MOUNTAINEERING — At 73, Tamae Watanabe is the oldest woman to summit Mount Everest — again. The last time she made the record, she was 63.

She reached the top with four other team members Saturday morning after an all-night climb, Asian Trekking says. The Japanese mountaineer was leading Asian Trekking's International Everest Expedition 2012.

In 2009, Kay LeClaire of Spokane briefly held the distinction of being the oldest woman on top of the world.

Ang Tshering of the China Tibet Mountaineering Association in Nepal tells The Associated Press that the team is in good condition and heading back to the base.

Asian Trekking has a list of Watanabe's other mountaineering feats, which have taken her all over the world, including Alaska's Mount McKinley in 1977.

The oldest man to climb Everest was Min Bahadur Serchan, who was 76 when he reached the highest point on Earth in 2008, according to the Guinness World Records. Radio Australia News reports the youngest person to climb the mount was 13-year-old American Jordan Romero in 2010.

See EverestNews reports here.

CLIMBING — Learn the Nuts & Bolts of climbing gear from Eddie Whittemore, a highly regarded Black Diamond sales rep, TONIGHT, 7 p.m., in a free program at Mountain Gear Retail Store, 2002 N Division St.

The informal-informative presentation will cover how climbing gear is manufactured, how it is tested and the standards; then a bit about caring for gear to make it last, and when to retire it for safety.

 A Q & A session will conclude the evening.

Whittemore invites you to bring your gear and your questions.

OUTDOOR SPORTS — Eastern Washington Univeristy outdoors enthusiasts are pooling outdoor gear for sale and bidding this week.   Check it out.

FUN IN THE SUN SALE

APRIL 13^TH, APRIL 14^TH 2012

120 G ST. CHENEY, WA. 99004

FRIDAY APRIL 13^TH, 2012, 8AM-4:30PM

SATURDAY APRIL 14^TH, 8AM-4:30PM

Bids taken & some pre-priced items

SOLD at this time

BID PICKUP & Sale of Pre-Priced Items

THURSDAY, APRIL 19^TH, 2012

8AM-4:00PM

ITEMS OF INTEREST

KAYAKS, SNOW SHOES, CROSS COUNTRY SKIS,

XC SKI BOOTS, WHITEWATER RAFTS AND MORE.

FOR PHOTOS:

http://sites.ewu.edu/surplus/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ewusurplus/

EMAIL: SURPLUS@ EWU.EDU

 (509) 359-7377 (FLOYD CLOKE) 

Dr. Richard Byrd, a Spokane pulmonary specialist and globetrotting adventurer, died on April 3 after suffering a blow to the head in a fall while hiking a rocky area on the coast of Cuba.

Byrd, 82, was traveling with his wife, Laurie, and a group led by National Geographic Expeditions. The adventure travel organization has clearance to lead Cuba cultural trips that include U.S. citizens, who are otherwise restricted from entering the nation.

Byrd was featured in a 2010 story in The Spokesman-Review for the inexhaustible energy that allowed him to continue a medical practice with the Rockwood Clinic while satisfying a world-class appetite for climbing mountains, paddling kayaks and hiking treacherous trails.

“The group was hiking and he was out in front, as usual,” Laurie said, describing his fatal accident. “He apparently slipped and hit his head. He never regained consciousness.”

She said she finds comfort in knowing he was out exploring new territories and doing what he loved.

“On the other hand, this was such an incredibly active and vital man who still saw patients – and he was gone in an instant. It takes some getting used to.”

Byrd, a former Air Force officer, launched most of his outdoor adventures after the age of 50. He was active in the Spokane Canoe & Kayak Club and a veteran, along with Laurie, on wilderness trips in North America.

They paddled off the Galapagos Islands as well as northeastern Greenland, a trip that took 10 years to arrange with permission from the natives.

“It was worth it,” he said.

Byrd climbed peaks such as Kilimanjaro and hiked to the base camps of Mount Everest and K2.

He'd trekked in Nepal, India and Buton, an island in Indonesia. He’d canoed Alaska’s Noatak River into the Bering Sea, kayaked the Strait of Magellan in Chile and rode out 400 miles of whitewater in a canoe, along with Laurie, on the Nahanni River in Canada’s remote Northwest Territories. The Nahanni trip is epic in the paddling club’s history because the group nearly starved.

After trekking 200 miles across England, walking an average of 20 miles each day, Byrd wondered if he was in good enough shape to run a marathon. He proved he could by finishing the Portland Marathon, just before he turned 80.

Byrd’s ashes returned the United States with his wife. The family is planning a memorial on April 27, 11 a.m., at Hamblen Park Presbyterian Church.

CLIMBING – Karl Dietrich, an accomplished North Idaho mountaineer, will be presenting a slide show of his alpine adventures at 6 p.m., March 29 at the Laughing Dog Brewery in Ponderay, sponsored by the Idaho Panhandle Avalanche Center.

MOUNTAINS — The historic Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood turns 75 years old in this year.

Built during the Great Depression as a key part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal-WPA projects, the lodge has served FDR’s intention – as “a place to play for generations of Americans in the days to come.”

To celebrate the anniversary, Timberline will hold several promotions and special events throughout the year. Notable happenings include an ode to skiing and snowboarding during “Heritage Week” in April and a free concert and heritage fair.

Idaho is in the eyes of the beholder.

From grizzly bears to fly fishing, several interesting outdoors related programs are scheduled tonight in Spokane, plus one biggie for anglers in Sandpoint.

It's too bad people have to choose just one to attend.  Here's a sampling of the lineup:

• Fly fishing film helps anglers “Connect” with steelhead.
• 'Grizzly Manifesto” author to speak at Gonzaga.
• Bhutan trekking slide show funds opposition to Mt. Spokane ski area expansion.
• Lake Pend Oreille “state of the lake” fisheries presentation tonight.

OUTDOOR SCANDALS — It’s been 10 months since Jon Krakauer and 60 Minutes alleged that the Greg Mortenson, who became famous with his book Three Cups of Tea, was a literary fraud who used the Central Asia Institute as a personal cash cow, prompting a civil suit and an investigation by Montana’s attorney general.

According to a just published report by Outside magazine — check it out —  Mortenson still isn’t talking. But the case is heating up, with important developments in the lawsuit and hints that the A.G.’s probe could go badly for CAI.

MOUNTAINEERING — Jared Townsley had a goal this year to ascend Mount Hood once a month.

The 32-year-old from Tigard was a skilled climber who had already scaled the mountain more than a dozen times, sometimes solo, the Oregonian reports

Sunday night, Townsley headed up for a climb that turned out to be his last.

Tuesday morning, search teams recovered the body of the computer engineer near White River Canyon after he fell to his death while descending in icy conditions.

Read the report from the Oregonian here.

Read a report from Townsley's home town paper quoting the family here.

Read the AP report on the rescue/recovery here.
  

WINTER SPORTS — The Spokane Downtown Library's Northwest Room is featuring a timely display celebrating winter in the Northwest, including a lot of snowy outdoor recreation.

Winter weather conditions have long created both challenges and opportunities for Northwest residents. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw greater hazards than the present, with less than ideal equipment and poor roads.

Winter recreation then and now included skiing, sledding, ice skating, hockey, snowshoeing, hunting, and outdoor work.

This exhibit combines photos of fun in the snow with disasters such as avalanches on railroad tracks. Come and see these images from winters past—you might be surprised at how familiar they look.

The Northwest Room is on the second floor of the Downtown Library.

WHEN: January 11-March 31

TIME: Northwest Room Hours

LOCATION: Downtown

Call 444-5338.

CLIMBING — The extraordinary skill of big-wall rock climber Alex Honnold, 26, was put to the mainstream in 2011 by a CBS filming crew willing to go out of their comfort zone. 

Honnold, 26, said he is at peace thousands of feet off the ground, but how do you find cameramen who feel the same way for a a “60 Minutes” assignment to film Alex's ascent of Sentinel in Yosemite National Park?

CBS assembled a dream team of photographers and riggers, who spent two days assembling an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys so they could film the climb with 12 cameras from the valley floor to the summit.

The video above talks about the filming of the feature on this young climbing phenom.

Watch Lara Logan's full “60 Minutes” report on Alex Honnold here.

JP Auclair Street Segment (from All.I.Can.) from Sherpas Cinema on Vimeo.

SKIING — This street-skiing video clip from the ski film All.I.Can. is one of my favorite moments from the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour that ran three nights at The Bing Crosby Theater in Spokane.

It required skill and a sense of humor. It makes fun of all the virgin powder films people die to make.

It features J.P. Auclair making a wild trip down through the dirty urban snow lining the steep streets in Trail, British Columbia.  It's way more imaginative than screaming off cliffs. Very cool.

MOUNTAINS — Climbers, and everyone else, can enjoy an eagle-eye view of Glacier Peak west of Lake Chelan in a series of photos shot by John Scurlock, a Bellingham firefighter/paramedic who built his own sport plane and uses it to capture interesting aerial scenic photos.

Scurlock has developed an incredible photo gallery website where he has a large inventory of aerial views detailing winter routes and faces on North Cascades peaks and more.

Last week, Scurlock and Steph Abegg photographed Glacier Peak and Mount Stuart, two prized wilderness destinations for the region's mountaineers.

When you go to his website, be sure to click on “view map,” which locates the mountains and allows you to click a bubble and see the photo. 

This photograph of upper Glacier peak  looks to the south/southeast.

Here's an interesting view of blowing snow back-lit by the setting sun, taken just as they turned the plane toward home in a steady 40-50 mph wind out of the north at altitude, “a typical clear-weather winter pattern in my experience” Scurlock said.

(Click 'original' below the images to see the largest uploaded sizes.)

  

MOUNTAINEERING — Historians have digitized a newsreel film that documents the February 1922 first winter ascent of Mount Rainier by Jean and Jacques Landry, Jacques Bergues and newsreel cameraman Charles Perryman, according to historical notes by software development specialist and climber Lowell Skoog of Seattle.

In 2003, Perryman's grandson Steve Turner contacted Lowell Skoog about this film after reading about Perryman's climb in the Alpenglow Ski Mountaineering History Project. This led to an eight-year effort by Skoog to acquire the Perryman newsreel films from Turner for The Mountaineers based in Seattle. The project was completed in October (2011).

“This is a truly historic film,” Skoog said. “It was the first motion picture ever taken on the summit of Mount Rainier. It shows the first winter ascent of any significant peak in Washington state, and the highest no less. It is the oldest known climbing or skiing film in Washington.”

Notes about this historic ascent can be found at Alpenglow.org.

ICE CLIMBING — A climber suffers serious injuries while ice climbing in Wyoming.  Feel the pain with him and the helplessness of his partner as they focus on getting to safety.

Would you have done anything differently?

Would you have made it?

ADVENTURE FILMS — Adventure, humor, awareness and awe, plus a   good dose of pucker factor, are coming to   Spokane this weekend in a road show of top outdoor adventure films.

And if you don't already have tickets, you may be out of luck.

The cream of the crop from the 31st annual Banff Mountain Film Festival will be traveling from Alberta to The Bing Crosby Theater tonight through Sunday.

But tickets are sold out through TicketsWest.  Call the Mountain Gear Retail Store, 325-9000, to see if any tickets are left for this popular annual event.

The World Tour shows will take the audience to extremes, from ascending to one of the coldest places on earth to rappelling into the hottest place – to take a sample of molten lava from the bowels of a volcano.

The films feature all sorts of outdoor pursuits, including climbing, wildlife, pedaling and paddling.

See above for the always popular festival film clips compiled into the exciting World Tour into segment.

Then click here for details about this year's festival as well as links for clips on many of the top films.

MOUNTAINEERING — Gary Guller, the first person with one arm to summit Mount Everest and the leader of the largest cross-disability group to reach the 17,500-foot base camp at Mount Everest Base Camp, brings his motivational story and message to Spokane Community College  on Monday (Oct. 17), 1 p.m.,  in the Lair-Student Center auditorium, Bldg. 6, 1810 N. Greene St.

The program is free and open to the public.

Guller, who lost his arm in a previous mountaineering accident, has continued breaking ground in outdoor adventures. He's led an expedition to the summit of world’s sixth highest mountain, Mount Cho Oyu, in Tibet and he's completed the Marathon des Sables, a six-day, 153-mile endurance race across the Sahara Desert.

Info: SCC student activities, 533-7081.

WOMEN OUTDOORS — The Spokane REI store is devoting an evening to providing women with information on programs and events designed especially for getting women active in outdoor activities.

Diva Night is set for Oct. 20 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at 1125 N. Monroe.   That's a week a way, but the first 30 women to pre-register for Diva Night will receive a complimentary gift bag of fun prizes!

Topics to be covered range from  health and wellness to camp cooking, backpacking, climbing and more.

 Participating groups include the Susan G. Komen Foundation, The Souper Bowl, Emde Sports, Belles & Baskets, Gals Get Going, the YWCA, Jazzercise, Fitness Center, Rossignol, Superfeet and Moving Comfort, Petzl, Columbia, Black Diamond, Asics and ZipFizz and Girl Scouts.

The REI climbing wall will be open for women to try out.