5,500 miles across Europe, the restoration of Glen Feshie, hard travel, and everything weighs something | The Pinnacle
This week’s Pinnacle Reads include a spread of subjects on long-distance hiking, high-stakes Himalayan mountaineering, ecosystem restoration, photography, and more.
I’d like to take this opportunity to say hello to those of you who have newly subscribed – many, I suspect, from the excellent Inkcap Journal, which featured a link to The Pinnacle last week. Welcome! I publish on a biweekly schedule: a list of Pinnacle Reads one weekend, then a feature or article the next.
This week’s reads:
The End is My Beginning – it was a pleasure to publish this harrowing story of death, achievement and identity by Tamara Lunger on Sidetracked.
How it feels to be home after walking 5,500 miles – I’d been following Ursula Martin’s journey across Europe through social media, and it’s great to read her story here on The Great Outdoors.
Ben Dolphin: Glen Feshie’s ecosystem restoration has made it one of the most uplifting places to go in Scotland – Glen Feshie is a place I find tremendously exciting. It’s been a few years since my last visit, so I’m really looking forward to going back and finding the new tree growth even more vigorous than I remember.
The Cape Wrath Trail Boxset – a cracking set of videos here from Robin Wallace, who has recently completed the Cape Wrath Trail.
Why I’m Launching Hard Travel – an exciting new newsletter on expeditions, exploratory mountaineering, and Arctic journeys – hard travel, in other words – by Ash Routen.
In the World of Ultralight Hiking, Everything Weighs Something – I enjoyed this look at the sometimes bizarre subculture of UL backpacking by Ali Selim. I’ve been thinking a lot about lightweight backpacking lately because I’m writing a book about it, but one thing that’s started to bother me is that many common UL techniques rely heavily on disposable products: ziploc bags perhaps most often, or the disposable surgical shoe covers used as camp shoes in this piece. Is there a way to move beyond this without sacrificing pack weight, or is compromise the only solution? Does it really matter if your pack now weighs 6kg instead of 4kg, or is that UL sacrilege? Questions to ponder, certainly – I certainly am, as my own pack weight fluctuates somewhere in the ‘lightweight’ area of the spectrum.
Pocket Outdoor Media acquires Outside Magazine, Outside TV, Gaia GPS, athleteReg, and Peloton Magazine; Rebrands as Outside – this doesn’t feel like a good move for Gaia GPS, which has long been one of the best and most reliable navigation apps for mountain use in Europe and the USA. I’ve been thinking about this subject ever since ViewRanger was acquired by Outdooractive (and, as a result, is being mothballed). Navigation apps are important; people rely on them in life-or-death situations. The last thing we want is for a previously reliable tool to suddenly morph into yet another bloated, data-hungry social feed. How can we ensure that these apps aren’t compromised by the capricious tides of the app economy?
A question of stiles: rural ingenuity or hazardous obstacle? – Andrew McCloy writes about stiles for the Cicerone blog. Stiles in my own area were largely in poor repair for years, but since late 2019 there has been an extensive campaign of replacing stiles with kissing gates – which are far more accessible, even if they’re sometimes a tight squeeze to get through with a big pack.
Nights in Green Nylon: The Ups and Downs of Bivvy Life – Ronald Turnbull, bivvy extraordinaire, writes about the subtle pleasures of bivvying in the British hills. The first edition of Ronald’s The Book of the Bivvy was a bible of mine almost twenty years ago – I learned a huge amount from this slim volume. It’s great to see a new edition on its way from Cicerone Press.
Photographing the Hebrides: Canna – beautiful work here from Christopher Swan.
Recently published
I have a bunch of features in the August 2021 issue of The Great Outdoors magazine, which is on sale now. More about my features here.
The Meaning of Adventure: Hiking the Haute Route Pyrenees – first published in Sidetracked, this feature is now free to read on my blog.
My next book, The Farthest Shore, is now available to pre-order with Vertebrate Publishing. The first 200 copies come with a signed print of the cover art (although I suspect they may be sold out by now).
Until next time,
Alex
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