Coming at You: The Recreati Mindset 2013
We’ll be launching the second edition of the Recreati Mindset next week. The Mindset is our little welcome to all those who turn 50 this year. (If you haven’t noticed it before, check out the section labeled Pages, at the top of the right column below.) If you know someone who reaches this golden threshold...
Denali wins again
Let’s focus on the success here: climbing solo, AARP-eligible adventurer Lonnie Dupre reached 17,200 feet on Denali, in January. Not to belabor this, but he carried all his food and fuel, alone, to 17,200 feet, in January. He was planning to reach the 20,320-foot summit today but, as his website reports, “extremely...
Toward a safer bike
The bicyclist with a jacket tied loosely around her waist, a guy with a strap dangling from whatever is clamped into the mousetrap over his back fender. An errant shoe string or flapping pants leg. Suddenly, the fabric swings that extra inch and gets snagged. It’s pulled into the derailleur or wedged between the chain...
Lonnie Dupre is back on Denali
Lonnie Dupre, the AARP-eligible adventurer who has focused on solo-climbing Denali in January, is currently taking his third run at the mountain.Two years ago, he made it to 17,200 feet–“just hours from the summit”–before bad weather intervened. Last year, even nastier weather pinned him down at a lower altitude. This time, he’s making the ascent...
Flabby old heart no impediment to wrecking knees, hips
“We always worry about marathoners who are sort of dropping dead, if you will, and having a heart attack during the marathon,” says Dr. Davinder Jassal as he explains the purpose of his recent study and, simultaneously, gives us our favorite quote of the month. Jassal (an associate professor of medicine, radiology and physiology at...
AARP-eligible sea kayaker at midpoint on Scotland-Iceland row
Fifty-four-year-old sea kayaker Chris Duff has finished the first leg of a demanding, 450-mile voyage from Scotland to Iceland. He left the Scottish island of Lewis last Wednesday, rowed 40-50 miles a day and arrived Sunday in the Faroe Islands. This makes him one of the few travelers since St. Brendan to find the Faroe...
Rainer Hertrich takes a break: The run of runs comes to an end
It’s over. Rainer Hertrich, the 50-year-old madman who had skied every day for 2,993 consecutive days, has stopped. The run of runs that started in 2003 is at an end, which means that Hertrich can finally claim his Guinness record for “Accumulated Vertical Descent in Consecutive Days on Telemark Gear.” ESPN...
Does Alaska hate old people?
We were saddened to hear that 50-year-old polar adventurer Lonnie Dupre has abandoned his attempt to be the first person to climb Denali, solo, in the dark frigid Alaskan winter. He’d used up quite a bit of food and fuel being pinned down in his 4×4 snow cave for a week,...
AARP-eligible adventurer currently attempting first winter solo attempt of Denali
It’s probably too soon to be talking about Lonnie Dupre’s epic/insane attempt to be the first person to climb the highest peak in North America…in the winter…by himself. He’s still in the early stages of the ascent, at 12,300 feet, so it’s like talking about a no-hitter in the seventh...
Winter kills
Winter is the odd season when the mere act of stepping outside can cause pain; it is also, often, void of smell. And it’s a time of death. Extreme heat may make for more dramatic photographs and garner bigger headlines but—in the developed world—cold is a bigger killer. (In fact,...
So much of a good thing: skiing 365 days a year for eight years
There’s a point where the guy with an awesome idea becomes the guy with the epic ambition. And another point where his epic ambition becomes his white whale, his Daisy Buchanan, his driving and terrifying obsession. We’re not sure where Rainer Hertrich lands on that spectrum. At the moment,...
What Brits call “holiday brain,” Yanks call “the weekend”
That headline might be unnecessarily provocative, but there is a needless breathlessness about the heedlessness of Brits over age 50 in this story in the Daily Mail, which is shocked…shocked…to discover that 13 percent of these blokes and lasses will engage in extreme sports while on vacation…and of...
