Before I became an expeditionary mountaineer I had a certain disdain for difficult climbing objectives. They have their place, of course, and I nodded approvingly whenever I read of some thirteen-day spin-drifted, single-cramponed ascent of an untouched Alaskan face accomplished on a week’s food and fuel. I was glad they did it, and not me.
Instead, I announce to the readership of Harvard Mountaineering, which is to say most of its editors, my part in an expedition of a different sort. Oh sure, the expedition claims the first recorded ascents of nine peaks in the Borkoldoy range of the Kyrgyz Tien Shan[1. A technical summary is available at www.borkoldoy.harvardmountaineering.org and a report is also published in The American Alpine Journal 2006. Consider this my personal story.]. But I write to share my subversive strategy of making the expedition laborious and complicated enough to merit the title without undue resort to the risks and discomforts of hard climbing. A sneakier path to glory. Continue reading Kyrgyzstan The Hard Way→
Robotic aircraft of the future, used for reconnaissance or communication, may need to rely on wing morphing, a trick mastered ages ago by birds for long flights. By measuring how ultraversatile swifts morph their wings to double their gliding time or triple their turn rate, researchers have given both biologists and engineers a greater understanding of the secrets of efficient flight.
I conducted a travel experiment recently. Everywhere I go, people make suggestions on what to see, which I usually politely ignore. (“Oh, England? You must see the hedgerows! Spain? Don’t miss Barcelona! Kyrgyzstan? Where’s that?)
I spent a summer crossing the Pyrenees and the Picos de Europa in northern Spain, sacrificing sleep and stripping my rental car’s clutch all in the name of improving Let’s Go’s travel guidebooks.
It was a summer of pastoral mountain scenery, hitchhiking with hippies and undercover police, and yes, the Sanfermines in Pamplona.
I didn’t know it then, but my summer jobs researching and writing budget travel guidebooks would morph into my full-time career as a freelance writer.
Journalist covering global development by way of science and technology.
