Category Archives: Outdoor News

Help Sherpas Help Nepal

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If you’re looking for a way to help in the midst of the tragedy unfolding in Nepal head over to Crowdrise. Kathmandu-based outdoor apparel manufacturer Sherpa Adventure Gear has created an earthquake relief fund called “Help Sherpas Help Nepal”. One hundred percent of the funds raised through the campaign will go to relief efforts in villages where Sherpa Adventure Gear underwrites the education of Sherpa children through its charitable Paldorje Education Fund.

In a letter from Kathmandu, Nepal, announcing the fundraising effort, Tashi Sherpa, founder and CEO of Sherpa Adventure Gear, wrote:

Dear friends,

Thank you for your kind words following the devastating earthquake of April 25th.

As we gather our wits and resources to respond to this catastrophe, here’s how you can take action.

Please visit the Sherpa Adventure Gear site to make a donation:

https://www.crowdrise.com/helpsherpashelpnepal


100% of your funds will go for immediate relief on the ground through our Paldorje Education Fund network-already set up to benefit the children of Sherpa families in remote villages.

With each day, the death toll rises, along with the need for water, tents, and medicine.

We believe this is the wisest way to bring support where it does the most good, working through our contacts in each community.

This is not the kind of adventure anyone seeks, but we are determined to see it through, no matter how long it takes.

Thank you for standing with us and giving what you can.

Sincerely,

Tashi Sherpa and the Sherpa Family

Sherpa Adventure Gear has been inundated with concern, prayers and thoughts since the earthquake struck. The earthquake left more than 5000 dead and millions without shelter and basic necessities. SAG and its facilities in the Kathmandu valley, however, were spared.

In an April 28th email from Kathmandu, Tashi Sherpa wrote, “Sitting here in the Sherpa building creates a disconnect and a false sense of security but one only has to go half a mile to know the harsh reality.”

Sherpa and his colleagues have arranged for immediate supplies of tarps, water purifiers, sanitary supplies and more to be brought in from India by road. It has also appealed to its network of contacts in the greater subcontinent region to supply what they can in the way of urgently needed water, health and sanitation supplies and temporary shelter.

“There is much we can do together to help,” Sherpa added. “We can reduce the pain of the present and help to ease the future for those who need to see hope.” The link for the campaign is https://www.crowdrise.com/helpsherpashelpnepal.


Utahns Touched By Nepal Quake

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Photo-courtesy-Jost-Kobusch


A candlelight vigil will shine in Salt Lake City’s Washington Square this Friday to honor those killed and injured in Saturday’s devastating Nepal quake. The death toll from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake is still not firm but so far more than 4400 are thought dead with several thousand more injured or missing. Many Utah families, however, are breathing a sigh of relief after word that loved ones survived the devastation that leveled much of Nepal and Katmandu.

The quake trigged a massive avalanche that ripped through Everest basecamp. The bodies of 11 of the 18 victims have been recovered by Monday. Among those killed were California filmmaker Tom Taplin, who was filming a documentary on Everest, emergency room physician assistant Marisa Eve Girawong, serving as a base camp doctor for Seattle-based Madison Mountaineering, and Google executive Daniel Fredinburg, who was part of a project to create a Google street map of the trek to Everest Base Camp. The death toll could have been much higher but luckily about 80 percent of the climbers were out at Camp 1 or 2.

At least 80 stranded climbers had been evacuated with hundreds of others waiting. Rescuers are still locating the bodies of those who did not survive the roar of snow and ice at 18000 feet. “It lifted rocks and boulders ahead of it, slamming into hundreds of tents in the center of the camp and spilling over onto the Khumbu glacier on the other side,” wrote African climber Sean Wisedale on his blog. “Everywhere around us it was unstable. Avalanches continued to fall.”

Of the 11 bodies recovered so far, seven were Nepalese. Utah’s famed Apa Sherpa was in Nepal when the quake hit but the world record holder for summits on Mount Everest is safe, according to his son Pemba Sherpa. At the moment, airports remain closed, hospitals are brimming with patients, and there’s concern for sanitary conditions, water and food shortages, and more quakes.

The Nepalese Association of Utah is collecting funds for the American Red Cross to help the victims of the earthquake and have offered to help Utahns connect with their friends and family in Nepal. The vigil is at 7 p.m. on Friday at 451 South State Street, Washington Square in Salt Lake City.

Utah National Parks Attendance Reaches Record Numbers For 2015

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national parks attendance

Utah’s national parks attendance is on track to meet or break last year’s record, so says a report recently issued by the NPS. That must mean at least some parts of the beehive state benefited from the ridiculously warm 2015 winter.

People flocked to Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Cedar Breaks National Monument and Pipe Springs National Monument long before the usual May visitations. In fact it looks like the national parks attendance will break the record set by the more than 5.2 million people who visited Utah’s national parks in 2014. We’re talking a 19 percent increase in visitor spending and an 11 percent jump in total visitors.


national parks attendance

The statistic matters because it translates to an estimated $336.8 million for Utah and 5,000 jobs. Zion alone brought in $172.2 million in 2014. “From Timpanogos Cave National Monument to Canyonlands National Park, the national parks of Utah draw more than 10.5 million visitors a year from across the country and around the world,” said Sue Masica, director of the NPS Intermountain Region, which includes Utah and seven other states. “Whether they are out for an afternoon, on a school field trip or crossing America on a family vacation, park visitors come for a great experience — and they end up spending a little money along the way.”

Visit Utah has relaunched an oldie but goodie national spring campaign from 2013 to continue to drive traffic to the parks. No sense in spending taxpayer money on a new campaign when the red rock in them and the Mighty message is timeless.


The NPS revenue will hopefully go back into the park system to address the estimated $11.5 billion backlog of repairs and renovations to maintain roads, trails and park facilities. In Utah specifically, there are about $278 million worth of projects hanging in the wings.


Winter’s Last Gasp

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Just took a look at the forecast for today thru Thursday. In particular, the little numbers below “Total Storm Snow”. Yep. You know how they say when a person dies they expunge every last bit of air and moisture their body contains? Well since winter has technically died this feels like the last gasp. :


So my mind starts calculating. Maybe I get a room up in LCC tomorrow so I can ski freshies first thing in the morning and not get caught in the red snake up the Canyon? But its so late in the season. Will there even be a red snake anymore? There wasn’t for last week’s storm.

I call around. Wow. Now I’m depressed. Alta Lodge– $444 for two doubles; $321 for twins with a shower down the hall! But they do include breakfast and dinner. That advertised $99/pp at theNow I  Cliff Lodge? Riiight. $202. Good luck trying to get that deal before May 1 and it’s not good on the weekends. Sheez. I thought only airfares bend you over when you book last minute. Let’s rethink. It’s going to snow maybe 2-5″ today. The brunt of the storm rolls in overnight. Could be Lake Effect= 15-30″.

Lots of thunder, lightning and wind today so not good for skiing.  The main snows fall overnight and into Wednesday morning. The best time to hit it would be late morning. I really wouldn’t need lodging. Ah, the joys of living local.Winter

I’m in. Ski Alta tomorrow during the dump. Could be epic depending on tonight’s snow totals and Lake Effect. 

High Rustler Will Rage Again Despite Tragic Weather

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Canyons Resort March 2015

 

It’s official. The season – at least in Utah – is going down as the warmest and driest on record. According to the National Weather Service, temps were consistently 7 to 13 degrees above normal from December to March; and that news comes on top of the reports that our nation’s winter overall was the 19th-warmest in the last 120 years. The irony is that NOAA was calling this back in October yet everyone seems surprised. But despite the tragic news, Utah skiers are ready to party.

 


The massive party you’ll share with a couple hundred of your fellow passholders takes place atop High Rustler on the final Sunday of the season. It celebrates the “Final Closing Day of Alta.” (Alta closes on April 19 then reopens for one last weekend on April 24, 2015).

 

HIGH RUSTLER RAGES

Locals skiers aren’t ones to let their favorite resorts close without a bang and so the annual ritual of meeting on High Boy for the last run of the season has been raging since the 1960s when a loyal group of Altaholics made the High Traverse to Rustler for one farewell kiss to winter and some raucous hell raising. The 45-degree pitch drops you quickly into the 1300 vertical-foot run but the point of the ceremony is to wait, and wait, drawing out the day until the last possible moment before making that painfully sweet final run.

Back then, the gang waited until the last Germania chair emptied and those skiers joined up with them. That was around 6 p.m. or so. Now, you might still catch skiers crunching beer cans from the peak at 7:30 p.m. as others make their way to the parking lot. Alta technically closes at 4:30 p.m. but the sign at the top of Collins Lift will post that ski patrol’s going home at 5 p.m., you’re on your own, so be careful. That’s like leaving for the weekend and giving the teenagers the keys to the house, the car and liquor cabinet. Who’d want to leave that party?

More than 200 skiers and snowboarders (who brave the cat track from Snowbird’s Baldy Express to the top of Collins and the High T) dress in crazy costumes and rally for the ridge above Rustler. Coolers, amps, boomboxes, beer, combustibles, fifths of whiskey and vodka, and firecrackers get passed among the crowd.


A flat spot no bigger than the bed of a pickup truck acts as the podium for the “judges.” If you jump into Rustler too soon, these gatekeepers pound you with harsh words and harsher snowballs. So you wait, and wait; hoping for a sign that it’s time to start the mass exodus from the peak. But it never comes too soon. Everyone has too much fun at the party to want to go home. In past seasons, a giant roar would erupt from the mob and you’d experience a Chinese Downhill, Alta style. Flash turns, hoots, hollers, wipeouts, and apologies made to the wind as skiers continued their nonstop crush to the bottom, rippers barely missing the snowplowing novices who dared the ritual. It wasn’t pretty for anyone as you spent most of the run trying to survive the onslaught of darting, out-of-control bodies. But that was the best part.

These days the core riders may want to hang onto even the tiniest bit winter. We’ll see what happens this April 26. You may have to decide on your own when to leave. Luckily the party continues with live music and the largest ski tailgating event of the season in the Collins parking lot. If you’re anxious for asphalt make sure you sneak through a line in the trees and pop out below where the snowballs can’t reach you. The heavy wet snow is destined to leave a mark both physically and emotionally.

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