3 Awe-Inspiring Glaciers

With polar ice caps melting at an alarming rate, now's the time to visit some of the most awe-inspiring natural formations that Earth has to offer -- glaciers. From South America to northern Europe, glaciers rise like ice behemoths, carving out valleys and paving the way for fjords. Here are three of the most breathtaking.

 

 

Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina

Perito Moreno's imposing ice wall is fed from the Andes and is one of Argentina's biggest tourist destinations. Viewing decks afford astonishing views of one of the most visually stunning glaciers in the world.

Grinnell Glacier, Montana

Like many of the glaciers in Montana's Glacier National Park, Grinnell continues to recede at a rapid rate because of climate change. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Grinnell Glacier has shrunk by 40 percent since 1966, and if climate change continues at this pace, Grinnell will be gone by 2030. All the more reason to see this majestic glacier before it disappears forever.

Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland

Who says glaciers have to be cold? Eyjafjallajökull sits on top of a volcano! This is the same Icelandic volcano that wreaked havoc on European air travel in 2010. Nevertheless, visions of volcanic activity in a scene of glacial beauty more than make up for Eyjafjallajökull troublesome eruptions, in our opinion.

While these three glaciers are found on opposite corners of the planet, they're all vulnerable to the same melting fate. And if you want to visit these glaciers but don't want to contribute to climate change through air travel, why not go on a bike tour to your glacial paradise.

--Images by iStockphoto/Nikontiger, Zaharov, Bkamprath, OddStefan

Callum Beals is an editorial intern at Sierra. He recently graduated from UC Santa Cruz, where he studied history and literature. He enjoys hiking, camping, and waking up at ungodly hours to watch soccer games.

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The Two-Wheeled Adventure: Tips for Bike Camping

Looking for an eco-friendly alternative to car camping? Bike camping, or bike touring, can be one of the most physically demanding as well as rewarding ways to experience the outdoors. Climbing hills while towing 40-50 pounds of camping gear has the potential to exhaust, but the freedom that the bicycle affords and the contemplation that it fosters is worth the effort. Nevertheless, bike touring is not as simple as just hopping on your beach cruiser with a backpack and peddling off into the wilderness, as a considerable amount of preparation is essential.

We spoke with Raymond Bridge, the author of Bike Touring: The Sierra Club Guide to Travel on Two Wheels, to learn how to plan a successful bike camping trip.

Know your bike

Bridge says that perhaps the most important preparation for bike camping is knowing your bike and knowing when something is wrong. For beginners, "The main thing is to do a lot of riding around home first," said Bridge. "You need to be fairly familiar with your bike, because if you need to make adjustments, it's helpful to know what you're doing."

Get the right gear

Not all bikes are made for bike touring, and it's extremely helpful to have rear bike rack with panniers. You'll want to put your most cumbersome camping equipment here, such as tents, sleeping bags, and sleeping pads. It's also possible to strap some equipment to your front handlebars, but using a rear bike rack is safer and makes handling easier. 

6 of America's Most Dangerous Hiking Trails

With temperatures rising, many of you are gearing up for a vacation with family or friends. You might be dreaming of the world's most stunning canyons or America's newest monuments, but we know that some of you are also looking for a serious challenge this year. For those who are brave enough, prep those hiking boots, gather your supplies, and tackle some of America's most challenging and scenic hiking excursions.

Mist Trail, Half Dome, California

Tucked away in world-renowned Yosemite National Park, the Mist Trail attracts thousands of visitors every year to climb to Half Dome's 8,836-foot-high peak. Hike through beautiful pine forests, bustling waterfalls, and what seems to be a vertical staircase before reaching the steel cables that will take you the last 400 vertical feet to the top of the dome.

Even with cables to assist, the final ascent to Half Dome requires extreme strength and is only for the brave at heart. Without the cables, the hike to the summit of this beautiful landmark would be virtually impossible. And even with this assistance, there have still been unfortunate causalities on this Californian adventure. Since 1995, six deaths have occurred at Half Dome -- one when a hiker was attempting to pass other climbers on the cables.

Green Stars: 5 Luxury Eco-Hotels and B&Bs

With the summer months fast approaching, many of us are starting to plan vacations with family or friends. But wait! Before you book that five-star hotel room, did you know that hotels contribute more than 60 million tons of CO2 emissions annually? U.S. hotels spend over $7.5 billion on energy and generate 1.9 billions pounds of waste each year. Thankfully, there are some amazing alternative lodging options for the more environmentally concerned. And they don't require you to sacrifice that five-star, luxury ambiance. Best of all, they are located in vibrant locations, surrounded by tons of eco-activities.

Helmet Hair No More

Bike commuters, fear helmet hair no more! The days of showing up at work with messy hair — or even worse, biking to work with no helmet — are over. A company in Sweden has developed what they call an "invisible helmet," which keeps heads safe and hairdos intact for about $600. The "Hovding" helmet is more of a collar with an airbag inside that inflates around the head within a tenth of a second of impact. So the cyclist's hair remains perfect (except for, you know, being blown in every direction from racing through traffic.) Of course, the helmet does not compensate for afros, mohawks, or beehives — but neither does a normal helmet, so these funky hairstyles are simply out of luck. For those with 'dos that can fit in the helmet, the Hovding comes in fashionable styles to match any outfit. 

This helmet is a great idea, especially in this day and age where risking injury seems to be more important than possibly looking silly with a helmet strap around the chin or mussed hair. With the Hovding, the helmet looks more like a giant scarf wrapped around the neck.

Don't believe that a battery-powered collar can protect your head in an accident? Just ask the crash test dummies in the video below. 

A Creepy Scottish Cycling Trip with Rapha

"Eimhir, the daughter of the MacLeod clan, who was betrothed to the devil but, preferring death, jumped into the loch and was transformed into a mermaid," UK outfitter Rapha's blog tells us.  "Auld Clootie, enraged, struck the earth and created the blasted landscape, it is said."

This "blasted landscape" belongs to Assynt, a seriously out-of-the way corner of northeast Scotland, which makes it ripe for cycling, as the Rapha Continental team does, through gale winds and herds of wild deer.

Their short film is one to watch.  It can be described as beautiful, and, like the legend, haunting and kind of creepy, particularly with the Beowulfian narration of their experience. 

Not bad for advertising either.

Benita Hussain is a freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, GOOD and Women's Adventure Magazine, among others. With degrees from Cornell University and Fordham Law School, she's also a part-time lawyer and yoga teacher that surfs, climbs and travels to do both.  Twitter: @hussainity.

Bloke Is Halfway to Cycling Six Continents

In January of 2010, when a quilt of snow fell over England and temperatures across Europe hit historic lows, Stephen Fabes headed east on his bike.

Fabes, a physician in his early thirties, had a vague plan. From Londontown he’d bump over the Alps, cut south from Istanbul and pedal Africa from nape to tailbone. Then on to the Americas, Australia, and Asia. He’d traverse six continents — 50,000 miles — in five years.

The first few weeks weren’t so bad, despite the fact that Fabes didn’t train for the trip (“I thought, ‘I have a lot of cycling ahead of me, why should I do more now?’”). But soon the spine of Europe appeared before him, and things got frigid. French motorists beamed incredulously as he ascended the mountains. One night a blizzard struck, hardening his gloves and turning his sleeping bag into an ice cocoon. He eventually breezed down to the Riviera and dipped into a tunnel that spit him out in a balmy valley east of the Alps. One thing he missed about the cold, he later mused, was the absence of “winged nasties.”

Soon he rolled into Italy and heard a clicking sound. This sound wasn’t coming from his bike. It was coming from his knee. “I could feel," he blogged, "a small curious mobile mass within the joint space which often got trapped causing me sudden pain.” Still, he couldn't turn back. He rode through the Balkans and Greece before an MRI revealed a bit of cartilage caroming in his knee. He stored his bike in Istanbul and hitchhiked back to London, where surgeons presented him the stray piece in a jar.

Steinbeck, Bikers, and Slimy Critters

Eric Morgan recalls guiding Interior Secretary Ken Salazar through the pastoral hills outside Fort Ord in Monterey, California. To the west, the maritime chaparral unfurled for miles beneath their feet before giving way to a peninsula, where the land crawls under the Pacific and great whites swim offshore.

 “He kept calling the place a crown jewel,” says Morgan, the project manager of habitat restoration at Fort Ord, which is under BLM jurisdiction.

Secretary Salazar is only the most recent "somebody" to pass through Fort Ord. In 1776, Juan Bautista de Anza slept beneath the hills on his journey from Tubac (now Tucson) to San Francisco, where he established the Presidio. John Steinbeck called the nearby Gabilan Range “beckoning mountains with brown grass love.” (Their westerly counterparts, the Santa Lucia’s, he said, were “brooding — unfriendly and dangerous”).  And from 1917 to 1994, the fort served as a military base. Unexploded shells still lurk behind Keep Out signs.

The fort is as worthy of exploration as it is rich in history. Hikers can search for threatened California tiger salamanders — amphibians known to slink through vernal pools and co-opt rodent burrows — and view Toro Manzanita, a fuzzy plant with 90 percent of its range on Fort Ord lands. Each year, 100,000 people travel Fort Ord’s 86 miles of trails, and half of them ride mountain bikes. Some say it’s the choice single-track on the Monterey Peninsula.

Jordan Manley's Images Really Move

At 27, adventure photographer Jordan Manley is already a veteran in his field. His eye for vitality and mood has earned him the covers of magazines like Bike, Powder, SBC Skier, and Skiing. His images, though, rise above the numbing trove of “ski porn.”

So why is he exploring ski video, a niche that’s struggled to break from its worn-out groove of big hucks and dizzying spins?

“With video, there’s a narrative opportunity that’s not there with photography," he says. “I can be more involved in the storytelling."

Indeed, Manley the videographer is more interested in mountain chronicles than big air. Recently, a piece of his, called “Friends of Shames” told the story of a B.C. ski community trying to save their mountain from the bad economy. It’s part of the second season of his web series A Skier’s Journey, which has featured travelogues of Kashmir and France in past episodes. Manley finds poignant stories to accompany his stunning cinematography. His voiceovers are slight, reflective, thoughtful, albeit not necessarily gripping.

Manley’s own story isn’t mythic. In 1996, he and his family moved from a pink-skied suburb in Ontario to Vancouver. He got interested in mountain biking, and his passion for skiing was amplified. “The environment is such a big part of skiing,” he says. “There’s no match for the experience of being above treeline in the Coast Mountains.”

One day, he picked up his dad’s Pentax Spotmatic (though he's since shifted to Nikon D3s) and started clicking photos of cyclists and the wet, mossy forest.

To learn the technical aspects of shooting, he read books by Freeman Patterson. Soon he was gazing at photographs by Patterson, Sterling Lorence, and Vincent Laforet, thinking, “How do I do that?” Then he developed an eye. Photography became a supplement to action sports, a new way of interacting with nature. “I’ve always had a passion for moving through a landscape on foot or on skis. I want to capture how an athlete interprets his surroundings,” he says.

Manley often spotlights the point of contact — a skier’s exploding line fringed by austere powder, say — where an athlete ruffles his pristine environment. It's compelling, he believes, how the snow erupts, then settles back into form.

Manley’s most arresting works pull us right in. We feel a single texture, like wet snow hitting our faces or mist settling on our skin, and from there, the settings swallow us. Our gaze becomes touch: We feel socked-in by their weather, engulfed by their locales, burned by their sun, scraped by their old, dark wood. They aren’t really images; they’re worlds to wander through.

The Baffin Island episode of A Skier’s Journey premieres Monday, Dec. 12, followed by the Argentina episode on Jan. 2. Watch these and past installments at Jordan Manley's Vimeo site. To see more of his photography, click through the jump, below.

Climbing the World's Lowest Point to its Highest

It was by chance that Pauline Sanderson came to bike across eight countries and climb the tallest mountain in the world.

The lawyer-turned-explorer happened to receive a flier in the mail: "It had this very tiny bicyclist against the huge backdrop of a Pakistani mountain," she said of the advertisement EverestMax had sent her. It was love at first sight.

After putting her job on hold for six months, renting out the house, and getting a bank loan, Pauline, 40 years old at the time, was determined to be on that trip.

It was hardly her first trip abroad. Her husband, Phil, had started an outdoor-training school for Westerners in Nepal, where they'd lived for four years. And the adventure-hungry duo had been to other parts of Asia and Africa too.

Pauline left Phil for four months to complete the first part of the journey — a separation that she said was difficult — but the two were reunited at Mount Everest, and became the first British married couple to reach the summit.

On the rest of the journey, Pauline, four other bikers, and two supporting team members (who drove the van and provides sustenance) set off from Heathrow to Jordan to begin a six-month journey from the world's lowest point to its highest: the Dead Sea (elevation -1,388 feet) to Everest's summit (29,029 feet). Before scaling the mountain, the crew biked almost 5,000 miles across Jordan, Iran, Pakistan, and Tibet.

Pauline vividly details her journey in a new book, The World's Longest Climb; 50% of all profits from its sales go to the charities SOS Children’s Villages and Practical Action.

Pauline didn't tell her mother about the mountain. It was, after all, the only mountain Mom had expressly forbidden her to climb. She told her she'd be climbing a Mount "Evelier," a fib her team loyally maintained through the journey.

Objectively, she said, the scariest part of the journey should have been crossing the Iran-Pakistan border — 300 miles of bandit territory. "They ended up giving us an armed guard all the way across Pakistan," she said. Fortunately, there were no surprises. 

Everest was an entirely different beast, and that was when she experienced the scariest moment of her trip: For about a minute, her oxygen tank stopped working. At first she thought she hadn't taken enough air with her, but then she realized the pipe had twisted. Phil came to the rescue. "It probably took a minute between me getting his attention and him being with me," she said. "It felt like such a long minute."

Other scary moments: passing the dead. Even though she'd been warned about the corpses, Pauline still felt shock when she caught her rope on a dead man's foot as she scaled Everest. "This guy is 100% dead, and I'm walking right past him because he’s doing the same thing I was," she recalled, adding that five people had died just days before their climb.

"We actually went up in ignorance. When we came down we were told ignorance is bliss," she said. 

--Avni Nijhawan / photo: DRichard Walters