Airbags are a hot topic in the snowsports industry, and
Mammut is introducing an evolution of its Snowpulse system at next week’s
Outdoor Retailer Show that it’s calling a new category in the airbag
market—protective airbags.
The new Snowpulse PAS (protective airbag system) airbags offer trauma protection not
currently available from other airbags. In forested and rocky terrain, which
means most places in North America, many skiers die from trauma during a slide, not
suffocation from being buried. Mechanical trauma causes approximately 15 to 32 percent of
avalanche deaths depending on location and which study you’re referencing.
Because of its extended neck wrapping bag, an avy victim wearing one of
Mammut’s Snowpulse PAS packs has additional chest, neck, and head protection
from impacts, better neck stabilization in a slide, and a greater chance of
coming to rest with his head on top of the snow when a slide has finally settled.
In the PAS bags, the
main airbag volume is in front of and above your head. That means when you come
to rest in an avalanche wearing this pack, your head and face will typically be
on top of the avalanche with your body in a sitting position, back downslope.
When he competes in triathlons, nine-year-old Conner Green puts in extra work so that his seven-year-old brother Cayden Long can race with him. Cayden has cerebral palsy and can't walk on his own. In the swim portion, Connor pulls Cayden in a raft. In the running portion, he pushes him in a stroller. In the bike portion, he pulls him in a cart. The brothers have competed in more than a dozen triathlons since 2011, and were named Sports Illustrated Kids'2012 Sportskids of the Year. Watch their story in the video above.
When astronaut Chris Hadfield was asked last week what his favorite photo taken during the first three weeks of a stint on the International Space Station was, he answered simply.
"I love the beautiful pictures of the world," Hadfield said, "but for
me, the one that was most significant was looking at the noctilucent clouds.
These are clouds that you can barely see from the surface of the Earth.
They're the highest clouds that exist—tiny ice particles way up in
the mesosphere. And yet from orbit, as the sun rises, the light bounces
off of those clouds, directly into our eyes—and we can see a part of
the Earth's atmosphere that's basically invisible to people on the
surface. To me, that's both beautiful—because of the colors and
textures and ripples of it—but it's also really significant. It's a
way to understand the changes in our atmosphere, and a way to understand
exactly how our atmosphere interacts with the universe beyond."
What exactly did Hadfield mean by that last sentence, in which he says that the clouds can help us understand changes in our atmosphere and our relationship to the universe? I set off in search of the science behind noctilucent clouds for the answer.
The finished product—with super slow mo footage of thousands of pounds of falling water, the tap of falling raindrops, and kayakers winding through tight slots—is polished. But the nine-day filmmaking trip to Mexico was anything but smooth.
Everything started when kayaker Erik Boomer and photographer Tim Kemple called filmmaker Anson Fogle and invited him on a simple jaunt to chase waterfalls. "Naively, we all talked about it as a vacation," said Fogle.
Juneau climbers Ryan
Johnson and Samuel Johnson will attempt Mount Hayes, Alaska. Photo: Glacier Fed/Flickr
The Alpinist and their partners announced the winners of the 2013 Mugs Stump Awards today, offering up $33,500 in grants to nine teams pursuing climbing objectives that exemplify light, fast, and clean alpinism. A quick breakdown of the expeditions is included below, as taken from the Alpinist announcement. We'll cover some of these expeditions as they occur through our "Expedition Watch" posts.
