-distance days are in the rearview mirror.”
Even with his long-distance days behind him, when Smith talks, this lifetime skateboarder pulls you back to 1976. Feet to pavement — push, push, glide — a lulling pattern of road-shoulder survival. With maps stuffed in the glove box and the radio blasting in the boxy Pontiac, there is only a simple task at hand: stay alive, and get to the other coast.
As we reported earlier this week, Paul Bonhomme set out to run the entire length of the Alps in 28 days. That's 2,650km and a total of 150,000 vertical meters. But last night, Bonhomme had to call it quits because of a nagging injury. He stopped after 500km at the foot of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo in the Italian Dolomites.
Bonhomme initially injured his foot on the second day, after 154km. He was greeting some people on a downhill and was not looking at his foot placement. His left foot landed sideways and he felt a slight crack in the ankle.
He thought it wasn't serious, but the discomfort continued. Bonhomme changed the way he ran, putting most of the weight on his right leg. He continued this way for another 300km, but the plantar fasciitis felt like electric shocks. Last night, his right knee also began to give him problems. In the end, Bonhomme had to give up.
Mountain guide Paul Bonhomme has set out to run the length of the entire Alps in 28 days. He will have to cover 2,650km and a total of 150,000 vertical meters.
On Saturday at 4 am, he started from Muggia, Italy. He will cross eight countries before finishing in Monaco.
"This is a childhood dream, a huge childhood dream," wrote Bonhomme. "This is a monster. This is a dance. These are the [whole] Alps...from the Adriatic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea."
He says this project has been in his head for almost 20 years. Although the climbing is not demanding technically, it will be a huge endurance effort.
Three team members, Jean David Laurence, Rosa Okmen, and Christophe Angot will help Bonhomme along the way. He invites supporters to follow his tracker and even join him on sections of the route.
Jamie Aarons has completed Scotland’s Munro challenge in record time. The 43-year-old woman started on May 26 and scaled all 282 mountains above 3,000 feet in 31 days, 10 hours, and 27 minutes. That's faster than all previous men and women.
To qualify for the record, she couldn't use any motorized vehicle between the peaks. The ultrarunner zigzagged her way by running, cycling, and kayaking. Overall, she ran 1,315km, cycled 1,249km (830km on a road bike and 370km by mountain bike), and kayaked 11km.
She summited her first Munro on the Isle of Skye and did her last, Ben Kilbreck, on June 26.
Donnie Campbell held the previous record. The former Marine completed it in 31 days, 23 hours, and two minutes in 2020. Libby Kerr and Lisa Trollope set the previous female record of 76 days and 10 hours in 2017.
This is not the first time Aarons has completed the Munros, but it is the first time she has attempted to do so in record time. She had climbed them twice previously, with her partner. This time, she set a staggering pace. On average, she summited an astonishing nine Munros a day. Her maximum was 14 in a 24-hour period.
At the start of the journey, she told the BBC, "My journey will take me across the length and breadth of Scotland, across sea and lochs, from remote glens to the highest point in the United Kingdom, and across more miles of bog than I care to think about.”
One of the main difficulties was the weather. It was, for Scotland, too good. At first, she found herself in the middle of a heatwave. Avoiding sunburn and dehydration was difficult.
Then she found herself contending with flooding and storms. She was even in the vicinity when a lightning strike took down the stone pillar on Ben Nevis on June 12.
The storms made river crossings particularly difficult. Once, she had to reroute and add an extra kilometer to the journey.
She had planned her route meticulously for two years. During the challenge, a six-person logistics team made sure every piece of equipment was in the right place at the right time for her.
She received advice from previous Munro runners, had support runners to help her keep pace, and used previous record holder Donnie Campbell's numbers as a guide. He had slept for eight hours a night, for example, so Aarons cut this down to four hours. Although she was exhausted by the end, she thought that the time she saved would be enough to clinch the record. She was right.
When we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the web. Sometimes we’re a little too plugged in and browsing adventure reads can turn from minutes to hours. To nourish your adventure fix, here are some of the best adventure links we’ve discovered this week.
Tragic accident with sled dogs: Sled dogs in Aasiaat, West Greenland have bitten a six-year-old boy to death. They were chained outside the city’s ski club when the boy approached the animals too closely. Four of the dogs have been euthanized. This is a stark reminder that arctic sled dogs are not pets, they are working animals.
Thru-hiking showed me how lonely I was: Maggie Slepian had spent most of her adulthood feeling proud that she was so independent. It also made her feel lonely. Thru-hiking gave her a community of people with a shared goal. Walking for months on end, without home comforts, forced her to do something she hadn’t done for years: ask for help and rely on the people around her.
A new world record across the Cook Strait: Andy Donaldson (UK) is attempting to complete the Oceans Seven challenge. He has now completed his third swim and set a new world record in the process. He crossed the 22km Cook Strait in New Zealand in four hours and 33 minutes, cutting four minutes off Casey Glover’s 15-year-old speed record.
Hard science, hard running go together
Why are so many scientists hardcore endurance runners? Marathons, ultramarathons, triathlons...pick any long-distance endurance race and you find that scientists are competing more often than they statistically should. In particular, physicists and astronomers seem to appear frequently in these races. Wired investigates why so many from these particular fields enjoy such sports.
Angela Eiter’s new mission: Legendary climber Angela Eiter became the first woman to climb 9b in 2017. In 2020, she made the first-ever ascent of another 9b route. Follow her as she seeks more firsts.
Using satellites to monitor natural disasters: Only researchers used to be able to map changes on Earth because of climate change or natural disasters. Now geographer Qiusheng Wu has detailed the various open-access sites that anyone can use to observe how coastlines, rivers, and wildland areas have changed over time. We can even monitor volcanic eruptions or wildfires as they happen.
Landing a plane in an emergency: It’s been a plot in several well-known films. The pilot falls ill and a tannoy asks: Are there any volunteers to land the plane? Unfortunately for would-be heroes, commercial pilot Patrick Smith says "There is a zero percent chance of someone pulling that off.”
Yet -- why is this not surprising? -- almost half of the men with no training said in a survey that they were confident they could land the plane. The clinical name for this wild overconfidence is the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Protecting the Atacama
A national park to protect the super blooms in the Atacama Desert: The Atacama is the driest desert in the world, and one of the most barren. At least, that is how it seems until a winter rain. Suddenly, the usually bare land fills with pink, amber, and gold flowers. It is known as desierto florido (flowering desert).
This used to happen every decade, but as the rains become more frequent, it now happens almost every year in some parts of the desert. To protect the blooms, Chile has made it a 57,000-hectare national park.
Many consider Abdellatief Abou Heif the greatest long-distance swimmer ever. In Egypt, he was a national hero. Streets and buildings bore his name. In 1991, the International Swimming Hall of Fame voted him the Marathon Swimmer of the Century. Yet many outside Egypt or the world of open-water swimming have never heard of him.
Born in 1929, Abou Heif was one of 15 children. All of them liked sports, but he was the only swimmer. Everyone else played ping pong. His desire to swim came from the 1932 film, Tarzan the Ape Man. He loved the actor playing Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller. In the 1920s, Weissmuller had won five Olympic medals swimming. That was all Abou Heif needed for inspiration.
His success in the water started at an early age. He won his first races in Alexandria, the city he was born in, at the age of nine. Abou Heif then went to school in the UK, first at Eton College and then at Sandhurst Military Academy. He returned to Egypt to serve in the army and eventually became a colonel. He continued swimming throughout.
First swims
His first famous win came in 1953, in a 29km race on the river Seine in France. Two years later, already the world’s top marathon swimmer, he was invited to take part in a race across the English Channel. He had already swum the Channel twice but never in a race.
Swimming was the national sport in Egypt, and Egyptian swimmers had won all but one of the Channel races since they began in 1950. This was a time when marathon swims had substantial prize money. For the 1955 race, it was £1000 - enough to buy a house at the time. It drew in the best swimmers in the world. All eyes were on Abou Heif.
The starting conditions in France were good but worsened as the race continued. For 12 hours, Abou Heif and Tom Park, the American open-water champion, swam neck and neck. Then with a few kilometers to go. Abou Heif pulled away and won by 17 minutes. Only three people managed to finish the race.
He donated his winnings to the family of a swimmer who had died trying to make the crossing. He wanted to return in 1956, but when Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, all Egyptians were banned from entering the race. Tom Parks won that year. By the time Abou Heif was allowed to re-enter, the race had come to an end.
Three-time overall champion
Between his 1953 river Seine swim and 1972, he took part in 68 international races, all between 30 and 80km. He won many of them and placed less than third in just 12 races.
A circuit of swims took place in Canada, the U.S., Italy, and South America. Swimmers received points for every race, like Formula I drivers, and the one with the most points at the end of the circuit was the overall champion. Abou Heif earned that distinction in 1964, 1965, and 1968.
A few of Abou Heif's swims were particularly striking. In 1963, he raced 96.5km across Lake Michigan. It was the longest open water race ever held. Professional marathon swimmers didn't wear wetsuits. Unlike triathletes, they still don't. Resisting cold was considered part of the challenge. So many of the swimmers' body types were closer to walruses than whippets.
Abou Heif battled strong waves and currents, and a water temperature of 11˚C. He was up against Ted Erikson. Erikson was a formidable rival. He had become the first to cross Lake Michigan two years earlier and was also a member of the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame.
It was a two-man race but Abou Heif won in a time of 34 hours and 38 minutes. Erikson finished in 37 hours and 31 minutes.
Swam a two-man relay by himself and won
Two years later, he swim in a relay race in Montreal with partner Giulio Travaglio of Italy. They were supposed to alternate every hour, but Travaglio had to pull out after the first hour because of illness. So Abou Heif swam the whole race himself and won. It took him 30 hours, and every other relay team pulled out. The race was so difficult that it was never staged again.
This was not the first or last time Abou Heif outlasted everyone else. Where others pulled out because of the weather or water temperature, the Nile Crocodile, as he was known, battled on. No patch of water seemed too challenging for him. At the end of every race, while others struggled to finish, he would sprint to the finish line.
Despite his prowess, his physique did not suggest such a formidable athlete. He stood five foot and ten inches and weighed between 200 and 260 pounds.
A trencherman appetite
Most athletes stuck to a regimented diet and race-day eating plan. Abou Heif was different. He had a rough plan but ate by instinct. Often he showed up about four hours before a race and polished off a huge meal of two whole chickens, milk, and orange juice. Occasionally he sat down to eat but stopped after a few mouthfuls. If he was not hungry, he wouldn’t force himself.
Similarly, during the race, he swam to his own tune. Everyone else drank liquid-based top-ups. Not Abou Heif. In his book Wind, Waves and Sunburn, Conrad Wennerberg recalls how during the La Tuque 24 Hour Swim (a two-man, 24-hour relay in chilly northern Quebec) he sent out for solid food. Abou Heif jumped out of the water and scarfed down two burgers, three fried eggs, and six glasses of orange soda. Ten minutes later he was swimming again at full speed.
“It would kill other swimmers…Abou Heif is the only swimmer who can do such a thing,” wrote Wennerberg.
In 1975, Abou Heif retired from racing. He continued to be revered until his death in 2008.
“If an emblem were made that represents Abou Heif and his feats, it would have a big set of beautiful white teeth amid a friendly grin and a picture of a huge stomach," writes the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Nick Ray was cruising along in his kayak, about halfway through a one-year paddle around Scotland.
Then something went terribly wrong.
Ray reported a stroke-like incident that hospitalized him on the morning of March 9. Days later, the prognosis had changed to a possible palsy. Still, work remains ahead of the paddler if he seeks to get back in the boat.
He described the early part of the episode on Twitter. "To say I’m gutted is an understatement," he wrote.
My day began like this. A 3 hour ambulance journey & now in casualty. It seems I suffered a small stroke last night. I’m going to be admitted for observation. To say I’m gutted is an understatement. A huge thank you to my hosts Carole & Jim for taking such wonderful care of me. pic.twitter.com/dEZ6srh4n6
— Nick Ray (@LifeAfloat) March 9, 2023
It’d be hard to knock Ray for feeling discouraged. He started his Scottish circumnavigation on Aug. 28, 2022. The retirement-age explorer sought to “explore the incredible coastline of Scotland, following my heart, my inquisitiveness, and my dreams,” he wrote at the time.
If all went according to plan, his 12-month journey would have come to an end on his 60th birthday this August.
Now, that outcome’s been thrown into serious jeopardy. Though he wasn’t sharing live tracking of his trip, he’d made it to Kilt Rock as of late February — paddling from his embarkation point of Tobermory.
Ray was still under examination as of this afternoon, alternately tweeting his experiences in the hospital and memories from his trip. Notably, he’d been suffering from gout in the week leading up to his hospitalization. He reported he'd paused his trip due to the illness on March 8, the day before the episode.
I’m off the water. Not because of the snow but because of gout! This flared up a week ago making it incredibly painful to walk, wear my kayaking footwear & generally feeling rotten. pic.twitter.com/P7zXyHeKWP
— Nick Ray (@LifeAfloat) March 8, 2023
A serious setback
By March 10, he tweeted the circumstances surrounding his episode had “been deemed complicated.” Yesterday, he stated he’d still be hospitalized for a few days. He would require speech and language therapy, and his eyesight was affected, he wrote.
But a glimmer of hope awaited. Strokes often result from sudden arterial blockages, and this afternoon, scans showed that his veins and arteries were healthy. The tests resulted in an updated, and less severe, prognosis.
“It’s hard not to whoop gleefully just yet but I will. It’s highly unlikely this episode was the result of a stroke & is probably a palsy,” he tweeted. “I’m SO relieved!”
Several palsies exist along a spectrum of seriousness. According to the Mayo Clinic, Bell's palsy causes “sudden weakness” in muscles on one side of the face. More severe palsies include cerebral palsy, which often appears at a very young age, and progressive supranuclear palsy, which "results from deterioration of cells in areas of your brain that control body movement, coordination, thinking and other important functions."
Time will tell when and if Ray gets back in the boat to finish his ambitious quest.
As the sun began to set over Washington state’s North Cascade mountains on July 16, 2022, climber Jenny Abegg and ultrarunner Kaytlyn Gerbin plunged into the wilderness — intent on sending the entire mountain range. On an ASAP basis.
This article was originally published on iRunFar.
Sound wild? Well, that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Beginning near the Canadian border, the adventure covered 124 miles and a bone-crushing 59,000 feet of elevation gain. To construct a route, the two athletes linked up four existing North Cascades traverses, including roughly 100 miles of “true off-trail alpine travel in rugged and remote terrain.”
They reconciled the maps, dialed in their gear, and beat tracks to a ranger station to secure the necessary backcountry permits — for “the entire North Cascades,” Gerbin joked.
They called the objective the North Cascades High Route and launched into the effort. When the smoke cleared six days and 19 hours later, they’d not only established a formidable and serious mountain traverse but also pulled off a whale of an adventure.
It all started when Gerbin summoned the idea into reality — after she and Abegg had happened to entertain it separately a year earlier. Abegg was living near the Canadian border when she first mused on a major line that would link up the North Cascades. But she never acted on it, whereas Gerbin did.
Gerbin invested multiple seasons in a prolonged planning, logistics, and scouting stage that effectively became her full-time job. And the ambitious final project served as the spark for an exciting new partnership.
A tale of two skill sets
By the time of the North Cascades High Route trip in the summer of 2022, the two athletes had been trying to link up for about a year. In fact, Gerbin had landed on the idea of contacting Abegg after a coincidental close encounter on the other side of the world.
On Feb. 4, 2022, Gerbin grabbed the women's supported fastest known time (FKT) on Patagonia’s storied La Vuelta al Hielo, running alongside Fernanda Maciel — only to see Abegg go out a few days later, needing only two extra hours to do a similar but non-identical variant of the route, unsupported and alone.
So Abegg stood out to Gerbin from the get-go. And when the two women started to interface, they realized they could complement each other's knowledge gaps. Like attracts like, but the inverse also characterized the two athletes’ mutual attraction.
“I need to be really good friends with my partners, and I knew right away that Kaytlyn and I had a great dynamic. She’s totally dialed in ways that I am not, necessarily,” Abegg, a Senior Editor at ExplorersWeb's sister site Switchback Travel, told me. “We met up in spring [2022] at Washington Pass for this bike-ski-climb thing. The way that she packed her bags, and packed her bike, and talked about snow conditions, overhead hazard — all sorts of things — she’s whip-smart and really well trained.”
For Gerbin’s part, she was hunting a high-acuity rock climber like Abegg. The ultrarunner felt comfortable with the magnitude of work the route would require but knew she needed to onboard technical wherewithal for segments with fifth-class climbing and ridgeline traverses.
“I put in a cold call over Instagram,” Gerbin recalled. “It was, ‘Hey, we have some mutual friends. I heard you’re rad.' We connected after that, and she was all-in on the project.”
She said the Washington Pass outing made it “immediately evident” that the two could fill the skill gaps they were both vulnerable to. The outing generated an unshakable trust between the two athletes and sealed the partnership.
The North Cascades High Route was on.
Whiteout conditions and a shiver bivy
Abegg and Gerbin started the route on the business end. Their entry point, off Ross Lake just two miles shy of the Canadian border, led straight into some of the remotest terrain they’d cover.
“Just us, the mosquitoes, and the bears,” Gerbin muses in The North Face’s documentary of the effort. The women then observe there’s “zero trail” that leads anywhere — and lean into 12 solid hours of bushwhacking.
“No trails after that, either. No trails at all! What are we doing out here?” Gerbin cracks.
That’s the general bent of the project. I don’t know if poison ivy lives in the North Cascades, but if it did and I tried Gerbin and Abegg’s route, I would be a walking red rash.
Glaciers and white-outs presented myriad challenges and delight to the two runners, who kept a peppy spirit early on. Still, they thought navigation would be so much easier if they could see. The trek wore on, and the two athletes stayed socked in by the heavy fog.
But the route was long, and conditions would vary widely. After 19 hours of movement on the third day, they found themselves at Luna Col, an overlook Abegg described as “the most beautiful place I’ve ever camped.”
“We could look out at where we’d come from and see the ridgeline that we had traveled. It was epic! We’d come so far and covered such technical terrain. But then we could also look south and see where we were going. And it was kind of this feeling of, ‘What the heck are we doing?’” Abegg said. “That and, ‘Well, we’re doing it.'"
Not long after that, the athletes found themselves mired in their first (and only) spat of the trip. Day four dragged, and after 20 hours on, Abegg and Gerbin found themselves benighted on a complicated ridgeline with temperatures dropping.
Abegg’s climber background conditioned her to prefer a “shiver bivy” and wait it out until morning light. But Gerbin, the ultrarunner, was trained to keep pushing through the night.
There was a designated resupply location only a couple hours downhill, in Gerbin’s estimation. At it was a cozy van; there was even a mattress in the back, where they could rest their rapidly swelling legs. Why not just gut it out and get there?
A dispute ensued, which was to both test and vindicate their partnership.
“Being an ultrarunner that’s pretty comfortable and confident moving in the dark, my mindset was, let’s just push through. We’ll get a full night’s sleep, and we’re going to be warm. I’m like, I don’t care if we get there at 4 a.m. That still seems more worth it to me than setting up a tent, then being freezing cold in it,” Gerbin said.
Abegg recalled becoming “snarky” as the two decided to continue onward.
“It’s hard to resolve things when you’re both hungry and tired and cold. We discussed it a few times, and I pushed us to keep moving forward,” Gerbin said.
But it wasn’t to be. Gerbin gave way to Abegg’s perspective when she noticed an inefficiency familiar to anyone who’s pushed the limit of nocturnal exploration.
“We got to a point where we were both just fumbling around in the dark woods on this ridgeline,” Gerbin recalled with amusement. “We’re not navigating well, we’re not moving efficiently. I was like, ‘Jenny, you’re right. We just need to hunker down.’”
Gerbin said the ability to make decisions under pressure while exhausted often boils down to communicating directly and with respect. Even if it’s an ongoing thread of 10-second conversations, she said, kicking the can down the road will not help. The women’s ability to hash it out was key.
Party time and 'writhing' wildlife
Soon, they’d reach their longed-for van and resupply spot, leaving the choppiest, remotest terrain behind them. That’s when the party started. Joined by a cadre of videographer friends plus their significant others, Ely Gerbin and Michael Hutchins, the two athletes soon began harvesting a certain giddy energy with an invigorating effect.
Asked about the source she and Gerbin tapped, Abegg said, “Exhaustion?”
Laughing, she went on, “I think we were so enthralled [with the project]. In those seven days, I didn’t think about anything else — my home life, work, any of that stuff. In every moment, I was completely present with the task at hand. There’s a distillation of emotion that’s not clouded with all the other junk of life on objectives like that. You’re just like, ‘Oh, we’ve been going for five days, and my legs are swollen, my shoes won’t fit anymore, but my friend just made a joke, and it was really funny!’”
Episodes of varying abrasion and ickiness took place. There’s footage of Gerbin butt glissading in running shorts, which she told me was no big deal but will likely strike most as … unenviable.
Then, the two encountered a repulsive pestilence. Gerbin and Abegg both described a densely vegetated passage during the first half of the route with a reputation for insect swarms. Expecting mosquitoes thick enough to block out the sun on a head net, the two packed along the recommended equipment.
They wouldn’t need it. Instead, they found an infestation of caterpillars. “Millions upon millions” of them, Gerbin said, hatching — coating the bark of every tree and shrub they forced their way through while bushwhacking. In no time, the women had caterpillars squirming all over their bodies. On their faces, caught in their hair, tumbling into their shirts.
“It was dis-gusting,” Gerbin said with emphasis. “They’re writhing all over the bushes you’re fighting your way through. All over you, everywhere.”
“It was the worst physical moment,” Abegg said. “I mean, there was a night where my legs were so sore, they twitched and convulsed the entire night. It pushed me to the brink. But being covered in writhing caterpillars was so much worse.”
All in the name of mountain exploration.
An 'only known time' and a rending farewell
The overwhelming creatures’ density caused one detour when an opportunity to go around another swarm presented itself. And other than that, the team encountered few time impediments. It’s a testament not to the pursuit of the record books but to Gerbin’s planning and their joint teamwork en route that they met their initial seven-day goal.
Both athletes confirmed independently that an FKT was never the point. Since the only other group to ever try it did not time themselves, Abegg said, her and Gerbin’s campaign produced an “only known time.”
“The scale of this route, to do it in this fast and light style — shaving a couple of hours or a couple of days off felt irrelevant. We had goals and timelines, but it was always based on how much food we had and how much farther it was to the next resupply spot,” Gerbin explained. “That drove our pace; more so than thinking, ‘Oh, someone else can do this part faster.’”
Gerbin hopes establishing the route will give more people a chance to see the rugged, unspoiled beauty the North Cascades has to offer. But she did emphasize that there’s another side to all the sentimentality and stoke.
“I get pretty excited when I think of people who travel the world to seek this terrain out, realizing there are cool lines like this in Washington state,” she said. “At the same time, hesitation is not the right word — but it’s challenging to share the scale and seriousness and consequence of some of this terrain. It’s not to be taken lightly.”
She recalled the months she’d spent coaxing the massively complex route into reality, sometimes so anxious about the risk of a certain section or obstacle that she couldn’t sleep. She mentioned the labyrinthine Picket Range, where travelers could find sparse choke points in tall, sheer cliffs plugged with snow or overhung by deadly seracs.
“I’d really hate for someone to get in over their heads,” she said.
After almost seven days of managing objective risk, solving problems, and navigating through caterpillars and all other hazards, Gerbin and Abegg still hadn't had enough. By the time they reached their prescribed endpoint, they both wished they were still on the trail.
Abegg renders a touching voiceover at the end of the documentary, saying, “It’s sad not to be able to keep being out there together.” The partners reach the finish line in Stehekin and slam-dunk a fencepost with all four hands at once.
So don’t sleep on Kaytlyn Gerbin and Jenny Abegg. There’s wishing you could still be out on the trail, and then there’s the initiative that gets you back out there. While both partners said the afterglow of the North Cascades High Route still feels strongly satisfying, it’s clear it’s not their last hurrah.
“We have a few ideas [for what to do next],” Gerbin said slyly.
Yann Busnel is attempting to travel "the longest land route in the world". On January 3, the 35-year-old Frenchman started his journey in Cape Agulhas, the southernmost point of Africa. Over the next four years, he plans to travel 50,000 kilometers to Cape Horn, at the bottom of South America.
His expedition, which he has titled Beyond the Capes, will be completely human-powered. He will hike, cycle, ski, longboard, kayak, canoe, and will even use a camel.
Busnel has already made his way through Africa and is currently trekking across Saudi Arabia. He spoke to ExplorersWeb about his journey.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Avoiding unsafe lands
You say you are taking the longest land route in the world but you will use a kayak for some sections. Can you talk us through the route?
This is the longest route between two points on earth across land. I am traveling from South Africa to South America via the Bering strait. Unfortunately, there are a few areas where it is not safe enough for me to travel overland, and others where it just isn’t possible.
For example, between Djibouti and Saudi Arabia, I used a kayak and a sailboat. I will have to cross the Bering Strait by sea because, since 2008, there has not been enough sea ice to walk across. The Hormuz Strait is not possible for me to cross because of the situation in Iran, so I plan to use a homemade sailboat. None of this really matters. The distance is still over 50,000km between the two points. There is no other longest way.
Since setting off, I have crossed South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. After passing between Eritrea and Yemen, I am now in Saudi Arabia. From here, I will go to the UAE, then Oman, Pakistan, China, Mongolia, Russia, Alaska, Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Argentina. I will end in Ushuaia.
Following a dream of exploration
You talk about a couple of goals for this journey: doing something no one has done before and better understanding human adaptation. Explain your approach.
This expedition has many goals, but the most interesting one for me is the physical and mental challenge. I want to see how my body and mind will change and adapt. There are so many elements: solitude, physical difficulties, pain, cold, heat, and constantly being outside and away from home.
The second big part of this journey is sharing. I will come across many tribal peoples, I am trying to understand our world and its different cultures. I want to share this on social media, and hopefully, make people dream of traveling.
The third purpose of this expedition is my favorite. It's to understand lifestyle and evolution. People have to adapt as the world around them transforms. I love all these things, how to survive with nothing, why people do things one way and not another.
Doing something nobody has done before was another motivation. I dream of being a pioneer and feeling what great explorers felt. I always thought it was impossible: Many explorers told me that everything has already been done. But I finally found this project and it makes me so happy.
From duo to solo
Where did this idea come from?
I always wanted to explore the world and do great things. My hometown of Brittany, France, is full of great stories, great explorers, and adventurers. I always dreamed of being part of that.
This idea came to me when I reversed the "classic" map view of our world. I realized that the longest itinerary was in front of my eyes. Initially, I was going to do this with my brother. But life changed, he met his fabulous wife and now I am doing a zero-emission journey and he is backstage taking care of me. I couldn’t do it without him.
How long do you expect this to take?
About four years. Some parts, such as the section I’m doing right now, are very slow. Walking through a desert takes time. At the moment, my camel is ill, so we have had to rest quite a lot over the past few days. In comparison, when I use a bicycle, I feel like a rocket! The different terrain and ways of traveling break up the journey and mean that nothing happens at the same speed.
I have three years to go until I arrive at Cape Horn. Truthfully, that thought is one of the hardest parts of this adventure. I am not going home before I reach the end. There will be no interruptions and that is a long time to be on the road and away from the people you love.
Camel for kayak swap
How much of the route was pre-planned before you set off?
I am an ex-soldier and I used the skills I learned in the army to prepare. Everything, all the roads and routes, has been pre-planned. I have been working on this for 10 years. But things change every day, and I adapt. Luckily, other than a few kilometers here and there, my original route has not changed much so far.
I will try to stick to my plan but you have to find solutions as problems arise. I’ve been fighting for two months now to save my camel and to cross borders with him. Our world is complicated. The logistics are the worst part. You end up in odd situations. For example, I did not have enough money to ship my kayak back to France and buy the camel. A Saudi guy offered me a camel in exchange for my kayak. I accepted, but now I don't have a kayak and will need to find one again later in the trip.
Are there any countries you are concerned about traveling through?
Not really. People tend to think about what is coming next and forget about enjoying the moment. I’m trying not to do that, though sometimes it can be difficult with all the planning.
Some countries will be more complicated. Russia for example. I hope the war will end soon. China has now reopened, so I am really happy about that. I thought I was going to have to come up with a detour.
The few kilometers before borders are when I worry the most.
How much gear are you carrying with you?
It depends on my support and how I am traveling. Rouhoul [the camel] is carrying 130kg. He has all the water and food we will need to cross the desert. On the bicycle, I had about 50kg. That included everything: water, food, solar panels, power banks, clothes, spare bicycle parts, a sleeping mat, a sleeping bag, etc.
Some highlights
What has the hardest challenge been so far?
I am a man of action. I cannot stay in one place long without anything to do. So the hardest challenge was being stuck in Djibouti for three months because of the wind.
Eritrea was also an unfriendly place. It's a closed country, a bit like North Korea. If you want to visit it as a tourist, you can, but they want you to stay in the capital city. I wanted to kayak along the coastline. Their army did not like that. They seemed to think I was dangerous.
What will be the biggest challenge going forward?
There are many, but the biggest will be the polar section and the Rub Al Khali desert in a few days. They are each so remote, and I will be in a dangerous situation if anything goes wrong. In the Rub Al Khali, there is no water and the sand dunes are difficult to move through.
Another challenging section will be crossing the Bering Strait by kayak, because of both the conditions and the logistics. I hope everything will be fine with the visa and papers I need.
Other difficult points will be the Darien Gap, the Oman Gulf, the Himalaya, crossing Canada on foot, and kayaking along Alaska's coastline.
It begins with maps
How do you prepare for an expedition like this?
For many years, the most important part has been to visualize everything. To ask myself if I'm ready for each part and to answer truthfully. For the physical element, I have trained in the military and played many sports for years.
Another important part is the maps. They're the beginning of the adventure. I had to prepare intelligently. Often I would find myself stuck, unsure how to get to the next place. You have to be patient. I love the quote, "He didn't know it was impossible, so he did it."
It wasn’t just me preparing. Lots of people were involved and still are. I speak to my logistical team as often as I can, sometimes for directions but often because it's the only way to escape my mind. They are my family, my best friends.
You can follow Busnel's journey here.
What's your New Year's Resolution for 2023? If it's anything shy of "run a marathon every day for a year," you're already falling short of Gary McKee's 2022 effort.
The Cumbrian man logged 42 kilometers daily for the entirety of 2022, raising over £1 million for charity.
He’s done it
Gary McKee completes his 365th marathon in 365 days aiming to raise £1m for cancer charities https://t.co/RCM1XNbc9o pic.twitter.com/QqxJnU2gMq
— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) December 31, 2022
According to the BBC, the father of three wore out more than 20 pairs of running shoes and completed 15,333km in pursuit of his goal. And he did it while balancing not only family but also career. McKee works full-time at a nuclear waste processing and storage facility.
He completed the 365th marathon on a rainy New Year's Eve to the sound of applause from an enthusiastic crowd of hundreds, who turned out despite the foul weather.
"The streets were lined. It was raining, but everybody was out clapping and shouting. It was fantastic seeing everybody there. It's something I'll always remember," the 53-year-old told the BBC afterward.
No stranger to pain
McKee didn't just hop off the couch and start running marathons on Jan. 1, 2022. According to The Guardian, the amateur athlete previously completed 100 marathons in 100 days and 110 marathons in 110 days. He's also climbed Kilimanjaro, run end to end across Great Britain (Land's End to John o' Groats), and completed the Three Peaks Challenge in less than 24 hours.
The runner still hadn't achieved his £1 million goal prior to embarking on his final marathon of the year. Speaking to a BBC morning program before setting out, McKee was in good spirits and hopeful that last-minute donations would help him reach the benchmark.
Sure enough, by the end of the day, McKee was able to tweet out news of his fundraising victory.
£1 million pounds!
WOW!#GaryMcKee #marathonman pic.twitter.com/f63hdTJg2C
— Gary McKee (@Marathon_Man365) December 31, 2022
We reached out to McKee to find out how he spent the first day of the new year, given how tired his legs must be.
"Mostly with a beer in my hand, having not had one for over a year," the marathoner shared.
Ocean rowing is becoming ever more popular, but kayaking an ocean remains a rare, extreme feat. This year, Cyril Derreumaux sought to do what only one other person had done before -- to kayak alone across the Pacific, from California to Hawaii.
He set off from Monterey on June 21, and on September 20, after 91 days at sea, he beached his craft in Hilo, Hawaii.
Derreumaux is not opposed to rowing. He had already rowed from San Francisco to Hawaii in 2016. At the time, as part of a four-man crew, he broke what was then the speed record for the crossing. But kayaking it alone was something different.
"To...be in the middle of the ocean, on your own, and feel the waves, the rawness of nature, and the strength of the ocean," Derreumaux told ExplorersWeb. "Something inside me just drew me to it.”
Inspired by Ed Gillet's 1987 epic
The journey mimics Ed Gillet's legendary 1987 crossing. Gillet was one of the inspirations for this project, and Derreumaux spoke to him a number of times before setting off.
Though the route was the same, Derreumaux admits that their journeys were incredibly different. Gillet used a six-metre, off-the-shelf Tofino double kayak. His effort was truly solo. He pushed off with just an SOS transmitter and a radio, which soon broke down. He navigated with a sextant and slept in the cockpit with a tarp draped over him.
By the end of his journey, he was hallucinating, all his supplies had run out, and he was eating toothpaste. His family suspected that he had died. Indeed, Gillet later wrote that if he had done the trip 10 times, he would have died on five of them.
Derreumaux does not think anyone will be able to replicate Gillet’s journey. He describes him as a trailblazer and a maverick.
Not an ordinary kayak
By comparison, Derreumaux had a custom-made carbon-fibre vessel with a sleeping cabin, a team of people advising him on land, and every piece of equipment you could ask for: GPS, VHF radio, satellite phones, Iridium trackers, and solar panels.
Yet his journey was not easy. Successfully reaching Hawaii was a huge feat. A number of people have died trying to cross this patch of water. Derreumaux himself had to be rescued after just a couple of days in 2021 when he first attempted the crossing. High winds and 4.5m swells damaged his kayak, which began to leak. He called the coast guard.
Derreumaux spent the year making improvements. He modified his sea anchor rig, installed a satellite communication system, and added both a manual bilge pump and side panels to keep water out of the cockpit. Then he spent five days on the coast of Santa Cruz training in high winds. He even slept more on the boat to get used to it and ensure better rest.
None of this assured the outcome, but he felt more confident when he first stepped into his boat and set off. He knew he had done everything in his power to succeed.
On June 21, he left amid a flotilla of paddlers, who came to wish him well. Then ensued three months of solitude. He had initially hoped to complete the 4,444km in 70 days, but difficult conditions and multiple challenges slowed his progress.
Early struggles
For the first few weeks, the winds pushed him in the wrong direction, and he struggled just to hold his position. Almost constant swells made him seasick. Luckily, after the first few weeks, the conditions eased and he was able to move forward.
He had to overcome a number of small issues. In week two, the tubing on his steering line broke and his compartment flooded. He had to create a drain system. Then the steering line became really stiff and he had to find a way to ease that.
Off the coast of California, it was foggy and cloudy all day, so it was hard for the solar panels to replenish his batteries. After 46 days, his water maker broke, so he had to use the manual one.
He had calculated he would need 6,000 calories a day, but already at the halfway point, he started rationing food. It was very clear he was not going to cover the distance in 70 days. Even with rationing, he wasn't sure if he would make it. He didn't want to have to start eating toothpaste like Gillet.
He decided to change his Hawaiian endpoint. Rather than land in Waikiki, he redirected to Hilo, which was six days closer. Only then did he have enough food to complete the distance.
Despite the challenges, Derreumaux says he loved the journey.
"The first two or three weeks were the hardest," he said afterward, "but then you get more secure in your boat and in your skills. After that, it’s more mental and it seems like Groundhog Day. Eventually, I got into a pattern where I just enjoyed the day. Your mind just declutters and you’re completely free to have new thoughts."
Two fell runners moving in opposite directions each broke the solo, unsupported winter Bob Graham Round record within 24 hours of each other, according to UK Hillwalking.
The outlet reported Paul Wilson set a time of 22 hours, 54 minutes on Thursday, Dec. 15. Shortly after that, on Friday, Dec. 16, James Gibson set a new record of 21 hours, 12 minutes.
"What a day! The conditions were perfect for winter running with lots of hard frosted ground. I didn't have a schedule; I just went with the flow and enjoyed it," Gibson told UK Hillwalking. "I ran strongly and passed Paul [Wilson] on Yewbarrow, stopping for a selfie before both pushing on in our opposite directions."
"Temperatures fell to about -10˚C, and my bottles froze in the night. With all the high becks frozen over too, it made getting water pretty hard. My legs tired over the last section, but I was happy to keep going and get back to Keswick in the time I did," he went on.
For the purposes of the record, "winter" refers to any time between Dec. 1 and the last day of February, UK Hillwalking reports.
Shane Ohly, the founder of Ourea Events, set the previous solo unsupported winter record at 23 hours, 26 minutes on Dec. 2020.
A famously grueling route
The Bob Graham Round is a Lake District fell running challenge which traverses 42 fells over 106km, with 8,230m of elevation gain thrown in for good measure. The challenge is named after Bob Graham, the runner who completed the route in under 24 hours back in 1932.
According to Fastest Known Time (FKT), runners traditionally tackle the Bob Graham Round supported and with the assistance of pacers. A solo, unsupported winter attempt is another beast entirely. Only four runners have completed it: Martin Stone, Shane Ohly, and now Paul Wilson and James Gibson.
FKT lists the current supported male Bob Graham Round record holder as Jack Kuenzle with a time of 12 hours, 23 minutes and the supported female record holder as Beth Pascall at 14 hours, 34 minutes.
Here's a short film about the Bob Graham Round Saloman put out a few years ago.
Aurelie and Doc Marco, both 39 years old, started cycling in April 2018. Four years later, they are still pedaling.
They met in Barcelona, where Aurelie was an event manager and Marco, as he likes to go by, taught English. They married, then set out on their dream voyage.
Their initial plan was just to cycle from Helsinki to Singapore for charity. They dubbed their journey 421 Adventure, which stands for four wheels, two hearts, one world. "That’s probably the best description of our trip," they say on their website.
45,000km, 32 countries
The husband-and-wife duo has now been on the road for 1,673 days. They have covered 45,000km and passed through 32 countries on their bikes. Ironically, they never made it to Singapore.
Starting in Finland, they have cycled Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, China, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and back to Thailand.
Then the pandemic hit and closed borders stopped them from continuing to Malaysia. So they flew back to Europe and spent some time cycling around their home continent.
Friends puzzled
After they had been on the road for one year, some of their friends were puzzled. How long would they continue, and why? But the pair loved their new lifestyle. "Our first year on the road [was] an amazing feeling of freedom, utter control over your life, and happiness," Marco explained.
They admit that it is not always easy. Perhaps the hardest part of their journey has been visa applications and crossing borders.
"Sometimes, administration [stuff] wants to make you rip your hair out," they say. Often they find themselves anxiously waiting for new visas with only days left on their current ones.
In September 2021, Argentina opened its borders to vaccinated foreigners. Within hours, the couple had booked flights. They planned to cycle across the Americas from Ushuaia to Alaska.
From Buenos Aires, they made their way 1,000km across Argentina to San Rafael. They thought this would take two weeks. In fact, the journey lasted almost a month. They had not accounted for the difficult terrain, the wind, or the fact that their bikes were so heavy. Although they typically carried everything they needed, this time they had extra gear for the cold Andean temperatures.
More lifestyle than journey
They also took a huge detour to cycle through the Atuel River Canyon. Much of Argentina is quite flat, and they "were looking forward to some proper climbs." It did not disappoint. The "rock colors and types, vegetation, and even the river itself looked different every time we looked up. We had an absolute blast."
Over four months, they cycled 4,500km from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia. After they finished the first leg of their journey, they flew home to see a family member with health issues. Theirs was never intended to be a continuous A to B journey, with no interruptions.
Eventually, they strapped their helmets back on and cycled from the UK to Madrid, often stopping for weeks at a time to see family and friends.
After four years of cycling, they are now back in South America. In October, they landed in Punta Arenas, Chile, and are now a month into their journey to Alaska. Over the first week, they cycled through Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales.
They estimate that the first 250km of their Americas journey would take four days, but they are flexible. They don’t want to just pedal past interesting areas, they want to experience them. In Punta Arenas, they spent two days at a ranch to see a rodeo, then climbed an extinct volcano with some police officers.
Theirs has become more lifestyle than journey.
No woman has completed more Munro rounds than Hazel Strachan. The Bathgate, Scotland native has forged a lifestyle by climbing Scotland’s 282 peaks that are 3,000 feet (914m) and higher.
On one day in mid-October, she put her commanding record even further out of reach.
Strachan summited Glas Maol (1,068m) and Creag Leacach (987m) on October 16 to finish her 11th and 12th Munro rounds. She did the feat on what appears to have been a raw Scottish winter day.
Walked over Glas Maol in driving rain for the second last Munro. The sun is out and I’m now on the summit of Creag Leacach having ‘compleated’ a 12th Munro round.#Munros #doublecompleation #Scotland https://t.co/rt7Mzew3px
— Hazel Strachan (@StrachanHazel) October 16, 2022
The Scottish Mountaineering Club curates the list of Munro peaks. Summit height is the only defining criterion; peak prominence is not a factor. According to Fastest Known Time, completing a round means covering 126,000m of vertical gain.
Hamish Brown reported the first known successful Munro round in 1974. Donnie Campbell ran and walked the circuit continuously in 2020, and covered an estimated 1,422km to do it. The record for the most ever completed Munro rounds belongs to Steve Fallon, with 16.
Strachan holds the women’s record, but it doesn’t seem like that’s what’s important to her about the Munros. In a tweet, she points out that in her last two Munro rounds -- almost 600 hikes -- she's only had a partner on 8. It seems she prioritizes a self-reliant approach and the solitude of her home country's striking natural beauty.
Strachan typically prefers to take her time, bagging Munros one at a time by herself. Of the 564 total Munro summits she needed for her 11th and 12th rounds, she only hiked with a partner on eight of them.
Strachan goes the long way
Each round took Strachan over three years of work. Along the way, she got some traveling in, visiting the United States' Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Arches National Park.
The detours may have hampered her record-setting pace in the Munros. But she drew intrinsic value from them nonetheless, indulging her curiosity for terrain and geology.
Painted Wall is on the right. The main rock is Gneiss and the white veins is Pegmatite. The canyon of the Gunnison was formed by water erosion. The deepest part of the canyon is at Warner Point. It’s a drop of 2722ft down to the river. #Colorado pic.twitter.com/ifXJTyUzwE
— Hazel Strachan (@StrachanHazel) June 14, 2022
Highlights of Strachan’s last few years in the Munros include packrafting through rivers and lochs during some legs of the trip.
Will Strachan continue to rack up more Munro circuits? All signs point to yes. But now, other peak-bagging objectives now beckon. The Corbett Round consists of 219 Scottish peaks between 762-914m.
A week after her double Munro, Strachan had already gotten started.
22.10.22 By noon the banks of cloud had cleared to revealed the bulk of both Baosbheinn and Beinn an Eoin. I had a great day traversing both #Corbetts The night sky was beautiful with a million stars. The sound of rain against the tarp woke me from a deep sleep.#Scotland pic.twitter.com/eH2Jb81dWg
— Hazel Strachan (@StrachanHazel) October 24, 2022
Get ready for ongoing updates to the Scottish Mountaineering Club record books.
Jasmine Harrison has become the first woman to swim the length of Britain. Over three-and-half months, the 23-year-old swam 1,448km from Lands End to John O’Groats. Though the route is very popular among runners and cyclists, she is only the third person ever to swim the route.
Harrison started on July 1. She followed the west coastline of Britain and swam approximately two kilometres offshore during the challenge. Her daily distance depended on the current and waves. She was in the water for 4 to 12 hours each day but often split this into two shifts. The furthest she covered done one shift was 26km, and the furthest in a single day was an impressive 50km.
Throughout the journey, a safety kayak and support boat followed her.
During her time in the water, she had to swim past sharks, through swarms of jellyfish, and across busy shipping lanes. Her full wetsuit helped protect her against jellyfish stings, though of course, her face and hands were exposed. They endured multiple stings until eventually, she began wearing gloves and a hood, which also helped against the cold water.
More than once, she had to stop swimming because of the number of jellyfish in the water. Her support team was most worried during the last 130km of the swim because of the presence of orcas, although orcas -- certain recent instances with boats notwithstanding -- almost never bother people.
As summer ticked into fall, the weather worsened. She began in a heat wave and ended with strong winds and cool temperatures. This forced her to stay on the boat for days to wait out the winds. She also became colder sooner in the water.
“With the rain, nothing dries and my wetsuit is always wet, and I get cold immediately,” she told The Northern Times. "You struggle to stay in the water for six hours when you are cold."
Her time in the seawater also led to ‘salt mouth’, a condition often endured by ocean swimmers. Salt builds up on the tongue, mouth, and throat. It can make swallowing almost impossible and strips the skin from the throat and mouth. Her wetsuit also caused chafing, despite the lubricant she used. This caused a number of painful blisters.
This is not Harrison's first long-distance effort. In 2021, she became the youngest person to row alone across the Atlantic in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge.
On October 1, Brendon Prince successfully finished his stand-up paddleboard journey around Northern Ireland. In nine days on the water, he covered 303km. This was the final phase of paddleboarding around the UK that he began last year.
At first, Prince wasn't sure where his starting point should be, but the death of Queen Elizabeth II death on September 8 decided it for him. Out of respect for the monarch, he started on The Royal Canal in Dublin on September 14. He wanted to paddle the entire 145km canal and its 43 locks.
However, the combination of locks, wind, debris, and weeds slowed him considerably. The weeds, in particular, were waist-high and impossible to paddle through. He had to walk around or slosh through parts of the canal, pushing his board.
After about halfway, he decided to call time on this section. He hopes to go back earlier next year, when the canal is free of weeds, and complete its full length.
Prince wanted to include the canal since he has always focused on coastal paddling. As part of his water safety mission, he wanted to demonstrate that inland bodies of water require caution too. “I will keep doing this until accidental drownings in the UK are below 50 a year," he said. "It is not acceptable that we have 600 to 700 people drowning every year.”
On September 16, two days after aborting The Royal Canal, he began to paddle the coastline of Northern Ireland. He finished in seven days. Though it was a fairly short route compared to his paddle last year, it was not without difficulty.
“It has all the idiosyncrasies of Scotland -- the big cliffs, the crazy flows, and the secluded paddling," Prince told ExplorersWeb, "but in a much more condensed coastline.”
Prince found the hardest part of the entire UK coast to be Scotland's Mull of Kintyre, which is directly opposite the Northern Irish coastline. "It married up that that section was pretty difficult as well,” Prince commented.
Crossing Belfast Lough was also difficult. Though only 12km wide, the inlet “played havoc with the tide”. It also has a lot of boat traffic that needed watching.
Not a continuous route
During his mainland UK paddle, Prince followed a continuous route. Not so in Ireland. The weather forced him to stay on land for a few days and to juggle the individual parts in order to complete the whole distance in the time he had.
“On one day, I did three sections," he explained. "One headed south. Then I went north and did a section heading west. In the evening, [I] did a section heading east. They all pieced together, allowing me to do the whole coastline.”
The water between the mainland and Rathlin Island was Prince’s favorite section.
“It’s an absolute fairground ride. Very fun, very dangerous. There are currents that want to take you to Scotland, there are currents that want to take you to the Atlantic. It’s crazy but a real blast, not for the faint-hearted.”
This felt different from last year's UK mainland circumnavigation. For one thing, he had many more followers this time, and more people wanted to engage him along the way. He had to be disciplined with conversations because he was trying to paddle for 10 hours a day.
He is planning a number of future projects, which may involve water but won’t all use a paddleboard. In a few weeks, he will take up a new (unidentified) water sport and train at it for a year, then attempt a new project. He hopes to show that when you approach water sports safely, anything is possible.
Cyril Derreumaux has completed his solo kayak from California to Hawaii. He arrived at Hilo on September 20, after 92 days at sea. He is only the second person to make the arduous journey by kayak.
Derreumaux pushed off from Monterey on June 21, in the company of well-wishers paddling a few strokes beside him. Then three months of lonely effort. He had initially hoped to complete the 4,444km in 70 days but difficult conditions slowed his progress.
A rough start
For the first few weeks, contrary winds pushed him in the wrong direction. The daily battle became not losing distance rather than making progress. Constant swells made him seasick, and he felt very weak. On week two, the tubing that held his steering line disconnected and let water into the cabin.
Then after 46 days, his water maker broke. From that point on, as well as rowing for 10 to 12 hours a day, he also spent an hour to an hour and a half manually generating fresh water. He also spent several bad weather days in his little cabin, on sea anchor.
It quickly became clear that the journey would take more than 70 days. By the halfway point, he started rationing food. Though he had calculated 6,000 calories a day to fuel all that rowing, he lost weight rapidly, even before rationing. With it, he began to doubt whether he would make it in time.
At the end of August, he decided to change his Hawaiian endpoint. Rather than land in Waikiki, he redirected to Hilo. This cut six days of paddling from the journey and meant that he had enough food to make the distance without having to resort to eating toothpaste, like the first California-Hawaii kayaker, Ed Gillet, had done.
Music, Seinfeld, and dolphins
Derreumaux entertained himself by listening to music almost constantly. Before leaving, he had even downloaded Seinfeld to watch at night, when he wasn’t rowing.
He also enjoyed watching dolphins around the boat. By the end, hundreds of them had come to visit. Over the last few days, he even had a mahi-mahi following him.
“A mahi-mahi pet fish followed me all day, I loved it!” he wrote on social media. "[It] left me yesterday morning. I guess he did not like when I played Celine Dion."
As the journey progressed, Derreumaux became more relaxed and attuned to his surroundings. He found not seeing himself in a mirror to be a very “freeing experience”. He has also established a kind of symbiosis with his custom-made boat Valentine.
“I know her so well now," he said. "I know how she behaves in what kind of waters, I know all the noises she makes and what they mean, I could find anything in the dark… it’s very special.”
Ed Gillet's inspiration
Ed Gillet's original 1987 journey first inspired Derreumaux. Gillet was far less high-tech. He used an off-the-shelf kayak -- no sleeping cabin, no extended storage -- and had no means of communication for most of the journey. After three weeks at sea, Derreumaux said, “I am more in awe of Ed Gillet and what he accomplished [than ever].”
He first attempted the journey in 2021 but needed rescue after five days. Storms and swells damaged his boat and caused water began to leak into the cabin. With conditions set to worsen, he abandoned the crossing.
But despite that embarrassing end, Derreumaux channeled the failure into improving his technique and boat.
He modified the sea anchor system, installed a satellite communication system, and added both a manual bilge pump and side panels to keep water out of the cockpit. He also trained to be more familiar with how his kayak behaved in high winds.
This was not Derreumaux's first time crossing the ocean from California to Hawaii. In 2016, he and his teammates broke the speed record for rowing in the Great Pacific Race. The four-man team covered the roughly 4,500km from Monterey, California to Oahu, Hawaii, in 39 days, 9 hours, and 56 minutes.
Brendon Prince, who paddled a stand-up paddleboard around the UK last year, is now going to SUP around Ireland.
He plans to start on September 13 but says that he will be more flexible than he was with his SUP around Britain. Looking back, he thinks he should have been less rigid in his approach. Last time, he started in tricky conditions. He is now happy to wait three or four days for the right moment.
He wants to let the weather dictate his whole route. Until yesterday, he was unsure if he would go clockwise or counterclockwise. Nor did he know whether he would first tackle the inland routes or coastal sections. The death of Queen Elizabeth II prompted a decision. “Out of respect to Queen Elizabeth, I will start the Grand Tour by paddling the length of The Royal Canal.”
He has not commented on his route after that. However, he will cover approximately 300km of coastline along Northern Ireland, plus the 150km length of the Royal Canal, 35km across Lough Neagh, and a 70km double crossing of the North Channel. The total distance falls somewhere between 500 and 800km. He is currently talking to local people and paddlers for additional information.
Like last year, water safety is a huge element of Prince’s project. He wants to show that you can partake in these activities safely. His work as a lifeguard on the Devon coastline inspired his initial paddle around mainland Britain. Six years ago, he had to drag three people from the water on the North Cornish coast. All lost their lives.
“What made the event so impactful, was that the three people had their whole family on the beach,” Prince said. “To see the catastrophic effect that drowning had on that family changed my life forever.”
Prince has chosen to start in September because it is usually quite mild, with warm sea temperatures. However, the weather this summer has been anything but average.
He estimates that the complete journey will three weeks. Last year, he averaged 40km a day, and that is what he hopes to average this time on the coastal sections. On the inland routes, he hopes to cover more than this.
An experienced paddler, he is confident in his abilities and has done considerable research in preparation. “The flow in the Irish Sea is immense," he said. "I’ve paddled it before, so I have an idea of what to expect.”
To train, he has been paddling for five hours a day. Unlike the UK paddle, this time he will use a number of different boards because of the different waterways. Although Prince will paddle solo, a safety van on land will follow him closely.
If he finishes he will become the only person to SUP the entire coastline of Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, and Wales. He hopes to paddle the entire Royal Canal non-stop, a distance of 130km that incorporates 43 locks.
He will also attempt to break a speed record on Lough Neagh and the North Channel. Though it is not the purpose of the journey, the mini-goals will add even more excitement to the project.
A man with no shirt on set the Bob Graham Round speed record on September 2, shaving almost a half hour off the mark in the process.
This article was originally published on iRunFar.
Kuenzle finished the 100km loop and all of its 42 fells and 8,200m of elevation gain in England's Lake District in a to-be-confirmed 12 hours, 23 minutes, and 48 seconds, according to the website Open Tracking.
Mountain running icon Kilian Jornet previously held the speed record at 12 hours, 52 minutes, setting it in 2018.
Finishing at around 6:30 p.m. local time, Kuenzle broke Jornet’s four-year-old record. The English circuit’s namesake first ran it under 24 hours in 1932 to establish the challenge.
An American who lives in California, Kuenzle is a former U.S. Navy SEAL, a mountain running coach, and an athlete whose focus seems to be on setting speed records around the world. His Bob Graham Round effort certainly launches him into international status as a mountain athlete.
The Bob Graham Round’s fame stems principally from its rugged, technical terrain. Steep scrambles punctuate boggy, wet tracks. And because the weather on the course can change rapidly, speed attempts can become dangerous in a hurry. Among the 42 fells, or mountains, along its route, the Bob Graham Round tackles Scafell Pike, the tallest mountain in England at 3,209 feet in elevation.
Kuenzle didn’t take long to outstrip Jornet’s 2018 pace. And by the time he secured his lead in the splits, he wouldn’t relinquish it. Four hours into the effort at the 873m summit of Fairfield fell, he was faster than Jornet by a minute and three seconds. From there, he steadily pried the gap open wider until he checked in at the start/finish line at Moot Hall in Keswick.
Comments poured in via social media after Kuenzle’s reported time finalized. Everything from congratulations to flippant comments on fell running speed records showed up — some toed the line articulately.
“I think the lack of heavy t-shirt made the difference. Next person to try will forgo shorts as well I’d imagine,” one commenter said.
Author and television host Justin Fornal is preparing to swim across Kane Basin, a stretch of 50 ice-choked kilometres of ocean between Canada and Greenland. Fornal's team left New York on August 7 and is now in Greenland.
The swim will start on Pim Island, a small satellite just off Canada's Ellesmere Island. He plans to boat across from Greenland and begin swimming as soon as weather and ocean conditions allow.
Fornal is the host of the Science Channel's Unexplained and Unexplored, which investigates mysteries like Atlantis.
While Fornal's website claims, "no one has ever attempted a swim of this magnitude," questions remain about what exactly he'll be attempting.
In an interview with the Toronto Sun, Fornal explained that a support kayak and Inuit team from Qaanaaq will guide him. What he doesn't explain are the stipulations guiding his attempt. Will he make the swim all in one go? Will he break it into segments?
Can he rest in support boats? Is he allowed to grab onto the support kayak? Traditionally, extreme open-water swimmers are transparent about such things. But the rules of Fornal's project are unknown.
This lack of detail somewhat overshadows his stated goal, which is to bring attention to climate change and the people of Qaanaaq.
English Channel rules
We reached out to legendary cold-water and marathon swimmer Lynne Cox for her take.
"I think I would call what Justin is doing an 'adventure swim'," Cox said. "Justin will be swimming in a thick wetsuit and thick cap. His goals are different than open water swimmers who swim under the English Channel rules."
Cox explains, "Under English Channel rules, you have to start from shore and finish on the distant short without touching anyone or holding onto anything during the swim. You are only allowed to wear a swimsuit, swim cap, goggles, sunscreen, and something that will protect your skin from chafing. This type of swimming is about human capability and endurance."
It seems that Fornal's swim might be about other things. You can track his progress here.
Marathon swimmer Sarah Thomas has become the first person to complete a two-way crossing of the frigid North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland. During her swim, the water temperature fluctuated between 12˚C and 14˚C. The water is also rough and full of jellyfish.
On July 9, the Colorado swimmer waded into the water on the Scotland side. She completed the 34.4km one-way crossing to Northern Ireland in exactly 10 hours, breaking the female one-way record by two minutes.
When she set off, she had no intention of doing a double-crossing, but her pace was good and she felt confident. She decided spontaneously to try to complete the first two-way swim. The double-crossing took her 21 hours and 48 minutes in total.
Jellyfish torture
After the swim, she said, “I am well, other than an entire body covered with jellyfish stings. That might have been the hardest, most painful thing I’ve ever done.”
Thomas is unstoppable in the water. In recent years, she has broken multiple records and completed a number of firsts. In 2017, she became the first person to complete a 100-mile, current-neutral swim. Then in 2019, she made international headlines when she completed the first four-way crossing of the English Channel.
Evan Morrison of the Marathon Swimmers Federation called her North Channel feat "a stunning addition to Sarah’s extraordinary collection of firsts”.
How it all began
Thomas has been swimming her entire life. Originally a competitive swimmer at school, she discovered her love of open water when she entered a 10km swim near her home. Since then, she has arguably become the world’s most formidable ultramarathon swimmer.
At the beginning of her marathon career, in 2012, she completed the Triple Crown of swimming: crossing the Catalina Channel, the English Channel, and encircling Manhattan Island.
But when she first swam the English Channel, she realized that she was capable of far more. On the beach in France, she knew that she would have been able to complete the return journey.
Now she has her sights set on the Oceans Seven, made up of seven of the world’s toughest swims: the North Channel, the Cook Strait, the Moloka'i Channel, the English Channel, the Catalina Channel, the Tsugaru Strait, and the Strait of Gibraltar. The North Channel was Thomas’s fifth swim on the list.
On June 21, Karlis Bardelis reached Africa and has almost completed his human-powered, round-the-world journey. The last stage of his circumnavigation saw him row 4,800km from Malaysia to Somalia. He was initially supposed to land in Tanzania but changed his plan in the final days of his journey. He has not divulged why, but updates on his journey suggest it was because of damage to his boat.
[Editor's note: A later story explains the last-minute change of plans.]
A six-year journey
Bardelis began his epic journey in 2016. He started in Namibia and rowed, as part of a pair, to Brazil. In 2018, he restarted in Brazil and cycled on a tandem bicycle to Lima, Peru, with his then-girlfriend. They pedaled the 5,400km in 102 days.
Starting in 2018, he solo rowed 26,000km across the Pacific, landing in Malaysia after 715 days. He became the first person to row from South America to Asia.
A long wait
Bardelis had planned to continue, but COVID forced him to pause his circumnavigation. He flew back to Latvia and waited.
A year and a half later he was back in Malaysia, ready to recommence his challenge. When he arrived in December 2021, his boat, Linda, had suffered some water damage. He made repairs and then figured out the final stage of his journey. Rowing across the Malacca Strait was almost impossible due to strong headwinds. To avoid this, he cycled 850km across Malaysia to Kuala Perlis, the new starting point for his final row. He pushed off in January 2022.
His next stop was Sri Lanka. There were two reasons for this, he needed to cross an antipodal point, and he wanted to pick up Dimitri Kieffer. Kieffer paused his own circumnavigation to join Bardelis and learn the ropes of ocean rowing. The kindred spirits rowed together for nine days before Kieffer hopped off the boat in the Maldives to continue his own expedition. Bardelis tackled the remaining 3,900km solo.
A tough home straight
The last stage of his journey has been fraught. The first few weeks saw winds push him the wrong way. Next, he had to cut one of his anchors loose as he was unable to retrieve it from the deep corals it was stuck in. On numerous occasions, he had to row for over 20 hours straight to ensure his boat did not drift backward.
At the start of June, he still had 1,000km left to paddle. Huge waves and strong winds were throwing him off course and he began to question if he would be able to land in Tanzania. “I really don't know where I will land, but one thing I know for sure, it is 1,000km until Africa,” he wrote on social media.
Just days later the situation worsened. The metal binding that held his steering rudder in place broke. He attempted to fix it using a rope but it was far from ideal. On June 12, with 407km left, his boat capsized. He lost his glasses, water pot, toilet bucket, and sunscreen to the ocean.
On June 21, he landed in Kismaayo, Somalia. There are few details about his final few days at sea, or his landing in Somalia, other than that he is safe.
Bardelis is now making his way back to Latvia.
In the sufferfest department, Fay Cunningham, 35, and Emma Petrie, 26, have broken the record for the number of consecutive daily marathons. The Scottish duo has just run 106 marathons in 106 days.
They began on February 19 and had initially planned to run 100 marathons, with the Edinburgh marathon as the last. Then they discovered that Kate Jayden did 101 earlier this year, and Jacky Hunt-Broersma did 104. Thereafter, they upped their challenge to 106.
Both women are personal trainers and regular runners. Still, after the first 15 marathons, Petrie's blistered and swollen feet worried her. Cunningham, meanwhile, was suffering from knee pain.
“That’s when doubts crept in," Petrie said in an interview. "But that problem went away and it hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be.”
They prudently ran each marathon at a slower pace than they would normally complete 42km. Still, they finished all of them within five to five-and-a-half hours. After each marathon, they took a two-minute ice bath. Chiropractors and massage therapists worked over their tired, sore limbs regularly.
They ran most of their marathons near their homes so that they did not have to vary their daily routine much. Sometimes they ran the same course more than once.
Their February start featured wind, snow, hail, and rain. During the more than three months, they only ran five marathons completely by themselves. Friends, family, and followers have joined them for 100 of the runs.
To fuel their efforts, both women aimed to eat 4,000 calories a day and sleep nine hours a night. Still, they lost about five kilograms each.
Pioneering endurance cyclist Dervla Murphy has made her final trip. The only known woman to successfully cycle from Dunkirk, U.K., to Delhi, India, died this month at age 90.
Murphy grew to love cycling in Lismore, Ireland, where she grew up. The story goes that she got a second-hand men's pushbike and an atlas for her 10th birthday. Soon, the 10-year-old made a connection between the two that would become her life's work. If her legs kept pushing the pedals down to turn the bike's wheels, she'd keep covering ground — all the way to India, for instance.
Soon, Murphy did precisely that. She first made international headlines in 1963 when she pedaled into Delhi after a ride that covered over 7,500km. The 32-year-old soon chronicled the adventure in Full Tilt, which became her best-known book.
Dunkirk to Delhi
It's impressive enough to imagine Murphy's sheer physical task on her spirited ride. Even with modern cycling technology, the distance and terrain are staggering. But the more significant obstacle she overcame must have been the challenge of doing it as a woman in a relatively prehistoric gender rights climate.
In 1963, women in Ireland had possessed the right to vote for four decades. But Murphy's ride took her through Afghanistan, where women still couldn't vote at the time — and experienced other well-documented social restrictions. Dervla also withstood the unique threats women still encounter while traveling alone.
She lit out for the six-month trip with only her bike (nicknamed Roz), a change of clothes, a dozen pens, and a pistol. She returned with the story of a lifetime and permanent status as a cycling legend.
Dervla Murphy: 'Fearless'
She developed an attitude she called "fearless" — and even qualified what she meant by the word.
"If you're fearless, you don't need courage. It's only if you're fearful that you need courage to overcome your fears," Murphy said in a 2021 interview.
Those acquainted with her described her with an affection approaching reverence.
"She is unique, an incredibly precious witness to the world who is also tough, brilliant, forthright, honest," said Barnaby Rogerson, her London-based publisher. "[She] will no doubt in future ages be saluted as a humanist prophet."
Murphy endured poor health in her final years, including osteoarthritis, hepatitis, and an immobilizing heart condition. As late as 2020, she still lived in the same Lismore home where she grew up.
When ultrarunner John Kelly set out into the Lake District hills from Keswick, Cumbria, England, on May 2, he did it to settle a score.
He would succeed. Five days, 12 hours, 14 minutes, and 42 seconds later, Kelly would pull back into Keswick with the fastest Wainwright Round time on record (unofficially). Last year, bad weather and foot problems stifled Kelly’s effort on the punishing round-trip. Even a glance at the course details explains why.
You might call the task prohibitive — 214 peaks, 515km of travel, and a massive 36km of elevation change.
Dearth of crisps leaves Kelly 'not happy'
The peaks, or fells, share a name with Alfred Wainwright, who originally compiled them in his 1950s Lake District opus A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells. In height, they range from 978m (Scafell Pike) to 298m (Castle Crag).
As opposed to his 2021 attempt, Kelly found overall good weather on the route this year. Photographer Steve Birkinshaw reported the labor took its toll on the 37-year-old anyway.
“John Kelly looks like he will break the Wainwright Round record tomorrow night,” Birkinshaw tweeted on May 6. “I was with him this evening on the Northern Fells. He was still moving strongly but at times in a lot of pain. Not happy we did not have any salt and vinegar crisps.”
On his own, but not alone
Kelly started and finished the Wainwright Round at the historic Moot Hall. He took the record from his La Sportiva teammate, Sabrina Verjee, who set the route’s fastest known time (FKT) at five days, 23 hours, 49 minutes in June 2021.
That year, which some called “the year of the FKT,” Kelly had supported Verjee on a May attempt.
Addressing this year's FKT mission beforehand, Kelly acknowledged that disappearing into the mountains for days can be more than just physically challenging. He thanked his supporters for staying behind him.
“Thankful for a job that has allowed me to work remotely and take most of my annual leave in a span of just over a month, and for a family supportive of big adventures and crazy goals,” he wrote.
As borders reopen, long-distance cycling has become more popular than ever. It's low cost, eco-friendly, and allows you to go almost anywhere -- even Antarctica.
ExplorersWeb has rounded up six exciting long-distance bike tours happening right now. Some of the cyclists are athletes. Others are relatively new to life on two wheels. Their expeditions range from round-the-world marathons to extreme Arctic adventures.
Arctic World Tour
Italian cyclist Omar Di Felice started his journey on February 2. He is cycling 4,000km through eight arctic regions. Di Felice began with the first winter bike crossing of Kamchatka, the wild peninsula in the Russian Far East. He covered that 740km in five days.
Next, he is cycling 1,200km from Murmansk, Russia through Finland and Sweden to Tromsø in northern Norway. That section is already underway. On February 14, he crossed into Finland.
From Tromsø, he will cycle short sections in Iceland and Greenland before shifting to Western Canada. From there, he will cycle to Alaska.
Siberia 105°
Stefano Gregoretti and Dino Lanzaretti began a 2,000km expedition through Siberia on January 13. First up, an ambitious 1,200km ride from Oymyakon to Verkhoyansk. These two villages are the two coldest settlements in the world.
But after just 620km, they aborted on February 4. The duo had struggled from the start. In the first few days, they had problems with the gearboxes on the bikes. Then strong winds forced them to push their bikes, even downhill. It's unclear whether that was because of the strength of the wind or the ungodly wind chill.
Their only options were to abort or to wait out the weather, but their one-month Russian visas would expire before they could complete a postponed expedition. They chose to abort.
Chains and Chords
Louisa Hamelbeck of Germany and her American boyfriend Tobi Nickel are making their way “around the world with bikes and a guitar”.
They left Salzberg, Austria last June and plan to cycle for the next two to three years. Since setting off, they have pedaled through Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, and Turkey. From Turkey, they flew to Florida and have now reached New Mexico.
It took them 82 days to travel the 3,250km to their first big milestone: Artemida, near Athens, where Tobi’s father lives. Here, they spent six weeks seeing friends, researching the next few sections of their route, and servicing their bikes.
They wanted to go to the U.S. by boat but they are traveling on the cheap. They found it impossible to find an affordable ship that would take their bikes. In the end, they cycled to Turkey and flew to Miami on December 9.
Explore for Huntington
Dimitri Poffé is biking 15,000km across Central and South America. As the title of his project suggests, he is doing this to raise awareness of Huntington’s disease, for which he tested positive three years ago. Unfortunately, the disease runs in Poffé's family: His sister has had it for eight years, and he lost his father to it 15 years ago.
Currently, he is asymptomatic but he knows that he will develop symptoms between 35 and 40. The diagnosis “was a trigger to realize a dream: to go around the world.” He has chosen Central and South America because the disease most affects that region of the world.
Poffé set off on October 3 from Mexico City. He plans to pass through Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama before cycling through South America.
He reached Guatemala on January 20 and has spent a month exploring the country on two wheels. His next stop is El Salvador.
Migratory Bikes
Camille Pages and Antoine Jouvenel are cycling from the south of France to Nepal. Carrying 40kg each, the French duo will cross 19 countries and cover 20,000km.
Both were relatively new to cycling when they started planning their expedition. They quickly realized that they had a lot to learn.
After a COVID delay, they began their “cyclo-nomadic adventure” in July 2021. Nine days later, they reached Italy. Here the inexperienced pair faced some of their most challenging routes, including Izoard Pass (made famous by the Tour de France) and the Dolomites.
So far they have cycled through France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania.
Voies Recyclables
Brewenn Helary and Lea Schiettecatte want to complete a zero waste, zero carbon, trip around Europe. Voies recyclables translates to ‘recyclable paths’.
Their circumnavigation of Europe will cover 15,000km. They set off on February 12 from their hometown of Iffendic, in France. Their round-Europe trip will take them through 20 countries.
On February 2, ultra-distance Italian cyclist Omar Di Felice hopped on his bike to start a long, cold ride.
In total, Di Felice's westbound route will cover 4,000km of arctic terrain, from Kamchatka to Alaska. His Arctic World Tour will include stages in Scandinavia, Iceland, and Greenland. He hopes to inspire people to travel by bicycle and point out the impact of fossil fuel emissions on arctic landscapes.
Di Felice's route and trip details
Di Felice hopes to complete the cycling in three weeks. Currently, GPS tracking shows that he's already covered a good chunk of the 800km he planned to ride between the capital of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy and Ust'-Kamchatsk.
He will then proceed to Murmansk, Russia, near the Norwegian border. Stages between Tromsø, Norway, through Finland and Sweden, will take him another 1,500km. Di Felice will then go island-hopping; short stages in Svalbard, Iceland, and Greenland follow.
Finally, he will travel (by some means other than cycling) to Whitehorse, Canada, for a long final stage ending at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in Alaska.
Di Felice has a specially-outfitted touring bike to crunch through the snow. Along with his 4,000km on the bike, he's imposing a rule to supply and support himself locally when possible. Even if it's well below zero, he plans to pitch camp if he can't find indoor accommodation.
You can follow Di Felice via social media channels. He plans frequent updates, with episodes featuring locals and arctic scientists. The ultra-cyclist wants to highlight his interview subjects' experience living in areas under changing climatic circumstances.
Di Felice has previous experience with cold-weather cycling. He already circumnavigated Iceland this winter via the 1,294km Ring Road. The trip took him 19 days.
Karlis Bardelis has resumed his human-powered, round-the-world journey. His circumnavigation started in Namibia in 2016. With a friend, he rowed across the South Atlantic Ocean to Brazil. Then in 2018, he restarted in Brazil and cycled on a tandem bicycle to Lima, Peru, with his then-girlfriend. They pedaled the 5,400km in 102 days.
Bardelis next left La Punta, Peru in 2018 and rowed 26,000km across the Pacific to Malaysia in 715 days. He became the first person to row from South America to Asia.
In Malaysia, COVID-19 put the next leg of his challenge on pause. Finally, after waiting a year and a half, he has been able to restart his journey.
Damaged boat
Bardelis flew back to Malaysia on December 7, and has spent the last three weeks planning. He had to quarantine for a week before he could visit his boat after 16 months in storage. The boat was in one piece but when he checked inside the cabin, he found water.
“I felt quite down discovering the interior conditions”, he wrote. Before leaving, he had arranged with those storing the boat to keep it under a roof. Clearly, it had stood outside for at least part of the time. Luckily, most of the electronics still worked. After fans dried out the interior for a few days, Linda was almost ready to back on the water.
He initially had planned to row across the Malacca Strait and into the Indian Ocean. But at this time of year, winds would have been against him the whole way, making the row almost impossible. So instead, from December 20-23, he cycled 850km across Malaysia to Kuala Perlis, the new starting point of his row.
The rowing begins again
On December 30, he rowed for nine hours to the island of Langkawi. He spent a few days at the Royal Langkawi Yacht Club, making the final few adjustments to his boat before reembarking.
The final part of his circumnavigation splits into four legs. The first, which began on January 2, is a relatively short row from Malaysia to Sabang, Indonesia. Bardelis hopes to complete this in eight days.
Here, Bardelis hopes that a friend will join him for the 50- to 60-day row to the Northern Maldives. If not, he will continue solo.
From there, the Latvian will island-hop to the South Maldives. Then he may have to wait a bit for good weather before leaving. At that time of year, conditions in the South Indian Ocean may be too dangerous to row in.
When weather permits, he will row from the Maldives to Tanzania, which he plans to reach in early July. He then cycles to Namibia for the final leg. “Once I reach Namibia, the circle will be complete,” he says.
You can track his journey here.
Over 141 days, Brendon Prince circumnavigated mainland Britain by stand-up paddleboard. He covered 4,203km, took over 8 million strokes, and tackled 7-metre waves. The 48-year-old became the first person to SUP around Britain, completed the first known SUP from Lands End to John O’Groats via the coast, and made the longest ever SUP journey.
He began his journey in Torquay, in southwest England. He paddled up the west coast, around Scotland, and then down the east coast back to Torquay. Prince told ExplorersWeb that his favorite sections were between Kintyre and Oban in Scotland because of its beauty, and the beaches in Northumberland and Norfolk because of the wildlife.
He particularly enjoyed seeing British landmarks as he paddled. “Blackpool Tower, the bridges in Newcastle, paddling past Dover Harbour: They're exciting because they're big landmarks," he recalled. "I love nature and I love natural coastline. But let's face it, once you've seen a limestone cliff, they all look pretty similar.”
No support boat
Prince undertook this circumnavigation in part to emphasize water safety. He was previously a lifeguard on the Devon coast. Five years ago, he had to drag three people from the water on the North Cornish coast, and none survived.
“It made me think that what I was doing wasn’t enough,” said Prince. "I wanted to do more to prevent drowning and most importantly, to educate people."
Prince wanted to prove that his project could be done safely, without a support boat. He did have a support vehicle on land, which was valuable for logistics and as a backup when he landed on the trickier beaches. But once he was on the water, Prince was completely by himself.
Sometimes, he made only 10km for 10 hours of paddling
Bad weather plagued him throughout the journey.
“I had 22 days [when I was] not on the water at all and I had another 30 days where I did under 10km in a day, even though I was paddling all day,” he said.
“One day I started paddling at seven in the morning and a guy was walking his dog. It got to about five that night, and the same guy came out to walk his dog again. He stopped and he shouted, 'I can't believe you are still paddling.' I had only covered about six kilometres the whole day.”
The northwest coast was particularly challenging. The man-made sea defenses in the area deflected the power of the sea, and the rebounding waves forced him to stay farther out to sea.
Longest day: 78km
He had initially thought that he could complete the journey in 90 days if the weather was good. And he is still certain that is a good estimate. The weather just wasn't on his side. But despite the lost time and the short days, he averaged 10 hours and 40km a day on his board. On his longest day, he made 78km in 17 hours of paddling.
The bad weather brought big waves and swells. He became better at reading the weather and as his hours at sea accrued, so did his level of expertise.
“I’m not the paddler I was when I started,” Prince said. “Unless I had a 40 mile-an-hour wind in my face, I paddled. By the end of it, I was just going out and getting on with it. Big seas just don't really worry me in a way that perhaps they did six months ago.”
Prince planned his route carefully and started in the areas that he had regularly paddled. He had done 100km paddles around Cornwall and Devon previously. He knew that crossing the Severn, Scotland, and the northwest coast would be the hardest sections. Starting in the south meant that by the time he reached these cruxes, he had hundreds more hours of experience under his belt.
Careful planning
By the time he got to Scotland, the big waves did not faze him at all.
“I was surfing down every wave that came through," he said. "There was a seven-metre swell, with the wind at the top of the wave and then no wind in the trough. It's great fun.”
A one- to two-metre chop was more dangerous because it continuously threw him from the board. On two occasions, Scotland winds rolling off the mountains caught him off guard. He solved this by heading further out to sea.
Over the 141 days, the physicality took its toll. Prince switched between six different paddle strokes to “keep my body fresh”. Although he ate 10,000 calories a day, he lost 13kg. The changes to his body became very evident.
“Regardless of how much you eat, your body reshapes itself," he said. "I lost a lot of bulk because I didn't need strength, I needed stamina. I lost a lot from my legs. By the end, they were useless for walking up steps or going for a run.”
The aftermath
The effort even affected his hands. By the end of the four-and-a-half months, they were like claws.
“I couldn't really open and close my hands because they were wrapped around a paddle for so many days," he recalled. "Only now have my hands got back to a level where I can open a jar.”
Later, his wife was upset that he kept the state of his hands a secret. “But if you articulate it, it's real and it brings you down. And that is something I couldn't afford.”
Prince took great pride in his unwavering positivity. Every day, he made a conscious effort to keep a smile on his face and power through. “Never moaning gets you through anything,” he said.
Jonas Deichmann, 34, has completed his round-the-world triathlon. Over 14 months, the German athlete swam 456km, ran 5,000km and cycled 21,000km. He crossed 18 countries and covered the distance of 120 Ironmans. COVID restrictions made his journey even more difficult and forced several route changes.
Deichmann began his triathlon by cycling from Munich to Croatia. Here, he started his swim leg. For 54 days, he swam for eight hours a day along the coast of Croatia, eventually covering the 456km. He admitted that swimming is his least favorite of the triathlon disciplines. As he got out of the water in Dubrovnik, Deichmann commented, “I don’t want to do that again…I am and will remain a cyclist.”
"An amazing way to have a miserable time"
He thought that the next stage would be in his comfort zone, although cycling through a Russian winter would not be easy, even for an experienced rider. But COVID restrictions forced him to change his route. His original plan had been to cycle through the Balkans, Turkey, Russia, and China. But when he arrived in Istanbul in mid-December, he discovered that Russia had closed its borders.
After waiting for 13 weeks, he finally got a visa for Russia and made Vladivostok the endpoint of his cycle. He had to cover the Russian section in 60 days, the length of his visa. Battling extreme cold and winds, his speed varied from 18km an hour to 30km an hour. “Cycling across Russia in winter has been an amazing way to have an absolutely miserable time,” he said.
On May 18, he reached Vladivostok. Once again, he had to rethink his route. He wanted to hitchhike across the Pacific on a cargo ship, then run across the U.S. But American borders were closed and finding a boat to take him was practically impossible. Eventually, he flew to Mexico just before his visa ran out.
11 pairs of running shoes and 3 flat tires
He began his running leg in Tijuana. He covered 5,000km, pulling a cart with his supplies, and arrived in Cancun on October 5. Deichmann aimed for “consistency, not speed” so that he would make it to the end. He wore out 11 pairs of running shoes and had three flat tires. Everyone from police units to mariachi bands and running groups joined him for sections.
On October 29, Deichmann flew from Cancun to Lisbon to start the final leg of his journey. He cycled 4,000km across Portugal, Spain, France, and Switzerland before crossing the border back into Germany. As a special highlight, he stopped in Aedermansdorf, Switzerland, where his family lives. He hadn't seen them for 14 months, and they gave him a welcome party.
With fewer daylight hours, he had limited cycling time but tried to cover 160km a day. In Seville, he felt “sicker than I have in years”. He took three days to recover, then upped his daily mileage to 200km to catch up. He arrived back in Munich on November 29.
Deichmann already knows his next big challenge, which he hopes to do in 2023. Though he says that it is “strictly secret”, he did admit that it would not include a swimming leg. And after 14 months of pushing himself to the limit, he says “I will also give my body 14 months of recovery.”
Watch a grown man carrying a shovel dressed as a train engineer run a marathon through muddy swamps, dense brambles, and people’s backyards.
You read that right. The short film Run the Line depicts Beau Miles “following his nose on something half-cooked that’s only half there” — in this case, a long-abandoned train line near his home in southeastern Australia.
Miles totes no electrolyte packets, no nutritional goo, no form of instant sugar. He has no smartwatch, no system for measuring distance. He doesn’t even wear running clothes. A pair of work pants, a cutoff plaid shirt, and a scarf get the job done.
Why the shovel? According to Miles, it’s to shove aside blackberry brambles when the going gets thick. It's a curious tool for the job, but it makes the ruddy-complected runner's anachronistic kit uncannily complete.
The objective: “Run” a semi-rural 43km train line that once carried timber between Noojee and Warragul (outside Melbourne) from the early 1900s until 1958.
Beau Miles hunts history on the traces of a trail
Why pursue such a bizarre objective? According to Miles, his aim was to perform first-hand (or boots-on-the-ground) historical research.
“I think it’s easy to forget about eras before our current one,” Miles says. “Especially when they get lost under layers of new suburbs and development. There comes a time when you have to actively search out history. Running what was last run by big steel wheels — what a cool idea! At least, I think it’s a cool idea.”
Noting that the route has not existed for over 60 years, the chipper Australian understandably predicts some obstacles. Hijinks ensue.
Almost as soon as he sets New Balance to train track at the station in sleepy Warragul (population 1,476), he runs into his first bottleneck: a small house, right where the track used to be.
He considers his options.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Miles begins, “if I was sitting there having my cup of tea and a bloke wanders through looking like an idiot train driver with a shovel, I’m probably going to get up and say ‘get out of here. You’re not supposed to be here, train drivin’ man.’”
Trespass as exploration, and 'bush tucker'
He resolves to go around, but it won’t be his last time weighing the pros and cons of attempting to harmlessly violate personal property. Trespassing is the zany exploit’s principal antagonistic behavior, and the marathon-distance run proves to require it on a nearly constant basis. (The film counts the last fence Miles jumps as number 176.)
“My thinking was, if I was continually moving and being mindful of the animals, I wasn’t doing anybody any harm,” he says.
At one point, the police respond to phone calls from anxious residents and conduct a notably non-threatening interrogation.
The encounter tests Miles’ mettle little, if at all. He simply churns through the landscape, eating leftover mush packed in multiple upcycled peanut butter jars in his backpack. At one point, he chomps down wild mushrooms growing beside the road. “That is a good bit of mushie,” he exclaims. “A good bit of bush tucker.”
He’s delighted to discover that fence number 68 is not electric, stating, “That’s good for my balls.”
“I want to be engaged with what’s around me,” he says. “I don’t want to be distracted by the trail, or the lack of one. This is my new kind of running — which in some ways isn’t running at all. It’s exploring. And I bloody love it.”
Revelations with a magpie
Reflecting at the end of the adventure, Miles finds himself talking to a curious magpie at Noojee station. “I spent years and years going to the ends of the earth trying to find adventure,” he confides to the bird. “It’s right under my nose here. Under all these multilayered things in my own backyard.
I guess that’s the big takeaway here. Explore your own backyard.”
It's 217 kilometres from the lowest point in the Americas (Badwater Basin, 86m below sea level) to the base of the tallest mountain in the contiguous United States (Mount Whitney, 4,421m). Naturally, two of America's sufferfest heroes recently took the hard way up and the dangerous way down.
The mission: bike the distance through the blistering desert, then summit Mt. Whitney's 13km, 1,870m Mountaineer's Route. Then ski back down.
After introducing the objective, professional skier Cody Townsend says, "I've got one other person who's just dumb enough to do this with me."
Enter the world's most famous rock climber, Alex Honnold.
It's the latest installment in Townsend's The Fifty video series, which chronicles his tour of the 50 most famous ski descents in North America (according to the guidebook, Fifty Classic Ski Descents of North America).
Honnold's first line in the video: "I legitimately haven't skied in a couple of years, I don't think." Then he makes a dad-tastic rock climber joke.
Hijinks and danger ensue, as the two athletes defy the weather to visibly struggle through the task. They endure some legitimately hairy moments. Some activities they're clearly not good at: Alex Honnold grasps the concept of french fries vs. pizza, but that's about it.
Can they complete their charge? "Only one way to find out," says Honnold.
Jonas Deichmann started his round the world triathlon in September 2020. He has just completed his third leg -- a 5,000km run across Mexico.
He began by swimming 456km along the coast of Croatia in 54 days. Swimming is his weakest of the three disciplines. “I don’t want to do it again,” he admitted.
Although his specialty is cycling, he had to draw on all his experience during his 17,000km ride across the Balkans, Turkey, and Russia to Vladivostok.
“The Russian winter makes life as a cyclist a fierce experience,” he said.
Deichmann completed that bike leg in May but found himself stuck in Vladivostok. Finding a boat to Mexico was “practically impossible”. His plan had been to catch a lift on a cargo ship, but because of Covid-19, none allowed passengers.
Eventually, he only had a few days before his Russian visa ran out. He had to fly to Mexico, something he had wanted to avoid. Even this had its logistical difficulties. His flight routed via Tokyo and there was a strong chance that he would get stranded there. But in the end, he reached Mexico.
After two days of preparation, he began his run in Tijuana. Over 117 days, he ran 5,060km, pulling a 20-kilogram cart with his supplies and gear. He ran roughly 45km each day and tried to keep a pace of six to seven-minute kilometres. If he noticed himself going faster, he deliberately slowed down, to maintain "consistency, not speed”. He completed his run in Cancun on October 5.
In the first few days of the run, he struggled in the 40˚C temperatures. He adapted to avoid the hottest hours of the day. He began early, took a long midday break, then started running again in the afternoon.
Besides the heat, pulling his trailer up “long steep mountains” was his greatest challenge. In all, his run had an elevation gain of 45,000m.
Deichmann gained a huge following in Mexico. Running clubs and solo runners joined him for sections of his journey. Even the police department in Juchitan got involved. Sometimes, over 100 runners accompanied him.
“I love the company...but there are also days when it is just a bit too much," he admitted on Instagram. "Running alone can be very nice. Ideally, I like a few days company and then a few days alone.”
Deichmann had assumed that as a cyclist, he would enjoy the bike sections, but the Siberian weather took its toll. Although running was “a lot harder on my body”, he has enjoyed his time in Mexico most so far.
After 11 pairs of running shoes, three flat tires, and eight kilograms lighter than when he left Tijuana, Deichmann is now resting in Cancun. He is using the time to work out the logistics for his final leg, a 4,000km cycle from Portugal to Munich. He is now looking for a boat that can take him across the Atlantic.
Since this is hurricane season, the only realistic option is a cargo ship. "My beloved bicycle Esposa is already waiting in Europe and will be ready whenever I arrive in Portugal,” he said.
Chloë McCardel, 36, has completed her 44th crossing of the English Channel. This breaks the record for the number of crossings by a single swimmer.
The Australian swimmer started her swim in Kent on Wednesday and arrived 32km later at Pointe de la Courte Dune, France after 10 hours and one minute of swimming. It was her seventh crossing of 2021.
McCardel has been racking up Channel swims for over a decade. Last year, she exceeded the men’s record of 34 Channel crossings. Alison Streeter, who swam the Channel 43 times, held the previous record.
Over the years, McCardel has spent over 450 hours in the frigid waters of the Channel. Her longest single swim was a triple crossing that took almost 37 hours. She has been actively working toward the record for the last five years.
It hasn’t been easy. She has suffered many jellyfish stings, battled hypothermia, and even ended up in hospital after one of her attempts. She swam her previous crossing just days after recovering from a chest infection.
A survivor of domestic abuse, McCardel credits swimming the Channel for rebuilding her confidence and sense of identity. She told the Guardian that the stretch of water has an “almost magical pull…I call it my spiritual home.”
Now that she has broken the record, she admits that she is unlikely to return. After years of marathon swimming, she suffers from pain in her muscles, tendons, and ligaments. She feels like her body is telling her to stop, and she has achieved her goal.
"I'm really happy to just retire as queen," she told Radio National, "Forty-four is a lot. I don't feel any compulsion to go back, there's no other record in the Channel that excites me."
On July 31, 23-year-old trad climber Anna Taylor took off from Penzance, Cornwall to do something unusual: complete the 83-route circuit found in Ken Wilson's Classic Rock book.
Not only that, but she would also access each climb by bicycle and solo 68 of the routes. The bike path Taylor followed wends from Cornwall through Wales, the Lake District, Scotland, and finishes on the Isle of Skye.
On September 30, Taylor announced her triumph — and relief — at having completed the feat. She's the first woman to do so.
10,000 metres, 2,500 kilometres, and miserable conditions
Taylor entered her project tour as an experienced trad climber but a nascent cyclist. She exited the Classic Rock challenge with a little over 10,000 vertical metres and 2,500 cycling kilometres under her belt.
Notably, gritstone legend Neil Gresham showed up to support and belay Taylor in the final stretches. She described "a fun, mildly epic adventure sliding around on the Cioch, and the Cuillin Ridge was, to put it frankly, f**king grim. It wasn't quite the scenic finale I had in mind, but was quite a fitting ending in the sense that virtually nothing about this trip has ever gone according to plan."
The young Briton noted her favorite and most formative experiences on the journey, too:
"There's been some good and very memorable moments though. Climbing The Long Climb on the Ben in a bubble of mist feeling like I was the only person in the world was ace, as was the watery fight to get out of The Chasm (though that was perhaps more of a type 2 fun sort of day). Routes like The Devils Slide on Lundy and The Clean Sweep on Hells Lum were also highlights, and all that definitely made up for the times I was frozen, wet and off-route, or regretting my life choices cycling up endless hills."
Is 'fair means' a trend?
The accession of climbing routes by fair means is having something of a moment. In July, German expeditionists Stefan Glowacz and Phillip Hans took off on the 'Wallride' route development tour through the Alps, covering 2,500km by bike and foot exclusively.
On September 20, Paralympian Andrea Lanfri cycled over 470km from Genoa, climbed up Capanna Margherita (4,554m), and returned to the base before cycling back to Genoa. He completed the first leg in under 19 hours.
And just earlier this week, the Swiss-Italian alpinist team of Simon Gietl and Roger Schaeli finished linking the Alps' Six Great North Faces using human power alone, trekking, biking, or paragliding to and from each climb.
Even in light of this recent trend, after her trek across the British Isles, Taylor seems well-poised to hold her own in a largely male-dominant fore. And the young female ascentionist did most of it alone, on the cusp of a gloomy, slick shoulder season, and across the sparse British gritstone pate.
"For now," she wrote, "I'm just appreciating being warm and dry, and I'm pretty relieved to have got this over with before it starts snowing."
For a closer look at Anna Taylor's two-month, 83-route accomplishment, check out her social channel, @anna_taylor_98.
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A millennial from Texas just became the first person to cycle across Iceland in less than 24 hours.
Payson McElveen, a rising star in mountain and gravel biking circuits, burned through the 413km ride in 19 hours, 45 minutes, setting a new speed record for the route.
It's no joke to travel the route by any self-propelled means, but McElveen’s time is ridiculous. The terrain is rugged, the remoteness is intimidating, and the weather during his ride on September 11 was awful.
All that and, according to McElveen, setting the record wasn’t really the point. He’s no stranger to all-out Fastest Known Time attempts, but this time, he just wanted to challenge himself and enjoy the terrain.
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“The competitor in me will always enjoy racing to throw down a fast time, but this project was less about an FKT effort and more about just seeing if it was possible to ride across the whole country in less than a day,” he told VeloNews. “Ever since the success of the White Rim FKT in 2019, I’ve been thinking about other geographically focused routes to do a big effort on. To me, those are the challenges that inspire me most these days: Start at one landmark and ride as fast as you can until you literally run out of road or trail. In this case, that was hitting the ocean on the south side of the country.”
The Iceland FKT route
McElveen’s north-to-south route took him through the country’s interior highlands — mostly stark volcanic desert, veined sparsely by high-clearance access roads. The challenge would be steep under any circumstances. Most of it proved to be deep gravel, and it required occasional river crossings, which the cyclist forded in neoprene socks.
Chris Burkard, the adventure athlete and photographer, helped McElveen come up with the idea and has explored Iceland extensively. For VeloNews, he pointed to the pure difficulty of McElveen's ride itself, but also to a certain esoteric significance that underpinned it.
“More than just an athletic achievement, Payson’s ride pays homage to thousands of years of overland travel through this wild country and in many ways is impossible to truly describe to anyone who hasn’t sunk their tires deep into its remote and endless gravel roads,” Burkard said. “Having personally ridden through it, around and across it, slogging thousands of miles of Icelandic gravel –- I know a thing or two about Iceland’s terrain by bike, and this achievement can only be compared to a near-mythical achievement. Fitting for Iceland, to say the least.”
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Through adversity, catharsis
The grim weather compounded the Iceland FKT challenge. McElveen rode into a persistent headwind for most of the day, got soaked by over seven hours of rain, and endured temperatures as low as -1˚C.
“It’s funny how our ‘weather window’ would qualify as the worst riding weather you’d probably have all year elsewhere,” McElveen said. “Iceland’s weather is some of the most dynamic in the world, especially in September. I would strongly recommend riding in the warmer, drier months of the summer, and take more clothing and food than you think you need.”
He wasn't kidding about the food. Knowing that no food was available on the route, McElveen ate a 7,000 calorie breakfast before he took off.
In the end, the young cyclist's invincible psych won out. To hear him tell it, Iceland's sublime beauty carried him through the grueling task of setting an Iceland FKT as much as his strategy and persistence.
Iceland is the most beautiful country I have ever been to, but with volcanoes, glaciers, desert, and weather that will make you feel extremely small and vulnerable. After this ride, I have a full appreciation for giving this wild country the respect and admiration it deserves.
Long-haul expeditions around the world have restarted. Some have reached their final stages, while others are trying to out-manoeuvre lingering pandemic restrictions.
Out of Eden Walk
Since 2013, Paul Salopek has been walking the original migration route of humans from Africa to the tip of South America. In total, it will take him around 15 years to complete. It is the ultimate slow journalism story.
Eight years on, Salopek is now in Shanghai, preparing to walk across China. He estimates that it will take him 18 months to traverse that vast country.
He entered China through Myanmar, where COVID-19 forced him to put his Out of Eden walk on hold. While waiting out the pandemic, he witnessed first hand the fallout from the recent military coup.
Speaking to National Geographic, he said that when he made it to Yangon to extend his visa he “inadvertently stepped into a world of bewildering anguish”. Initially, he felt that it would be disrespectful to continue with his cultural city walks. Eventually, he concluded that “walking the world should include both the desolating and beautiful”.
Now for the first time in 17,000km, he flew rather than walked from Myanmar to China. Continuing on foot was too risky. Leaving the country has weighed heavily on him. “It is a terrible thing to abandon your friends in such situations…you can walk away from a lot of things in life. Grief and shame aren’t among them.”
Around the world with a cat
Dean Nicholson left Scotland to bikepack around the world in 2018. Three months later, a stranded kitten adopted him. Since then, they have traveled the world together, Nicholson cycling and Nala on his shoulder or in her specially made basket. So far, Nicholson has been to 20 countries and Nala to 12.
After returning to the UK in 2020 to get visas for Russia, they went to Austria at the end of last year. Since then, they have been exploring the area waiting for restrictions to lift. Hauled up in Gmunden, they have been taking short excursions into the surrounding mountains. To pass the time, Nicholson has been marketing merchandise of his and Nala’s journey. The duo has reached almost celebrity status.
Today, Nicholson revealed that he now has all the paperwork needed to apply for an Article 50 permit to continue his journey across the EU. His current goal is to make it to Thailand.
UK Circumwalk
Karen Penny, 55, is walking 17,000km around the coastline of the UK. She started in January 2019 and expected the walk to take three-and-a-half years. She now thinks she will finish on September 21, 2021. Despite a few months off waiting for COVID restrictions to ease, she is almost a year ahead of schedule.
She has already walked around England, Wales, and Ireland, and is finishing her walk in Scotland. She is now on her tenth pair of walking boots. For the entire journey, she has carried all her supplies and equipment in a backpack. She resupplies as she walks through towns and villages. She has estimated that she camps nine out of 10 nights. The rest of the time, passersby and friends offered her a place to stay.
She is currently walking to Aberdeen. Here, she will catch a ferry to the Shetland Islands on September 14. In her final week, she will tackle the various Shetland Islands. Her endpoint is the island Muckle Flugga.
7,000km across Italy
Elia Origoni restarted his 7,000km walk across Italy in July. He was forced to stop his expedition in May to recover from injuries sustained in an avalanche. Seven weeks later, he was ready to head back to the Sentiero Italia.
He has walked through 14 regions of Italy and is currently in the Chiareggio Valley. He began the first week of September in San Fedele Intelvi, Lombardy, and walked up the Bocchetta di Nava. An unexpected problem here was the lack of water. The map indicated a water point but it was dry. He had to ration the small amount of water he was carrying. Luckily, he reached a village and was able to top up his supplies.
As the summer tourists left the mountains, the new month brought solitude for Origoni. It also signaled his last month of walking. He aims to end his walk in Trieste.
Running from the UK to Nepal
Rosie Swale-Pope, 75, started running from the UK to Kathmandu in 2018. The pandemic forced her to stop in Turkey and eventually return to the UK. Her plan had been to re-start in Turkey as soon as possible. When it became clear that restrictions would not allow this any time soon, she decided to restart the entire journey and take a different route.
On June 25, she left Brighton, UK, her rough plan is to run to Norway, head north to Russia, then make her way through China and Tibet before ending in Nepal. After a month running in the UK, the North Sea forced her to momentarily stop her on foot journey and fly to Bergen. For the past few weeks, she has been working her way up the west coast of Norway towards Førde.
For the 49th time, Jane Dotchin has set out on a seven-week pilgrimage along rural byways from her home in Hexham, England to Inverness, Scotland.
How many 80-year-olds do you know who travel 1,000km overland each year? Age is just a number for Jane Dotchin from Hexham, England, who has done such a trek annually since 1972. This year, her 13-year-old pack pony, her disabled Jack Russell terrier, and a few personal items were all she needed for the trip.
Dotchin puts on her eyepatch and an orange safety vest, packs her kit and Jack Russell terrier Dinky onto her horse, and sends it. From her home in Northumberland, near the Scottish border, she’ll ride all the way north to Inverness. It’s a tradition that started decades ago for Dotchin, with a deferred animal care request and an inkling of freedom.
“My mother would look after my other ponies, but she wasn’t that keen on looking after my Haflinger stallion,” she told Scotland’s STV News. “So I rode him down to Somerset to see a friend, which is about 300 miles [480km].”
Despite cultural changes and age challenges, the active octagenarian never lost her inspiration and remarkable trail psych.
Highland trail riding: Dotchin goes north, old-school
Dotchin’s pilgrimage, which started this year on August 31, will take around seven weeks. She and her pony, Diamond, do 25 to 30km days, mostly on single-track roads. She declines to use maps, sticking to routes she knows (presumably quite intimately) and visiting friends along the way.
“It is nice to go and see [people] again,” she said to STV News. “I ring them up in the morning to say I’m going to be there in the evening. I don’t warn them too far in advance, because if the weather suddenly changes or I decide to stop early then they can be left wondering where I’ve got to.”
Her process is simple: eat a simple diet of porridge, oatcakes, and cheese. Resupply along the way, never carrying too much at once — boil water from streams when it’s necessary. Sleep in a tent, tether the horse, dig a hole in the ground when nature calls.
It’s fascinating to think of an 80-year-old woman in England acting out the dreams of John Muir, but there she is. Her one compromise appears to be that she does carry a rudimentary cell phone — however, she only uses it in emergencies, and a single charge often lasts six weeks.
Along the way, Dinky the Jack Russell frolics in grass patches despite her deformed front legs. She sleeps with Dotchin like a “hot water bottle” while Diamond rests and grazes on a long tether nearby.
A public service announcement from Jane Dotchin: don’t litter!
Over the years, Jane Dotchin has made one alarming observation: trash is now everywhere. Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire, just outside Glasgow, especially sets off her litter radar.
“It’s appalling, in particular single used barbecues which are left lying all over the place,” she told STV News. “Cumbernauld is the fly-tipping capital of Britain. There are some lovely people there who let me camp, but some of it is so disgusting and shameful.”
Regardless, she carries on. She also notes that camper vans are more and more prevalent on the UK’s narrow single-track roads. She’s happy to share but notes that some van drivers don’t seem to realize just how much space they take up.
“I was forever just about getting swept off the roads by them,” she said.
Still, her love for the countryside and a worthy adventure endures. And in 2020, The British Horse Society recognized it, giving her its Exceptional Achievement award.
Many thru-hike the Kungsleden, Swedish Lapland's 500km "King's Trail." But Louis-Philippe Loncke did it unsupported — and on short rations.
Unsupported long-distance hiker Louis-Philippe Loncke is no stranger to carrying very, very heavy packs. He carried a 48kg pack on an 800km traverse of the Pyrenees last year, and once humped a spine-crumpling 62kg across Tasmania.
But for his recent project in Swedish Lapland, Loncke decided to do something new: cut weight. It’s very rare to complete the 500km Kungsleden ("King's Trail") without support, but Loncke did it with just a 31kg backpack. To turn the trick, he would have to cut down on his food reserves severely. And if he were going to do that, he’d have to lose weight for the trip.
Check and check: Loncke brought 12.5kg of food for the entire 19-day trip. By the end, he weighed 75kg, down from his usual 82kg.
The Unsupported Kungsleden trek: plenty of time
It was quite a lot of weight to cut for a thru-hiker, whose calorie demands are generally massive. During the trip, Loncke routinely cranked out 30km days. But Monster Pack Man’s food store looked like it came straight out of the back of the dorm room cabinet: meals in pouches, bars, nuts, and powders had to suffice.
And in the end, they did. Starting on August 25, Loncke walked and paddled the route without much of a hitch. He brought a packraft to float a total of 18.2km of the trip, completing the required lake crossings.
Comparatively unencumbered, he hiked the rest. And despite a muscle tweak in the middle of the trip that forced a rest day, he even found time for “side trips”. The 34km in detours included a summit of Kebnekaise, Sweden’s tallest peak at just under 2,100m.
The Belgian news outlet RTL has aired a feature (in French) with Loncke on the trip.
Rosie Swale-Pope, 75, has reached Bergen, Norway during her latest attempt to run 8,500km from England to Nepal. Swale-Pope kickstarted the run on June 25 in Brighton, then made her way to the east coast of England.
Despite being in her eighth decade, Swale-Pope seems to relish her journey as much as ever. "Can't wait to meet more of you wonderful people along the way," she wrote on social media three weeks ago.
Swale-Pope flew to Norway on August 19 and reunited with her beloved cart, dubbed Ice Chick. The cart was sea freighted from Immingham Docks on the east coast. Now on the west coast of Norway, Swale-Pope will run north to the county of Finnmark. Here, she hopes to cross the border into Russia.
Despite the jump in latitude, the temperature and weather in Norway are currently similar to England. But as she heads further north and into autumn, Swale-Pope can only hope that Ice Chick won't be describing her.
In every sport, there are key moments where people seem to do the impossible, events that catapult someone’s name into the history books. In marathon swimming, one such moment came 60 years ago, on August 22, 1961, on Lake Michigan.
One of the five Great Lakes in North America, Lake Michigan borders the states of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. The vast lake has a total surface area of 58,030 sq km, a maximum width of 190km, and a maximum length of 494km.
The 60th anniversary of Ted Erikson’s remarkable swim across the lake gives us an opportunity to relive this landmark event and delve into the history of marathon swimming.
Even before 1961, several swimmers tried to make the 50km across Lake Michigan from Chicago to Michigan City. In the late 1950s, Joe Griffiths attempted it four times. After years of huge waves, seiches (standing waves that can form in an enclosed body of water), storms, and relentless currents, his fourth attempt sent him to hospital. “I’ll never talk about crossing that lake again,” he declared.
Around the same time, Harry Briggs stubbornly attempted the same route. In 1960, after his third try, he gave up. Writing about the ordeal, he noted that “a rare degree of cooperation from nature” would be required for anyone to cross the lake. The challenge was not just the distance and the waves. The temperature of these big northern lakes was frigid, even at the end of August, when these swims often took place. No one wore wetsuits.
Ted Erikson tackles Lake Michigan
Jim “The Courtesy Man” Moran (a billionaire car dealer and philanthropist) had sponsored Griffith’s attempts to cross the lake. When Griffiths decided against a fifth attempt, Moran offered a cash prize of $3,675 to the first person who could swim from Chicago to Michigan City. On August 21, 1961, six swimmers lined up to take on his challenge. One of them was 33-year-old Ted Erikson.
A localized storm threw up five-metre waves. By 2 am on August 22, just one swimmer remained. While everyone else had succumbed to the horrendous conditions, Erikson had battled on. During the night, the water was so rough that his support team lost sight of him for 15 panic-inducing minutes.
The wind and currents pushed him off course. In total, he swam 70km, a whopping 20km more than intended. It took 36.5 hours, but eventually, Erikson clambered onto the pier at Michigan City to a cheering crowd of over 10,000 people. He had set two world records: he was the first person to swim across Lake Michigan and had spent the longest time in the water during an endurance swim.
Steven Munatones, a renowned open water swimming champion and coach, put the achievement into perspective for ExplorersWeb: “Erikson’s swim lands somewhere between extraordinary and mind-boggling…At that time, swimming at these distances was just being explored by the world’s pioneering marathon swimmers.”
What makes this all the more impressive is that Erikson was completely unknown in the world of marathon swimming.
We asked Erikson about his open-water swimming experience. How had he prepared for this great swim? His answer was surprising:
“I’d always loved the water and spent almost every day swimming a mile or so,” Erikson explained. He had considered tackling long-distance swims before but the cost had always stopped him: “I had insufficient financial resources to do it on my own, the Moran contest gave me the opportunity."
Early long-distance swimmers
The 1950s and 1960s saw a huge uptake in marathon swimming, with numerous firsts, but it was by no means the beginning of the sport. Ten-thousand-year-old Egyptian wall paintings show men swimming using what archaeologists believe to be a primitive form of breaststroke. Similarly, mosaics and paintings from Pompeii depict swimmers in the open water. The Japanese are known to have organized outdoor swimming races as far back as 36 BC, and the Romans held races in the Tiber, with crowds of people lining the banks to watch.
When discussing key events in marathon swimming, Munatones first pick is “Skyllias and Hydna swimming 14.5km in Greece in 480 BC.”
As the story goes, Skyllias and his daughter Hydna swam 14.5km to cut the anchor ropes of a Persian fleet in the Battle of Artemision. This first historical record of a marathon-length swim has proved to be quite prophetic. Women have continued to excel in marathon swimming. It is currently one of the only sports where women achieve similar or even superior results to their male counterparts.
Though there are earlier examples of long-distance swimming, the feat that first drew international attention occurred on August 25, 1875. Matthew Webb crossed the English Channel in 21 hours and 45 minutes. It was his second attempt at the crossing and he was determined to finish.
Covered in porpoise oil as primitive insulation, he set off in the choppy waters. He was stung by jellyfish and pushed off course multiple times. By the end, he was so exhausted that friends were getting ready to jump in and save him because his strokes were so weak and irregular. But he finished, and he returned to England as a celebrity.
In 1926, 19-year-old Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the Channel. She cut a staggering seven hours off Webb’s time, and two hours from the then-current record. She finished in 14 hours and 34 minutes.
The neverending cycle of new challenges
This began a pattern. Webb was the first man to swim the channel, so Ederle became the first woman. Ederle swam from France to England, so Florence Chadwick swam from England to France.
The challenge then became to complete a round trip. Antonio Abertondo was the first to swim from England to France to England with no breaks, in 1961. Not to be outdone, Ted Erikson decided he could do it faster. So in 1965, he became the second person to complete a two-way crossing and broke the speed record in the process.
As well as speed records, swimmers wanted to tackle freezing temperatures and sought out ever more dangerous bodies of water. In 1967, Erikson became the first person to complete one of the most dangerous swims possible. He swam 50 km from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge. This swim was not repeated for 47 years. To this day, Erikson regards it as his proudest achievement.
In 1987, Lynne Cox completed her most famous swim, a 4.3 km crossing of the Bering Strait in 3°C water. Ten years later, Susie Maroney swam 150 km from Havana to Florida. The waters were so dangerous that she had to swim in a shark cage. It wasn't until 2013 that the route was completed without a cage, by Diana Nyad. Nyad had tried for years but ultimately succeeded at age 64.
This cycle continues on almost every waterway in the world. Swimmers strive to find new routes across oceans, rivers, and lakes. Building on the successes of those who came before, swimmers continue to push boundaries. In 2019, Sarah Thomas completed the first four-way crossing of the English Channel.
An Olympic sport
Today, marathon swimming is more popular than ever. “Its inclusion in the Olympic program was the greatest catalyst for marathon swimming around the world,” Munatones told me.
First included in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, marathon swimming has gone from strength to strength. Ten-kilometer races have cropped up all over the world, garnering thousands of participants. Though very different from Webb and Erikson's solo swims, it demonstrates the exponential growth of the sport.
As new generations of swimmers take to the water, they have many things their predecessors did not. GPS trackers, accurate weather and temperature forecasts, jellyfish ointment, shark shields, and a wealth of knowledge to draw upon. The sport may have changed, but boundary-pushing records, such as Erikson’s swim across Lake Michigan, continue to inspire.
Ultra-endurance athletes, alpinists, and adventurers seem to have really come into their own during the COVID-19 pandemic. It feels like a new Fastest Known Time is set on some popular route every week. This week is no exception.
For the second time in just over a year, the FKT on the popular Monte Rosa Traverse in the Swiss Alps has fallen.
The new record, set by Frenchman Benjamin Vedrines, stands at 9 hours and 18 minutes, more than four hours faster than the previous record of 13 hours and 39 minutes, set by Nico Hojac and Adrian Zurbrügg in July 2020.
Hojac and Zurbrügg’s effort on the Spaghetti Tour in turn bested Andreas Steindl and Ueli Steck’s time of 14 hours and 35 minutes, set in 2015.
Védrines completed the feat alone, starting early on the morning on Aug. 14.
The Spaghetti Tour usually takes days to traverse. It involves climbing 18 snow-covered peaks above 4,000m.
On August 17, 2021, veteran endurance runner Anna Troup of Henley, England staked a new record time for women on the Pennine Way. Troup knocked out the 435km trek in 72:46:37, a little over three days. In doing so, Troup secured the grail from the previous title holder, Sabrina Verjee, with 1.5 hours to spare.
Troup's Pennine Way Record
Troup had that new record in mind when she set off from Edale on August 14. The ultra runner adhered to strict arrival and departure times at each pitstop along the way — at first.
But in the early hours of Tuesday, August 16, Troup's actual time began to trail behind target, owing to a bout of illness and an essential 40-minute nap near the third and fourth stops of her trip. At Byrness, Troup's actual time lagged one and a half hours behind her stretch target. By 7 am, she was a full 2 hours and 4 minutes off.
But perseverance prevailed in the last two stops. Sources say that Troup "stormed down" the Cheviot Summit section and picked up speed throughout her descent.
Troup's latest achievement improves upon her personal Pennine Way best by a substantial margin. Just six weeks ago, Troup completed the route in 80:28:35. This week's victory bests that June time by nearly 7 hours and 42 minutes.
She joins fellow Briton John Kelley, who reclaimed the men's Pennine Way FKT last May with a searing time of 64:40. For additional information and shots from Troup's Pennine Way effort, look to her IG.
Ian Clinton, Simon Chalk, Jordan Swift, and Matt Mason have become the first crew to row across the North Atlantic Ocean from New York to London.
All four rowers are serving, or are former members, of the Royal Marine Commando.
They set off from Brooklyn Bridge on May 31 and crossed the finish line at Tower Bridge yesterday. It took them 72 days to cover the 5,572km route. They set themselves the target of completing the journey in 70 days, but bad weather meant that they just missed out.
During their entire row, they grappled with some of the worst conditions on record in the North Atlantic. They spent a total of 24 days on their para-anchor. Member Jordan Swift told CNBC that the physical aspect of that challenge hadn’t been that bad. The biggest difficulty was the emotional ups and downs from all the setbacks because of the weather they faced.
Of the four, only Mason and Chalk had previously rowed across an ocean. Mason completed the Atlantic Rowing Race (now known as the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge) in 2014, and Chalk is one of the world’s foremost ocean rowers. He has rowed the Atlantic seven times, the Indian Ocean twice, and holds multiple Guinness World Records in ocean rowing. He was in the first Atlantic Rowing Race in 1997 and went on to manage the race in 2003.
Some have dubbed this route "the world's most dangerous row". Just 57 people have made it across the North Atlantic. The crossing has been attempted 72 times, with 29 successes and 43 failures, including six deaths. Although others have rowed across the North Atlantic, Ocean Revival is the first team to make it from New York to London.
Here at ExWeb, when we’re not outdoors, we get our adventure fix by exploring social media and the wider interweb. Sometimes we’re a little too plugged in, and browsing interesting stories turn from minutes into hours. To nourish your own adventure fix, here are some of the best links we’ve discovered this week.
Fire and Ice: Debra Gwartney, the wife of the late nature writer Barry Lopez, recalls the final few months of Lopez's life, during which wildfires forced the couple from the place that Lopez has called home for the past half-century. A moving piece.
Love and Loss in The Mountains: Continuing the slightly morbid theme, this piece covers the ups and downs of one man's grief after losing his wife in an avalanche in the Canadian Rockies. “You always think you’ll save the ones you love when the moment comes. But he didn’t save her.”
Did the Pandemic Finally End the Modern-Day Ski Bum? In the United States, ski town restaurants are in dire need of workers, but ongoing housing crises are making it impossible for staff to live where they work. This mirrors a trend across Europe where high-earning city slickers are flocking to the countryside to work remotely.
Broken Dreams on Everest
The Real Story of Sandy Hill Pittman, Everest’s Socialite Climber: Vanity Fair revisits Jennet Conant’s 1996 feature on Sandy Hill. The socialite nearly died in the storm that killed eight fellow climbers on Everest. Hill, then-wife of MTV creator Bob Pittman, used her energy, glamour, and instinct for the media spotlight to scale some of the world’s highest peaks. But did she take it too far?
Everest a Year Later: False Summit: After a lifetime of wanting, in 1996 Jon Krakauer made it to the world's highest point. What he and the other survivors would discover in the months to come, however, is that it's even more difficult to get back down.
Gaucho: Rebels of The Estancias: The gaucho has been an iconic figure for centuries, emblematic of South America’s untamed landscapes. Yet a shift in farming culture combined with new economic demands means that extinction threatens the lifestyle of these cowboys of the Southern Hemisphere.
The 61-Year-Old Shepherd Who Shuffled His Way to an Unlikely Ultra Win: In 1983, 61-year-old Cliff Young showed up at the 1983 Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultra Marathon. He wore his first-ever pair of running shoes and windbreaker pants with hand-cut holes for ventilation. The outcome went down in Australian running folklore.
Fishing Camels of The Aral Sea: Under the Soviet Union, a disastrous irrigation program turned the Aral Sea into a toxic desert. Photographer Laurent Weyl visited the fishermen of Tastubek to document their story.
On August 1, James Armour completed his self-imposed challenge of running, swimming, and cycling the length of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland.
It took the 25-year-old Scotsman 52 hours and 52 minutes to traverse the entire 308km. The Outer Hebrides lie on the edge of the North Atlantic. The archipelago has 119 islands, 14 of which are inhabited.
Seasickness from big waves
In total, Armour swam 32.9km, ran 92.2km, and cycled 183.5km. He began the first swim at Barra Head lighthouse and almost immediately felt seasick. Perhaps counter-intuitively, seasickness is common in open-water swimming.
“They were huge slow waves that would pick me up and take me down and I started to feel very nauseous,” he said. To make matters worse, the tide turned and pushed Armour eastward. He had to swim an extra two kilometers to counter the effects of the tide.
After making it to Vatersay, he ran 25km to Barra before starting the second swim of the challenge, which brought him to Eriksay. Here, he set off on a 100km cycle to Berneray in North Uist.
The longest swim was 10km through the Sound of Harris. Armour describes the choppy sea as soul-crushing: “I felt absolutely dead, I had no energy left to keep warm and I thought there was no way I could get across...I felt so empty.”
He pushed on. During the swim, his tongue became so swollen because of the saltwater that he could barely speak. At one point, about 60 seals started coming toward him. Armour was okay, but the support crew member in a kayak alongside him was scared, as the seals kept bumping into the small boat.
In total, Armour had six swim sections, two bike legs, and three runs. He had to amend his route slightly, as about one-quarter of his running route had no trail and wandered through waist-deep heather. He completed the journey with an 80km cycle to Achmore and a 60km run to his endpoint in Port of Ness.
Armour is the first known person to complete such a journey on the Scottish Islands.
Former Olympic 400m swimmer Neil Agius of Malta has broken the record for the longest non-stop, unassisted swim. The 35-year-old swam 125.6km from Linosa, Italy back to Malta in just over 52 hours.
He started stroking on June 28 and swam through two sunrises and two sunsets to arrive in Xlendi, Malta at 10pm on June 29.
He initially intended to swim 153km from Tunisia to Malta, but his crew were unable to leave Tunisia because of bad weather. So he changed his route at the last minute. Thirty-two supporting crew split among half a dozen boats kept an eye on him during his swim.
The entire swim was live-streamed and drew over two million viewers, according to Maltese sources. Agius used the publicity from the swim to highlight plastic pollution in our oceans.
He swam unassisted and without a wetsuit. During the first 30km, waves hit him constantly from the front and side. Currents gradually become more favorable, and in the last 25km, his average pace picked up from 2.5kph to 3.2kph.
Australia's Chloe McCardle set the previous world record for a current-neutral, single segment natural route in an ocean in 2014. She swam 124.4km from South Eleuthera Island to Nassau, Bahamas in 41 hours and 21 minutes. Before Agius’s attempt, she told Times of Malta, “I really wish him the very best.” Because of his shortened route, Agius bested her distance by barely more than a kilometre.
Adding another layer of excitement to the feat, Agius’s girlfriend proposed to him just before he started. He said yes.
The ever-determined Rosie Swale-Pope is on the road again, on her latest attempt to run 8,500km from Brighton, England to Kathmandu, Nepal.
Swale-Pope set off from Brighton on June 25 and headed north. Behind her, of course, she is dragging/cajoling her beloved cart and living space, dubbed Ice Chick.
"Life on the road again, you just can't beat it!" a chipper Swale-Pope told her social media following. "All I need is Ice Chick and a good pair of trainers."
Swale-Pope has reached the outskirts of London and is heading toward the East Coast of England to catch a ferry to the Netherlands. She plans to reach Bergen, Norway (not clear if this will be on foot). Then she heads north across Russia, China, Tibet, and finally Nepal.
But with coronavirus cases rising in many countries across Europe and parts of Asia, life on the road might not be plain sailing, even for the world's most positive long-haul runner.
Those quirky Kiwis are at their goofy antics again. This time, one man has suffered blisters, a sore gut, a bleeding nose, and jelly legs while running 100km in a pair of gumboots.
George Black, a 24-year-old real estate agent, left from rural North Canterbury, on the central part of the South Island of New Zealand. He ran through Hawarden’s Peaks, Amberley, Rangiora, and eventually finished in Christchurch’s Hagley Park, 100km north. A symphony of supporters greeted him. He says he undertook his peculiar quest to raise proceeds for farms that had suffered from recent flooding.
Earlier this month, the Canterbury region suffered extensive damage when floods ravaged the area in record rainfall. Many farmers had only just rebuilt after Cyclone Debbie.
Wearing a pair of size 8 Red Band gumboots, Black left at 4 am, long before sunrise, and ran in his clodhoppers for 12 hours. His feet were “destroyed”, he admitted afterward, with cuts, scrapes, and plenty of blisters. “I’m absolutely buggered, and so are my feet,” he said.
Black used to run 10km along backroads near his family farm. Last March, he increased his distance dramatically, running 75km from the farm to Christchurch. But that was in sneakers.
Once he’d run 75km, he felt confident about adding another 25km. “I thought I would put on some gumboots to make it harder,” he said.
“I’m just running 100km in gumboots, and it’s not going to solve the world’s problems,” said Black before his wacky run.
His supportive Mum drove alongside him for much of the journey, providing regular sock changes and water breaks.
French swimmer Arthur Germain began his 784km swim along the entire length of the Seine today.
The 19-year-old son of Paris's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, left from the river's source in Burgundy at noon on Sunday. He expects to cover 15 to 20km a day and reach its outlet at Le Havre in 52 days.
No one else has ever swum the entire length of the Seine. As an added wrinkle, he will pull a kayak behind him with gear and supplies, so that he can camp en route at least part of the time.
Germain wants to draw attention to pollution in the Seine. He himself was vaccinated against leptospirosis, a bacteria found in the river's water, before leaving.