Early on in his career, video game designer Jason Rohrer embarked on a strange quest. Instead of trying to make huge blockbusters like Halo or Grand Theft Auto, he produced games about what it means to be human. His work was an argument that video games could be about more than shooting robots and aliens. He wanted to make people laugh, love, and cry.

His game Passage is a five-minute meditation on the beauty of life and the inevitability of death and part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. A Game for Someone was designed to only be played 2,000 years in the future and is currently buried somewhere in the Nevada desert.

ā€œHe created a nesting doll game that could not be completed in a single human lifetime called Inside a Star Filled Sky,ā€ Patrick Jagoda, a game designer and English professor at the University of Chicago told me. ā€œHis games have been very, very high concept.ā€

But now, Rohrer is taking his art from the digital space and into the real world with a treasure hunt based in New England. On Thursday, Rohrer launched the hunt, called Project Skydrop. The first person to solve his seemingly straightforward puzzle will find a gold statue and bounty of cryptocurrency. But given the ambition and scope of his previous work, most everyone familiar with his gamesā€”including meā€”is wondering: What does Rohrer have up his sleeve this time?

The Details of the Hunt

Project Skydrop is like a treasure hunt from the future. Instead of a brittle, yellowed map or a cryptic poem guiding searchers, this hunt is largely digital. The treasure itself is a sculpture made of 10 oz of solid goldā€”worth about $23,000ā€”engraved with a Bitcoin wallet recovery phrase that unlocks a further crypto bounty: 50 percent of the pool of $20 entry fees to join the hunt. The sculpture isnā€™t buried, or even hidden. Itā€™s just sitting out somewhere in the open in New England.

The clues? A combination of aerial photographs that start unhelpfully close to the treasureā€”one foot off the groundā€”and a circle on a map that starts out unhelpfully far awayā€”a 500-mile radius. Every day, the aerial photographs zoom out to provide more context about the treasureā€™s surroundings. Every day the circle shrinksā€”down to a one-foot diameter search area after three weeks.

ā€œI know it’s not gonna be solvable on day one,ā€ Rohrer told me from his home in New Hampshire. ā€œAnd I know it’s definitely going to be solvable on day 21.ā€

ā€œDefinitely solvableā€ is an attribute that few other treasure hunts have had over the years. Most have failed in one way or another.

Forrest ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s million-dollar chest of gold took ten years to find, and five searchers died in pursuit. By the end of it, in 2020, Fenn was the subject of several lawsuits. Because of this chaos, the treasureā€™s finder did his best to remain anonymous, and to this day the general public doesnā€™t know exactly where the treasure was hidden. Itā€™s a mess.

Twelve treasures were buried in major American cities for The Secret, a treasure hunt created by Byron Preiss in 1982, but so far only three have been found. Preiss died in 2005. That hunt was simply too hard.

Even the original armchair treasure hunt, Masquerade, from 1979, ended in scandal when it turned out that the finder had used inside information to locate the jewel-encrusted golden hare that people were looking for.

The legacy of modern treasure hunts, in other words, is controversy, scandal, and failure. They end badly. They look a lot like video games that needed a little more playtesting before being released.

ā€œTreasure hunts in the past haven’t really worked that well,ā€ Rohrer said. ā€œThey kind of fundamentally break.ā€

Project Skydrop, then, is a game designerā€™s response to those failures. The shrinking-circle, closed-timeline design of the hunt keeps it from dragging on for decades. The final location of the treasure and the identity of the finder wonā€™t be a mystery: in order to claim the Bitcoin, the finder is required to upload a video of themselves with the treasure when they find it.

Rohrer and his creative partner, Thomas Bailey, have also taken steps to make sure that no one gets hurt by another searcher.

ā€œLet’s say the treasurer’s worth a million dollars, right? It’s life-changing money. And as you come over the crest, you see someone a few feet closer to the treasure than you. What do you do? Do you start running? Do you start screaming? Do you start shooting? So we had to figure out a way to prevent that as best we could.ā€

Averting Another Forrest Fenn Debacle

What they came up with is a clause in the entry agreement that searchers must ā€œobtain the treasure peacefully,ā€ and in the hope of enforcing that rule Rohrer and Bailey fitted the area around the treasure with camerasā€”like a bizarro, non-violent Hunger Games.

Those cameras upload to the Project Skydrop website in real time, so barring technical difficulties, anyone who pays the huntā€™s entry fee can watch the treasure hunt unfold, including the moment someone finds and claims tens- or hundreds-of-thousands of dollars worth of treasure.

ā€œIf you think about that moment,ā€ Rohrer said, ā€œand what that moment will feel like in the grand scope of all human experience, it’ll just be an incredible moment, right?ā€

It will be quite the moment. But is it art? Is it very, very high concept?

ā€œIt is possible that he made a treasure hunt and that’s it, full stop,ā€ Patrick Jagoda told me. ā€œBut based on the 20-or-so games that he’s made in the past, I bet you there are layers of meaning to what this thing is.ā€

Perhaps sending people out into the world in the pursuit of a solid gold sculpture is a statement on being a celebrated video game creator, but not a particularly well-compensated one. Perhaps itā€™s a commentary on our increasing dependence on screens and pictures and satellite imagery to navigate the natural world. Perhaps he just wants to make the real world feel a little bit more like a video game.

When I asked Rohrer directly if there was more going on here than meets the eye, he laughed because even if there was, he said he wouldnā€™t be telling me about it.

But then he told a long story about his most successful game, One Hour, One Life, in which players build a family and then a civilization over the course of generations and every hour of gameplay equals one human lifespan. One Hour, One Life incorporates a lot of the themes of his early gamesā€”the meaning of life and death, andĢżthe way our actions today echo into the future.

As the creator of this game, however, he can see how people are playing itā€”the degree to which a digital life can take over a real one.

ā€œWhen the game first came out and I was looking at statistics, there were a number of players who played it ten hours a day, seven days a week for like 11 months,ā€ he said.

ā€œI’ve interacted with a number of members of this community and, you know, a lot of them are like 25 years old, living at their parents house, spending all day playing video games. And some of the interactions I’ve had have been pretty heartbreaking. It’s like, ā€˜I know that I’ll never have a family of my own. And the only way I get to feel like the joy of parenthood is through your game. Thank you, Jason.ā€™

ā€œI feel like I want to make something that kind of lifts them up out of that and kind of energizes them or somethingā€”gets them out of their chair.ā€

When Forrest Fenn launched his treasure hunt, he did it to get kids ā€œout of the game room, off their texting machines and into the mountains,ā€ he said.

Fenn spent much of his life in the mountains. Rohrer has spent much of his life making video games. But theyā€™ve arrived at a similar place.

ā€œLike yesterday I climbed to the top of a mountain with my wife and two younger children and our dog,” he said. “And we picked wild blueberries up at the top of the mountain. And it was a really hot day and once we got down to the bottom of the mountain we swam in these beautiful cascading, crystal clear waterfalls. That felt like living to me.ā€

In other words, Rohrer is still exploring what it means to be human. Heā€™s still trying to make people laugh, love, and cry. But as the creator and curator of all that screen time, it seems like heā€™s also now trying to atone for something.

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By the time Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest in May of 1953, the British had been trying to climb it for 31 years. This was the countryā€™s ninth expedition, in addition to two reconnaissance flyovers commissioned by Englandā€™s wealthy elite in the 1930s. Meanwhile, several other countries had been trying to find their way to the summit at 29,035 feet, continually threatening to grab the prize away from the Crown.

In 1947, a rogue Canadian engineer named Earl Denman got to 22,000 feet before being turned back by a storm. In 1951, Denmarkā€™s Klaus Becker-Larsen made it to the North Colā€”a 23,000-foot ridge on the Tibet side of the mountainā€”but turned back because of rockfall. In 1952, a Swiss expedition failed to make the summit, perhaps only because their Sherpas got nervous about the weather and the expedition leaders were too polite to push them on. If the 1953 British expedition was unsuccessful, France had the permits in hand to try next.

You canā€™t really overstate how badly England needed this. Over the previous decade, a yearslong World War II bombing campaignā€”the Blitzā€”had destroyed over a million British homes, and the cost of victory put a damper on the economy that lasted for years. In the summer of 1947, British control over came to an end, resulting in widespread violence and massive loss of life. A few years later, in early 1952, their wartime king, George VI, died suddenly, a few months after undergoing an operation for lung cancer. In short, England was taking some lumps, and the nation was looking for something to celebrate. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth II coincided nicely with Everestā€™s climbing season.

So when Tenzing and Hillary reached the summit at 11:30 A.M. on May 29, their feat was a source of pride for the whole empire. Britain had proved itself Great. And as the climbers descended, the race was on to tell the world.

James Morris, a London Times reporter, was embedded with the expedition and had been waiting at a high campā€”21,000 feetā€”for news of success or failure. (Morris underwent a gender transition in the 1970s and took the name Jan Morris.) It was hours before she got word, at which point Morris rushed down toward Base Camp in gathering darkness. When she got there, her only means of communication were the mail runnersā€”a half-dozen trusted Sherpas who carried updates from the expedition 200 miles from Base Camp to Kathmandu. There had never been bigger news to deliver.

But this is where the story gets fuzzy, imprecise, and very nearly lost. Because thereā€™s almost no record of what happened on that run to Kathmandu. And a few weeks after the message arrived, the runner who carried it was dead.

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In the summer of 2020, the decade-long Forrest Fenn treasure hunt ended in a tangled mess of conspiracy theories, wild accusations, and protracted legal proceedings. Fenn wouldnā€™t say who found the treasure. Worse than that, he wouldnā€™t say where it had been hidden. For a treasure hunt that was supposed to be real-life Indiana Jones, the finale left everyone jonesing for more information.Ģż

Cue the frivolous lawsuits. One accused Fenn of ending the hunt on purpose and lying when he announced the treasure was found in Wyoming. A different one accused the chestā€™s then anonymous finder of hacking a plaintiffā€™s emails and texts to steal the solution. A third implied that Fenn was lying when he said he never told anyone where the treasure was, because pop star Taylor Swift referenced that she knew the location of the treasure in her lyrics and music videos. I wish I were making that up.

But now the most recent Fenn lawsuit has shown that Fenn did actually tell someone exactly where the treasure was, very soon after it was found. He told Yellowstone National Parkā€™s chief ranger, Sarah Davis.

The Fenn treasure hunt began in 2010, when the wealthy art dealer hid a chest filled with gold and jewels from his personal collection ā€œsomewhere in the Rocky mountains,ā€ then published a 24-line poem containing clues to its location.

Jack Stuef, a 32-year-old medical student at the time, found the treasure in 2020. He revealed his identity to ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų in December of that year, just before being added as a defendant to one of the lawsuitsā€”ā€œmy texts and emails were hackedā€ā€”which forced his hand.

Five searchers died in the course of the hunt. Fenn collapsed and died at home in Santa Fe in September of 2020. Over the past two years, all but one of the lawsuits have been dismissed. Which brings us to Jamie McCracken, theĢżFlorida man now hunting for treasure in a New Mexico courtroom.

McCracken accuses Fenn of moving the treasure four timesā€”whenever McCracken was getting close to it, he says. He also claims that Fenn purchased property near his search spot to keep tabs on him, and that Fenn was lying every time he said that the chest was still in the same place heā€™d originally left it. McCracken, who is representing himself in court, indicated he would show evidence that Fenn was still alive after his death was announced. He says Fenn misled the entire community on the hunt.Ģż

Karl Sommer, the lawyer for ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s estate, put it differently.Ģż

ā€œI mean, this is bizarre shit,ā€ he said.

Whatever it is, McCracken is pretty good at submitting legal paperwork. He declined to comment until his case is resolved, and itā€™s set to begin proceedings in June. In preparation, Sommer subpoenaed Stuef for a deposition. He needs Stuef to say that he solved the clues in the poem fair and square, and that the treasure was exactly where Fenn originally left it. If Sommer questions Stuef, however, McCracken also gets a turn. Stuef would be under oath and could be compelled to reveal the exact location of the treasure.

And it turns out, officials at Yellowstone really want to avoid that scenario.

In April, assistant U.S. attorney Kimberley Bell filed a motion to intervene in McCrackenā€™s case, arguing that publicizing the exact location of ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s treasure would result in a surge of visitors and damage to the park. In support of that motion, the parkā€™s chief ranger, Davis, signed an affidavit stating that in August 2020, two months after the treasure was found, she had a Zoom meeting with Fenn and Stuef, during which they told her where the treasure had been stashed. Davis surveyed the area the following week and concluded that the spot was not set up to handle the increased foot traffic that revealing the location might bring. (The affidavit doesnā€™t specifically state that the treasure was in the park, just that the location is owned by the U.S. government and managed by the Department of the Interior. But cā€™mon.)

For years, that the treasure was found in Yellowstone, which is why Stuef wouldnā€™t share any specifics: found property in a national park is supposed to be turned in to the park supervisor. In a sense, by putting the chest in Yellowstone, Fenn booby-trapped his hiding spot. Whoever found the treasure would have to maneuver very carefully if they wanted to keep it.Ģż

But Stuef passed the test. And now we know how.

The McCracken lawsuit made public photos of the chest in situ, still embedded in the ground, as well as some private emails between Stuef and Fenn that occurred immediately after the treasure was found. And Stuefā€™s first email reads like it was written by a committee of lawyers.Ģż

ā€œIā€™m aware that over the years you have intimated that you may like to give these items to the person who found it,ā€ Stuef wrote. ā€œIf that is the case with me, I would be happy to receive them, but I think it would be prudent that I first return your treasure to you so you can fully verify that it belongs to you. At that time, you can make your decision on whether to keep it all, give it to me, subtract or add items, or whatever else you may decide.ā€

Stuef emailed Fenn on June 5, apparently leaving the chest in place overnight. He says he retrieved it June 6, which raises some questions. Did Stuef figure out all that precise language on his own that day? Were there instructions in the chest about how to proceed? The latter seems more likely. Fenn said he spent $5,000 on a lawyer figuring out the potential finderā€™s legal situation before he placed the chest. And he always said that there was a kind of fail-safe inside. That heā€™d know when it was found.

But then, it also seems like Stuef knew he was going to find the treasure long before he did. Maybe he had time to prepare. According to a document that recently turned up on , Stuef applied for tax status and apparently moved to Puerto Ricoā€”where there is almost no capital gains taxā€”in September 2019, nine months before he found the treasure.

I put all this to tax attorney Larry Brant, who I consulted with back when the treasure was first found.

ā€œIt looks like someone is really thinking this through,ā€ he said.Ģż

On May 4, judge Francis J. Mathew denied the governmentā€™s motion to intervene in the case, saying that doing so would cause undue delay, and that the government has other avenuesā€”like an injunction in federal courtā€”if it wants to keep the location of the treasure a secret. His view seemed to be that the location of the treasure became public information when Fenn published his poem.

So for now, the deposition will proceed, and ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s hiding spot could soon be revealed. The end of the treasure hunt may finally be drawing to a close.

When I interviewed him in 2014, Fenn said he wanted to make the contents of his treasure chest look like a pirate movie, so he filled it with the most visually stunning items he could find: diamonds, rubies, and gold.Ģż

ā€œThere are hundreds and hundreds of gold nuggets,ā€ he said. ā€œTwo of them are larger than a henā€™s egg.ā€

Gold nuggets. Yellow stones. It was right there this whole time.Ģż

Peter Frick-Wright is a contributing editor and the host of an Apple Original podcast about the Fenn treasure, coming later this year.

The post Revealed: Forrest ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s Treasure Was Hidden in This National Park appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

Over the weekend, the number of people in the world who know precisely where Forrest Fenn hid his treasureĢżsupposedly doubled. We know the finder was a man, from ā€œback east,ā€ according to Fenn, and that he wishes to remain anonymous.Ģż

Fenn, of course,Ģżis the former art-and-antiquities dealer who in 2010 hid a box of treasure somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and wrote a poem with nine clues leading to its hiding place. The finder, on the other hand, is anyoneā€™s guess.

So until we know more about where it was, who found it, and what he plans to do now, the hunt is in a maddening kind of limbo: it is both over and not, the chest is simultaneously newly found and perhaps also gone forever. Call it Schrƶdingerā€™s Treasure.

¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s Ģżincluded a promise of more information and photos in the days to come, but Dal Neitzel, who runs the website Fenn used to post the message, says Fenn has now backed away from that statement, saying the treasureā€™s location is ā€œpersonal and confidential.ā€ Some are anxiously waiting for more information. are basically coughing ā€œbullshitā€ into their hands, saying the whole thing is a scam and the contents of his chest are ill-gotten gains.

Absent proof that the treasure was ever out there, it doesnā€™t take a ton of natural skepticism to feel very suspicious about whatā€™s been going on.ĢżAnd if thatā€™s your disposition, this ā€œanonymous finderā€ business reads like a convenient way to call off the hunt without having to admit that it never existed in the first place. After all, five people have died in pursuit, and hunters have started filing lawsuits claiming Fenn misled them.

But when it comes to finding valuables, anonymity isnā€™t all that suspicious. Thereā€™s a culture of discretion in the treasure community. Longtime hunter W.C. Jameson wrote in his memoir, : ā€œAnnouncing a discovery often leads to negative and unwanted developments, primarily the loss of any treasure that may have been found.ā€ In other words, finders are not keepers if they make a big fuss about it.

In this case, the problem with telling everyone about the location of ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s treasure is that thereā€™s a good chance it doesnā€™t legally belong to the person who found it. It varies by state, but in general, treasure found on private property belongs to the land owner, not the finder. Pretty much the only way to stay out of court is to negotiate the split of any findings ahead of time.Ģż

On federal land, like national parks and national forests, treasure hunters need permits to keep anything they find, and even then youā€™re going to need lawyers, because ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s treasure doesnā€™t fit into any category for which the federal government has a neat and tidy legal definition. It wasnā€™t ā€œlost,ā€ ā€œmisplacedā€ or ā€œabandoned.ā€ At ten years old, itā€™s not really from antiquity. It may not even fit the legal definition of a treasure.

ā€œThe question here is whether itā€™s even a treasure trove,ā€ said Ben Costello, an attorney and board member of the 1715 Fleet Society, which researches and documents the recovery of shipwrecks. ā€œI donā€™t think it is, because the owner is known.ā€

Property where the owner is known is supposed to go back to that original owner. We donā€™t have laws for gold and jewels that the owner doesnā€™t want back. Itā€™s just not a situation that comes up.

But maybe Fenn thought of all this ahead of time? He wonā€™t say.

ā€œI would have to make the assumption that it could be legally claimed by someone,ā€ said David McCarthy, a numismatistĢżwho handled the discovery and sale of a $10 million dollar treasure called the Saddle Ridge Hoard, in 2013. ā€œThere are public lands where citizens of the United States can keep what they find.ā€

Assuming someone does have a legal claim to their find, the second hurdle is the tax situation, and it is daunting.

ā€œI saw the announcement that someone found ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s million-dollar treasure and I thought ā€˜Do they know theyā€™re about to pay $450,000 or so in income taxes?ā€ says Larry Brant, a tax attorney in Portland, Oregon.

No one is sure just how much the contents of ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s chest is worth, but Brant says the IRS views treasure just like any other income. The moment you find it, you owe taxes on it for that year, regardless of whether you auction it off, give it to someone, or keep it in your living room as a conversation piece.Ģż

Then thereā€™s the matter of state and local taxes. Just like the winner of a state lottery who has to pay taxes in that state, or an NBA player who has to file income taxes everywhere they play, treasure finders have to pay taxes wherever they find treasure. So if it was in New Mexico, thatā€™s an extra 4.9 percentĢżoff the top. Wyoming, however, takes nothing. Location matters.Ģż

So, letā€™s say the treasure is worth a million dollars, which is what Fenn originally said it might be worth. The finder owes about half of it in taxes, and letā€™s say half of whatā€™s left goes to the lawyers heā€™ll need to sort out his claim to the property. Then thereā€™s the Chicago woman who against both Fenn and the anonymous finder claiming heā€™d stolen her solve. It all adds up to an income-to-headache ratio that doesnā€™t look so good.Ģż

Which brings us to the most interesting, and hopeful, reason for the finder to stay anonymous and obscure the location of the find. It came fromĢżNeitzel, who has been running devoted to the Fenn Treasure for over nine years. His initial reaction was denial when he got the message announcing the findā€”he thought someone was spoofing ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s email. But now he says heā€™s come to terms with it.Ģż

ā€œMy main concern is that Forrest puts closure on this,ā€ he said. ā€œPeople need to know if they were close.ā€

He says over the years, one of the ideas that people on his blog keep circling back to is the idea that if they found ¹ó±š²Ō²Ōā€™s treasure, they would take a little something out for themselves, keep it quiet, then put it back where they found it, without ever disclosing the location. Itā€™s an option that would save everyone a bunch of taxes, legal fees, and hassle. Wouldnā€™t it be great, Neitzel said, if the hunt were over, but the game could go on?

The post Finding Forrest Fenn’s Treasure Was Just the Start appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

Five minutes into the first episode of Netflixā€™s viral documentary series , its codirector, Eric Goode, encounters a newly purchased snow leopard in the back of a van, suffering in the Florida heat. ā€œThat set me on this journey to really understand what is going on with people keeping big cats in this country,ā€ Goode says in the seriesā€™ only narration. Itā€™s a moment of feline sympathy that launches the show and sends Goode on a five-year quest to document Big Tigerā€”a cat-sprayedĢżindustry of breeders, traffickers, and wealthy narcissists exhibiting wild animals across the United States. The bigger the ego, the bigger the cat.Ģż

Goode, a somewhat well-known conservationist and entrepreneur, should be a natural fit for this series: heĢżfounded theĢż, anĢżenvironmental nonprofit,Ģżin addition to creatingĢżand designingĢżseveral nightclubs and hotels, including the Bowery Hotel in New York City. Unfortunately, Goode brings to Tiger King the intellectual rigor and social responsibility of… a nightclub and hotel developer. Donā€™t get me wrong, Tiger King is as fun as shootinā€™Ģżup a stop sign. But the scene with the leopard in the van is the only indication in the five-hour series that anyone behind the camera gives half a litter boxĢżabout wildlife. Instead, it selectively leaves out information toĢżcraftĢżaĢżnarrative that entertains at the expense of both the cats and the actual earthbound truth.

Iā€™m not a big-catĢżperson. My familiarity with this world comes from the several months I spent last yearĢżproducing and editing Ģżwith reporter Rachel Nuwer. In the series, we explore and try to explain Americaā€™s tiger problem, including two episodesĢżthat coverĢżmuch of the same ground as Tiger King. And whileĢżCat People is a work of journalismĢżthat goes in a very different direction with the materialĢżthan theĢżquarantine-fueled supernova of mass entertainment that isĢżTiger King,Ģżthe docuseriesĢżskims over or entirely leaves outĢżthe context viewers need to understand anything tiger related.Ģż

Tiger KingĢżlooks at three organizations, each with its own charismatic figurehead. Joe ā€œExoticā€ Maldonado-Passage runs the in Oklahoma,ĢżBhagavan ā€œDocā€ Antle founded (TIGER) in South Carolina, andĢżCarole Baskin operates in Florida. Tiger King would have you believe thatĢżall three facilities and their owners are versions ofĢżthe same thingā€”egomaniacs who get off on owning wild animals and then selling that feeling of power and primal connection to the public. The show presents Joe Exotic as honest in his dishonesty, Doc Antle as a con man maintaining plausible deniability, and Carole Baskin as a hypocrite, having fooled her followers (and maybe herself) into believing that sheā€™s somehow different than the other two. It glosses over the fact that her facility is, in most ways,Ģżfundamentally different.

You know why there are more tigers in captivity than in the wild? Because the general public will pay huge amounts of money to play with a tiny tiger cub for a few minutes. But tigers only stay tiny for a few weeks, so to maintain their supply, breeders like Joe Exotic and Doc Antle, as the series shows, churn out cubs for their petting operationsĢżand then unload themĢżwhen the felinesĢżgrow up, start chomping on customers, and develop a $10,000-a-year meat habit.

What Tiger King largelyĢżbrushes aside is that Big Cat Rescue, on the other hand, only accepts animals confiscated by law enforcementĢżor from owners who are trying to get rid of them.ĢżTheĢżseries quickly skims overĢżthe factĢżthat these cats are almost always adults and that theĢżsanctuary forbids pettingā€”if a staff member or volunteer touches an animal for any reason, theyā€™re fired and never allowed to return. Finally, Big Cat RescueĢżwill only take animals if the owners sign a contract declaringĢżthat theyā€™ll never own, or even have a photo taken, with another big cat. If they violate the contract, there are financial penalties. The docuseries doesnā€™t mentionĢżthisĢżat all.

The Baskins arenā€™t just rescuing big cats, theyā€™re also working on the problem at its source. The biggest threat to tigersā€™ survival around the world is habitat loss and poaching. When American diplomats try to push other countries to address their high levels of poaching, however, theyā€™re basically laughed at and told to clean up their own problem first. The Baskins are trying to do exactlyĢżthat. makingĢżit illegal for owners and breeders to sell big cats as pets across state lines. Then, in 2016, they were part of a collection of environmental groups to close a loophole that allowed licensees like Joe Exotic and Doc Antle to sell big cats to each other. The Baskinsā€™ latest lobbying effort is a bipartisan piece of legislation called , which Tiger KingĢżbriefly mentions before going back to more salacious material. It would ban all cub petting and exotic-animal encounters, including for hybrids like ligers and tiligers,Ģżeffectively shutting down the mechanism that drives the tiger industry.Ģż

Instead of makingĢżthis basic difference clear, the series paints Carole as greedy and manipulative, and it portrays her followers and contributors as having been suckered. Yes, she is uncomfortably cat obsessed. Yes, her organizationā€™s music videos are pretty cringey. And itā€™s true that no one knows what happened to her second husband, Don Lewis, which Tiger King revels in for a whole episode. But itā€™s also trueĢżthat all the fact-checked pieces of journalism about Carole Baskin ( ) end thereā€”no one knows. Tiger King, on the other hand, gives a megaphone to the conjecture that Carole killed her husband and fed him to the tigers. The backlash to that conjecture? It defames her, of course, but it also limits her and her husbandā€™sĢżability to do big-picture conservation work. It hurts the cats.

Letā€™s jump back to the breeders for a second, though, because thatā€™s where Tiger King really drops the ball. The show gives voice to the idea that breeders are helping wildlife by increasing their numbers. ā€œWeā€™re makinā€™Ģżmore of ā€™em,ā€ Joe says. This is one of the most common arguments you hear from tiger owners and breeders. Itā€™s alsoĢżintellectually dishonest, and the fact the series does not give anyone a chance to correct it in the documentary is irresponsible. Virtually all privately owned tigers in the U.S. are mutts who do not belong to any of the six distinct subspecies found in the wildĢż to conservation efforts. The show lets Joe and others suggest that if it looks like a tiger, it must be a tiger, never botheringĢżto point out that thatā€™s not actually the case. Tony the Tiger would do better in the wild. At least he wouldnā€™t muddy wild genes.

These choices add up to a show that becomes propaganda for its own binge-worthy thesis: the whole industry is petty and shallow, to the point that none of these people who have devoted their lives to big cats actually care about animals. Itā€™s good TV.ĢżItā€™s just not true.Ģż

Goode has stopped doing interviews about Tiger King, but he expressed some regret to Ģżlast month that the series wasnā€™t more focused on the animals. ā€œNetflix is very adept at making binge-worthy television,ā€ he said.ĢżTiger King was supposed to be BlackfishĢżfor cats. Goode told his subjects he was making a film focused on environmental problems. He ended up with something that may actually be a step backward for tiger conservation in the United States.

The post ‘Tiger King’ Is a Wild Ride. And Largely Misleading. appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

The climb was scheduled to begin at dawn, but at dawn there was nothing to climb, just a tiny hump of land on the horizon. We were still miles away, chugging along on the northwestern Pacific Ocean. Over the next few hours the hump grew larger, transforming into the cone of a volcano. From the boat I could see cliffs, a lava-rock seashore, and dense jungle rising to grassy ridgelines that crept upward like veins to a heart. Dark clouds obscured the summit. It looked like a place that could swallow you whole.

Our group consists of 11 American climbers, one Brit, and six porters from the nearest population center, Saipan, 248 miles to the south. Saipan is part of a little-known U.S. territory called the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, and the top of the volcanic island weā€™re approachingā€”called Agrihanā€”Ā­happens to be the territoryā€™s highest point. At just over 3,000 feet, itā€™s nothing special as mountains go. But as far as anyone knows, it has never been climbed. Fifteen years ago our expedition leader, John Mitchler, decided that he wanted to be the first. Since then, no one has been able to talk him out of it.

At 9:04 a.m., the crew of our 60-foot boat, the Super Emerald, dropped anchor and winched a small skiff over the deck. Loading it up, they implored us to not fall overboard because ā€œthe sharks here are not friendly.ā€

We filled the skiff with duffel bags of climbing gear and gallon after gallon of water. We brought a ton of itā€”250 gallons in all, weighing precisely 2,082.5 pounds. Roughly a gallon per person per day for the nearly two weeks weā€™d be here. It would take five trips from boat to shore to off-load all of it, and then the Super Emerald would turn back for Saipan. Over the next week, we would haul those jugs up to each of four camps en route to the top, returning to the beach every night to fetch more.

Looking toward the shore, I could see John and the crew tossing jugs toward the sand like a fire brigade. Then, in a blink, they were done, and John disappeared into the jungle, heading uphill, already sniffing out a route to the top.

To complete a first ascent is to be written into history, but unclimbed mountains are a dwindling resource. The Alps were once so formidable that, as recently as 1723, a respected scientist published an account of the various species of dragon to be found there. Dragons proved absent, however, and alpinists decided they liked climbing anyway, and began tagging summits all over the world. They checked them off at a furious pace, and climbing firsts are mostly now about new routes or new styles or some other minute or oddball differentiationā€”Ā­youngest, oldest, fastest, first without oxygen, first cancer survivor, first blind person, .

John is trying to carve out his own little niche in that world, but heā€™s doing it by chasing quantity, not quality. Some climbers pejoratively call this peak baggingā€”Ā­summiting mountains just to say that you summited them, regardless of how difficult they are. Defenders claim that the beauty isnā€™t in pioneering a new route but in the completion of a listā€”like the Seven Summits, the highest point on each continent.

John belongs to an even more curious subset of peak baggers called high pointers. High pointers donā€™t limit themselves to mountains. Theyā€™ll go to the top of anything so long as it isnā€™t man-made. You might say that thereā€™s no climb too small. Mighty Denali in Alaska or modest are equal checkboxes on the list. High pointers tend to be engineers, scientists, programmersā€”fans of empirical data with a passion for details. Many joke about their single-minded focus on summits, calling it ā€œthe sickness.ā€ When they say that about John, they arenā€™t really joking.

John lives in Golden, Colorado. Heā€™s 62 but looks younger, with a square jaw and long hair always pulled back into the kind of man bun that tends to belie his conservative politics. A geologist by training, he now spends most of his time running several small businessesā€”a marketing firm, an adventure travel agency, and a spice company called JAK Seasoning among themā€”that he owns with his wife, Kathy.

In the 1980s, John began spending much of his spare time and money reaching the highest point in all 50 U.S. statesā€”which, he says, ā€œmost high pointers agree is the coolest list.ā€ Some of those summits, like Alaskaā€™s 20,310-foot Denali, are truly arduous, dangerous climbs. Others, such as Delawareā€™s 447.85-foot Ebright Azimuth, are mere hills.

By Johnā€™s reckoning, more people have climbed the Seven Summits (416) than the 50 high points (305). When he finished in 2003, he marked the occasion by setting another goal: heā€™d climb the high points in all five inhabited U.S. territories, which no one had ever done. ā€œI do love checking off a list,ā€ he says.

He got to it. Guam and Puerto Rico were practically drive-ups. The U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa: no problem. By the summer of 2014, all that was left was Agrihan.

Perhaps Agrihan has never been climbed because itā€™s so remote, or because thereā€™s no reliable source of fresh water, or because itā€™s brutally hot and humid. Most likely it just never occurred to anyone that it would be worth doing.

ā€œFor most climbers, itā€™s either EverestĢżor bouldering or Alex Honnold and all that,ā€ John says. ā€œThis is really bizarre climbing.ā€ That was basically his sales pitch the first time we spoke on the phone. Iā€™m not a high pointer. I donā€™t even like climbing all that much. When the mountains are calling, I generally pretend I have bad service and __nā€™t hear wh__ theyā€™re say__. In 2016, I climbed to 20,000 feet in Bolivia, but I was searching for the remnants of a plane crash, and I didnā€™t bother to summit. Since then, my standard line has been that if Iā€™m going to climb a mountain, there had better be a plane crash up there.

Agrihan, I was told, would be different. Weā€™d be on a tropical island, not a frigid mountain, and we wouldnā€™t be covering much ground. Our route would be just three miles long, with 3,000 feet of vertical gain. There wouldnā€™t be any altitude issues, and the route wouldnā€™t be technical, just a muddy stretch near the top where we might place ropes. The hard part would be the glacially slow process of building trails through heavy jungle and aptly named sword grass. Weā€™d establish base camp on the beach and a series of four higher camps for stashing water and supplies en route to the summit. At first weā€™d shuttle two or three gallons at a time to camps one and two. Then, as the porters set up the higher camps, weā€™d haul roughly half of that to camps three and four. If we could get a couple dozen gallons to camp fourā€”about two gallons per personā€”that would be enough for everyone to summit. It would be hot, wet, and extremely slow going, with lots of grunt work and little fanfare if we succeeded. But in 1953, a plane had gone down somewhere in the crater. So I guess I was in.

Our base camp is a semi-abandoned six-room building left over from when Agrihan was used as a coconut plantation and is currently losing a decades-long endurance contest with the heat and humidity. Ever since the Spanish came ashore in 1565, the island has been intermittently inhabited and abandoned, following the whims of whichever superpower controlled itā€”Spain, Germany, Japan, and currently the U.S. Last abandoned in 2010, its population when we arrive is exactly two: Eddie Saures and Jeremy Topulei, who grew up in Saipan and came to Agrihan last year to prepare the island for resettlement. They spend their days fixing up the place and taming the jungle around the scattered buildings. Survival depends on their vegetable garden, collecting rainwater, jungle fruit, the fish they catch, and the pigs they hunt, along with 50-pound bags of rice and a 30-pack of Bud Light delivered quarterly.

I spend the first full day shadowing John as he picks his way up toward the mountain. By nightfall our trail is still a modest thing. Snaking through the shaded jungle for an easy 20 minutes, curving around felled palm trees and startled lizards, it rises only slightly before leaving the shade and hitting eight-foot-tall sword grass. From this point on, our machete-wielding porters whack a shoulder-wide path straight up the fall line toward the ridgetop. The sword grass is thick and nasty stuff, like a cross between bamboo and corn. Its serrated blades slice any exposed skin; when cut to ankle height, the stalks stand straight up like punji sticks. In the grass, thereā€™s no protection from the sun, and the air is 87 degrees with 80 percent humidity. The sheer thickness of the growth stifles airflow, and hiking up the ridge is like breathing into a paper bag inside a sauna.

Itā€™s not just the heat and the foliage; there are also flies everywhere. Millions of them swarm our eyes, noses, mouths. At one point a fly lodges itself in my left ear, seemingly stuck until, 40 minutes later, I finally hook it with my finger and it breaks in half. Then the other flies seem to sense his demise and redouble their efforts to get in my ear and harvest the smooshed bits of their comrade.

The first two times John tried to climb Agrihan, he wore a head net and covered up to try and combat the insects. Now he just lets them swarm.

Thatā€™s right. My apologies. I havenā€™t mentioned the first two climbs.

In 2014, John chartered the Super Emerald for four days with a high pointer named Roger Kaul and his nephew, Clint, who is on this trip, too. That group, along with three porters, braved the heat, humidity, and flies as long as they could but made it only halfway up the mountain before the boat had to return to Saipan. ā€œThat was pathetic,ā€ John says. ā€œJust embarrassing.ā€

In 2015, they doubled the size of the expedition: six climbers, five porters, and a documentarian. They hacked their way to within 26 vertical feet of the top and identified what they thought was the summitā€”a vertical column on the volcanoā€™s rim. But they were separated from it by a deep mud valley that was too dangerous to traverse without climbing gear, which they hadnā€™t brought. So they turned back.

This is where the shape of Johnā€™s obsession really becomes clear. Because whatever wilderness experience or trial-by-flies John wanted to have on this island, heā€™s had it. Twice. But he hasnā€™t touched the summit, so heā€™s back. Thereā€™s a tinge of desperation in his efforts. Johnā€™s not so much an explorer or a pioneer as an eccentric collector lusting after the final piece of a set. Thatā€™s no metaphor. He collects almost everything. Stamps, gum wrappers, coins, beer cans, water bottles, magazines, and yes, mountains. In fact, given that heā€™s afraid of heights, sometimes the collecting is at odds with the mountaineering. ā€œI donā€™t seek out rock climbing or ice climbing,ā€ he says. ā€œBut if itā€™s there, Iā€™ll do it.ā€

His real talent, he says, is data analysis. Heā€™s very good at obsessing. To save weight, he doesnā€™t carry a stove or fuel and eats his food cold. He also keeps a list of the most Ā­effective cost-per-calorie energy bars. (Winner: Snickers.)

Whatever his methods, itā€™s hard to argue with the results. John has high-pointed not just all 50 states but 55 of the 60 national parks as well. He also wrote a county-by-county guidebook of Coloradoā€™s high points. Though he recently stepped down from the job, for the past 20 years, heā€™s written and Ā­edited the glossy newsletter of the ,Ģżwhich makes him something like the figurehead of this tribe. He knows that he could claim Agrihan if he wanted to, even without actually topping out on it. The high-pointing community doesnā€™t have strict criteria for what constitutes a summitā€”John says you should get your head above the highest pointā€”but thereā€™s no verification system. If you say you climbed it, you climbed it.

One climber on the 2015 trip did, in fact, quietly check the mountain off his list. John did not. The fact that he hadnā€™t attained the true summit ate at him. He decided that he would not cut his hair until he reached the top of Agrihan. (Hence the New Age man bun.) He put Kathy in charge of chartering the boat, booking hotels, and other logistics, because you canā€™t effectively negotiate on price when you want something this badly.

ā€œDonā€™t get me wrong, I want them to succeed,ā€ Kathy told me before the trip. ā€œBut you canā€™t hear it in my voice.ā€

It was sir Hugh Munro, a Scotsman, who first popularized the idea of climbing a list. Back in 1873, Munro started summiting all of Scotlandā€™s peaks over 3,000 feetā€”now called the Munrosā€”and began cataloging them. In 1936, Arthur Marshall became the first to high-point all 48 (at the time) U.S. states. Vin Hoeman was the first to do all 50, in 1966. By high-pointing the U.S. territories, John is trying to join their ranks. But on the third day of our expedition, that desire to make history left him wrung out and recuperating at camp two.

Clint Kaul brought the news. A retired software engineer from Kalamazoo, Michigan, Clint returned to base camp on the beach that night and relayed that John was too tired to come back down. He had climbed the first ridge in full sun and overheated. He would stay where he was and rest.

ā€œCan someone bring up my MP3 player tomorrow?ā€ John asks when we reach him on the radio.

ā€œYeah, weā€™ll send it up with the masseuse,ā€ jokes Greg Juhl, a 45-year-old ER doctor from Reno, Nevada.

Back on the beach, though, thereā€™s some confusion as to when John tired out. He is almost always the most enthusiastic high pointer in the room. But as we prepared for this trip, heā€™d looked haggard and exhausted. Purchasing supplies at an Ace Hardware in Saipan, he even seemed a little irritated. ā€œLetā€™s just get to the summit and get out of there,ā€ heā€™d said as the group debated the merits of different gear.

Over the next two days, we continue hauling water. John stays higher up on the mountain with his MP3 player, moving gear between camps two and three and preparing to set up camp four. Many of us start the day at 4:30 A.M., hoping to carry two 40-pound backpacks full of water and supplies before the sun hits. By the morning of the fifth day, a lot of us are moving slowly and snapping at each other over little stuff. Iā€™ve tweaked my back. Clint, who accompanied John on the other two summit attempts and helped with much of the route planning for this trip, has developed a deep cough that asserts itself each morning. ā€œI really hate this mountain,ā€ he says before heading uphill.

I grab two gallons from camp one and pick up a third and fourth from camp two. Once above the sword grassā€”just before camp three, at 1,950 feetā€”the flora turns to waist-high ferns. From there itā€™s an hour straight up to 2,520-foot camp four. When I get to camp three around lunchtime, Gary Reckelhoff is sitting there with a daypack. Thirty years old and built like a greyhound that does CrossFit, Gary always wears a heart-rate monitorĢżand tracks how many calories heā€™s burning on an expedition. Heā€™s the most physically fit member of the team, but you wouldnā€™t know it from the tiny load he just carried from camp two. I start to simmer with anger. And thatā€™s before I head up to the breezier, permanently cloudy camp four, where I find John and a 51-year-old entrepreneur and nonstop talker named Tony Cobb.

During the previous two days, there was grumbling at base camp about these two. Is John still recovering? No one knows. Whatā€™s Tony doing up there?

For the past hour, Iā€™d been rehearsing a lecture along the lines of: Are you sure you should even be here, John? But when I arrive, John comes over and tells me heā€™s not doing so great. He has no legs, no strength.

ā€œI think Iā€™m done,ā€ he says.

Done for the day?

ā€œDone with high pointing,ā€ he says. ā€œThis is my last expedition.ā€

You canā€™t harangue someone whoā€™s on the verge of giving up. Johnā€™s struggle has placed him firmly atop the moral high ground. But Iā€™m still angry, so I move on to Tony, who is stretched out on his sleeping pad in his skivvies, a contented smile on his face. When I see this, my anger boils over. There are nine gallons of water here when there should be two dozen. I ask how he can just sit here while the rest of the group toils in the heat? Granted, Tony hauled some water on his way up, and heā€™s been moving gear between camps and setting up rain catchments. But itā€™s not raining, and the longer he and John stay high on the mountain, the more water the rest of us have to carry. My voice quavers, Iā€™m so furious.

ā€œYeah, well, Iā€™ve been needing an excuse to go back down,ā€ Tony says when Iā€™m done.

ā€œIā€™ll give you an excuse,ā€ I yell. ā€œNine fucking gallons!ā€

For the first time on the trip, Tony barely says a word in response. He simply gets up, packs his gear, and heads down the mountain.

I walk away to be alone for a bit. Everything feels backward. Tony is quiet. Obsessive John is quitting high pointing. Iā€™m chewing out a team member over a climb I supposedly have no stake in. No oneā€™s more surprised by my behavior than me.

But I think I know why Iā€™m so invested. Nine months before Agrihan, I broke my leg in a canyoneering accident and spent 21 hours waiting for a helicopter to get me to a hospital. It was a traumatic fall that shattered both my fibula and my youth. I came out of surgery in a 32-year-oldā€™s midlife crisisā€”fragile, anxious, and newly aware of my mortality.

The first time I spoke with John on the phone, he persuaded me to join the trip. But I think I needed to be on this climb more than he needed me on it. Like a lot of high pointers trying to summit Denali before they get too oldĢżto do all 50 states, I was climbing to prove that I was still capable of a kooky expedition in the middle of nowhereā€”that I was still myself.

So I guess John and I both need to conquer some dragons on this mountain. From camp four, it seems like the only place weā€™ll find them is at the mountainā€™s very highest point.

By day six, weā€™re within striking distance of the summit, except that we donā€™t know which summit to strike. Radar topography shows two potential high points, both situated along the rim of the crater, at 952 and 960 meters (3,123 and 3,150 feet, respectively). Theyā€™re dubbed P952 and P960. The two elevations are within the radarā€™s margin of error, however, so thereā€™s no way to tell which is the true summit.

Normally, determining which point is higher would be a simple matter of setting up a spotting scope on one of them and shooting it toward the other. But the cloud cover makes this next to impossible.

ā€œSome places have two or more high points that are exactly the same,ā€ John says. ā€œThe purists go to both.ā€

Ginge Fullen is a purist. An Englishman who lives in Scotland and a former clearance diver who disarmed underwater bombs for a living, Ginge has a Mr. Clean look and is easily the most accomplished high pointer in the group, perhaps of all time. He has high-pointed 170 of the worldā€™s 195 countries, though in 1996 he tried to summit Mount Everest and suffered an altitude-induced heart attack. (His injury gets a brief mention in Into Thin Air.) Doctors advised against further mountain climbing. Rather than hang up his boots, Ginge simply capped his climbs at 6,000 metersā€”about 20,000 feet. While that rules out Everest and 16 other country high points he hasnā€™t climbed, he can sure as hell climb Agrihan.

Ginge, Gary, and I spend hours setting ropes between the two summits, which are connected by a 200-yard-long ridge made treacherous by a thousand-foot drop that goes straight into the crater. The traverse involves picking our way through the shrubs and trees that crowd the ridge, descending into a small valley, and then ascending a 15-foot mud wall.

The ridge is precariousā€”at one point while weā€™re pounding in anchor stakes, a three-foot chunk of mud peels off and falls away. Weā€™re at least five days from a hospital, and if someone were to go over the edge, Ginge says, theyā€™d be better off not surviving. John is wary of heights, making this particular scenario his nightmare. He doesnā€™t want to do the ridge traverse. The question is: Will he be able to sleep at night if he doesnā€™t touch both summits?

The next day, after the ropes are set, all 12 climbers make their way up to P960 and pose for a photo. Then, at their own pace, most everyone crosses the ridge to P952, just to be sure, and returns. But not John. Instead, he gives a little speech about how he woke up this morning feeling like he just didnā€™t need the second summit.

ā€œSometimes you need a mountain,ā€ he says. ā€œI woke up and I didnā€™t need this one.ā€

On the way down, I ask another climber, Reid Larson, what to make of Johnā€™s decision. Reid is something of a high-pointing wunderkind. Just 32 years old, heā€™s been blitzing through lists and is now tied with John as the first person to summit all 50 states plus all five U.S. territories, assuming that P960 is the true summit. But if the other peak, P952, turns out to be higher, Reid, who touched both, will be the only one between them to have summited Agrihan. If this is Johnā€™s last expedition, why not be sure heā€™d really finished?

ā€œBased on everything heā€™s done, itā€™s not really about risk aversion,ā€ Reid says, referring to the ridge traverse. ā€œWeā€™re all sort of flummoxed.ā€

Of course, we donā€™t actually know that the second summit is higher. As near as we can tell, itā€™s somewhere between 18 inches and three feet taller than P960. But itā€™s awfully close. John may have already done the thing weā€™re worried heā€™ll regret not doing. But we may never get an accurate measurement.

Except that while the rest of us make our way down from the top, Gary Reckelhoff stays behind. We have another four days before the boat comes. Heā€™s going to stay near the spotting scope and wait for the weather to clear, because ā€œthere can only be one highest point,ā€ he says. Two days later the clouds part, and Gary reports that the second peak is seven feet taller than the one John went up. So itā€™s confirmed: John didnā€™t stand on the highest point.

Over the next two days, the team tries to convince John to go back up the mountain and touch the true summit. The trail isnā€™t that bad. Gary can get up there in four hours. John could do it in a day. Weā€™d carry his gear!

Except that on the way down from the summit, ten minutes from base camp, Ginge slipped and landed on his machete, severing a tendon in his finger. Greg, the ER doc, sewed him up, but Ginge will need surgery and is done climbing for now. Weā€™re trying to convince John to take on a death-mud traverse without the strongest climber on our team.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with Ginge. At one point or another, each of us is going to wake up to find that we canā€™t do the things we used to be able to do, or that those things donā€™t matter as much as they once did. For John, that day just happened to come when he was supposed to summit the last mountain on his list.

ā€œI was making a statement to myself,ā€ he told me later, recalling his decision not to go up again. ā€œI need to stop the obsession.ā€

For the past 20 years, John has been the fixated-on-summits guy. It has colored every relationship, every interaction. People want to know: Whatā€™s next?

ā€œI climbed Denali, and then everyone said, ā€˜Are you going to do Everest?ā€™ ā€ John says. ā€œWhere does it stop? And how do you stop it?ā€

Maybe by pulling up just short of the true summit, and counting it anyway. John did 99.78 percent of Agrihan. Maybe itā€™s time to start rounding up. We swat flies and play backgammon for three days until the Super Emerald shows up to take us home. Agrihan recedes into the distance, and John raises his middle finger, flipping off the mountain, his youth, his desire to make history.

The only way to slay some dragons is to simply stop believing in them.

Contributing editor Peter Frick-Wright () is the host of the ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų podcast.

The post The Obsessive Quest of High Pointers appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

It takes some of the most extreme situations to test our desperate desire to live.

How a 13-Year-Old Saved His Dadā€™s Life

Charlie Finlayson was on the ultimate climbing adventure with his dad, David, when a loose boulder forced him to make a daunting rescue.Ģż

Adrift at Sea

With no shore in sight, the only thing Matthew Bryce had to cling to was his surfboard and the hope that someone would find him.Ģż

Way Off-Piste

It only took one wrong turn for Kelsey Malin and her ski partner to find themselves 52 hours deep into the backcountry with no food, water, or way to get out.

A High Case of the Bends

George Watson and Geoff Belter went diving in Peru. One of them was never found again.Ģż

Sink or Swim

When two young pilots flew out over the Pacific together to log hours, they didn't plan on having to make a crash landing.Ģż

How One Couple Survived the Tubbs Fire

Imagine opening your door to a fire. Now imagine thereā€™s no way out.Ģż

The post Shocking Stories of Survival appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

The first I heard of , outside Portland, Oregon, was on the radio in my car. A climber had fallen 700 feet and six others were stranded.

This was yesterday afternoon, February 13, and when I got home a few minutes later, I found that local news helicopters were on scene and streaming their footage on Facebook live. My girlfriend, Ellie, already had it pulled up on the Chromecast, and was on . Six climbers were trapped by bad ice that was in places so thick and hard that they couldnā€™t get any purchase with their crampons and axes. ElsewhereĢżit was so crumbly, and the pieces being dislodged so big, that some compared it to a bowling alley. OneĢżclimberĢżhad fallen and would be pronounced dead at the hospital. I sat down and we toggled between live footage of the rescue and hours-old tape of three fellow climbers giving CPR for 90 minutes.

It was horrifying.

Last August, I broke my leg in a canyon and spent 21 hours being rescued from the flanks of the same mountain, by a lot of the same people. I was finally pulled to safety by probably the same Black Hawk helicopter. At one point, while watching yesterdayā€™s feed, I saw a rescuer taking photos and said out loud, ā€œLook, thereā€™s Tim, snapping pics just like he did on my rescue!ā€

As I and many others watched, I was grateful that I was rescued on a Sunday morning, when there werenā€™t any news choppers in the air. Technology has made it so that Mount Hood rescue efforts are to Portland what police pursuits are to Los Angeles. In 2002, on live TV, shifting gusts of wind helicopter (essentially an upgraded Black Hawk) while it was hovering over a rescue team evacuating an injured climber from Hogsback Ridgeā€”the same part of Mount Hood where yesterdayā€™s accident took place. Incredibly, no one was killed in the crash.

In December 2006, on up the more difficult north side of the mountain, climbers Kelly James, Brian Hall, and Jerry ā€œNikkoā€ Cooke were caught out in a storm. As Hall and Cooke went for help, James stayed behind in a snow cave. He captured the worldā€™s attention when he was able to make a cell phone call to his wife. Rescuers got to his body a week later. Hall and Cooke were never found.

A few months later, in February 2007, a group of eight climbers had three of their party and a dog go over a cliff near Palmer Glacier in white out conditions. They spent the night in a makeshift shelter, in contact with rescuers by cell phone, with news vans camped out in the parking lot. The eager public held its breath. Both groups .

The rescues on Mount Hood havenā€™t stopped, and the coverage of each one gets a little more immediate. But as footage of yesterdayā€™s accident streamed onto our TV, Ellie and I watched as the people being rescued were subjected to a knee-jerk public shaming. Even before they were off the mountain, even after one of their group had died, the questions popped onto the screen below the Facebook stream: How dare they take risks? What did they expect? Who do they think they are?

ā€œItā€™s a lot of extra pressure,ā€ Robert Aberle told me when I asked him about performing rescues on live TV. Aberle was the paramedic who responded to my accident in August. The helicopter crash in 2002 was his first mission as a medic on the Reach and Treat team, and he was involved with every rescue described above and many more. ā€œIt almost seems like [the media] want you to screw up because that creates better news. It gets more coverage,ā€ he said.

Iā€™m a part of the media, but after my rescue, I see that coverage differently, too. The experience of being pulled off a mountain by professional rescuers is deeply humbling, and my 21-hour ordeal is the most vulnerable I have ever felt. I had nightmares for months. I often wept at nothing and disappeared mentally back into the moment of my injury. But my accident was minor by comparisonā€”no one died and my life was never in immediate danger. I was spared the judgment of strangers.

We only have vague information about what happened on the mountain yesterday. We only just learned that the man that died was named Miha Sumi, and that he was from Portland. Weā€™ll never know how he would have felt about his death being live-streamed on the internet. At one point on the video, his friends did chest compressions and waved a space blanket as if signaling for help, but the rescue helicopters come from farther away than the news helicopters, so the only aircraft on scene was loaded with cameras, sending pictures to me on my couchā€”it felt just as disrespectful to watch as it did to look away.

The post The Problem With Live-Streaming the Mount Hood Rescue appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

At this point, Zac Efronā€™s life seems almost completely public: heā€™s got a tabloid love life, heā€™s not shy about removing his shirt, and heā€™s fairly open about having been to rehab. But when recruited him and his younger brother, Dylanā€”who is an Ironman triathlete and dedicated fly-fishermanā€”to test out products this summer for a new ad campaign, the world learned that Zac is actually pretty comfortable running around in wild places. Growing up in Central California, the brothers frequently went out in search of waterfalls, cliff jumps, and other adventures.Ģż
Ģż
This summer, Columbia sent the Efrons to as part of their , and the guys filmed each other all the way to the top of the Continental Divide Trail. Earlier today, a few hours after Columbia posted a video from the trip, we caught up with Zac by phone in LA to ask about his secret outdoor adventure habit, keeping up with his younger brother, and their awesome, newly-customized Sprinter van.

OUTSIDE: Tell me about this van that you and your brother have.
ZAC EFRON: It's a dream come true. You know, a lot of kids play around with different kinds of cars, and everybody wantedĢżthe Batmobile or some cool NASCAR car. I wanted a van. And that's all I wantedā€”like a mobile home I could park anywhere in the bushes and just be, like, a creep with a van. Well, not be a creep but, like, a surfer.Ģż

You mean like a Chris Farley kind of van?
[Laughs] Yes. And I think it started because my grandparents used to have one and they lived up north in Oregon. And we would take a lot of family trips together in our Westfalia. And there was a stove in that one. It was an awesome thing.

So what are you in now?Ģż
This one's been upgraded. We got it rock-a-fied.Ģż

Rock like rockstar?Ģż
No, like The Rock. Like just buffed up. Like super van. We call it The Wolf because it's covered in not just paint but Rhino Lining. It's matte, it's cool. There's a lot of room in it. It's super fun to drive. It's got big tires. We did more hard core off-roading in this thing than in any truck I've ever driven. All the electronics are solar paneled. It runs on diesel fuel, which is nice and effective and affordable and fun to figure out. My brother picked it up. That was his contribution to the trip. So I had to learn the “van rules.”

Your brother is a pretty accomplished outdoorsman and triathlete. Did he pull you into this stuff as an adult?Ģż
It's always been in our blood. We've done it since we were young. That's the only way we could have fun. We didn't really have amusement parks or anything. We would go to the beach or head inland to a couple of spots where there are hikes to waterfalls or hot springs and that kind of stuff. It's kind of a gem, where we grew up. We found the most epic cliff jumps the other day. It was beautiful.Ģż

What's your brotherly dynamic like on the trail?Ģż
It depends. I mean, if it's really just us out there and we're just hiking or backpacking it's a lot different than doing it with a camera crew. I'll tell you that much. I'm a little bit more camera savvy so I know what is important or what might need to be done more. So I kind of have a slightly different perspective on it.Ģż

Does one of you push the pace while the other stops to smell the flowers?
I mean, it's me keeping up with him. Thatā€™s what it is usually. But it's fun because he pushes the limits and so do I in other ways. I'll be the first one to test the water and see if it's deep enough on a cliff jump. But he's the one to start a fire or make sure we're staying on course.

Are you looking for adrenaline when you're outside? Or more like peace and solitude?Ģż
Both. You just go back to being real. The city is sucked out of you. You can get in these little bickering fights on the road and they're over in two seconds and that's just the way it is. You have to stick together. You're stuck with one another when you're out on a trip like that. So you work through your issues. We probably learned more about each other in four days on the road than we did in a whole month just chilling at home.Ģż

You've been cast a party guy for the last few years, which lined up with your real life to some extent. Do you think this project with Columbia, and just generally doing more stuff outside, will change perceptions about you and maybe get you different kinds of roles?
Yeah, I hope so. The whole inception of this idea was kind of like, I have had this secret that I've kept for a long time. I can go anywhere and I can just be alone. I know how to do that. I've learned how to camp. But we have a generation of people that don't necessarily know how or haven't seen anybody really do it or know what it means to escape. This was an opportunity to reach out with a solid brand that's using recyclable materials to make awesome jackets that helped my brother and I cross the Continental Divide. If we can show people what these places are and why the world is worth saving, then we're kind of hitting everything I would want to accomplish with a partnership. It's just a call out to our generation to get moving.Ģż

I donā€™t have like a cool ending question.
Itā€™s all good dude.

What's the next outdoor trip youā€™re excited about?Ģż
Just probably go to the top of , in LA. [laughs] But the top, top, topā€”like alllll the way to the top. You can look down at Griffith, it's fun. It's beautiful. For me, step one each day is to get outside. After that, itā€™s all downhill.

So with the resources to go anywhere in the world, you choose Griffith Park?Ģż
I mean, there's so many places I want to see. You know my brother and I go fly fishing quite a bit. And that's something my dad loves to do and he's pretty good at himself and we can afford those trips now. So it's kind of cool to be able to go. You've got the van so you have zero excuses. Cut out all the bullshit. Let's go fishing. Just be at my house. I've got everything. Let's go. And to be able to be that guy for my family, the one who gets us outside, that's the guy I want to be.Ģż

The post Zac Efronā€™s Secret #VanLife Dreams appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.

Over the past year and a half of producing the Science of Survival series for the ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Podcast, weā€™ve spoken to dozens of people who endured life-threatening ordeals. By combining their stories with analysis from experts, weā€™ve attempted to make sense of what they went through and understand how they were able to come out the other side alive. Our biggest takeaway: the most powerful and mysterious part of any survival tale begins after the bleeding stops and the fire is out. While some survivors wage endless battles with imagined dangers, others are reborn with enhanced strength and purpose. Weā€™ve only begun to comprehend the forces that shape near-death experiences, but just hearing incredible stories like the ones weā€™ve gathered here can better prepare us to withstand whatever comes our way.

Case Study 1: Struck

KrisĢżNorbratenĢżwas leading a group of young women on a climbing expedition inĢżVedauwoo, Wyoming, in 2014, when a lightning bolt from a fast-approaching storm struck the outcrop they were on and traveled up through the ground beneath them. Everyone survived, but the incident leftĢżNorbraten, then 38, traumatized. As time went by, however, her coping mechanism gave way to a creative flowering that has changed her life even more than the strike itself did.

Struck by Lightning

The bizarre science behind Phil Broscovak's lightning strike, and his incredible journey of recovery.

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Around two oā€™clock, we saw a storm brewing in the distance. We decided to head out and were packing up lunches, lowering people down, cleaning up our gear, and so forth. The lightning hit above us, traveled through the rock, and knocked us over like bowling pins. There were kids sitting on the rock, leaning on the rock, gathering up to hike back down. Then they were screaming, freaking out. Itā€™s quite painful having that much electricity move through your body. The most mystifying thing to me was that, at one moment I was standing in one place, and the next moment I was in a completely different place. It was surreal.

A couple of months later, I was at home and heard a garbage can being rolled across gravel. It sounded like thunder, and my body went into that flight response. It wasnā€™t logicalā€”it was very old-brain, reactive, get-me-the-hell-out-of-here. Everything had become raw. Itā€™s like all your nerves are cooked. The world was this very abrasive place to live in. Lights and sounds were difficult. Crowded rooms. Children crying. They were all terrible to be around.

I holed up for a long time. I also started writing. Originally, it was this tiny project, a short story, cathartic, get some energy out. But I kept going. Iā€™m at 350 pages now. Writing was something I was always good at, but I never had the idea, and I was never committed enough. After getting struck, it all just opened up. I donā€™t yet know how to explain it very well, because I feel very young in my understanding of what happened. But I do feel it was a birth into the second half of my lifeā€”like stepping through a door.

Iā€™m hopeful. Not in some super happy way, but I think it can work. A lightning strike is less than a millisecond. One millisecond redefined my life. I would not go back and undo it and hand over my manuscript. Never. Itā€™s been a tough journey, but I have a novel. Iā€™m a writer now. Itā€™s the work Iā€™ll do for the rest of my life.

Case Study 2: Broken

In the summer of 2010, Joe Stone crashed while paragliding from Mount Jumbo, near Missoula, Montana. He spent almost a month in an induced coma and woke up to learn that heā€™d lost the use of his legs and most of the fine motor skills in his hands. Initially despondent, he quickly decided that heā€™d find new ways to chase adventure. Three years after his accident, at age 28, he became the first quadriplegic to complete an Ironman triathlon. Last year he took his first BASE jump off a bridge in Draper, Utah. For Stone, the challenge of finding his way back from his injuries has been deeply gratifying. But for his family, especially his mother, Kim, the process has meant letting go of the impulse to protect Joe from his biggest danger: himself.

After the Crash, Part 1

What do you do when youā€™re addicted to adrenaline but confined to a wheelchair? So much more than people expect.

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Joe Stone:ĢżI donā€™t remember the crash. I launched, flew away from the mountain to gain altitude, then did a barrel roll. I think I might have collapsed part of my wing. I smacked right into the side of the mountain at probably 50 miles per hour. Some hikers called 911, and I was helicoptered to the ER. They had to remove my C7 vertebra; the bone was just completely blown up.

The moment I realized I was never going to fly again was way harder to deal with than not being able to walk. My dreams were in flying. I thought, Iā€™m just this weak little quadriplegic who canā€™t do anything.

That first year, I made it a goal to handcycle over Loganā€™s Pass, in Glacier National Park. I had to dig deeper than Iā€™d ever dug before to keep cranking. It took 14 hours for me to go 50 miles, but it opened my whole world up. When I realized that no quad had ever done an Ironman, it was pretty easy to make that my next goal. I had a really awesome eight months of training. At the start of the race, I had to pull up my goggles to wipe away the tears. Three years earlier, Iā€™d been in a hospital bed thinking that Iā€™d spend the rest of my life in a nursing home. Now Iā€™m at an Ironman. I donā€™t know how to explain how that felt.

After the Crash, Part 2

Once Joe Stone learned to use his paralyzed body, he decided heā€™d race an Ironman. Then he went even bigger.

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After that, I realized that my disability wasnā€™t truly a limitation. Thereā€™s always another way. If itā€™s something that hasnā€™t been done before, it just means Iā€™ve got to figure out a way to do it. Once I understood that concept, I was limitless. Soon after I started flying again, we launched off a mountain right next to the one I crashed on. From total devastation to total stoke. Now, seven years after the crash, I have a life full of opportunity and joy, friendship and adventure, thrills and getting scared again. Thatā€™s really all I was searching for.

Kim Stone:ĢżAs a mom, you do so much to raise your kidā€”to basically hand him his body. Youā€™re healthy, youā€™re grown, youā€™re smart, now go make your way. I was like, Joe, how could you break down your body like this? Knowing I couldnā€™t fix it, the way Iā€™d bandaged him his whole lifeā€”that was really hard.

It was a year or so after his accident that he told me, ā€œIā€™m the happiest in my life that Iā€™ve ever been, more than before my accident.ā€ At that point I began sleeping through the night, because I knew that, deep down inside, he was OK.

Then he started BASE jumping. It was extremely hard to watch that. Iā€™ve gone through phases when I thought heā€™s just being so selfish. It doesnā€™t seem like that thrill is worth dying for. But I always go back to: this is who he is. I want him to be safe, but he would not be happy just doing what most of us do. That would be even harder to watch, because he would not be the same person. But God forbid, I wouldnā€™t want him to get hurt any more than he already is.Ģż

Case Study 3: Hunted

In 1970, four young travelers headed to Bolivia for an ambitious adventure: they would paddle a tributary of the Amazon until they met up with the mighty river itself, then continue on through Brazil. And they would hunt and forage for their food. For Ed Welch, the trip was especially dauntingā€”he only went along because his adventurous new girlfriend, Vicki Adcock, had invited him. Then, a couple of weeks in, he and the other man on the trip were chased up a tree by a jaguar, where they spent a sleepless night expecting to be eaten. Living through that and then completing the voyage gave Welch the strength to follow Vicki around the world for decadesā€”and eventually find new courage after her death.

Treed by a Jaguar

The story of two explorers chased downā€”well, technically upā€”by a jaguar

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We were searching for our canoe, which some Bolivian soldiers had ā€œborrowedā€ and not returned. We came to this big area of eight-foot-tall grassā€”thatā€™s when we heard it. There was no question it was a jaguar. We ran until we found a tree we could climb. We were probably 35 feet up and had a machete and a .22. We couldnā€™t see very well, but we heard it pacing around the tree. Just a week before, a guy had been eaten by a jaguar exactly where we were. So we stayed up there the whole night, listening for anything that would signal an attack. Sometime in the early morning the jaguar left. When we got back to camp, the girls were mostly just unhappy that weā€™d taken both weapons.

I never shied away from anything after that. Vicki and I got married and ran a goat dairy farm in Washington, but we kept traveling. Weā€™d say, ā€œOh, letā€™s climb this mountain,ā€ and then we would.

When Vicki died from cancer in 2013, I basically just worked. I didnā€™t realize I was depressed. Iā€™d get up in the morning, milk the goats, do my chores, take a nap in the afternoon, and then do the evening chores. It was hard for me to figure out who I was, because throughout our life, Iā€™d borrowed her courage and energy to do so many things. She had all this curiosity and not a lot of fear.

Then I went to India and Africa. It was part of the grieving process. I did a safari in the Serengeti. I traveled through some potentially hazardous places. I climbed Kilimanjaro. I was 68 and it was hard, but it rekindled my desire to do more difficult thingsā€”to test myself against that fear.

Case Stude 4: Twisted

Weather Channel meteorologist MikeĢżBettesĢżand his film crew were chasing a tornado in Oklahoma in 2013 when the twister turned and struck their GMC Yukon. The vehicle was hurled 100 yards, across three lanes of traffic, and sent tumbling into a nearby field. The tornado, dubbed El Reno after a town it had passed, was 2.6 miles wideā€”the largest ever recorded. It also killed eight people, including two well-known stormchasers. ThoughĢżBettesĢżescaped with minor injuries, the near miss haunted him. It took another life-changing event for him to fully recover.

The Death Blow

When forecasts called for a massive tornado in central Oklahoma in 2013, storm chasers flocked to the area. Then all hell broke loose.

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Iā€™d never seen a tornado like that. It was aquamarine in color, wider than it was tall. A monsterā€”and it was right out our window. I remember telling everybody to duck, and then it hit. It was just the most violent impact, like a giant sledgehammer smashing the vehicle. Everything slowed down, and I felt this weightlessness. I thought, Wow, weā€™re floating up into the tornado. I wonder if weā€™re hundreds of feet off the ground. Is this when I die?

I probably suffered through some form of PTSD for months. I had nightmares every night. There was always a different ending, but usually it was me dying. Then it got to the point where I wasnā€™t thinking about the tornado but had these visions of dying in various ways. Just this constant fear of death. Time wasnā€™t healing the wounds. Eventually, I started seeing a therapist. Being able to talk to someone helped me get past the worst of it.

A year and a half after the tornado, my wife was pregnant and we were going to the doctor. It was that appointment where you find out whether youā€™re going to have a boy or a girl. It was also my wifeā€™s birthday. The doctor told us weā€™re going to have a little boy, and at that moment everything changed. That was the point where I was like, OK, Iā€™ve got this thing licked. All of a sudden, it became more or less an asterisk in my life instead of a moment that controlled me.

El Reno forced me to reevaluate what was really important, whether the rewards of my profession outweighed the risks. It was remarkable to go through the experience, and that whole year really was this circle of life, from near-death to a new beginning. Itā€™s been fabulous ever since.

Case Study 5: Burned

Greg and Julie Welch were a day into a kayaking trip in Minnesotaā€™s Boundary Waters in 2012 when a distant forest fire began burning straight toward their campsite. The Pagami Creek Fire torched 70,000 acres in less than four hours. Thanks to fast thinking and a lucky shift in the weather, the Welches survived. The experience left Greg exhilarated. But Julie continues to battle the fear that overtook her as they raced from the flames.

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Greg Welch:ĢżThe fire was unreal. The flames were blowing completely horizontal. It sounded like a freight train coming through the woods.

Julie Welch:ĢżI started packing gear in drybags. I was scared to death. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely do anything.

Greg:ĢżJulie paddled out and disappeared into the smoke. Then flames came shooting out of the forest. Thatā€™s when I pushed off.

Julie:ĢżI had no idea where Greg was. I was screaming his name until a gust of wind lifted the smoke for a second and I could see that he was maybe 20 feet away.

Greg:ĢżThe wind pushed Julie sideways and flipped her kayak. I got out of my kayak into the water and started kicking toward her.

Julie:ĢżIt was just insane. I thought we were going to cross the lake and get the heck out of there. Then all of a sudden itā€™s 360 degrees of fire. There was nowhere to go.

Greg:ĢżThe wind ended up pushing us into a large rock, so I jumped on and grabbed the back of Julieā€™s life jacket and helped her out of the water. Thatā€™s when everything changed.

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Tips on self-defense, BASE jumping, and how to make it out of a plane crash alive.

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Julie:ĢżHere we are in the middle of a forest fire, and it starts hailingā€”huge hail the size of nickels. Then it started raining buckets.

Greg:ĢżIt put the fire out, the whole thing. I was standing on the rock, jumping up and down and screaming at the fire. I thought, Boy, is it good to be alive!

Julie:ĢżI was shaking my head at him, beĀ­cause Iā€™m thinking, OK, that was the end of the world. It was Armageddon. I donā€™t know why heā€™s so exhilarated. I was in shock.

Greg:ĢżThe experience just didnā€™t mess with me much. Iā€™ve always been somebody who likes taking risks. I didnā€™t lose anything. I didnā€™t lose anybody. We didnā€™t even have a burn mark. Iā€™m almost glad I went through it. How many people get to do something like that and walk away?Ģż

Julie:ĢżIf you could see me right now, Iā€™m flushed. Iā€™m shaking. I hate talking about it. Greg, itā€™s his favoriteā€¦ whatever. When he starts talking about it with someone, I might leave the room. My stomach gets in knots, and I have huge anxiety. I can go back to the Boundary Waters now, but the whole time Iā€™m on edge. The wind blows and it scares the hell out of me. I get this creepy, eerie feeling. Itā€™s the fear that disaster is going to strike again. I hope someday I can overcome it.

The post Real Survival Begins After You’ve Made It Out Alive appeared first on ŗŚĮĻ³Ō¹ĻĶų Online.