Two Groups of Castaways Marooned on the Same Island: One Did Everything Right; One Didn’t
https://explorersweb.com/auckland-island-castaways-contrast-in-survival/
Social-Feed
Since Dec 2022 we have been running our own Mastodon & GoToSocial servers. What a breath of fresh air the Fediverse has been. We have made many hundreds of new friends from around the world, mostly related to our mountain, tech and nature interests.
Connect with me/us on the Fediverse at:
That's the last time I'm ever going into an Ikea. Must have done 5 miles twisting and turning down alleyways and walkways lined with people and products 😂. No direct route to the part of the store you are looking for. At the end ... the €18 product we wanted. Online only, if at all, for me from now on.
@jds some images from . Descriptions in the alt text
Spring is in the air
Yesterday we came across an interesting and unusual feature that we've never encountered before in mountains (outside of Kamchatka in 2013). A deep crack/crevice was found near the summit of Morron de Enmedio at 1098m in the Sierra Elvira. Coming up out of the crack was a constant strong blast of warm wind. This feature (the Raja Santa cavity) is just west of the summit if you want to experience this for yourselves. Natural warming for a cold winters day!
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As we had never been to these mountains before we called this walk "The Sierras We've Never Heard Of"! The Sierra Elvira lie just NW of Granada city. Good motorway connections mean the start is just 45 mins drive from our home base in Lanjaron.
We started the walk at the large parking area at Collado de los Pinos and made our way up through pine forests and open slopes to the Collado del Morrón del Punta.
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Beautiful winter sunset in the Alpujarra tonight
I love RSS feeds and do most of my blog and website catching up using these feeds. Used various pieces of software over the years to co-ordinate and aggregate feeds. Today, just installed FreshRSS on my server. Easy to install and no messing with ports forwarding etc. Just install on a server you run. Initial thoughts are that it works really well and provides a very nice platform to read your content.
Christmas Eve from a pub somewhere in darkest Andalucia 😂 . Can't say this reminds me of my Christmas's from my youth in the UK
Anyway, if you celebrate Christmas, ... Feliz Navidad a todos
Had some time to play today so back to exploring netstack using and app.
Excited that without wifi, bluetooth nor mobile data I managed to connect the two phones and send/receive text messages via LORA.
Initial testing got me to the end of my land (100m) without problems. Not "line of sight" either. Will extend distance tomorrow on dog walk. What can these very tiny aerials achieve?
After that maybe time for big aerial on the roof?
Back in southern Spain our group hiked up the Silleta de Padul from Padul (S of Granada). A nice 12km circular hike with 850m ascent/descent. Much of interest, including spectacular views of the Sierra Nevada mountains and the rock arch of "Piedra Ventana". Give it a go!
Nearly Christmas and we were fortunate to be able to walk around in t-shirts and shorts
I've seen Lautaro from far away to the south. A magnificent massif rising out of the Patagonian Icecap. Remote. Hats off to these two who managed to ski down the 2200m north face.
https://explorersweb.com/first-ski-descent-of-the-north-face-of-chiles-lautaro-volcano/
My two daughters and I sat on the diminutive summit of Latrigg last week, in the English Lake District with the town of Keswick and Derwentwater lake below.
We had just left my Dad, who died a few years back, with an eternal view over a place he dearly loved. What a final resting vista!
As a young inner city kid, in 1971 I was introduced to the hills. We spent some days camping & climbing the mountains surrounding the Newlands Valley in England's Lake District. Last week I returned to my spiritual hiking birthplace.
The forecast was dreadful but the gods were smiling. Cloud inversion & some wonderful light conditions. Quite emotional. Brought back many memories from my past.
@bergmeister
Mt Fitzroy (Chalten) 3405m.
I'm back in the UK visiting friends and family pre xmas. It's cold, grey, damp and frankly, quite depressing. Having said that the local village pubs are warm, welcoming and offer some lovely tasting and wonderfully inventive cask beers such as this 😃
It's bank holiday here in Spain so we knew many of the popular walks would be busy. Instead we drove 15 minutes to a town called Chite, which we had never visited before. Had beautiful hike through lush forests and lakeside (Embalse de Beznar). A glorious 2 hour, 7km circular walk that ended at the bar in Chite.
Amazing what's on your doorstep that can sometimes get overlooked!
This is amazing. Spotted these walls half way up a vertical cliff in the Tajos de Bermejales. Who built them and why?
From Wikipedia ...
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Neolithic people lived in the canyon 5,000 years ago, sheltering under its overhanging walls and using the river as source of food. There are traces of these early settlers on the canyon walls about 10 metres above the present river level. Some of the walls they built to enclose the cavities in the canyon wall are still visible.
Not into self promotion but this is the 7th anniversary of the publication of my guidebook to Spain's Sierra Nevada. Can't believe how time has flown by.
They say everybody has a book in them, I guess this was mine. Quite hard writing a guidebook. You have to remain factual not flowery, keep stories short & relevant etc.
Yes, I get some royalties, cup of coffee for every book sold, but truth is that this was a labor of love, not for reward. My way to spread the word about these mountains.
Some more photos from our trip this week down the Barranco de Tajos Bermejales. A very interesting hiking route with twists and turns, ups and downs and a few surprising features. Be prepared for some wobbly wire bridges, deep undergrowth, ladders, rungs and short sections of very easy scrambling, safeguarded by dodgy fixed ropes. Great stuff and recommended that you visit.
