Much like Indiana Jones, I’m not especially fond of snakes. Maybe that’s why stories like this one from Environmental Graffiti give me the creeps. The story tells the tale of the giant anacondas, found lurking deep in the Amazon, and the people who are crazy enough to go looking for them.

Anacondas have been measured as much as 32 feet in length, and over 500 pounds in weight, although snakes of that size are quite rare. Natives to the Amazon tell stories of much larger snakes deep in the jungle, but if they’re out there, they have yet to be discovered. Still, scientists haven’t ruled out these giants existing out there somewhere.

Looking at the videos and photos with this story, you’ll begin to understand just how scary these snakes are. When I was in the Amazon earlier this year, I only saw one anaconda, and it was roughly six feet long, but the ones pictured here are in excess of 20 feet or more, and the videos demonstrate how powerful they are. Crazy stuff, and I’m glad I didn’t encounter anything this big while I was stumbling around down there.

Mid-week always brings us a new episode of The Rest of Everest, which continues this week with an in depth look at the Annapurna IV climb and ski descent. Podcast creator Jon Miller is once again joined by mountaineers Ben Clark and Josh Butson.

Episode 110 is called “The Slog”, and it deals with Ben and Josh going down the mountain, back to Base Camp, after giving up on their summit bid last week, when they were trapped inside the tent, waiting for the weather to change. While down climbing the mountain, they talk a bit about their disappointment in having to retreat, while still knowing that it wast he safe move none the less. The episode also gives us more insight into a part of climbing that we seldom see in the form of the descent. Most films are dedicated to getting to the top, but as usual, the Rest of Everest shows every aspect of a climb.

This episode also does a great job of really showing the conditions that climbers deal with on these big mountain. I often write about climbers dealing with deep snow at altitude, but this episode of the podcast really puts that in perspective, with plenty of the white stuff on display, both higher on the mountain, and on the descent, which made for a major challenge for Ben and Josh. You’ll also have a better understanding of the title of this episode as well!

As usual, grab the episode directly from the ROE website or from iTunes.

The Gear Junkie is up to his old tricks, launching another “Choose Your Adventure” contest that will send a lucky winner off on an adventure of their choosing, and load them up with all the gear they’ll need to have fun along the way.

The contest, which runs from now until September 15th, allows entrants to select from one of five different multisport getaways to the Alleghenies Mountains. If your name is picked, you get to go on the adventure you select, and bring a friend along for the ride, all expenses paid, including airfare and plenty of great gear as well.

Each of the five packaged adventures includes a variety of activities, such as fishing in the mountain streams, kayaking on local lakes, hiking scenic trails, and road biking through the Alleghenies. When you sign up for the contest, you can look over the combination of activities and select the one that best fits your interests. When you win, find a friend who wants to join you, and later this Fall you’ll be zipped off to the southeastern United States for some outdoor fun.

To join in the fun, simply click here and begin filling out the form. Good luck!

Primal Quest Badlands is just over a week away, and I’m working hard at getting everything in order so I can leave town for the event. PQ is one of the biggest adventure races in the world, and while not everyone can devote all the time necessary to prepare for a ten-day race, that doesn’t mean they don’t want to give adventure racing a go.

If you’ve been considering getting into the sport, then PlanetFear has a nice article you’ll want to look over. It’s dedicated to helping beginners navigate through all the essential gear items that they’ll need for their first race, including good trail running shoes, headlamps, backpacks, and a whole lot more, including some that you might not have thought of on your own, suck as the proper socks.

The article offers up some good insights across the board, without bogging you down with too much info. For example, they recommend that when buying your pack you go with something in the 20-30 liter range, and make sure that it has waist and chest straps to hold it firmly in place while running. They even recommend a few specific companies and a pack or two, but don’t weigh you down with thoughts on all the pack features you may or may not need.

All in all, it’s a good, comprehensive report on the basic gear you’ll need for your first few races, which will tend to be shorter, but not necessarily less gear intensive. Sure, the expedition length races like Primal Quest have you out on the course longer, and you may need a bigger pack, but a lot of your gear will translate over to the longer races just fine. But as a beginner, you should just be thinking about getting through the first races in one piece, and not worrying too much about the epic events. At least not yet.

I missed this video when it was making the rounds last week, but it’s definitely worth sharing now. Back in January I posted about Ueli Steck setting yet another speed record for climbing in the Alps, zipping up the North Face of the Grandes Jorasses, part of the Mount Blanc Massif, in just 2 hours, 21 minutes. If you’ve ever wondered how Ueli does it, then take a look at the video below, and prepare to be amazed. Really impressive climbing.

More updates from the Karakorum today, where the season is rapidly coming to an end, and teams are either topping out or packing up to come home it seems.

We’ll start on K2, where Kazakhs Maxut Zhumayev and Vassiliy Pivtsov were hoping to make another summit bid today, but high winds near the top have forced them down, along with a Japanese team they were hoping to work with. The weather forecast calls for “hurricane force” winds on the summit over the next few days, which prompted the hasty retreat back to Base Camp. The question now is, will they hang around for another go?

It seems that most of the teams are preparing to give up on K2 this seaons, and Everest News has already declared “No Summits this Year”. The latest update from the Field Touring Alpine Team says that they’ve elected to go home. Their porters have arrived in BC and packing has already begun. They hope to exit Base Camp on Friday to begin the trek back to civilization. The team is healthy but tired, and although there were no summits from FTA this year, they still consider it a successful outing.

We’ll probably have to wait a few days to find out if any teams plan to stay behind and make one final attempt on the summit, but it seems that BC is going to be very empty by the weekend. If I were to venture a guess, I’d say Max and Vasso are the most likely pair to try again, but with high winds and very deep snow up near the summit, it seems that the chances of topping out are very slim. If the Karakorum season does end with no summits on K2, it just underscores how difficult it truly is to climb this mountain.

Meanwhile, the Altitude Junkies have updated their blog with the confirmation that Spanish and Korean climbers made successful summits on the 3rd. This includes Oh Eun-sun, the Korean woman who now has 13 8000m peaks to her name. The AJ team is completely off the mountain now, and their porters have also arrived on the scene, so they are packing up and preparing to head back to Skardu as well. It seems that the season is over on the Gasherbrums as well.

Finally, ExWeb is reporting that a team still remains on Broad Peak, and they are attempting a new route on that mountain. They’re into C1 right now and will be proceeding upwards to C2 and 3 tomorrow. By the end of the weekend, they may be the final team in the Karakorum.

Another expedition that I haven’t updated on in awhile is Walking the Amazon, which has British adventurer Ed Stafford attempting to wall from the source of the Amazon River to its mouth along the eastern coast of Brazil. If successful, this will be the first trek of the Amazon from start to finish ever, and quite an impressive feat. So far, Ed has been out walking for 420 days, and he isn’t expected to finish up until sometime next May. In between, there is a whole lot of suffering in the “Green Hell” to endure.

I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy Ed’s Twitter feed, and I still fully recommend it. The former British Army officer, and his companion Cho Sanchez, send daily messages out to the world that keep us informed what is like for them to be traveling through one of the harshest environments on the planet. But Ed also updates his blog with weekly reports that offer a lot more detail on what it is like to be trekking across the Amazon.

For example, the latest entry gives us a bit of insight into Ed and Cho’s morning routine, which begins at 7 AM with the boys rolling out of their hammocks and getting the day off to a start with a malaria pill washed down with some water. From there, it’s out of the cleaner and considerably dryer clothes and into the wet ones. They only carry two sets of clothes on them, and one of those sets is perpetually wet thanks to the humidity and lack of ventilation in the jungle. After that, it’s time to cook breakfast and things underway for the day, which will mostly include hiking through miles of dense rainforest.

From my limited time in the Amazon, I can completely relate to the stories of wet clothes. Literally everything I wore ended up wet, and it would not dry at all while I was in the jungle. When I returned to the air conditioned cabin aboard the boat that served as my home for the two weeks I was on the Amazon, the clothes still didn’t dry all that much, and my backpack was often soaked for no real apparent reason as well. The moisture gets into everything, and my camera lenses struggled to autofocus with the humidity causing the glass to fog up. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Ed and Cho being able to continue to hike all those miles every day, with the end still a long way off. But through the use of modern technology, we can continue to follow their adventure, which is fascinating to watch.

It’s been a few weeks since we checked in on Mark Beaumont, who is in the process of cycling the Trans-American Highway from Alaska to the tip of South America. He’s been blogging about his journey and updating us on his adventure over at the Cycling the Americas website.

When last we checked in on Mark, he had summitted Denali and was preparing to begin his ride. He has since ridden out of Alaska and south through Canada, and is presently back in the continental U.S. and riding through the Washington/Idaho border region.

Mark is making good time so far on his journey, but on this type of ride, the northern end is always the easiest. Riding through the U.S. and Canada gives the cyclist a great infrastructure with excellent roads, campsites, and supply stations along the way. The further south he goes however, the worse those conditions are likely to be, especially once he enters Mexico and continues into Central America and then down into South America as well.

Today on his blog update, Mark is answering a series of questions, that are quite interesting. He talks about his route thus far, and how scenic it has been. He mentions his climbs, having already knocked off Denali, and setting his sights on Aconcagua in January, and what it’s like to spend hours on the road alone with just his bike.

For the next few weeks, Mark will continue his ride through the U.S. and updates will continue throughout the entire journey When he reaches Mexico, I expect a different tone to his updates and very interesting stories from the road.

I wrote about this little adventure this morning on Gadling as well, but thought that it was such an interesting story, I wanted to share it here too. It’s called the Listen to Africa Expedition, and it’s an interesting mix of adventure travel, culture, and more.

A few months back, Huw WIlliams and Rebecca Sumner set out from the U.K. to ride their bikes through Africa. Over the course of the next two years, they’ll be covering more than 15,000 miles as they explore amazing landscapes, rustic African villages, and other remote corners of the continent. All the while they’ll be blogging about their journey and taking us along for the ride, so to speak.

Of course, we’ve seen other long distance cycling adventures before, including a number of them through Africa. But what sets this one apart, is their unique approach to capturing the very essence of the continent. The two British adventurers are taking some recording equipment along with them, and as they go, they are recording, quite literally, the sounds of Africa. This includes natural sounds, such as wildlife, the wind through the trees, and so on, as well as the voices of the people they meet along the way. They hope to preserve some of the culture as well, by recording local music, oral histories, and more. Some of the recordings are already in place on the expedition’s website, and it is fascinating to listen to them, especially in context with the blog posts as well. Click here to see a list of the audio files available.

There is a rough plan in place as to how Huw and Rebecca will go about their journey, but they are being very flexible in their travels, and leaving their options open. After leaving the U.K., they rode their bikes across France where they hopped a ferry to Morocco. From there they peddled down the western coast of Africa, and are now currently in Mauritania, with many months, and miles ahead of them yet.

The expedition website obviously contains a lot more information about the journey, including a gallery of photos and a map to track the riders’ progress. Gear heads will also appreciate the information on the equipment they are using, which is always fascinating to me.

Seems like a very cool project and I like their approach to capturing audio. It should be fun to follow along and listen to their progress.

A quick update this morning, courtesy of ExWeb, who is reporting that weather conditions on K2 have prevented the teams on their summit push from reaching the top of the mountain. Deep snow, reportedly up to the climbers chests, was the main impediment to their progress, and while most are heading back down for now, the Kazakhs are going to stay in C4 and make another go of it tomorrow.

According to the story, Gerlinde Kalenbrunner and her climbing mates have been turned back and are proceeding down. She’ll no doubt be weighing her options and the chances of getting to the summit yet this year, although time is beginning to run short. But Maxut Zhumayev and Vassiliy Pivtsov have remained at altitude, and hope to gather their strength to make another attempt on the summit. This shows how strong these two men are at altitude, having the ability to actually recover without descending, and they are actually use to spending days above 8000m.

The Field Touring Alpine Team has updated their status today as well, with the news that their climbers have also gone back down the mountain and are either in C2 or BC. Everyone is said to be healthy and feeling fine, if a bit tired.

The ExWeb report also indicated that a large chunk of ice broke off from a serac just above the Bottleneck and went sliding down the mountain, narrowly missing one of the climbers, in what had to be a very scary scene some what reminiscent of last year’s tragedy. Lets hope that these falling chunks of ice are not a precursor to another major serac collapse.

I’ll keep an eye on Max and Vassiliy and their next summit bid tomorrow. If anyone can get up to the top, it’ll be these two.