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93-Year-Old Summits Yosemite’s Half Dome ‘Stubborn as a Mule’

in People 280 views

Everett Kalin was looking for an adventure to celebrate his birthday. For a man of his age, that might entail going out to eat ethnic food, but the 93-year-old Californian had other plans.

“When you hit your 90s, you think, ‘What would be some things I’d like to do?’” he told SF Gate. “… I guess Half Dome was the thing that most popped into my mind.”

Half-Dome—the monumental mass of granite in Yosemite Valley is no place for faint hearts or knackered knees. For those with apposite fitness, it’s a 14-16 hour endeavor that involves gaining and then losing over 4,000 feet in elevation. Toward the top, cables embedded in the rocks require upper body strength to pull oneself up steep inclines.

Despite all that, Everett was determined, and requisitioned the company of his son Jon, 57, and granddaughter Sidney, 19, for the excursion.

Training hard, Everett made ample use of the days leading up to the trek to walk up and down stairs, and around Lake Merritt.

Then the day of the hike came, and Everett admits that he probably underestimated the difficulty of the beginning half, with plenty of steep paths that he described as slick.

Jon and Sidney helped him along every step of the way, even pushing on his backside during particularly vertical bits.

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New Tallest Tree in Asia–a 335-Foot Cypress Shows There’s Plenty Left in the World to Discover

in Enviroment 249 views

China is a big country with big buildings, big cities, big rivers, and a big population. But the nation’s penchant for big isn’t just an artificial one, nature plays along too.

If you look up “the tallest tree in Asia” on the internet, it may mention Menara, a yellow meranti tree Shorea faguetiana with a height of 330.7 feet (100.8 meters) found in Malaysia. The record, however, has now been broken.

Researchers at Peking University working in Yarlung Zangbo Grand Canyon Nature Reserve have recorded a Himalayan cypress Cupressus torulosa that has grown to 335 feet (102.3 meters). See the whole tree below, but it will take a few seconds to scroll all the way down.

This isn’t just the tallest tree in Asia, but the second tallest in the world behind America’s Hyperion—a coastal redwood that reaches 381 feet into the sky.

The researchers used a LiDAR drone survey to scrub away the leaves and measure the tree trunks of whole acres of forest quickly. This is how they were able to locate the giant cypress.

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Hugely Popular Hiking App Releases 27,000 Trail Maps to Download for Free to Increase Hiker Safety

in Sports 475 views

One of the most popular hiking apps has made 27,000 trail maps available for download for free in a bid to increase hiker safety.

Most hikers, if they’re honest, will at some point have experienced this situation: they thought they needed to follow one trail, but instead they followed another. Seeking to reorient themselves, they timidly pulled out their smartphone and see, as they suspected, there was no reception of any kind.

Last year, search and rescue missions were up 32% across the US. This is mainly down to the hikers being inadequately prepared. Access to offline maps would help ensure that all hikers can be best prepared for their hike.

To that end, the Irish hiking app HiiKER has released all trail maps in its database for download free of charge. They can either choose to download them directly to their smartphone or as a GPX file to their smartwatch—saving the battery of their device while away from electricity access.

“Hiker Safety is our absolute priority. Offering hikers Free Offline maps on HiiKER, means that everyone can feel confident that they’re on track, regardless of mobile service,” said Paul Finlay, CEO and Founder of HiiKER.

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These States Allow Visitors Free Off-Road Wheelchairs In Their Parks and Nature Areas

in Enviroment 240 views

Parks departments across the country are beginning to offer free all-terrain wheelchairs at their visitors centers for disabled people to explore their states’ treasures of nature.

Such programs have already cropped up in Colorado, Michigan, and South Dakota, and Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, a National Park Service unit, has also added off-road wheelchairs to their park’s resources.

With some weighing 500 pounds or more, the motorized all-terrain wheelchair is like a Caterpillar but without the scoop and the cabin. The tracks can allow it to go up or over some serious obstacles, such as stumps, mud, snow, and more.

The first state to set the trend was Colorado, who started in 2017 with their Staunton State Park Track-Chair Program which provides free wheelchair access with the regular entrance fee.

Later the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources placed all-terrain wheelchairs in 12 of their state parks, boat launching sites, and trails.

Georgia and Minnesota recently joined this group, with the latter recently-wrapping up a pilot program that tested chairs in 5 parks, the Washington Post reports.

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