This video has amazing footage from inside an avalanche, and shows how an airbag and avalung can save lives. It also shows to not underestimate the power of avalanches…
Outdoor gear
The Man and the Mammoth. Awesome story on how skiing was born!
These skates are the cat’s meow for going out onto natural ice. They consists of a skate blade with a skate-ski binding. Click in your skate-ski or classic ski boots and off you go. These are bar-none the most comfortable skates I have ever used, because the boots are so comfy, and provide lots of support. The blades are curved up at the front so they handle bumpy ice and snow better than regular speedskates. You can supposedly skate through several inches of snow.
I spend a lot of time out on the trails in Jasper National Park with a GPS these days, so I want to know how accurate my unit is. My Garmin Etrex 30x displays an accuracy number (EPE, or Estimated Position Error), typically ranging from +-3m to +-10m. One would think that this means that I am within 4-10m of my true location. However, this is not the case. An EPE of 4m actually means that there is a 50% chance that you are within 4m, but also a 50% chance that you are further off! However, there is a 95% chance that you are within 10m, and a 98.9% chance that you are within 10.2m.
Along with the Alpacka rafts, The Trak Kayak also gets a spot in the category of cool outdoor gear. I grew up with foldable Klepper kayaks, but they took a while to set up, they had a lot of parts, and we punctured the boats many times on the rocks of Belgian rivers. Fast forward 30 years, and enter this very cool foldable kayak.
There is lots of great outdoor gear out there, but every so often a really cool new toy comes along. Alpacka rafts qualify for the “real cool” label. They are small, ultralight inflatable rafts. Why are they cool? Because they allow you to hike through remote areas, and cross large rivers along the way in style.