Bandelier National Monument

Located in New Mexico an hour from Santa Fe, the 33,677 acres Bandelier National Monument preserves the homes of Ancestral Pueblo People. The park is named after Swiss anthropologist Adolph Bandelier, who researched the cultures of the area in the late 19th century. Bandelier was designated a National Monument on February 11, 1916, while most of its backcountry became a "designated wilderness" in October 1976. .Above are paintings by Pablita Velarde, which were comissioned by Bandelier under the Works Progression Administration in the early 40s. See many more here.

Breathe Owl Breathe

You should all listen to Breathe Owl Breathe, a Michigan three-piece making music in a handbuilt cabin in the upper reaches of the lower peninsula. On the small Portland, Oregon based label Hometapes, B.O.B. makes amazing dreamy, woodsy, honest folk music. Micah, Andréa, and Trevor are currently on tour and you should make a point to see them if they're somewhere close. Literally one of the best live shows I've ever seen. Listen/watch after the jump!

Crazy Guy

Crazy Guy on a Bike is "a place for bicycle tourists and their journals." What Trail Journals is to long-distance hiking, CGOAB is to bicycle touring. Super bare-bones site, with over 5500 journals, ranging from college grads cycling around the world, drifters living off their bikes, to retirees "credit card touring" from each bed & breakfast to the next. Takes some digging to find the really good ones, but almost all inspire you (at least me) to get out and do something great. Start with Heidi Domeisen's 2004 journal documenting her solo self-supported ride from North Carolina to Alaska and back.

On The Edge

On The Edge, 1985:

Aging distance runner Wes Holman (Bruce Dern) can no longer participate in American events thanks to a violation of his amateur status 20 years earlier. Convinced he's still fit enough capture the honor he lost years ago, Holman heads to his childhood home in Northern California to train for the run of his life: the brutal Cielo Sea Race, which has crushed competitors decades younger than him. John Marley and Pam Grier costar in this potent film.

According to RunningMovies.com (YES) the Cielo Sea Race is based on the actual race called The Dipsea Race and the aerial footage in the film was taken from an actual race.Watch the trailer after the jump and then watch the movie in full over at Netflix. It's well worth your time, I promise.

Never Cry Wolf

Never Cry Wolf (1983) was one of Disney's first takes at a grittier, more mature venture, and they knocked it out of the park on the first swing. Never Cry Wolf is an adaptation of Farley Mowat's influential book by the same title, written in 1963. You can find this film at most any library, ours has three copies.From wikipedia...

In Northern Canada, a young government biologist named Tyler (Charles Martin Smith) is assigned to travel to the isolated Arctic wilderness to study the area's savage population of wolves. His orders are to gather proof of the wolves' ongoing destruction of caribou herds.Contact with his quarry comes quickly, as he discovers not a den of marauding killers, but a courageous family of skillful providers and devoted protectors of their young. Tyler is befriended by two Inuit who tell him their own stories about the wolves. As Tyler learns more and more about the wolf world he comes to fear, along with them, the onslaught of hunters (Brian Dennehy) out to kill the wolves for their pelts and exploit the wilderness.

Watch the trailer and some clips here. Or watch the whole shebang (for now) in pieces here.

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Filmmaker Werner Herzog was interviewed yesterday on NPR's Fresh Air about his 2010 film, "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams", just before it's US release at the end of April. This film, shot in 3D (I know, I know) contains footage of some of the oldest cave paintings on the planet. The Chauvet Cave in Southern France is closed to the public, due to it's immense sensitivity and presence of harmful levels of radon and carbon dioxide. Herzog, creator of many films, including Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, is known for going to unprecedented lengths and some of the most inhospitable places for footage. I don't know about the whole 3D thing (Herzog speaks to this skepticism which he initially shared) but this looks amazing.Check out the trailer here.

National Cornbread Festival

If you're going to be anywhere near South Pittsburg, TN on April 31st or May 1st, make your way to the 15th annual National Cornbread Festival. South Pittsburg is home to Lodge, the only company still making cast iron cookware right here in these United of States. Once you're there, you can buy yourself a dutch oven to make, well, cornbread in, and then pay $2 to enjoy samples from the National Cornbread Cookoff. Because what's better than cornbread made in cast iron? Nothing, that's what. Watch a video of how Lodge cookware is made here and then watch an old video about the festival here.

Croakies and Chums

Ugly? Perhaps. Nerdy? Probably. But Croakies (there are Chums too, but like Chapstick is to lip balm and Kleenex is to tissue, Croakies is the common name for eyeglass retainers) are extremely useful while in the outdoors, especially while skiing or traveling by watercraft. Both Croakies and Chums are made in the USA, cheap as can be and willl help make sure you don't crush your sunglasses while sitting down for dinner. Seen that happen plenty of times. And for a little Croakies nostalgia:

In 1977 a local ski patrolman from Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming, came up with an idea for an eyewear retainer that would grip his shades through all kinds of alpine adventures. Using an old wetsuit, some sharp scissors, and good old American ingenuity, he made the first pair of eyewear retainers.  The ingenious device was based on the design of a Chinese finger trap and it quickly became a hit with all of the patrollers!  Demand picked up quickly for the patrolman’s invention which was nameless at first.Back in the seventies, the Jackson Hole ski patrol used the nickname “croakies” when they couldn’t think of a word (think “thingamajig”), but it finally stuck on the first neoprene eyewear retainer ever invented. 

Croakies headquarters are still in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with our production in Bozeman, Montana. Our inspiration remains the same - to create eyewear retainers and accessories that provide comfort, style, durability, and functionality to active people of all ages. With the addition of men's and women's belts into Croakies accessory line-up, Croakies now offers something for everyone.Croakies products are sold by retailers throughout the United States and in over 30 countries around the world. They’ve even been used OUT of this world – Croakies became standard issue on the Space Shuttle in 1990.  

Do y'all use eyeglass retainers on the trail?

National Park Week

Yes, it started on Friday, April 16th, but it goes until April 24th, so don't miss your chance to get out to your favorite national park this week FOR FREE. That's right, all 394 national parks are waiving their entrance fee until Sunday, so you still have one more weekend if you can't manage a weekday trip. It's all part of National Park Week, brought to you by the National Park Service.Or you could stay home, pay the small fee on a weekday/weekend that's way less crowded, and avoid the mayhem of the big parks.

Lesser

From Lesserfilm.com..."In 1981, Rob Lesser led a team of kayakers with primitive equipment down the then unknown Grand Canyon Of The Stikine, a remote, impossibly violent Class 5+ section of river in a deep black gorge that today remains the global test-piece for the world's best.For the next 20 years, fewer than 30 people repeated his feat. In between other first descents on rivers around the world, Rob returned to the Stikine 5 times, most recently at age 53, joining a team half his age. In the last 30 years, 300 people climbed K2, perhaps the hardest climb in the world. As of 2006, less than 100 had run the Stikine.Now, in 2011, at age 65, Rob is returning with his heirs to the river that shaped so much of his life. This is a story about a quiet hero, in a deafening place of almost incomprehensible power. It is an exploration of essential human questions about purpose, perspective, will and mortality against the backdrop of one of the most powerful, yet little known, places in the world."Watch both of the trailers after the jump. Man alive.Thanks to Wildwood for the heads up.

LESSER - A LIFE LESS ORDINARY PRE-TEASER from Anson Fogel on Vimeo.

LESSER - A LIFE LESS ORDINARY - THE BUS from Anson Fogel on Vimeo.

Isle Royale Wolves

NPR did a piece last week about the alarmingly dwindling gray wolf population on Isle Royale which is definitely worth reading. Isle Royale, for those unfamiliar, is a large (200+ sq. miles) island in Michigan, off the northern shore of Lake Superior near Ontario. Isle Royale boasts no roads, flying or floating its visitors in by small bush planes or via ferry. The island also only provides year round home to a very small handful of people. Less people visit Isle Royale National Park in a year than the Smokies get in a day.Isle Royale sits 15 miles off the shore from Ontario, its location playing an important role in the island's moose and wolf relationship. This predator-prey relationship has been studied for quite some time, virtually untouched by human interaction. The island's location allowed moose to swim to the island, it is suspected, sometime around the turn of the 20th century. This distance does not allow other "similar" predators or prey to swim to the island, like deer or coyote. It is thought that wolves then traveled an ice bridge from Canada as soon as 60 years ago, and numbers flourished to near 50+ until recent years. Wolves tend to prey on the weakest of the moose, allowing both species to in turn grow stronger and more vital.Recently, because of "parovirus, bitter winters, hunger and warfare between packs" the Isle Royale wolf numbers have dwindled to 15, with a suspected one or two reproducing females. If both of these females were to die without raising a healthy litter of pups, this would spell the end of the gray wolf on the island.Cold Splinters is hoping to make the jaunt to Isle Royale later this summer. Beautiful place.

Hardest Of The Hard

Mark Kryskow, one of my best friends from the University of Colorado, is someone I've written about before here on CS, describing him as an "animal, more fit and strong and crazy than anyone I have ever met, or probably ever will meet." It was impossible to keep up with Mark in college. Waking up at 3am to ride your bike to Estes Park and back (37 miles each way in the mountains) was not part of my agenda. Mark lives up in New Hampshire now, so I get to see him pretty regularly, either in North Conway for an ice climbing adventure, in Portsmouth (while visiting my folks) for a beer and a burrito, or in Alton at his house on Lake Winnepsaukee, alongside his equally crazy immediate and extended family.Mark is one of the humblest guys I've ever met, so of course he didn't tell me that he was featured in an article in Outside this month, in a profile of the Army program he works for, studying the effects of altitude and extreme conditions on the human body. When I called him last night to talk about it, he quickly changed the subject, probably because they refer to him as one of the "hardest of the hard" and pull a quote that details a test that involved a tube up his ass. The article isn't specifically about Mark, but I couldn't be happier to see him gracing the pages of Outside. Makes it even better that he and his wife don't give a shit.From the article:

One of the hardest of the hard men is Sergeant Kryskow, a recreation rock and ice climber who has participated in "eight or nine studies," including one designed to test a helmet prototype that cooled the wearer's head with streams of air coming from the lining. Researchers wanted to know if cooling the head cooled the body as well. To test this, Kryskow and others walked for hours on a treadmill in 120-degree heat, fitted with anal and esophageal temperature probes."It was kind of miserable," Kryskow tells me, suddenly transported back to that test. "You're tired, you're dehydrated, you've got a probe in your ass and another down your throat. But I like the challenge."

And in honor of Mark giving up his "horn" for a climbing helmet...MP3: John Coltrane - Giant Steps

Why Ticks Suck

It's been several months since I started listening to Josh and Chuck on Stuff You Should Know, and while most of their podcasts aren't exactly about camping and the outdoors, their episode on the tick, "Why Ticks Suck," is rather relevant for the coming months. For most of us, spring means camping, and of course, camping can mean ticks. Tuck your pants into your socks and go here to listen for free. It's #74 on the list.

Madison Spring Hut

Originally built in 1888 and opened in 1889 as the Appalachian Mountain Club’s first hut, Madison Spring Hut will reopen on June 2, 2011 after being completely rebuilt to add new green technologies and create more comfortable dining and bunk spaces. Madison was modeled after the European alpine huts and is now part of AMC’s hut-to-hut hiking network, which is the oldest in these United States. Perched at an elevation of 4,825 feet, Madison's above-treeline views of the Presidential Range and the valley below was originally built as a stone cabin for 12 guests with no caretaker or meal service. Read more about the technical aspect of the redesign here. And if you're not a member of the AMC and you live in New England, become a member now. The AMC does some wonderful things in these parts.