Ted Trautman Archives - ��ϳԹ�� Online

��ϳԹ�� Academy Turns Desk Jockeys into Savvy Explorers

nhunt — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Everyone’s up for an adventure in theory, but it’s hard to actually take the leap. Maybe you’re not sure how to bushwhack through the jungle, or communicate in a place where English isn’t spoken. There are safety concerns to think about, and even if you make it all the way to France, or Kyrgyzstan, or Antarctica, you worry that you’ll just sit in your hotel room wishing you’d landed somewhere a little closer to your comfort zone after all.

But would-be adventurers don’t have to stay would-be forever. That’s the pitch made by Brit who is ramping up a program he calls . Prior leads small groups of paying travelers (who cough up $4,000 each, plus flight expenses) on challenging treks through remote parts of Indonesia. These are classes, stresses Prior. Not tours. They come with many of the conveniences of a tourist package–lodging, transportation, a guide–but they’re also intended to prepare participants for future wilderness trips on their own. Accordingly, you can’t just sign up. You apply for admission.

“There are people out there who have an idea and they’ll just go and do it and they don’t need anyone for a bit of guidance. That’s fine. That’s not who this is aimed at,” Prior says. “But then there are people out there who love the idea” of a challenging, international adventure. “They love talking about it, they like reading articles, they like looking at pictures, but they’ll never, regardless of what you do, take that plunge. There’ll always be a convenient excuse that they’ll put in front of themselves…This concept falls right in the middle of those two kinds of people.”

Matt Prior. (Courtesy of Matt Prior)

Those who make the cut couldn’t ask for a more qualified teacher. Prior, a former pilot for the Royal Air Force, has traveled to more than 100 countries and summitted peaks on five continents. He’s best known for a series of long journeys raising money for charity: on a World War II-era motorcycle; ; and driving from London to Mongolia in a $200 car. Between these adventures, he flies commercial jets in and out of Hong Kong. He launched ��ϳԹ�� Academy last year.

Thanks to ��ϳԹ�� Academy, would-be adventurers don’t have to stay would-be forever.

What exactly happens during an ��ϳԹ�� Academy class? Prior requested that we not reveal too many details of his previous four trips, since unpredictability and spontaneity are essential to the service he’s offering, but here’s a broad picture. Over the course of a week, he leads three people across several Indonesian islands, staying overnight in a small village and climbing a volcano. (No, there's no Internet or phone access.)

The details change, and sometimes improvisation is needed, as when Prior’s motorcycle unexpectedly required repairs on the August trip; he gave his students a satellite phone and a basic map and set them off on their own for the day while he dealt with his bike. A translator (for emergencies) is usually available, but for the most part the students must learn to communicate with locals using universal gestures and patience, just like the many generations of globetrotters before them. Along the way, Prior passes on tidbits of travel wisdom, for example how to haggle with vendors and drivers, figuring security, being diplomatic, planning and preparation, the pros and cons of various gear, and how to manage money on a long trip.

(Courtesy of Matt Prior)

Holding a motorcycle permit is also a prerequisite for the course, since Prior and his students get around mostly on two wheels after meeting in Bali. This is a risky move for a new tour operator, since it significantly limits the number of eligible participants. But Prior told me it helps ��ϳԹ�� Academy live up to its name: “I want people to feel like they’re on their own expedition. Whereas if they’re just sitting in the backseat of a car, they can just fall asleep and get nothing out of it.”

The motorcycling aspect of the trip was a particular challenge for 42-year-old Tessa Chan, a Hong Kong-based journalist who took part in Prior’s first course, in August 2015. “I was really shit [at] it. I can’t even properly ride a bicycle,” Chan confessed by phone. But even she ended up appreciating the challenge. “Matt sort of shouted me through it. He was really patient with me…And when you get a bit of nice, flat road, it’s amazing. There’s a real sense of freedom.”

(Courtesy of Matt Prior)

The August course in which Chan participated was ��ϳԹ�� Academy’s first trip open to the general public, after Prior conducted several practice runs with military acquaintances over the previous months. As it happens, all three students in the inaugural course were women–Chan, from Hong Kong, was joined by two women from Australia.

The profile of the type drawn to the academy is hard to pin down, Prior says: mostly Westerners; a roughly even split of men and women; teenagers, middle-aged people, and retirees alike. He’s guided a junior officer from the New Zealand Defense Force, a search and rescue crew woman, and a banker, among others. “It's a varied bunch,” Prior says.

��ϳԹ�� Academy is one of the first companies to offer adventure with a safety net on such an ambitious scale, but it’s part of a growing movement to help adults reconnect with rural and wilderness environments.

��ϳԹ�� Academy is one of the first companies to offer these types of excursions with a safety net on such an ambitious scale–motorcycles, volcanoes, international borders–but it’s part of a growing movement to help adults reconnect with rural and wilderness environments. “The way that people find fulfillment in life in general is presenting themselves with a series of challenges and overcoming them,” Sasha Cox, founder of Trail Mavens in Northern California, . “I think that going into the wilderness provides such a delightfully ripe opportunity for this because there are challenges that are inherent to it, you have to do things in a different way than in the comfort of your own home.”

(Courtesy of Matt Prior)

What makes ��ϳԹ�� Academy stand out in this movement is its focus on experiencing another culture, rather than nature, per se. The first class, for instance, didn’t spend one night in a tent. Instead, they stayed in locals’ homes in order to get to know Indonesia’s people as well as its terrain. That kind of trust is part of the ethos of the academy, Prior says. “There’s nothing like this that exists in the world,” Prior says. “You’re working with total strangers, and the first time you meet them is on the other side of the world. At the end of the day, it comes down to trust and a willingness to go with the flow.”

Prior said he’s still sorting out where ��ϳԹ�� Academy fits in the broader ecosystem of educational travel, after launching his business last winter at London’s ��ϳԹ�� Travel Show, having conducted zero market research. But business is good, Prior says. He’s about to embark on his fifth trip, and has another lined up for October and possibly one in November as well. He just brought on a new instructor—a 35-year-old British ski-tour guide named who has paraglided off of Mont Blanc and summited Everest.

(Courtesy of Matt Prior)

For Tessa Chan’s part, ��ϳԹ�� Academy not only helped her check an adventure off her bucket list, it also gave her more cred with her kids back home in Hong Kong. “It’s good that they see me doing this,” she explained. “Not just baking cookies, you know what I mean?”

A guided trip like ��ϳԹ�� Academy’s may be all that some participants are looking for. But Chan, an apt pupil, told me she hopes to apply the Academy’s lessons in another far-flung location someday soon. “That’s what I want to do next,” she said. “See if I can apply some of these learnings off on my own.”

The post ��ϳԹ�� Academy Turns Desk Jockeys into Savvy Explorers appeared first on ��ϳԹ�� Online.

Virtual Reality Proves Itself as the Next Great ��ϳԹ��-Film Tool

mmirhashem — Mon, 19 Sep 2016 00:00:00 +0000

“There’s just this larger-than-life feeling about the Needles,” the renowned climber Alex Honnold says over footage of him free-soloing one of the range’s spires in southern California’s Sequoia National Park. “They have this mythical reputation almost, because not many people come out here. You feel like you’re just out there by yourself.”

Thanks to a new virtual reality video series, it’s now possible for thousands of people to feel this sense of solitude, all at the same time.

The series, “,” is the result of a collaboration between outdoor production veterans Camp4 Collective and virtual reality studio Jaunt VR. So far they’ve released four immersive videos showcasing top athletes: Alex Honnold climbing the Needles, Galen Volckhausen kayaking in Iceland, Cameron Zink mountain biking in Utah, and “Sketchy Andy” Lewis slacklining in Moab.

This is certainly not a first in the world of virtual-reality adventure—in fact, Jaunt and Camp4 have already teamed up before, in Nepal. The 360-degree experience just seems like a natural progression from GoPro footie. By enlisting some of the biggest names in extreme sports in this new series, Jaunt makes the case that VR isn’t just cool tech, it’s a superior way to enjoy an adrenaline rush.

Enthusiasts like to say that VR devices are “empathy machines,” because they supposedly create such an immersive experience.

Virtual reality creators must relinquish control in the sense that viewers control the direction of their gaze, but it’s easy to see how our natural reactions can make quick work of such heart-pounding footage. As Honnold talks about how secure he feels while free-soloing, tilt the camera downward and see just how far he could fall. In Moab, turn slowly to see the improbable length of Lewis’s slackline. This is also a great medium for incredulous double-takes, if you want to look back and forth between Volckhausen’s kayak and the gushing waterfall that just spit him out.

“We just wanted to show people what it’s like to go over a waterfall,” said director Tim Kemple of Camp4. He argues that VR is more than just gimmicky video. “To me, 360 is a completely new way of telling stories. It’s like going see a movie versus going to see a play.”

Enthusiasts like to say that VR devices are “empathy machines,” because they supposedly create such an immersive experience that it helps the viewer see the world from someone else’s perspective. In a TED Talk last year, VR evangelist Chris Milk drove this point home by putting his audience in a tent with a young Syrian refugee.

When it comes to adventure sports, VR devices might also be “experience machines” that allow people to “see places they’ll never get to go,” as Jaunt president Cliff Plumer puts it. Whether the viewer is constrained by her budget, or advanced age, or a disability, she can don an Oculus Rift and be transported instantly to the Needles. Thomas Hayden, of the Portland-based 360 Labs, is working on a VR recording of the Grand Canyon in part to help the elderly see it up close.

For all the opportunities VR presents to filmmakers, it also comes with unique challenges. For starters, some sports are better suited to the medium than others. Climbing is especially tricky: “It’s a pretty slow sport, and it’s a 2D sport,” Kemple explained. “I can’t go inside the cliff, so we’re down to 180 degrees from 360.” Shooting from a drone, on the other hand, creates a fuller, 360-degree shot, but that too comes at a cost: it can take days to stitch this footage together from the drone’s many cameras, since the drone is almost always in motion. Virtual-reality editing software does some of this work automatically, but a human touch is required to achieve the seamlessness on which Jaunt and Camp4 insist.

While VR might help extend sports’ fan bases, the “Home Turf” series could also end up using the popularity of adventure sports to build up the VR audience. The medium is still in its infancy, and premium viewing devices like the Oculus Rift headset cost as much as $600. The more compelling content there is available to view in VR, the more likely people are to invest in such headwear. Plumer, of Jaunt, is keenly aware of this. He said “Home Turf” was spurred in part by the fact that VR’s early adopters tend to be gamers and young men. “Our mission is to create VR experiences for our consumers, and right now that’s who our consumers are.”

Neither Plumer nor Kemple would reveal who might appear in future “Home Turf” installments, but they hope to feature sports like surfing and skiing, and to add some female athletes to the roster. On the technical side, Plumer said he hopes to see more interactivity in VR videos in the future. For instance, where the viewer looks might trigger different content—perhaps choosing one path or another as a kayak barrels toward a fork in the river.

The underlying message, Plumer says, is that VR is approaching a turning point as a medium. “A lot of VR so far has been driven by tech. But now the creatives are driving it.”

The post Virtual Reality Proves Itself as the Next Great ��ϳԹ��-Film Tool appeared first on ��ϳԹ�� Online.

‘100 Deadly Skills’ Is a Fun Read, but Please Don’t Take Its Advice

eberger — Fri, 08 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000

The best heroes in our pop culture tend to save the day not by brute strength alone, but by employing their quick wits between blows. Think James Bond, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or MacGyver. These are cultured warriors, always ready for a fight but never eager for one.

�� retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson molds the cultured warrior trope into something more belligerent: a ruthlessly pragmatic role model he calls “the Violent Nomad,” who avoids gun fights and car chases to preserve his strength, rather than his honor.

Deadly Skills bears many similarities, both in theme and aesthetic, to 1999’s The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht—all the way down to both books’ field guide-style rounded corners and simple but evocative illustrations, reminiscent of an old Boy Scout Handbook. That could bode well for Deadly Skills, since its spiritual predecessor blossomed in the early 2000s into a minor multimedia phenomenon that was spun off into card games, calendars, a TV show, and a wide range of tongue-in-cheek “survival handbooks” for distinctly non-fatal contexts such as college, parenting, and golf.

Where The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook and Deadly Skills part ways, however, is in the threats they prepare their readers against. The worst cases conjured in Piven’s and Borgenicht’s earlier book tend to pit man against nature: quicksand, earthquakes, poisonous snakes, and the like. In Deadly Skills, the danger mostly comes from other people: mass shooters, kidnappers, terrorists, and foreign governments. The result is a book that is less of a survival manual and comes off as more of neo-conservative propaganda tool.

It’s intriguing to read about the lives of Violent Nomads, but the world sure as hell doesn’t need any more of them.

As it turns out, fending off the bad guys requires a lot of MacGyver-esque creativity—and yes, some of the “deadly” skills in this book are defensive, not offensive, rendering the title a little misleading. “In order to remain deadly,” Emerson explains in a chapter on how to brace oneself for a car crash (Skill #093: Survive Vehicular Impact), “a Violent Nomad must remain safe.” Some of the skills on offer truly could be fatal, as when the reader learns how to turn a fishing weight and a bandana into a weapon “powerful enough to crack a coconut and do equivalent damage to a human skull.” What connects these violent how-to’s with the book’s more general-interest tips is an underlying hope that the reader will learn to think like a Violent Nomad without becoming one. An author’s note states that the book’s primary goal is to entertain, not create vigilantes. “Be deadly in spirit, but not in action,” Emerson impels. And then he continues talking about cutting off thumbs, crushing skulls, and impaling people with screws.

In some cases, Emerson veers into the brutal facts of real-world espionage. “For an operative,” Emerson deadpans, “collecting fingerprints is frequently a postmortem scenario…the operative will go the most direct route: severing the target’s thumb” (Skill #081: Trick Fingerprint Scanning Software). Similarly, in the event that your homemade Taser doesn’t discharge, you’re still jamming two sharp screws into a person’s body, so “breaking the skin should injure an attacker enough for the operative to gain the upper hand and make a rapid escape.” One hopes this book’s readers will never have cause to apply these deadly skills, but nonetheless they offer a fascinating glimpse into the world of shady intelligence gathering.

Emerson spent 20 years conducting special ops around the world as a Navy SEAL and NSA staffer, and Deadly Skills takes a simplistic, binary view of the world, splitting it into good guys and bad guys without pausing to consider anyone’s motivations. Emerson has clearly bought into the system.

Deadly Skills evinces a special distrust of foreign governments, which “sometimes use Western detainees as a form of political currency.” Emerson never names specific countries as particularly dangerous for Westerners, but it’s easy enough to read between the lines: for the reader hoping to assemble some makeshift body armor on the go, for instance, the reader is reminded that “every hotel has a Bible or a Koran stashed in a bedside drawer.” This special attention to the Islamic world is reinforced by Ted Slampyak’s illustrations, which frequently portray “bad guys”–or good guys impersonating bad guys–wearing Middle Eastern keffiyeh headdresses. Emerson advises his readers to practice cultural awareness, but only enough to blend into a crowd. “If the general population forgoes ketchup on their sandwiches or ice in their drinks, the operative will follow suit.” Absent is any deeper awareness of the danger in reflexively painting the massive and diverse array of Middle Eastern cultures as the bad guys—especially in the case of mass shootings (Deadly Skill #073: Survive an Active Shooter), since the vast majority of such crimes in the U.S. are carried out by white men.

I found it helpful when Deadly Skills mentioned useful products by name, which would make it very easy to write a shopping list before tackling my hit list.

Also strange is Emerson’s assumption that Violent Nomads must be men. This requirement is never stated explicitly, but Emerson’s exclusive use of masculine pronouns–e.g. “he may assume the outward appearance of… a businessman…a�� he understands that terrorist groups…may be targeting him”–feels strangely dated, especially in light of recent U.S. military milestones such as the Army and the Navy . Even when instructing the reader specifically to fill a tampon applicator with emergency supplies like cash and a map, Emerson seems unable to imagine anywhere to conceal this feminine product besides a man’s rectum–a maneuver helpfully illustrated with a picture of a muscular naked Nomad, bound and hooded in a gloomy cell.

At first I found it helpful when Deadly Skills mentioned useful products by name–Rain-X to keep windows from fogging, a steel Zebra pen’s utility as “an incredible makeshift stabbing tool”–which would make it very easy to write a shopping list before tackling my hit list. But I appreciated this name-dropping a little less when I found out that Emerson was also shilling products of his own–namely the Zero Trace line of signal-dampening electronics cases, and an app called Photo Trap that helps the user detect telltale signs of rummaging through a desk or cabinet. Both of these products are sold by personal security firm Escape the Wolf, of which Emerson is a founder and managing partner. I suppose unforced disclosure is a weakness in the intelligence community, but even the briefest admission of Emerson’s ties to the wares he’s hawking would have sufficed.

In sum, Deadly Skills is occasionally a fun and sometimes useful read that nonetheless reflects the shortcomings of the agencies in which its author was trained. It’s intriguing to read about the lives of Violent Nomads, and if governments collapse and we're all forced to become mercenaries, then this book may become a relevant tool. But God help us if we're living in that future.

The post ‘100 Deadly Skills’ Is a Fun Read, but Please Don’t Take Its Advice appeared first on ��ϳԹ�� Online.

Bring Summer Camp to Your Own Backyard with These Games

mpayant — Wed, 22 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Back when I was a teenager in Minnesota, some friends and I sat around a bonfire in somebody’s backyard, exhausted after a long day of tallying the tents, tarps, and tomahawks in our scout troop’s storage garage. We’d roasted our marshmallows and sung our songs, and the night seemed to be winding down when I asked if anyone wanted to play a game. One boy pushed for penny poker. Another suggested I Spy, which was so unappealing to the first boy that he stood up and threw an aerosol can full of bug spray into the fire. “I know a game,” he said, as our hearts started to bounce in our chests. “It’s called Run.”

We all survived, for what it’s worth, but sometimes I wonder how much easier our night might have been if we’d had a deck of cards handy, or even just a half-decent idea for a game. Croquet and lawn darts are perfectly fine pastimes, but they’ve had their day in the sun. To help keep your barbecues interesting this summer, we’ve collected a few (relatively) novel backyard games and activities that don’t involve hurling shrapnel at your guests. If backyard games aren’t your cup of tea and you prefer online casino games, our good friends at have you covered with their list of the best online casino games for Italian players looking to add excitement to otherwise boring games.

Cornhole

(Neal Patel/)

Cornhole, the unfortunately named game also known as beanbag toss or simply “bags,” isn’t exactly brand new, but it still has the sheen of youth thanks to its popularity among college students and the twenty- and thirtysomethings who miss their days on campus. The objective is simple enough: Throw your beanbags into a hole five yards away. Purists will want to make sure their bags measure six inches square and are filled with 14 to 16 ounces of corn feed, according to the American Cornhole Association. (The rival American Cornhole Organization, by comparison, is less picky about the material inside your bags. So go nuts.)

Spikeball

(chicospikeball/)

came into the world as a 1980s children’s toy, combining elements of volleyball and four square: Players are required to bounce a medium-sized ball off a small trampoline. The game never caught on in toy stores, but today it has found new life as an increasingly popular competitive sport, with tournaments coming up soon in 16 states. But just because you can play the game at a big beachside tournament doesn’t mean it wouldn’t also go over well in your own backyard. The official equipment is even starting to show up in sporting goods stores.

Slacklining

(Matthew Roth/)

For those who can’t wait until fall for The Walk—the Robert Zemeckis–directed film about Philippe Petit’s famous high-wire walk between the towers of the World Trade Center—a summer’s worth of slacklining awaits you. Petit practiced for ages on a slackline before attempting his stunt in New York, so you’ll be in good company.

Giant Jenga, Giant Beer Pong, Giant Everything

(Kent Buckingham/)

Anyone can drag a board game from their living room out into the sunlight. But DIY-minded players have gone one step further and created blown-up versions of their favorite games to take advantage of all the space outside. Why play beer pong with ping-pong balls and Solo cups when you can play it with beach balls and garbage cans? With some chicken wire, a few short poles, and a bunch of balls, you’ve got giant Kerplunk. Chop up a few two-by-fours and you’ve got giant Jenga—although to be fair, Hasbro, which owns the rights to Jenga, actually sells giant blocks of its own.

Glow-in-the-Dark Ring Toss

(rebecca_emily/)

Ring toss may sound pretty tame, but glow-in-the-dark ring toss is the perfect low-energy activity to keep a lawn party going after the sun sets and you begin to realize just how much potato salad you’ve eaten. Even with the phosphorescent glow, the surrounding darkness adds a little challenge, as does your food coma and the beer you might be holding while you play. You can buy premade kits, like this one from ($4), or assemble one yourself from glow sticks. In retrospect, this would have been the perfect distraction on that night with my fellow boys-will-be-boys scouts.

The post Bring Summer Camp to Your Own Backyard with These Games appeared first on ��ϳԹ�� Online.

Are Helicopters the Future of Conservation?

eberger — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000

“See those olive trees?” John Knapp asks me on a recent visit to Santa Cruz Island, off the coast of southern California. “They’re invasive. Wanna go in for a closer look?” I nod, and suddenly we’re falling through the sky.

Knapp is a botanist at the (TNC), the country’s largest environmental non-profit, and we are contemplating these trees not from a trail, but from 400 feet above in a three-seat Schweizer 333 helicopter with an open-air cabin. Knapp, a SoCal native in his early forties with a salt-and-paprika beard and a winning gap-toothed smile, laps up each gust of wind that blasts through the cockpit like a golden retriever leaning out of a car. Meanwhile, I inspect my surroundings for the best place to deposit the lunch I feel traveling back up my throat.

Fortunately, it’s very easy for pilot Ken Hutchins to drop me off on solid ground. (He hovers low and steady; I hop out.) In fact, that’s why TNC hired a helicopter in the first place. Santa Cruz Island, part of Channel Islands National Park and the largest island in the archipelago, is crawling with invasive species in hard-to-reach places. The Channel Islands are sometimes called “the Galapagos Islands of North America,” due to their unusually high biodiversity, and Santa Cruz Island, Knapp says, “is a hotspot within the hotspot.” But invasive species are threatening its wonderous ecology. Without intervention, the islands' more than 2,000 plant and animal species, 145 of which are found nowhere else on Earth and nine of which are endangered or threatened, could be pushed out entirely by non-native competitors like pampas grass, Spanish broom, and Peruvian pepper trees.

“I hate to use a war analogy,” John Knapp says, “but fighting invasives is kind of like Napoleon fighting wars on two fronts. Before we started using the helo, we were getting flanked.”

Invasives are a problem pretty much anywhere humans go, and constitute one of the largest threats to biodiversity in several of the country’s national parks—they’re the , for example. But on Santa Cruz Island there are both more unique native species to protect from predators and weeds, and better odds of success in managing them. In part, that’s because TNC owns and manages more than three-quarters of Santa Cruz Island. (The rest is owned by the National Park Service, which collaborates on conservation efforts.) With free rein over most of the island and a relatively large budget, TNC has been able to experiment with innovative conservation methods that smaller organizations have neither the resources nor in some cases the permission to attempt. The island is a microcosmic conservation battleground, and the helicopter represents TNC's latest and most promising weapon.

“I hate to use a war analogy,” Knapp says, “but fighting invasives is kind of like Napoleon fighting wars on two fronts. Before we started using the helo, we were getting flanked.”

Besides the invasive species that arrive at the Channel Islands naturally by air, like birds and plant seeds, more substantial invasives have been carried over by humans for the past 9,000 years, starting with the arrival of the Chumash Indians. But, as in many other places, it was European settlers who ushered in the radical ecological transformation that is causing problems today.

(Ted Trautman)

In the 19th century, Santa Cruz Island became a major agricultural center, with 97 square miles of grazing land for cattle, sheep, and pigs, and the largest winery in California. Ranching dropped off in the second half of the 20th century, and by 1980 several of the Channel Islands were designated a national park. TNC purchased most of Santa Cruz Island around the same time, and it’s been on a quest to supplant the island’s dozens of non-native plant and animal species ever since.

Before TNC could fully address the plant problem, though, it had to get rid of the animals. It spent the 1980s somewhat controversially exterminating more than 40,000 feral sheep, as well as live-capturing the island’s cattle and wild horses and relocating them to the mainland. In the mid-2000s, the organization made a final push to eradicate the island’s 5,000 remaining feral pigs, which were devouring every plant and small animal they could get their snouts on.

This is where the helicopter first came into play. TNC originally contracted the “helo,” as crewmembers call it, to help shuttle sharpshooters around the island in search of these pigs, the last of which was destroyed in 2006. But in a stroke of insight, the organization decided to keep the chopper around to “hunt” invasive plants. Being able to travel low to the ground, at a slow speed, allows for dropping people into rugged terrain with precision, and expedites plant surveys as well as weed killing.

It costs $750 an hour to fly in the Schweizer, which is quite a bit more than it does to send two staff members on a hike. But the helicopter gets the job done so quickly that it’s actually cost-efficient. While an invasive like fennel or saltcedar can be treated with herbicide in just five minutes, it can take hours to reach the more remote populations. By cutting out these arduous treks, the helicopter has turned a day’s worth of work into an hour’s, and a year’s worth into a month’s. “It’s twelve times faster and half the cost,” according to Lisa Park, a TNC spokeswoman.

(Ted Trautman)

It may also be changing the profile of the ideal botanist. Knapp observed that for the grueling hikes of TNC’s pre-helicopter days, “you wanted big, burly botanists” (perhaps the first time that phrase has been uttered) who could haul heavy herbicide tanks for miles. On the helo, in contrast, the lighter the crewmember, the better. Besides saving fuel, this can increase safety around craggy surfaces where the helo can’t land and crewmembers are required to jump on and off. In practice, this has meant a slight shift in demand from male to female staff members.

Right now, Knapp told me, a big part of the value of the helo program is showing other conservation groups and government agencies that it can be done. Enthusiasm for the experiment among federal environmental officials has been measured, but it’s growing.

No agencies have yet adopted the program, but the National Parks Service recently allowed TNC to deploy Knapp and the helicopter on nearby Santa Rosa Island (also part of the Channel Islands). Detection of invasives in national parks right now is limited to what workers on the ground see along trails and thoroughfares. If the program continues its success, it’s not a stretch to envision an airborne evolution in our approach to domestic conservation.

“It’s a real paragon of practical environmentalism,” says Doug Johnson, executive director of the California Invasive Plant Council. With a helicopter, “I could do our mapping in a week instead of fielding an army of interns for a year. I think it’s going to be an important tool in the toolbox.”

The post Are Helicopters the Future of Conservation? appeared first on ��ϳԹ�� Online.

Average Joes Run for Their Lives in ‘100 Miles from Nowhere’

eberger — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Matt Galland is a kind of modern-day Indiana Jones. He holds a Ph.D. in geography and teaches during the week at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, but on the weekends he finds himself on one adventure after another. That was the premise of a humble he started several years ago, which got so popular that it has been reborn as a proper reality TV show called 100 Miles from Nowhere.

The premise is simple enough: each week, Galland and two of his buddies—three Weekend Warrior types—are literally dropped out of the sky into the wilderness, with little more than backpacks, GoPros, and trail shoes, and have to figure their way back to civilization. It's like one of Bear Grylls' shows, but without a production crew in tow. The first episode premiered Sunday on Animal Planet.

Video loading...

��ϳԹ�� caught up with Galland this week. He told us a bit about the show, outlined the virtues of cheerful complaining, and described what it’s like to watch a good friend break his ribs 100 miles from the nearest hint of civilization.

OUTSIDE: So this show evolved from a one-man YouTube operation. With a big cable network backing you, how will 100 Miles be different?
GALLAND: There won’t be a ton of difference, to be honest. On my YouTube channel I just would go out for a run and carry my camera with me and just start filming whatever happened with really no intention of knowing what was coming. And for the show, that’s what we do as well. I say, “Let’s go to Patagonia and let’s run over these three mountains.” And there’s no more to the story than that.

Animal Planet is kind of daring to just let us go. I’m like, “If something happens, it does; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t,” I’ll just film everything. What ends up happening on the show, though, is way cool. Like in Mexico, we see giant snakes. [Co-star] Blake [Josephson] almost drowns. We jump off cliffs. If you go out and run 100 miles, things happen. I mean cool stuff, every single time, will happen. I think people like it because you don’t need to fake anything. There’s no production crew with us. It’s just me and my two buddies and no one else.

(Courtesy of Animal Planet)

Tell me about your two buddies, Danny Bryson and Blake Josephson, who are your co-stars on the show.
Danny Bryson I’ve known since high school. He’s the complete opposite from me. I’m always like, “This is freaking awesome, I love this!” even if my tent is about to blow off the mountain, while Danny’s like, “This is the worst, I hate this! I frickin’ hate camping!” I asked him about that attitude once, and he said he always secretly thinks the trips are awesome, but “the only way I can get through them is to complain.” One thing I love about Danny is that he’s kind of a “yes man.” I can call him up at three in the morning and say, “I’ve got an idea: Let’s run across New Zealand, the whole south island.” And Danny says, “I’m in. When?”

“Animal Planet is kind of daring, actually, to just let us go. There’s no production crew with us. It’s just me and my two buddies and no one else.”

I met Blake when he was building my home. He was working on my house and he noticed that I was always coming up in shorts at like 6 a.m., so I told him how I go running at 3 a.m. pretty regularly, sometimes up the mountain behind the house. I invited him to join me, but I truly did not expect Blake to show up. But he showed up in a pair of tights, and I took him for 25 miles, through like thigh-deep snow. We did some of the most technical climbing–probably like 5.5, 5.6 climbing, but no ropes and really exposed–at almost 12,000 feet. I kind of expected him to be like, “Dude, I just wanna go home, I hate this.” But he said, “Dude, this is fricking rad, how have I lived here my whole life and not done this before?” After that I knew he had to come with us on the show. He’s so hard-core.

Blake will do things that he should not do. He’s kind of a crazy guy. He’s willing to break more bones than anybody. I will dare him to do something, and he’s the kind of kid who will jump.

In a trailer for the show, you mention that “no cameraman can keep up with us,” so the three of you are doing all the shooting. Do you know what you’re doing?
It's kind of a big shock when I’m all ready to run and then all of a sudden they throw all this camera equipment on me. I’m like, “Dang, this is gonna be hard, now!” It’s heavy. Battery pack, camera, mic, GoPro, handycam.

Danny was the same as me growing up: in high school we both had video cameras, just video taping everything. These days Danny’s actually a really good cameraman. Any time I have a camera question I call him up, because he’s kind of one of those “tech” guys, he’ll figure out anything and he’s been great to have.

(Courtesy of Animal Planet)

Blake, on the other hand: I literally had to show him where the record button was when we shot the pilot. Zoom in, zoom out, all that stuff. I’m like, “Are you serious? My five-year-old can handle a camera better than you.” There’s this little thing in the show called the Blake Cam. You know when Blake’s filming because it’s out of focus, or half the person’s face is out of the frame. I think I said by Episode 5 or something like that, “No more Blake Cam. You’re a professional now.” I mean, cameras aren’t that hard. You gotta point it at the action. But it’s definitely been a fun struggle for all of us.

Besides cinematography, you three are also on your own when injuries occur. Does that scare you?
Well, Blake seems to get the brunt of it. He got stung like 18 times by bees in one episode. But the worst one so far was down by the Guatemalan border. We’re in this canyon that has almost no research on it—we’d heard that like eight years ago an Italian team crossed it in eight days. We had to do it in two days. We just were running as fast as we could and then finally we were like, “Let’s just jump into the river and float this thing.” And Blake jumped in and eventually got jammed in a bog. He was able to free himself, but he broke a couple ribs and of course we still had to finish the hundred miles. He got a pretty big contusion on his leg, it looked like a golf ball was sticking out of him.

“I’m always like, ‘This is freaking awesome, I love this!’ even if my tent is about to blow off the mountain, while Danny’s like, ‘This is the worst, I hate this! I frickin’ hate camping!’”

Other than that, though, for the most part really what happens is we get way dehydrated. After the Utah episode, we got to our truck and on the drive back to town I was completely passed out. I’m a skinny dude, I’m like 150, and it was lights out for me. We also deal with big cliffs and lots of exposure. It’s a dangerous game sometimes what we do, but if you’re meant to do it, you just gotta live up to what you’re supposed to do.

In the show you trek across parts of Utah, Arizona, Oregon, Idaho, Hawaii, southern Mexico, Belize, and Chile. How did you pick the places you visited?
It’s about as simple as it gets: I literally sit in my office, where I have a giant screen because I’m a lover of Google Earth. Google Earth is like my painting palette. I’ll spin that world around and be like, “Dude, look at that place in eastern Russia!” I look for big rivers, I look for diversity, where there are big rocks. If something is plastered with snow at a high elevation, it gets my attention. If I look at massive swaths of desert and zero vegetation, it gets my attention. It’s just pure, like, five-year-old curiosity. It’s like a child walks onto a playground and you ask, “Why did you choose the monkey bars?” Well, they looked freakin’ awesome.

The show’s title is kind of specific. Why 100 miles?
It’s something I’ve done over and over. For example I know, because I’ve done it, that I run 100 miles straight without stopping. I’ve done it in 27 hours, through the world’s roughest terrain. Also, Danny and I have both run the , which is Utah’s biggest ultra race. It’s 100 miles through the mountains in the middle of nowhere. I think there’s almost 40,000-foot vert on it.

Plus, a hundred is a big number. It’s kind of like a million dollars on all these TV shows–this is that big number, a hundred miles. It’s fun, it’s an adventurer’s number. And sometimes we go farther–we went 135 in one episode. It’s definitely about the miles, but it’s also about whatever fits the adventure. If I want to cross a place in Antarctica and it happens to be 122 miles, then we go 122. Or if I wanna cross a big canyon in Mexico and it’s 78 miles, we’ll probably do 78. I just love doing it, and I’ve done it my whole life. It’s win-win for me, whether the show makes it or not. I still get to do this, and share it one way or another.

The post Average Joes Run for Their Lives in ‘100 Miles from Nowhere’ appeared first on ��ϳԹ�� Online.

Dean Potter Releases Full-Length Dog Wingsuit Film

eberger — Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Last year, daredevil Dean Potter took the stage at festival in Telluride and screened the trailer for a short movie he made of his mini Australian cattle dog, Whisper, clad in tinted goggles, bundled in a backpack, and soaring through the air on Potter’s back during a BASE jump. The reception he got from the audience was lukewarm, to say the least.

Potter, who has graced us with decades of antics including free soloing, slacklining, and wingsuiting, and who has lived in a cave in Yosemite on and off, is no stranger to the role of the misunderstood outcast. But the video, called When Dogs Fly, really struck a nerve with the outdoorsy animal lover crowd. Some viewed it as a story of deep love and trust between man and dog. Others saw an animal needlessly put in harm’s way.

Nearly a year later, Potter has decided to release . ��ϳԹ�� caught up with Potter last week to ask what it’s like to fly with a passenger in his backpack, and what he has to say to his critics.

OUTSIDE: Are you still wingsuiting with Whisper pretty regularly?
POTTER: I would never make a movie just for the sake of making a movie. It captures our real life. Whisper’s entire life, she’s done what I’ve done. We wingsuit, BASE jump quite a bit, but only on the safest jumps. I don’t take her on any super advanced, death-defying jumps. I’m also into paragliding, so Whisper goes paragliding very often.

It all started because I had to take her on hikes. I was taking Whisper for a dog walk in the morning, then I’d go on like a four, five-hour hike by myself to go BASE jumping, and then I’d come back home, and take Whisper for another walk. It was like six or seven hours of hiking every day. I was like, “This is crazy, I’m getting run ragged. I’ve got to figure out a way to take Whisper with me.” I realized that for all but probably three or four minutes, Whisper would love it. These are long hikes into the mountains – that’s her favorite thing! I wanted to figure out these three or four minutes of being in the air so I could bring Whisper for four or five hours on these amazing hikes.

“Whisper's entire life, she's done what I've done. We wingsuit, BASE jump quite a bit, but only on the safest jumps. I’m also into paragliding, so Whisper goes paragliding very often.”

Tell me about your relationship with Whisper.
I spend more time with Whisper than I do with anybody else. I chose her when she was three or four days old, I’ve had her since she was nine weeks. She’s a mini Australian cattle dog; cattle dogs need to have a job, and her job is just walking after me. Whisper started coming with me on little climbs, and then on longer ones—multi-week trips into the mountains, that kind of thing. She’s my wing girl–like my wingman, but she’s a girl. Wing dog.

I don’t imagine they sell the gear you use at your local sports shop.
No, you don’t just go and buy a wingsuit BASE jumping backpack for a dog. I have to make it. My whole life I’ve always innovated the gear to match my pursuits. I’ve innovated the best climbing gear, the best slacklining gear, and definitely the most advanced BASE jumping gear. With Whisper, it took about a year and a half working with a few riggers to create the first BASE jumping container that allows Whisper to safely ride on my back. The model I use is quite bulky. It’s way overbuilt for safety, so it’s not very streamlined. Right now I’m working on a more aerodynamic prototype, so I can be more agile and safe in the air.

What about the extra weight on your back? Does that throw off your balance?
Whisper with all her gear weighs about 25 pounds, and that’s all up pretty high on my back. Upon exit, when we leap off the cliff, it puts me more head-down, which is a pretty vulnerable position. I practiced with sandbags and this little stuffed animal for a while and made sure I had it before I flew with Whisper.

In a more, let’s say, spiritual sense, how does it feel to wingsuit with a passenger?
The whole film is about how it was almost too much responsibility for me to fly with Whisper on my back. Wingsuiting is super dangerous. It’s not a glory film. I’m not saying, “Hey, look how rad we are, jumping.” Certainly some people will think, “Wow, that’s amazing.” But the film really goes deep into the fact that I am unsure and I don’t try to hide my uncertainty.

“Whisper chooses to do everything she does. And there are some things Whisper will not do. We found out very early on that Whisper hates to ride in helicopters.”

After the film’s trailer debuted at the Mountainfilm festival in Telluride last year, some viewers said your jumps expose Whisper to unnecessary danger.
It is an unsettling film. You shouldn’t expect just to see a dog with goggles on. Some people still watch the film and that’s what they take away. But if you really watch the film, and you’re thoughtful, the takeaway is how precious life and love are. And how all of us have to balance what we do with the effects our actions have on our lives. In Whisper’s and my case, and in [girlfriend and co-producer] Jen [Rapp]’s case, it’s way more front-and-center. The decision to go into the mountains and hike with your dog, and wingsuit with the dog, can bring catastrophe. These are decisions we make because they fulfill us, but they also have danger.

Do you think Whisper is “fulfilled” by these jumps the way you are? How can you tell?
Thanks for bringing that up. Whisper isn’t just a silent passenger. Whisper chooses to do everything she does. And there are some things Whisper will not do. We found out very early on that Whisper hates to ride in helicopters. We took her on one helicopter ride, and she pooped in the helicopter. We tried to take her again, but she plants her feet and sits down and won’t go. Or when I run the vacuum cleaner, like most dogs, Whisper tucks her tail and runs underneath the bed.

But when I pick up my BASE pack, and say, “Hey Whisper, let’s go for a hike, let’s go BASE jumping,” she’s right at my heels. She knows what the pack means – she’s been in that pack now close to a hundred times. When I’m sitting near the edge of the cliff and I start putting on my wingsuit and getting our gear together, Whisper comes right to me. She’s not pooping the helicopter, or hiding under the bed, she’s coming right to me, and nestling close and through her body language asking to come along.

With or without Whisper, what’s next for you?
I’m living full-time in Yosemite, and pursuing my art as strongly as ever. Right now I’m very focused on rock-climbing here in the park. There’s one rock that calls my name. When I first came to Yosemite, I wondered if I could free solo it. Recently I’ve also been setting up this major highlining zone in the park, as well as innovating the best flying wingsuit in the world, and I pretty much fly daily. My life is a mixture of pursuing those arts.

Also we bought this big piece of land inside Yosemite, and we’re trying to make this land more livable and have a place for all of our friends to be able to stay in the park for longer than the national park itself allows. So we’re kind of making this little safe haven, to be able to come into the park and really enjoy it.

The post Dean Potter Releases Full-Length Dog Wingsuit Film appeared first on ��ϳԹ�� Online.

Ted Trautman Archives - ���ϳԹ��� Online

���ϳԹ��� Academy Turns Desk Jockeys into Savvy Explorers

Virtual Reality Proves Itself as the Next Great ���ϳԹ���-Film Tool

‘100 Deadly Skills’ Is a Fun Read, but Please Don’t Take Its Advice

Bring Summer Camp to Your Own Backyard with These Games

Cornhole

Spikeball

Slacklining

Giant Jenga, Giant Beer Pong, Giant Everything

Glow-in-the-Dark Ring Toss

Are Helicopters the Future of Conservation?

Average Joes Run for Their Lives in ‘100 Miles from Nowhere’

Dean Potter Releases Full-Length Dog Wingsuit Film

Ted Trautman Archives - ��ϳԹ�� Online

��ϳԹ�� Academy Turns Desk Jockeys into Savvy Explorers

Virtual Reality Proves Itself as the Next Great ��ϳԹ��-Film Tool